Gardening

This was the little guy from last week:

Update on the luffas I posted about: https://piefed.social/post/2094148

These plants grow fast. This is about a week’s worth of growth on two fruits. The luffas have gotten significantly larger.

I’m not going to update these frequently, just wanted to show the growth rate in case anyone is thinking of growing a luffa plant. They are so much fun!

This is my second year trying to grow tomatoes on my balcony. Last year went alright but had some end rot on my romas. This year all 3 of my tomatoes have leaves that are turning brown like this. Can anyone tell what would cause it?

I'm using Neem oil preventatively on everything. Only on my balcony, nothing gets into the environment.

In what intervals do I need to spray? Does it get washed away with every rainfall? What about sun exposure?

More often in lower concentrations?

Right now, I'm buying commercial seeds for all my stuff. Not a big deal right now. I can't even grow this much all at once on my balcony, and the seed bags for 2 bucks each last years sometimes :)

From what I know, sticking to seeds made by breeders makes total sense for high value crops like cannabis, peppers, tomatoes, etc., because otherwise the quality will suffer, for example due to uncontrollable cross pollination.

But for many other things, this shouldn't make much difference. I'm thinking of herbs or lettuce as example.

One thing I also heard is that modern varieties don't even produce viable offspring. Therefore, getting "legacy" varieties are the only option, but with worse harvests because they haven't been selectively bred for decades.

Seeds cost money after all, and in the future, I want to be as independent as possible when I have a big garden or some sort of.

What stuff can I let go to flowering and save the seeds for next year, and where does it make sense to continue buying them?

And what did I get wrong? Is this BigSeed™ propaganda?

Also, under which conditions should I store them to keep them viable for as long as possible? Fridge? Room temperature? Vials? Paper bags?

The strong tomatoes are starting to grow flowers! So exciting!

The tomatoes and peppers aren’t going to like this at all. ~100mm of rain as well over a few days.

Hey everyone. So I live in an area that is mostly clay underneath the ground. To keep my foundation from shifting when it contracts during the dry months, I have to water it regularly. I have a soaker hose that runs around the house, placed 1 foot away from the foundation.

This creates a problem with mowing where I can't just let my robot mower (or my push mower) run freely because of the risk of the soaker hose getting caught up in the blades, which has already happened once when I accidentally mowed too close.

To resolve this, I want to kill the grass (using landscaping fabric) in the 1 foot space between the foundation and hose and replace it with something else so I don't need to bother manually trimming it. At the same time, I don't want to use organic stuff like mulch because underground termites also exist in my area and I don't want it to attract them close to the foundation.

A brief search pointed me to using gravel. However, the problem with stones (especially larger ones) is that they also trap moisture underneath them, and the dark and damp areas can also maybe attract termites. Reading a bit more, I think a good compromise would be smaller and uneven gravel/rocks, as more space between them means sunlight penetrates more and moisture gets dried up quickly. Is this a good solution?

I want to start a DWC hydroponics system on my balcony but have concerns about the safety of the plant containers.

The first idea was to use plastic sauce buckets from the local snackbar. They're a waste product and you can easily get a large stack of 10L buckets for free just by asking. They're initially food safe material and all you have to do is wash out the sauce residue.

The problem is though that this food safety won't last long in sunlight. The plastic will inevitably break down and release contaminants into the plant water and therefore will also end up in whatever vegetables that are growing in it.

I have considered getting other materials, such as glass vases or perhaps stoneware. Both are heavy and anything large enough is also quite expensive. Weight is a consideration as well on a balcony.

Another option would be to cover the plastic buckets with some plate material with a few holes in it for the plants.

Am I overthinking this? I'm trying to avoid plastic whenever possible but with the right precautions it shouldn't be that bad.

Zinnia State Fair Mix - about 75 days since seeds were planted. Fox Farms Soil, 10 inch Container

Small japanese maple seems to be dying, it's on the side of the house and gets partial shade, it is planted in mulch on a fabric barrier and a slight slope.

It's been doing well for around a decade and this spring suddenly it is only growing leaves on a few branches in small vollyball sized areas while a good 90% of the plant has no leaves at all.

Any ideas?

He's doing okay. Two of his brothers died in a very heavy downpour though. There's some growing inside to take their places.

First vegetables off of our farm this year are radishes. Also green beans but I didn't get a picture of them. These are red radishes planted around 45 days ago.

In the photo I am preparing to mash the radishes. Then I cook sausage and wilt the greens into that while it cooks. Then I mixed the greens and sausage with the mashed turnips. It was very good if one likes a strong but less bitter mustard green flavor.

Last year, a friend gave me a bunch of seeds that were going to be thrown away, mostly packaged for 2024. One of the packs was for luffas, a type of gourd that is commonly used as a sponge. I threw 2 in my Aerogarden to watch them sprout. I quickly learned it was too much plant for not enough space, so I moved one outside into a pot of dirt. It looked really sad for a while, I honestly thought it was going to die, but after the transplant shock wore off it started growing and producing. The inside luffa only produced 1 female flower and tons of male flowers. The outside luffa had a lot more female flowers, so I hand pollinated all of the female flowers with males from the inside plant. I ended up harvesting 10 sponges from my one outside plant.

This year’s plant is from a seed I harvested from last year’s luffa. I have another plant that I’ll be culling soon because the pot is too small and it’s only producing a few male flowers. But the one in the picture looks a lot happier and the luffas are growing larger every day.

I hand pollinated them because the bees go crazy for my luffa flowers and take all of the pollen with them. The large luffa was pollinated about 2 weeks ago and the smaller was pollinated last week. They are so much fun to grow, I highly recommend them if you have space. My luffas are grown in pots with an upside down tomato cage for it to vine up.

I think I want to try other kinds of gourds too because they are so fun and useful! Plus it helps support my local bee population :)

History:

• May 4th: The marglobe tomato seedlings in the photo were sown indoors in 12-cell grids, two or three seeds per cell.
• May 18th: They all had their first set of true leaves, and they received their first "indoor" dose of fertilizer using Miracle Gro water soluble all purpose plant food at a concentration of one-half teaspoon per gallon of water, which should produce a ratio of 3-1-2.
• May 19th: Their seed leaves had turned yellow, but their true leaves still looked normal.
• May 23rd: Most of the seedlings were looking pretty sad (wilted, drooped over), and the soil was looking pretty dry, so I gave them another round of watering, this time with plain water (no fertilizer), and within hours they were back to looking happy again.
• May 26th (today): Back to looking not normal but in a different way. Many seedlings' true leaves are folded upward, and the two seedlings in the front-right cell are wilted and drooped over again. I gave them another shot of plain water (no fertilizer) this morning since the soil was looking dry again.

All waterings, including today's, have been bottom waterings, where I lift the cells out and pour water into the bottom trays, then dump any excess after about 10 minutes.

Questions: Did I give them their first feeding too soon (at two weeks old)? Are seed leaves' yellowing and true leaves' folding upward a sign of nutrient burn? Should I flush the soil w/ plain water to flush out the fertilizer from the 18th?

I made a post a bit over a year ago about this guy:
https://lemmy.world/post/25891935

After I braved up and put it outside it absolutely flourished!

The leaves curled right up to the bulb, divided itself, and even gave me a few flowers! Unfortunately I didn't get flower pictures, it was a bit hectic. But they grew a tall stalk with unassuming yellow, nodding flowers

It spent the darker, colder days sleeping but now the soil is staying warm through the night it knows it's time to come out. It's got two bulbs now growing and they each have a huge cluster of leaves starting to emerge; I counted at least eight from each. And the signature curling leaf is apparent even though it's just barely sprouting

22 Tomato and 11 pepper plants, spacings a little tighter than it should be on some of the tomatoes, but it should be okay.

After roughly 72 hours in the fridge the pea greens started showing very subtle signs of softening/wilting. I did a taste test of the greens harvested 72 hours ago versus harvesting and eating live greens. The 72 hour greens tasted a bit more grassy, the live harvested tasted sweeter and were crisper in comparison. The obvious benefit of the 72 hour refrigeration is more time window before consumption, while the tray could then be used to grow even more in that time period. The downside is slightly wilted greens, refrigeration required, and clam shell packaging.

Here's the previous post if anyone wants more context to the experiment: https://lemmy.world/post/47253866

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_blue

These images are both from about 24 hours in the refrigerator. The paper clamshells I got allow for a high level of evaporation, sucking the moisture from the greens. So I had the idea to put it inside one of the trays I use to grow them while inside the refrigerator, and it worked. The solution being that the humidity gets trapped rather than sucked out during the refrigeration process. By keeping them in the humidity dome, the greens are crisp and taste as fresh as if they were harvested minutes ago. I misted them lightly before putting in last night, diluted hydrogen peroxide solution.

Look at those beautiful ripening fruit, once I've harvested them all I'll be able to make one whole espresso!

What a generous gift to those little flies! This is Sarracenia flava (yellow pitcher plant), a carnivorous native of the US Southeast Plains in a band from coastal Alabama out to southeastern Virginia. The weird looking things on the left side of the 2nd picture are the old structures for the flowers it previously had before the pitchers fully developed and opened up. (The flowers in question look like this and smell bad.) I’m not terribly sure of what the purple thing is since this is my first time keeping one, maybe that’s what develops into a seed pod? Anyway, seems to be a popular place to chill among the arthropods.

edit: initially botched the photos, maybe this works