gardening

22447 readers

1 users here now

<<<<<<< / c / g a r d e n i n g >>>>>>>

read braiding sweetgrass, lib

    _         ___
  _(_)_    .-'   '-.
 (_)@(_)  /         \  ,,,   _
   (_),,, \^^^^|^^^^/ {{{}}_(_)_
    |{{{}} \   |   /,  ~Y~(_)@(_)
    | ~Y~(@)\  |  /{}} \|/  (_)
  (\|/)| \Y/ \ | / ~Y~ \|/ (\|/)
   \|/\|/\|/  \|/  \|/\\|//\\|//
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Let it grow ^.^

     __
  .-/  \-. If I had a flower
 (  \__/  ) for each time 
/`-./;;\.-`\ I thought
\ _.\;;/._ /  
 (  /  \  ) of communism           
  '-\__/-'.-,         
 ,    \\ (-. ) my garden 
 |\_   ||/.-`would be full  
 \'.\_ |;` 
  '--,\||     ,
      `;|   _/|              
       // _/.'/ 
      //_/,--'                  
     ||'-`              
-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Ithorian@hexbear.net

Garden Prep (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago by ANarcoSnowPlow@hexbear.net to c/gardening@hexbear.net

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's starting to feel like false spring around here, which has me thinking about growing things.

It's been a couple of years since I have been able to have a real garden, I haven't been able to dedicate the energy to it.

I did however plant some fruit trees and bushes last year, and I'm already looking at how to help them grow some more this year.

I've already made the inadvisably early purchase of some bare root strawberry plants.

What are my gardening comrades doing in the face of the approaching growing season for the northern hemisphere, or how are you winding things down in the southern hemisphere?

What are you planning on growing this season or what did you grow this season?

What's your favorite gardening tip?

top 8 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] ratboy@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I am an extremely novice gardener with not a whole lot of energy but I love spring gardening! I just buy a bunch of leafy green starts and peas and let them do their thing and they usually proliferate really well with minimum effort beyond drinking 3 beers, heading out with a headlamp during the night to yeet garden snails that might be eating the baby plants.

The peas fix nitrogen into the soil which makes it healthier for summer plants that suck up nitrogen like tomatoes, and I can keep letting my lettuce heads grow for weeks while plucking whatever leaves I need for dinner here and there. Once I finally harvested the heads I probably ended up with like $70 of organic lettuce.

If I start my garden in the PNW rn I would be: pruning and/or fertilizing bushes and trees. Deep weeding my garden bed. Scatter low growing clover seeds to use as living mulch in the bed. Its also a very great nitrogen fixer. If you dont wanna use clover, then id cover in mulch. Next week i would throw starts and some seeds into the ground (starts: kale, lettuces, arugula, snow peas, broccoli, seeds: radish and carrots). Whoever survives survives and I'll go out and say "good job buddies". I probably wouldn't even need to worry about watering for a month or maybe even at all but if youre in a dryer climate check the soil to see if it needs water instead of doing it at the same times weekly.

My favorite gardening tip, if youre anything like me is to just do it. Give up any expectation that every start needs to survive, that you need to take soil samples to test soil acidity, that you need 3 different fertilizers for different plants, that they need to be pruned in a particular way etc etc. Just throw shit into the ground and see what happens. I used to get way too overwhelmed thinking about all of the things I needed to do for a garden to be "successful" to even want to start, but once I just said "fuck it, let's just see what happens" it became so satisfying to just see how things progressed. Organic gardening also let's you be way more lazy lol

[–] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

once I just said "fuck it, let's just see what happens" it became so satisfying to just see how things progressed

yep 100%. the gardener is the coach of the garden, not the boss. if you try a bunch of stuff you'll find out what works better or worse. trying stuff in real life and watching what happens is the best way to learn and it's more productive than trying to min max things.

[–] ratboy@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Definitely. It's so fun to just watch the lifecycles of it all, too. I feel like allowing myself to just let the plants and critters do what they need to was pretty profound for me. Just scattering flower seeds and watching their growth, seeing which ones thrive and thinning some of the more voracious growers out to help the lil guys is such a joyful experience!

[–] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

yes agreed. creating a space where there's a diversity of life is so nice. for the past 5 years or so I have been working to rewild/garden a yard full of grass. while it's still early days in the grand scheme, it's wonderful to see the diversity and intensity of life even when the area is still young

[–] ratboy@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh that's so fantastic, if I ever get a place of my own I really would love to rewild my yard. I tried to plant native flower seeds at an old apartment but the new landscapers weed whacked them all down to the root agony-wholesome

Have you noticed a difference in wildlife over time?

[–] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yes I'm very grateful and lucky to have this opportunity. Without details, I hope to spend the rest of my life here so I'm happy to be patient and plant tiny trees.

Differences - yes. So far the biggest one is the amount of bugs, especially in the warmer months. I look out and I see clouds of flying insects and when there isn't traffic noise you hear a thrum of bees and other buzzing insects. I have also started seeing more birds around the yard as shrubs have gotten taller. When it was just grass, there wasn't much for little birds to hide in, but now they are much more likely to hang out because there are shrubby branches and stuff to mess around in and also there's more insects for food. I even saw a falcon land out on the raspberry frame once, and another time a type of local hawk. Racoons dig around in the yard more than they used to but that's OK, the fact that they're finding things to eat indicates that there's healthy soil life for them to dig up. There's tons of deer in the area and they've always gone through the yard, but last year in the summer a mom left her two babies in a patch I've been rewilding that was just grass 3-4 years ago. Deer moms only leave their babies in places they think are safe, so I took that as a good sign.

Things I haven't seen in the yard proper yet include snakes (I tried building a hibernacula but either it's not suitable or no snakes have found it yet), or aquatic critters (there is a little pond here that I didn't build but it is full of invasive goldfish that would eat any frog/newt eggs)

Most of the shrubs and native trees I've planted are only a foot high or so. With any luck, the place will look very different in a decade.

@ratboy@hexbear.net here are a couple pics of the fawns:

[–] ratboy@hexbear.net 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thats so great! The babiiiies how adorable! Sounds like you've done a great job so far, preserving native habitats is important work! rat-salute-2

[–] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 1 points 4 months ago

Thank you, they are cute even though I hate how they devour uncaged plants. In the fall I like feeding them windfall apples that have gone weird.