I planted a new gardening thread

I'm two months away from planting here.

It's been so freakishly warm here in London I could've planted stuff last week, but who knows what kind of weather is coming down the pipe.  Will this April still be the cruellest month?  I'm pleased, confused and mortified.

Garlic can be really invasive.  Not as much as thyme, but still needs to be cultivated.

Hey, if it's invasive, I should plant some cloves of it in the city portion of the front lawn (in the grass between the sidewalk and street).  That could be fun!

The sun is up - finally! - but the ground is still too frozen to work here. Still snow on the ground, and puddles of water everywhere. We need a month of warm weather before we can garden here.

Yup. 

Don't try it with biennials like carrots or parsnips though, unless you just want a bunch of seed . 

And really, who wants to grow parsnips anyway, for any reason other than that mentioned in the first chapter of Margaret Craven's book?

I'm tossing the end of a 50 pound onion bag into the ground this week.

Even better, ginger and turmeric can be stored just as easily in a pot of soil  as in the fridge. 

(edit)

I am surprised that despite our non-winter, the garden is not quite ready for planting anything other than roots, tubers  and legumes. Four years ago I had tomatoes in the ground a few weeks before this. A few late snows and freezes is the difference. I don't mind though, because it all means a bit more water in the ground, and we didn't get much snow this year.

Ha! No, I would like a natural ground cover to protect the land from the occasional tires in the spring. Hardy grasses, weeds, whatever. The regular grass I planted there has now disappeared and is mostly sand - looks terrible. I want something green that can stand some punishment such as vehicles driving over it once in a while. There's very little topsoil - it's mostly sand.

I have very bad osteo/arthritis in both hands, but still managed to plant my tiny greenhouse today. I should have over 200 carrots and about 50 cucumbers if all goes well.

My main veggie garden - it's huge - went kaput last year because of weeds. Tomorrow I'm going to try to clear a small portion of it, and plant radishes, lettuce, and beets (not all will grow, though). About 50 of each. But, first, I have a hell of a lot of weeds to pull - and that's the tough part for me.

Yes, that's a great idea, and one I've considered for a while. Someone here builds big gardening boxes for senior citizens, and I'm waiting my turn. Can't get straw here, though. When I start the housing renovations soon, there's a big wooden box that the new door came in, and I'll use that - next year - unless it gets here really soon.

Our garden is looking great due to an amazing early spring. 

Potatoes, peas, beets, beans, onions, cilantro, carrots, turnips, romaine....all are up and looking huge!

I think we should have potatoes any day now :)

It is so exciting! 

Catchfire, turnips are good! 

Have you ever cut them in cubes and roasted them with a little brown sugar? You cannot harvest until after a few frosts. 

I forgot I have parsnips too :) We love those in the ground until next spring. 

Boom Boom, one of the things my mom puts down for ground cover in well-walked areas (e.g. between the cracks of patio stones) is creeping thyme.  Not sure if it's hardy enough for vehicle tires, but you never know.  It's pretty darn hardy, though, from what I've seen, and it's also pretty and smells nice.

Yeah, I've already put a few rocks there, will add more soon. My zone is 3A... will have to look for a different ground cover, but there's lots at the link you provided.

There are folks here with really spectacular gardens - mine is smaller, but I'm happy with it.

Hostas are amazing.  No work, they like the shade, they're perennials, and they're pretty.

I thought most hostas would flower eventually.  The ones I've had have always flowered.  The one we have in the front garden got pretty pink flowers shooting up.  Maybe I was just lucky and got flowering ones?

Pics or it didn't happen!  ;)  Kidding, of course.  I'd love to see it, though - it sounds beautiful!

As for hostas - I wonder if maybe the cool temps up where Boom Boom is might make a difference to whether hostas flower for him?  Because every hosta I've ever seen in my own yard or my mother's flowers eventually.

That surprises the heck out of me! I've had hostas for four years now, and none of them have flowered - this is the first year I've seen a flowering stem pop up.

(couldn't respond earlier as our phone lines, and thus our Internet, went out for 30 hours)

Never thought of that. However, I dump the fireplace residue over the cliff - and the weeds there are doing very well. Hmmmm.... must be a connection.

No, not so far!  But last week was the 100th anniversary of the tornado that ripped through the city (and my neighbourhood) and caused a great deal of death and destruction.  You can see our house on the edge of some of the old photos - it was just newly built.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_Cyclone

I have a new drip irrigation idea (not mine) to show you that is really neat   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlomeIaOKs 

I thought it had already been done but there were some aparent flaws and that was why people weren't using it. But my guess now is that nobody even tried this and it is so darn simple! My dripper irrigation was way more complicated and I wasted 3 weeks playing with it.  D A R N ! 

Also from England a rainwater diverter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8BONjopPhQ

Anyways, pallet gardening is going really well. It has a playlist at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL00C41C26C91A76BB&feature=view_all Worth a thought for next year, for anyone who wants a bit of work in winter to make gardening in summer way easier.

Brian

I really like the idea of container gardening, but my dilemma is that I don't want to be using tons of tap water for gardening, and containers dry out so quickly.

So I think what I'm going to do is make "container" planters that sit on the ground with no bottoms.  So, they'd never move from their place, but they would kind of be like raised beds and kind of like containers.

We have an old wooden trunk with a rotting bottom to it that I'm planning to use in that way.  I'll put newspaper down in the front postage stamp (to sheet mulch the weeds below), put the wooden trunk with rotting bottom on that, fill it with soil, and then plant stuff in it, putting mulch as a top layer in the planter after I'm done planting.  So, it will still have really good drainage, directly into the ground (especially when the bottom wood and underlying newspaper eventually rot), it will be similar to a container garden in that it will be contained, but work like a raised bed as well.  Maybe I'll grow strawberries in it or something. :)

I think this is going to be my gardening mission this summer - lots of "found" gardening containers.  I also love the idea of using an old wooden dresser that way, as a planter - take out the drawers and use those as individual little raised bed planters, but then use the frame of the dresser itself as a large raised bed to grow stuff.  I also have a couple of small, decorative shelves with no backs, with nowhere to put them on the walls - they could be used in this way as well.

It's funny, I thought of these ideas, and then I googled to see what other people do with them and realized that there's no such thing as an original thought anymore - everyone and their uncle has done both of these things! :)

My problem with making cilantro pesto is that I can't really eat it.  I can't tolerate high fat content foods these days, so anything packed in oil is a no-no for me.  I could make it for radiorahim, but even though he can tolerate it better than I can, it's probably no better for him than for me.  Although, I guess I could use it in a dish where I was planning to use a splash of olive oil in the cooking process anyhow.

One thing I've found with cilantro, though, is that it keeps way, way longer in the fridge if you bring it home, wash it all off, dry most of the water off of it by spinning it in the salad spinner, and then wrapping it loosely in either paper towels or just regular soft kitchen towels and putting it back in the produce bag.  It takes way, way longer to get slimy when you do that!  It's a little trick my mom taught me for most produce, including things like bell peppers you've sliced into and are saving the rest for later, green onions, etc.  I think it's the fact that the paper towel stays slightly moist but there isn't actual water sitting directly on the skin of the veggies.

I'm definitely going to try that regrowing trick that Catchfire posted a link to above for green onions, once my kitchen is no longer a dungeon hole (it's at the "gutted" stage of renovation right now).

Boom Boom wrote:

I have a huge wooden box  (as big as a casket)  that was used to ship new doors for the renovation project here, and I will use it as a planter. It's unfinished wood, though, and I'm wondering what is the most eco-friendly paint I can use on it if it will be a planter. Any advice?

Hmm, no advice here.  Do you have to finish it?  I've seen some nice, rustic looking planters that are unfinished.

That said, there are a few ideas being thrown about in this discussion for eco-friendly wood finishes.

Oh, and Boom Boom, I saw an interesting idea online about large crate-box planters.  If you want it to be mobile, you could screw casters onto the four corners at the bottom and that way you could roll it if you wanted to move it from one part of your yard to another at any point, say, if you were going to keep it on your patio or something.  Here's the blog where I found it.

Mulching question - if you're growing things from seed, how do you mulch so that the weeds don't take over the stuff you're growing before they pop out?  And if you mulch after you plant the seed, then wouldn't the mulch also stop your seedlings from coming up as well as the "weedlings"?