Cottage Gardening forum: Piggy Swap # 26 Let the Sowing Begin
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| Tcs... Glad ya ok. Sure wish Mother Nature would dive things out a bit more evenly. I have about a 6 foot wide and 4 foot tall compost pile. Now you would think that at least in the center of it , you would find some moist soil. I dug down through the middle, to the very bottom and not one drop of moisture. The soil is like dust. It so dry that it even repelling water. Takes forever to try and get it a bit soaked. Most things it good for them to have one inch of water a week. Heck you can water one inch early in the morning and by afternoon, not even evening, it doesn't look like the ground been watered for a month. I really am this year going to give it a try and see what happens by starting more of the veggie crops closer to the end of summer. I usually do cool crops, but going to add a whole lot to that list. Last year, veggie production was terrible here with the heat and drought. Fruit just doesn't set when temps stay consistent in the hundreds+ and high humidity. All folks did was waste time energy, water and seed. before I forget again.... Joseph.. Think it came from you. That Giant Mexican Helote (sp) corn. How much feeding does it need and about how tall does it get? Wondering if I need to put it behind or in front of like the Agronomy and some of the other corns I have. How things going in your fields? Get everything in yet? Oh.... any does anybody know or heard of , or have a scientific name for what the lady called " Foot Long Peas" not beans, but peas. She said somebody from NC gave her a few beans the one time and she forgot to save some, ate them right up she did,  and now she is looking for some more.I have never heard of a pea that grows that long. Now I gotta find out what it is and get me and the piggies some too.  |
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| Thanks so much Ella for the link. Joseph I need your corn sprouting instructions again now pretty please? |
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| I think the article I had said they update it at least every 7 years. but they have an interactive map thats pretty cool. |
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| One of my 2011 sowing successes - Orlaya grandiflora and bunny tails (and they REALLY do feel like bunny fur- sooo soft.) They were planted last year, and is now blooming. I picked some of each for a casual arrangement at work.    |
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Nice, Dianne! |
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| I was never able to get Bunny Tails to germinate.... very pretty!! lots of thunder, lightening and rain -- yet again. we did have a decent day, warm - a tad humid, and sunny in the afternoon. I have a few seedlings i'd like to get in the ground... i honestly do not see us getting frost, even though our last frost date is about Memorial Day. i've been here 5 summers now, and no frost that late... i generally plant by mid May. Terese -- Itasca, IL & Lake Delton, Wi My Email is my userID at hotmail.com |
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| Dianne... Oh that is pretty! What a cute idea. Pass it over. Will look good on my counter. Gonna bug ya about the beans again.  About how many pods do they make. One, two, three, a bunch and if you keep it picked to they make more or only one batch. How did you germinate your bunny tails? I have a few left that I could send Tcs to try again. Finally they saying maybe a little rain this evening. Sure hope so. Just hope it doesn't fizzle out before it gets here like normally. The only reason we are probably going to get some is because I was gonna hand clothes outside to dry. What I really begging for rain for is up on the front property I have oodles and I mean oodles of wild blueberry bushes and since we had so much rain so early they are loaded with blooms, like I have never seen before and they have such shallow roots and without the rain they will drop all those buds. Already the hickory trees are dropping nuts again from lack of water. Not a good sign of what to come for summer. |
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Good Morning, Star. I'll trade you my arrangement for a bowl of your blueberries anytime  The long beans usually form two long pods per flower set - and pick them regularly. Pick them young enough, eat the whole thing. If you forget, They get pithy fast and if they do, discard the pod, but the beans inside are still good. If you pick them, the plant will continue to flower and is productive over a long period of time. Feel free to ask away any time. In regards to the bunny tails, I received a couple of whole seedheads (think they were from Lynn), and I just roughly broke it up and direct seeded them seeds and chaft and all. It took awhile to germinate, and did not bloom until this year. I'll let most of the seed heads ripen so there will be plenty for the seed swap next year. Hope you get the rains today. |
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| I plant corn seeds 1.5 inches deep. Spacing of one foot within the rows and rows spaced 30 inches, which is the width that works best with my weeding equipment. The Giant Mexican Helote gets very tall. That midget's outreached fingertips are 8 feet from the ground, so that makes the corn around 16 to 20 feet tall.  I don't fertilize my garden because I garden in clay which retains nutrients very well, and because I till all plant residues back into the soil, and because I am philosophically opposed to buying fertilizer. Also the giant helote comes from an agricultural tradition in which heavy feeding of crops is not typical, so it's genome hasn't been weakened so much that it requires heavy fertilizer inputs created from fossil fuels. But things might be different in gardens with different soils, or for gardeners with different philosophies about growing. I don't think my method would work in sandy soil. I am still playing the waiting game: Waiting for the frost to stop so that I can finish planting. I am growing tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers on the patio in pots. I planted my first crop of corn a few days ago. The very early crops are all in and growing well. I'm just starting to plant the semi-tender crops now. It's still a month before I can plant the tender crops. Joseph'w Weekly Baskets 2012: http://cubits.org/ellasgarden/thread/view/70928/ |
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| Hey All! Glad to see Robin back! This heat sure is something. I've been trying to get my veggie beds tilled and into these new little raised bed edges that I got, and such heavy work is going slow, slow, slow. I get maybe two wheelbarrows full of soil gone through (sifting out the bermuda grass that took them over last year) before I'm exhausted and give up. That makes for a good time to check out the WS containers and do some labeling and up-potting though  Missed my morning yard work today though, so just a little piddling around in the heat for me. Have all sorts of tomatoes going, about 14 different kinds!Oh, and Ella, I've planted my peppers down deep like that with good success. Seems like everything I grow is always too tall for its own good by the time I get it in the ground! My tomatoes are currently about 28" tall in 4" pots. Can't even dig deep enough for them in the raised bed, so I'm setting them sideways in the ground. Seems to work well, as at that height they've all developed some natural curviness (read floppiness) that I can just go with! Deebie, glad you got some of the Vinca going! I LOVE them! Unfortunately I had to weed the bed they reseed in when they were still teensy, and probably only saved a few... am currently nursing them along. Won't have tons this year as I have in the past. OH, I have a milkweed question! Last year I purchased a pink perennial milkweed with kind of tiny leaves. They were maybe 2.5 or 3" by less than .5" wide. It never flowered, but the monarchs laid eggs on it and the caterpillars munched away, so I didn't really care. This year it was just a bunch of sticks and I was really worried it had died. Then, it finally started to grow a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, and now it had HUGE leaves! They're even bigger than the tuberosa that I've grown a few years now, maybe .75-1" wide and 5-6" long. Is that normal for a perennial milkweed to change so dramatically? I was worried at first that it wasn't the same plant, but now its definitely growing right from the stumps of last year's plant. Oh, and its got flower buds on it already too! |
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| Kelly -- I think my perennial MW's did the same. they get HUGE. forgot to say, Welcome Back to Robin. Holy Haiti's is it humid here today. we got well over 3" of rain in the past 24 hrs. wish i could send it elsewhere.... Terese -- Itasca, IL & Lake Delton, Wi My Email is my userID at hotmail.com |
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| Good to know Terese! I'm excited to have a mature perennial MW finally! A bunch of Pink MW from Tuink germinated in my WS jugs, so hopefully I'll have more next year! Do the Monarchs like the pink as much as the Orange variety? Now, huff, and puff, and blow that rain down here!!! Actually, the forecast gives us a 50% chance of some this weekend. I'd prefer not on the weekend when I could possibly draft yard muscle... but beggars can't be choosy! Just found out that two of the 18 yr old neighbors boys are looking for work... that bodes well for my gardening ambitions ;-) The back part of our long, skinny yard we planted a bunch of trees when we moved in, 14 years ago. Wanted to create a nice shady area. Well it's finally grown up a bit, but hadn't been pruned enough, and was too messy to do anything with, or even walk in. Got it pruned up by an expert the the other day and it looks so nice! Can't wait to kill off the weeds, mulch it and start getting some shade plants back there! I've got a few ferns to transplant immediately, a hydrangea volunteer, could find some daffodils to move. Planning on some Camelias I think, though I'm a little worried that the shade in the summer will be too dense...maybe I can put them on the edge. What else should I consider for complete shade in the summer, deciduous trees so more sun in the winter (though not total because it borders a row of tall hollies, so could get shade even in winter depending on where placed)? |
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| Corydalis, maybe, for one? I'm enjoying the pretty leaves on my nobilis seedlings, even though it might be next year 'til I see a bloom. I read that they go dormant in summer. Columbine. Really, just about anything that's up and growing very early might be a good candidate. |
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| Ooh, I hadn't thought about Columbine! Have a bunch of WS'd seedlings that will go back there... though maybe they better spend this summer in pots getting a little more sun and growing big and strong :) I know nothing about Corydalis, will have to check it out! Actually, I just know very little about many shade plants. Until now I've had only the beds against the front of the house that get shade... and of course there are a bunch of shrubs taking up a lot of that space. I've gradually replaced most of them with flowering options, but still.. not the same as a woodsy area! |
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We have light, somewhat high, part-day filtered shade for most of the cultivated gardens here. I've found that probably a good 80 percent of the plants I've tried that call for full sun do well in these conditions.  Spring and fall bloomers might be good choices in this category for a southern exposure since the angle of the sun is lower and shines in under a high canopy. It's going to be beautiful! You'll love your new shady area and the plants will too. |
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| Just adding 2 cents here about seed viability - I think Hill Gardens' link is a godsend, but it's one of three that I know about, and it seems not to be as well researched or hands-on as the other two. Keeping in mind that all of this data is subject to variables in our storage & circumstances etc., I would rank their reliability as follows: 1st: http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/404.html - Heh - sorry to say the online version of Norm Deno's Seed Germination Theory and Practice is not working. His experiments are sometimes a first-rate clue (can't say fact) to how seed storage relates to the viability & germination of some of the seed he studied. If anyone finds out when this one might go online again, would you purty please let us know? 2nd: http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/ 3rd: http://www.hillgardens.com/seed_longevity.htm Compare Hudson's & Hill's entries for Canna and you can see what I mean: Seed Viability for Canna: -- jlhudsonseeds.net - "The hard seed are very long lived, having germinated when 600 years old, found in a pre-Columbian rattle." -- http://www.hillgardens.com/seed_longevity.htm - 3 years ---------------------- I'm working on a Seed Viability/Germination chart for the seeds I am most interested and will put it up in Ella's Germination Forum when it's done - things are going very slowly for me right now - about all I've accomplished lately are a mound of chickweed in our compost area and a couple of entries a day in my chart. We are simultaneously coping with pending surgeries and a few neighbors of the cowl/pitchfork/torch persuasion (don't ask - got too much chickweed to pull than write a tome that might make things worse anyway). --------------------------------------- Robin - so glad to see you back - hope you get to enjoy your flowers this spring :) Kelly - Some Epimediums can make pretty, drought-tolerant, low edgings in very shady areas - their leaves are attractive all through the growing season and make anything scruffy behind them look spiffier. There's a huge variety among them. While we were limited to a shallow well that sometimes balked at producing any water whatsoever, I planted Epimedium sulphureum (name has changed and I'm no longer sure which one this is grrr) under a water-hoggy Pawlonia and it did well in years when all my annual flowers & vegies would die of drought. ------------------------- Hope I said something useful and that rain makes it down to Ella and others who need it. karen My religion is simple. My religion is kindness. Dalai Lama |
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| About seed viability: I know these websites: 2nd: http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/ 3rd: http://www.hillgardens.com/seed_longevity.htm They are not really unreliable, but do not really have experience. Well, I think you can rely on Hudsonseeds quite well, but I found out that Hillgardens list is not really reliable. Personally I needed to find out how long seeds are viable, so I investigated it myself, googling all kinds of seeds I'm trading/selling. Especially looking for scientific results. I have a -personal- list of seed viability. And, if I have time, I do some experiments with seed germination. But it is still very difficult. Some seeds will stay viable for many years, but depending on the kind of seed you need to keep them cool, warm, moist, etc. But some seeds will survive forever,even if they are kept in unusual circumstances. And there are seeds that only stay viable for a very short time. I tried to find a book on seed viability, but was not succesful to find that. I don't want to publish my list of how long seeds stay viable , because I can't be sure if it is really a good one. But if you have any questions about viability of seeds I might be able to help you. |
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And seeds stored in my extremely dry climate are likely to have different viability than the same seeds stored in a damp climate... Joseph'w Weekly Baskets 2012: http://cubits.org/ellasgarden/thread/view/70928/ |
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| I planted about a dozen 11-year-old seeds of 'Green Grape' tomato recently hoping that one seed might grow. The seeds had been in a little plastic bag in my veggie seed box at room temperature all that time. I got 18 plants. The seeds were tiny, and obviously I had not counted carefully, but nearly all must have germinated. I've had the same results in past years with other old tomato seeds that I planted, instead of tossing, in hopes of one plant. |
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| Catching up quick before I have to unplug again. Weather person fibbed. Raced to get everything protected from thunderstorms and hail that was supposed to be coming and like usual it went around us. humrp! But it coming finally and should be here soon. Need it so bad. Actually ned about three days of a nice steady rain so the ground has time to absorb the water. Trees are aborting nuts already. It way to early in the season for it. Dianne... LOL Your on. Wish I could toss some blueberries that away. What I think is strange this year, all the wild shrubs are loaded and my hybrids don't have the first bloom on them. Not sure what is going on. With the crazy weather, probably going to find more plants doing strange things too. Joseph....  Oh my!!!!!!!!!! I sure glad I asked about that corn. Never seen corn get that tall. I doubt mine will get that height with not having such perfect conditions as what you have, but will be fun to try. I have turned green manure and rabbit and cow manure into the place where the corn will go, but I know it is not enough and especially with the run off in that area. I wish I had some clay to mix with it. May try next year. What I need is to have somebody come with a big back hoe and try and did the whole are a about 4 -5 feet down and turn up some of the clay under it, but it is not the nice rich clay . It's that nasty sticky grey colored stuff that like a brick when it dries out. Hopefully you Northerners will be able to plant soon. Folks are already picking tomatoes and squash down here. Kelly... how about Heucheras and Hostas? Chelle right about the Columbine. I keep mine in partial shade. Too hot in the summer with the full sun. They usually go into a summer dormancy when it gets way to hot, but I keep them watered and fertilized and they start all their glory over again for the fall. The Origami's that I grow most of the time will not even go dormant during the winter. Not unusually to see them out their flowering in Dec and January. They are shade lovers. Thanks for info about the peppers. Always learning something new. Patricia... Isn't it cool when you have things that old germinate. What I really enjoy is that sometimes those plants have become rare or out of production and it is so glad to have them back in circulation again. I agree... Genetics is going to play a part in how well a seed will germinate, but I think even more it does depend on how that seed has been stored and the conditions it was stored and than you have to throw in the persons personal germination practices. Charts are a good reference, but I still will give anything a try or too. Like right now I have two trays of seed from 2007 out there I sowed. it's a hybrid I wanted to try. Not the first seed has come up yet, but everything I planted of the other stuff has come up. I letting it sit and going to see if it eventually will germinate. I planted a couple of Critter's old Neck pumpkin seeds she had. Didn't think I would get anything, but sure enough have two plants up and hopefully will be able to get them to fruit and seed saving size. Anybody familiar with Trillium's? I had some farmed out because at the time I didn't have a place to put them and now the person is ready for me to bring them home. They are a beautiful yellow color. Somebody went out hiking and becaus e they were so pretty they dug some of these wild Trilliums up. They couldn't keep them nor keep them alive, so I said I wanted them to try and keep alive and grow. I have to dig them up , but not sure when the best time is. Want to minimize the shock the best I can. They have already bloomed for this year and are just about totally dormant for the year now if that helps. Ok, gonna try and get something done before, crossing fingers and toes, some rain finally comes. |
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