Gardening Gardening

My indoor baby eggplant. A couple of my indoor ornamental sweet peppers.

 

Ornamental sweet peppers. That's a real accomplishment.

 

Thank you. They are actually super easy to grow indoors. I am crossing my fingers the aphids don't get to them.

 

Nice.
Wife just put some potato eyes in HD buckets yesterday. We'll see how that works.

 

Looks like it's going to be another bucket garden for us again. Maybe this summer I can get something started.

 

I say that every year with limited success.

 

Yeah I'm not holding my breath. I'll put some tomatoes and peppers in buckets and I'm going to try cucumbers again but that's about it. If I can find time to get something started on a bigger scale I will but I have a list a mile long for summer projects already and a gardenia at the very end of it.

 

anybody have much success with potatoes in buckets? i got a few in storage that the wife wont use cuz they started growing. wondering if i can get them going to produce anything...

 

Yes last year we had three large plastic containers with potatoes and did very well. So easy to harvest. Just started some sweet potatoes yesterday in glass jars to grow some slips.

 

habaneros and jalapenos

 

Hey billb3 what are your hardening tips before transplant? I tried seeds 2 years in a row, and pretty much struck out for anything started indoors.

 

The only real problem I see in using kitchen potatoes, is that there is no way to tell if they have been exposed to blight. Live tubers is one of the ways blight is spread. It is airborn and will infect any tomato or potato plant that the spores drift to. For that reason alone, I always buy certified seed potatoes. The problem with blight is by the time you recognize you have an infection, it is too late. The spores travel for miles.
As for growing them in a 5 gallon bucket, it has been done. youtube is a good place to look. seen it also in piles of hay. Even in barrels where they keep adding soil as the plants grows up and out of the barrel. Looks like fun.

 

I have a little unheated 8 foot long aluminum and double wall plastic hobby greenhouse. Windows auto-open so it doesn't get too hot and if it gets a little cold at night they slow growth and harden off.
I have problems with slugs and cutworms so I like to get peppers and tomatoes started a little early even though it means spending a little extra on potting soil ( I don't like to see roots wrapping in the pot bottoms ) just to have some tougher stems. Just not so early I need lights and huge pots.
Those are getting their first set of true leaves so they'll have to go in some potting soil and go out in the light so they stop reaching out the window. If it gets cold at night I can put a heat mat under them and tent them. I've tented without the heat mat and the soil in the pots have been enough of a heat sink with a blanket of sorts. They might slow down a little bit but I won't be weening them off of lights and out under scalding sun either.


Starting seeds in a house with a wood stove is tough. It's way too dry. That's why I use the plastic storage container upside down to trap moisture in so I don't have to mist them every half hour. They will bake in the sun though so I watch the temp with a little tiny 5 inch soil thermometer. Most seedlings can take more dry air once they are not surviving on their cotyledon leaves.

 

Has anyone every tried making a trellis lengthways over your CSS and covered wood for grapes or hardy kiwi? Sure it would shade the wood pile but if you are the 3 year plan and you top cover would it matter?

 

this is a neat trick, but I wouldn't try it on a hybrid tomato. It can't reproduce true to the parent. On generic types, It work, and after all, you always get something.

 

We all get those tall tomatoes when we try to grow them too early. Here is a rescue

 

Disc'd and chiseled on Thursday and ran some plastic for the first time this afternoon. Stupid me forgot to pack a shovel though

 

What are you planning too put in the plastic?