The Gardening Thread

[Róisín]

Agree about not growing food plants in a diesel container, though things grown for ornament are probably okay, and after a few years the container may have been sufficiently cleaned by insects, plant roots, soil bacteria etc. to be safe for food plants.

And Crow, springtails probably won’t hurt your plants, but they do get everywhere. Although they are hexapods they are not strictly speaking insects. They break up organic detritus in the soil in their search for the stuff they do eat (Bacterial colonies and microfungi and algae), which process may actually help your plants to access nutrients in the soil. But if you find them sufficiently annoying to want to kill them, diatomaceous earth may be best - just don’t breathe the stuff in, it does no more good to human lungs than it does to the joints and breathing tubes of insects and suchlike creatures. I am presently using it on the ants that are invading my beehive, and know to be very careful around it.

Also don’t overwater - springtails in nature are creatures whose habitat is the bark and leaf litter of the forest floor, so they like it dark and damp.

Also, catnip may be better for a bit of sun and air rather than being entirely indoor plants.

[Solokov]

Solokov, please make sure to not grow anything edible in it! Properly cleaned, almost anything can be used as container for decorative plants, but with edibles you have to be more careful.

Agree about not growing food plants in a diesel container, though things grown for ornament are probably okay, and after a few years the container may have been sufficiently cleaned by insects, plant roots, soil bacteria etc. to be safe for food plants.

Diesel exhaust fluid, not diesel itself. By weight it's ~30% urea and 70~ water. Which now that I recall stuff properly from when I was helping out on the farm urea is a nitrogen source. So the more I think on it, if I dilute the traces before addingn soil I should be fine.

And hey if the tree I want to grow grows super well, all the better.

[Róisín]

Solokov, what tree do you plan to grow? And yeah, that sounds better than diesel fuel!

[Solokov]

Solokov, what tree do you plan to grow? And yeah, that sounds better than diesel fuel!

I have a couple options from seed, I'm leaning towards dawn redwood or larch, but I also have easy access to gambells oak acorns as well.  I haven't quite decided yet, but I want to go with a "potted" plant for the time being in case I have to take off and move for work in the next couple years.

[Unlos]

Thorny and Róisín, is the sad truth that these are diseased and ought not to be let near the vegetable patch?  The seeds were kept dry and the earth was from my veranda. I didn't think it was contaminated but I don't think I can keep telling myself that these squash saplings will get better once out in the sun

Should I just throw them away or can anything be done?  I have limited belief in washing the leaves if the whole plant is blighted.

[Róisín]

Try spraying the leaves a few times with chamomile tea or with sour milk, spraying both sides of the leaf. And give the seedlings more sun. And when you water the plants, be sure to water the ground around the roots, and not to get the leaves wet. Keep the seedlings away from your regular garden until you are sure the emerging leaves are clear of mould, and when new leaves emerge cut off the old ones and dispose of them, preferably by burning rather than putting them in the compost heap. You could always put in a few more seeds anyway, keeping the seedlings somewhere with sunlight and good air circulation. If you wind up with more plants than you need: stuffed squash flowers are a delicacy.

[Unlos]

Thank you, I'll try. I wish I could keep them outside but it's still too cold at night for them. Rule of thumb in the area is after 20th of may,  even then a cold period last year killed off a lot of saplings so I'll wait until june if I can.

[thorny]

Thorny and Róisín, is the sad truth that these are diseased and ought not to be let near the vegetable patch?  The seeds were kept dry and the earth was from my veranda.

Do you mean that they're not in proper potting soil? Even good garden soil often doesn't work well in pots, because it often develops drainage problems; and if this is just soil from a yard (to me "veranda" is a roofed porch with a floor, so I don't see where any soil would come from) there may also be nutritional deficiencies. You might try a good balanced fertilizer -- careful not to use too much; then see if new leaves also show the symptoms (the already damaged leaves won't fix themselves).

I'm also not sure that what I'm seeing in those pictures isn't some sort of insect damage; though you might be right and it might be a disease problem.

[Unlos]

This is my veranda, I'm not sure how to best translate but roofed porch with a floor and three stories up. The earth is potting soil for herbs, but it's been stored on my veranda the whole winter in the bag so perhaps fungus were happy to grow in there?

The saplings are mainly indoor plants for the time being, being placed on the kitchen where the strongest light is, and carried outside when the weather permits - I have been so careful to not have them outside too long and not in direct sunlight so it shouldn't bee sun damage either though I can't say for sure. It's not ideal conditions but I can't plant anything outside that doesn't survive a night of frost (it's been predicted a snowfall in a couple of days, so definitely not yet!

I have a basil next to them, they tend to be a home for the tiny black flies that could potentially damage these, but I haven't observed them so I don't know how many insects might damage them. I will try a tiny bit of fertilizer as well, thank you!

[thorny]

I'd expect potting soil to keep for longer than that; but if the bag was open it's possible something got in there.

If it's potting soil meant specifically for herbs, it might indeed be a nutritional problem -- most herbs shouldn't be fertilized much, while the squash family are heavy feeders. If the color's true in the picture I'm seeing, that pale green might be lack of nitrogen; and other nutrients might also be lacking. Magnesium or manganese or potassium deficiencies can sometimes cause leaf spotting.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and it is a disease problem.

And Róisín's suggestions are definitely worth a try.

[Sc0ut]

Hello everyone! Long time no see, I hope you are all as well as possible in these exceptional times. I want to talk about my garden a bit. I've been neglecting planting due to *vaguely gestures at the world* making motivation difficult to achieve, and I want that to change. Maybe talking about it will help.

Said garden is a sunny, south-facing balcony with a glass top - it gets a lot of light but probably too much heat. This year I also got a hold of new, bigger pots (plastic unfortunately but at least they're reused rather than new) which will help with my tendency of crowding plants and not giving them enough space for their root system, especially for non-decorative ones. The plan is to have mostly herbs and greens, with a few assorted other plants. So far, all I have are things that have overwintered or self-seeded, like strawberries, kale, a few sturdy succulents, and one random poplar tree sapling that inexplicably appeared The strawberries seem exceptionally sturdy, never got any of the pests that bothered the rest of the plants, and are currently thriving and fruiting like crazy. I do want to plant a bunch more herbs and greens, maybe a couple of capsicum plants and some peas and flowers too.

There are also some problems: ants have made a home in the garden last year. I tried to evict them as soon as I noticed, including actually digging up the one queen I could find, but to no avail. I assumed they couldn't be that bad, until they started farming aphids on most of my plants. Combined with a very wet summer that encouraged powdery mildew, as well as other diseases, it made for a somewhat sad gardening year for me, since it was my first time dealing with both of these things in a balcony garden. This year, I want to fight all these problems a bit more intently (last year I mostly observed what was happening, tried one or two solutions and then let everything be when nothing really worked). I am the type to avoid harsh chemicals if at all possible (especially since I enjoy having other insects, especially pollinators, visit), so I'm looking for diy solutions for the two main problems, ants and mildew, that have a good chance of working.

Thanks for reading and good luck to everyone in their gardening! 

[Jitter]

I have the same problem with motivation as you do, Sc0ut! Luckily my garden is outdoors (a smallish yard) and ai mostly grow decorative plants, especially perennial floand shrubs, so a lot of it happens on its own. However the remnants of last autumn and winter could be removed to make it look a lot nicer.

Hopefully your mildew problem will at least ease if not outright disappear, when you have more room for the plants so that air circulation is better, and especially if the summer isn’t quite as wet (where are you? Here in southern Finland last summer was rubbish).

As for the ants, where are they nesting? Is it possible to just pour a lot of boiling hot water into the nesting area(s)? (Do be careful when doing this! It’s not worth burning yourself!). Some ants also avoid cinnamon and or baking soda.

[OMCH]

Hey all! I recently made some mason jar mini-greenhouses, and I decided to name them after the Hotakainen siblings (sorry Lalli). I figured that this would be the right place to post them . I think they're very pretty!

(Onni's on the left, and Tuuri's on the right)

[Jitter]

They are nice names! Did you know they mean Happiness (Onni) and Luck (Tuuri)? Or actually “onni” means both luck and happiness, not sure how well it suits him, but I hope your greenhouses will bring happiness to you!

I saw these really cool and beautiful largish plant terrariums built in big jars at the garden center and I kind of pine after such a thing now!

[midwestmutt]

I had to cover my yard flowers from a hard frost last night. Temps dropped to 24F.  There's a reason why we don't plant our gardens until after May 15th.