Gardening/Yard thread

[Gaspar]

Some tips I've learned the hard way over the years:

Never plant tomatoes in the same space 2 years in a row.  Verticillium rot, fusarium wilt and several other diseases are very common and persist in the soil only if tomatoes are grown in the same spot year after year.

You can take a 20lb bag of good potting mix, poke a dozen pencil holes in one side, lay it in your garden on the perforated side then cut a 2" hole in the other side and plant your tomato.  For some reason this makes them grow huge, and they are far less disease laden.  Works good for peppers too.

Use tobasco and water in a spray bottle to get rid of squirrels if they try to eat your tomatoes.  BB gun works too.

For aphids I just use a powerful garden hose sprayer and blow em away every day.    I hate the mess associated with seven dust.  If I spray them enough to keep their population down, the ladybugs take over when temperatures heat up.

If you're a tobacco smoker (doesn't apply to you FOTD), wash your hands extremely well before you even get close to your tomato plants.  Tobacco virus is about the most common disease.  Causes the leaves to just brown out and dry up before the tomatoes ever get a chance to ripen.  It then lasts in the soil until next year to reap havoc again if you plant in the same spot.

Plant radishes and/or small lettuces around your tomatoes.  they like a bit of shade and as you harvest and replant, they encourage you to cultivate and weed the soil around your tomatoes.

Don't ever grow cabbage.  Every time I've done it, the cabbage loopers invade my tomatoes, lettuce, and anything else they can get to.

If you want to have fun, you can buy these little tomato boxes.  they are about 3" x 3" and you snap them around your tomatoes until they ripen (or get too big for the box).  Not only do they stop bugs but you get very cool square stackable tomatoes.

DO NOT COMPOST TOMATO PLANTS.  Unfortunately the furry little stems harbor most of your nasty diseases after the season is over, and every tomato plant is seething with disease by the end of the season, even if they don't look like it.  Allan Storjohann gave me a very high tech composter years ago and I get it up above 140 degrees every season, but I learned that still won't do the trick.  When I eliminate the tomato plant waste I never have any problems (took me several years to figure that out).

I like the topsy turveys (I used to use 5 gallon buckets), especially for compact determinate plants like most romas.  If you use them for an indeterminate like a sweet 100, you'll have long ugly vines strung all over your patio.

[cannon_fodder]

The problem is Gaspar, most people only have one place they CAN grow tomatoes.   

I understand it is not optimal and I had to move my garden because the diseases that accrued in the soil.  But each time I move my garden it is an investment of 10-20 hours of time to take down the old fence, put up a new one, kill the Bermuda in the new garden sit, till the soil, add amendment, put up an aesthetic rock wall and then reduce the previous garden location to yard.  Keeping in mind that my mid-town lot allows limited space.  Particularly limited on space  that has good access to sunlight!

I will need a long term solution to that problem.

[Gaspar]

Try the bags then.  That's what I used to do when I didn't have room.  Takes care of the weed problem too.  Just lay the bag right on your soil, or lay down a weed barrier fabric first.  Also an inexpensive drip watering kit from Depot with a timer makes things really easy.  I started off with a cheap drip kit and ended up putting drip irrigation everywhere around the house.

[Conan71]

Gaspar, thanks for the bag tip.  Since most of my time is devoted to home renovation right now, a garden would be last on the list of priorities.  I love good home-grown tomatoes, sounds like a great solution for my time pinch right now.

[PonderInc]

One year I couldn't figure out why all my plants were getting eaten.  (All of them!  Tomatoes, flowers, okra...everything I planted was nibbled off when it was young and tender.)  I'd put a small gauge fence around the garden, and assumed it would keep the rabbits away.  (The holes in the fence were maybe 2 inches by 3 inches....which seemed smaller than a rabbit to me.)

Then I saw the rabbits just running through the fence with nary a hesitation.  As it turns out, they can squeeze through much smaller holes than I imagined.

I tried all sorts of suggestions, including spreading dog hair and blood meal around the garden, and the old "have a meat-eater pee around the perimeter" trick.  (That was amusing.)  The bunnies just laughed.

Now, I always use chicken wire, and I make sure there's no gap between the soil and the bottom of the fence.  My cat has been helping, too. 

The only downside to the kitty patrol is that I've learned that bunnnies actually scream when they're being killed by a cat.  Not what you want to hear first thing in the morning. 

[Townsend]

The only downside to the kitty patrol is that I've learned that bunnnies actually scream when they're being killed by a cat.  Not what you want to hear first thing in the morning. 

Well, Clarice - have the bunnies stopped screaming?

[Gaspar]

The only downside to the kitty patrol is that I've learned that bunnnies actually scream when they're being killed by a cat.  Not what you want to hear first thing in the morning. 

Not what you want to hear at 3 in the morning when the cat comes in the doggy door with one in her mouth.  Sounds like a human scream.  Great way to wake up!

[cannon_fodder]

I use something very similar to this:



It is more attractive and more sturdy than chicken wire.  My dogs do well enough keeping most rabbits away, so keeping the dogs away is the real trick!  Stupid girl dog.  She went over a rock well and jumped over this fence with 2 strands of wire above it, then cleared the rock wall on the OTHER side and landed on my lettuce.  Once in there she picked up a 6" plastic pot full of rocks and scattered it around.  Then picked up a Tupperware thing full of starter plants from seed and carried it to the other side.

Then she left.  No real damage but for 4 lettuce plants.

Last year my garden was a war zone.  I trimmed back rose bushes and intertwined the thorn branches into the fence.  I put stakes out away from the fence and put up strands of wire (dogs can't jump well over long distances and clear a 3.5' fence, more of an UP type of jump).  I placed random stakes inside the fence so she had nowhere to land.  I placed a swing along the fence so she couldn't even get there.  (contractors were working behind the fence last summer and knocked out a few of my 6' fence pickets continuously, hence the motivation to get back there and bark at them through the fence holes).

Eventually my cumulative work paid off.  But by that point the combination of garden destruction and the difficulty I had of getting back there made it not worth the effort.   Stupid grumble (I mean that in that my female dog is unintelligent).  But she's so cute with her floppy ears and whatnot.  


As a somewhat related story:  my girl dog (my boy dog is damn good, so no boy dog stories get told) kills things.  Rabbits, squirrels, birds.  She ran down a deer once at my uncles house (it fell jumping a fence, she caught it and didn't know what to do).  Basically, any animal dumb enough to go in my backyard had better be smart enough to know it is risking death.

On occasion she brings us these prizes.  My wife is usually not-so-happy to receive a slightly chewed on squirrel.  She doesn't chew them up too bad (my dog, not my wife) let alone try to eat them or gods forbid roll in their guts (unlike if my boy dog finds a dead fish at the lake).  But on one occasion she brought my wife a headless squirrel.  Per my wifes testimonial, she couldn't find the head.  It HAD to be in the backyard somewhere.  But alas.  I couldn't find it either.

A couple months later the dogs are coming in at night and acting like camels.  Not only the girls dog - who was a stray in Tulsa for months per the vet so she drinks when she can as much as she can and will eat until she throws up.  I told you this dog isn't bright.  I digress . . . so they were BOTH coming in and drinking like they had no water all day.  I just thought they were getting picky and shifted from a desire for pond scum to filtered water.  So I started putting water out for them each morning in a farm bucket (kept it from freezing too).

So early this spring I'm cleaning out the half-barrel water garden (old whiskey barrel) / dog water source  that has turned into a hippo pond for the much aforementioned stupid girl dog (she hops right in, plants no longer survive in there.  Cattails, lilys, irises, hyacinth, water lettuce, all dead. She also ate the fish out of it. "Girl, why does your breath smell like koi?" Thanks for that.).  Come spring it is stagnant, low on water, and full of leaves and other garbage.  As I got to the bottom scooping it out the water smelled like a swamp, but this time not the usual swamp smell - it was particularly bad. 

Lo and Behold!  I'm chucking out cups of water and suddenly something chunky flies out.  I gaze upon it as it sails through the air, unable to place it.  Not a rock.  Not a dirt clump.  Not a dead fish.  Something my boy dropped in there?  It lands on the already drenched ground with a dull splat and rolls to a horrific stop.  A semi mummified and well soaked squirrel head is looking back at me.   Which was nice.

It may have been the first time since the inception of marriage that a husband had been excited to tell his wife he had located a missing squirrel head. We did not save it.

[Gaspar]

Too bad you didn't save it.  I would have put it on a tiny pike in my garden to serve as a warning to others.

[GG]

I love these gardening stories.   Good information and entertaining experiences.   

[DolfanBob]

I use something very similar to this:



It is more attractive and more sturdy than chicken wire.  My dogs do well enough keeping most rabbits away, so keeping the dogs away is the real trick!  Stupid girl dog.  She went over a rock well and jumped over this fence with 2 strands of wire above it, then cleared the rock wall on the OTHER side and landed on my lettuce.  Once in there she picked up a 6" plastic pot full of rocks and scattered it around.  Then picked up a Tupperware thing full of starter plants from seed and carried it to the other side.

Then she left.  No real damage but for 4 lettuce plants.

Last year my garden was a war zone.  I trimmed back rose bushes and intertwined the thorn branches into the fence.  I put stakes out away from the fence and put up strands of wire (dogs can't jump well over long distances and clear a 3.5' fence, more of an UP type of jump).  I placed random stakes inside the fence so she had nowhere to land.  I placed a swing along the fence so she couldn't even get there.  (contractors were working behind the fence last summer and knocked out a few of my 6' fence pickets continuously, hence the motivation to get back there and bark at them through the fence holes).

I used the exact same wire for my garden. After attaching it to my railroad ties. I cut the top wires and bent them outward in order to keep my dog out of there, i know it sounds cruel but after a couple of jumps in there he stopped doing it.

[custosnox]

and now I want a garden.  If only I could afford it...

[Conan71]

Too bad you didn't save it.  I would have put it on a tiny pike in my garden to serve as a warning to others.

I'm still afraid it might wind up at my house as a house-warming gift....blech!  What was in the backpack again yesterday, Cannon?

[cannon_fodder]

I'm still afraid it might wind up at my house as a house-warming gift....blech!  What was in the backpack again yesterday, Cannon?

Stuff to make Philly Cheese Steak for supper.  Thin sliced round, red onions, garlic, bell peppers, provolone, swiss cheese and a loaf of French bread.   Damn it was good.  Mind you, I did wake up at 3am to be "punished" for my excessive eating.  Still, I think it was worth it.

That and a pickled severed squirrel head which I left in your neighbors mail box with a note asking if you could date their daughter.

[Townsend]

Well, the younger girl got one...a freaking bunny.

Went to let her in and there she was at the back door with the non-kosher half in her mouth.

Happy to say the door is glass so I saw the carnage before opening it up to the nasty.

Both dogs got baths at about 10 last night to get off any rabbit residue.

No luck finding the front half so I'll mow the yard this eve (need to anyway) and see if I can find it.

That was a super gross way to end the day.

I never heard the scream.