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On December 25 I started 96 tomato seeds of 8 different varieties, from Sample Seeds. I kept the flat in my teeny greenhouse, which is a plastic shop shelving unit from Home Depot under a cover made from middling thick double polished clear vinyl with a zipper down the front/middle, out on my...

I planted a bunch of garlic in... November? I think. Maybe December. Anyway... they made leaves like I expected garlic would. Alternating sides, big oniony leaves. But then, a week ago, they started doing this: My neighbor had scapes on his garlic last week, but I don't think that's...

Problem: Bugs. Caterpillars. Weeeee caterpillars. I'm sorta of the philosophy that the plants can likely survive this with minimal leaf loss. I can certainly foliar feed some fish emulsion to shore up their resilience. If I poof a damp plant with DE (I've got a thing that's like a...

I ventured into ornamentals last weekend at the spring garden show. Now I've got a wee Brug in a pot on my porch. Slightly shaded but mostly sunny from 1:pm on, in some organic pre-fertilized potting soil (orange bag... Can't remember the name). I watered well on planting on Sunday. It was...

I put several planters of potatoes together a few weeks ago. Planted on top of 2/3 planter full of soil, and planned to hill to the top and beyond. Had been burying the sprouts as soon as they were visible, until.... It rained a few days ago for the first time in months. I started setting...

Finally. It'll be 70*F today, and I've been getting antsy. I started seeds last year, got all the varieties I wanted, and everything did great. This year I started seeds even earlier, after bodging together a plastic-shelf-greenhouse to go on my back porch in the sun. Well, the greenhouse...

Theoretically, anyway. To avoid continuing to hijack the Fruit Salad Tree thread, I'm'a just put this over here. Backstory: I grew up in Eugene, Oregon. I spent a great deal of time at my Mom's parents' house, riding my pony and running around and climbing the mimosa tree and snacking on...

I'd been planning on building the potato tower... until I saw Durgan's photos proving this method a fallacy. http://www.durgan.org/URL/?QHBIN So now, in planters. I've got several square planters that are 24x24x24. Are these big enough? Durgan's Red Pontiac potatoes look like they would...

I just saw a review for this book, and decided I MUST read it. Figured some of y'all might as well. :) Publisher's Blurb: How Carrots Won the Trojan War is a delightful collection of little-known stories about the origins, legends, and historical significance of 23 of the worlds most...

I've had a thought........ My garden is set up thusly: I like using the fences as trellises, and while I don't much care for the view, I do like that the fence itself doesn't cast a shadow over my garden. I don't mind sharing with the neighbors, even if they don't know what to do with a...

I've finally taken some photos of the garden. I'm located in MidCity, in New Orleans. Winter never came this year, so I started all my seeds on Feb 4 (late, even if we'd had winter), and set them out around March 6. We have a weird property line, and my garden is in a piece that's actually...

So, I saw these spots on one of my tomatoes, and I've never really seen this before, and I suspect it's maybe a virus of some sort? Shall I yank it out of the ground and burn it as an example to others? I think I may have another one (volunteer potato leaf mystery tomato) that may be doing the...

I believe that my backyard has seen gardens before. Along my fenceline I've got several clumps of asparagus. It's thin and weedy and tough and ferny. I've never seen an edible-looking spear. Am I just missing them before they bolt? Or is the patch so old it just doesn't do anymore? Or is...

I've got a 18"x36"x54" plastic shelving unit from Home Depot. It's got "perforated" (grid) shelves, so I can hang my lights off them. I'm thinking of getting a couple yards of 20ga double-polished clear vinyl, and cutting/folding/duct-taping it together to form a cover for the shelves, to...

I have 2 Cherokee Purple and 3 Arkansas Traveler tomato plants that have, in the last week, started to go bronze-colored. The stems and the leaves are darkening, and the leaves are curling a bit and getting... tougher? almost rubbery. There don't appear to be any bugs on... no aphids or...

I put in a couple of Sweet 100 tomatoes this year (in addition to a few Arkansas Travelers, Romas, and some mystery seedlings and volunteer transplants from my neighbor). One took off, grew like crazy (~4' tall), set a bunch of brackets of wee tomatoes, and then suddenly drooped like it was...

How many "cleaning up the yard" stories end that way? I'd borrowed a friend's giant limb-loppers to attack a large ornamental ginger in the corner of my garden. It's been on the "to be killed" list for 2 years, so I waded in on Sunday morning, nipping off giant grasses and piling up the...

I've got a bunch of seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, cukes, zucchs, okra) set out, and it's time to feed them. Well, I think it's time to feed them. They've been in the ground for a couple weeks and haven't done much, so I was considering giving 'em a boost. I don't want to go out and buy plant...

(I don't know if this is better in the Composting forum, but most of my questions relate to the plants rather than the soil, so.......) I just cut 3 new 2' wide rows along the fences in my backyard for a veggie garden. My backyard, and two of neighboring yards, are rather overrun with weeds...