Cheerleaders needed, please. This is daunting.

Kelejan wrote:I clicked on the site  and everything on it is out of stock right now.

Never fails, does it?

OhioGardener wrote:

Kelejan wrote:I clicked on the site  and everything on it is out of stock right now.

Never fails, does it?

A good sign that they must be good value.

People are super duper getting back into gardening right now. I ordered seeds from Fedco in Maine and it must have been just before the crowd was surging because now they have a message on their site that they aren't accepting orders until tomorrow and it will be 2-4 weeks for delivery, they are so backed up. Thankfully I received my seeds Friday.

NH, Welcome back!

Thanks, sanderson! So nice to still see familiar faces here!

NHGardener wrote:People are super duper getting back into gardening right now. I ordered seeds from Fedco in Maine and it must have been just before the crowd was surging because now they have a message on their site that they aren't accepting orders until tomorrow and it will be 2-4 weeks for delivery, they are so backed up. Thankfully I received my seeds Friday.

Lucky you. NHG.

NHGardener wrote:Thanks, sanderson! So nice to still see familiar faces here!

And, I haven't aged a bit!

Hi mollyhespra, my suggestion to beginning gardeners is to start small and grow it bigger every year if you want but start small. So my suggestion is to restart small, knowing some of the beds will need some extra care and attention in their prep. Maybe let one grow out naturally, use the weeds before they seed as biomass in your lasagna garden plan. Grow something as that is the reward for the hot days of summer and you question your sanity and ask yourself, why grow my own when I can buy it from the farmer down the road, that is the garden devil talking. It is because you can't beat freshness and I don't need a brix refractometer to tell me how great freshness taste although it would be nice to have a brix refractometer. However you decide, take time to enjoy all the things a garden brings to lift the spirit and if you find these things then your garden has been a success.

Hi guys! Is everyone out getting their gardens ready?

I just went to the Fedco Seeds website again to browse and now they are not accepting orders at all!! They will be at some point in the future but no dates set.

Can you believe this? Seeds are getting absolutely sold out. 

Johnny's Seeds in Maine is also not accepting orders.

I have a hunch that as seeds are getting bought out, many of those will actually go to waste and never get planted by well-meaning but not gardening types. Yikes. Well, let's hope they spread those seeds around in their own circles anyway.

Check your local nurseries, see what seeds they have available. I also have 3 seed companies that are local which makes me a very lucky gardener indeed, Comstock Ferre which carries the Baker Creek Seeds, Chas Hart Seed and New England Seed.  I consider them and my local nurseries a natural resource. Many nurseries you can call up, order and get curbside service. 

It probably takes something like this for people to want to be more self-sufficient, start gardening and more power to them. Better a late realization than never. Here anything agricultural is considered essential.

With that said, I am trying to find a toilet paper tree so I can grow my own. I know they grew them in Maine when I was a child and they would float them down the rivers to the mills in the spring. I am just hoping you can grow them in a greenhouse so I can have a year long ever ready supply. I don't know if I have ever had a really fresh roll, picked right from the tree but looking forward to that day. I have been wondering lately how internet rumors get started. Maybe someday I'll know.

Everybody please stay healthy and safe.

Dan in Ct wrote:Check your local nurseries, see what seeds they have available. I also have 3 seed companies that are local which makes me a very lucky gardener indeed, Comstock Ferre which carries the Baker Creek Seeds, Chas Hart Seed and New England Seed.  I consider them and my local nurseries a natural resource. Many nurseries you can call up, order and get curbside service. 

It probably takes something like this for people to want to be more self-sufficient, start gardening and more power to them. Better a late realization than never. Here anything agricultural is considered essential.

With that said, I am trying to find a toilet paper tree so I can grow my own. I know they grew them in Maine when I was a child and they would float them down the rivers to the mills in the spring. I am just hoping you can grow them in a greenhouse so I can have a year long ever ready supply. I don't know if I have ever had a really fresh roll, picked right from the tree but looking forward to that day. I have been wondering lately how internet rumors get started. Maybe someday I'll know.

Everybody please stay healthy and safe.

Yes, Dan, it is like the modern day Victory Gardens.  People want to be busy and more self-sufficient.  I think it’s great!

NHGardener wrote:Hi Molly! I have been absent here for several years (southern NH) but after years of neglect I am trying to get my garden into shape, and here I find your story doing the same thing! Your photos are amazing and in such short time you've come a long way.

I jumped to the end of this thread so I need to go back and study what you've done, but last week my husband weed whacked most of my garden area, fixed the fencing that had collapsed, I put black plastic over most of the garden, beds and rows, until I ran out of plastic. I wonder if the grocery store is giving out cardboard but these days I'm hesitant to ask. One 4x8 box I did spruce up in the fall with fresh Coast of Maine bagged soil and planted garlic. 

Good to see you still here! And funny to read your story that your garden ended up pretty much just like mine, and is now hopefully coming out of hibernation. Maybe the soil rest was good for it.

NHG!!!  So good to see you around again!  


If I can do it, you can too!!!  How's it going with your garden rehab?  

P.S. You know those Sparkle strawberries I got from you?  I call them the "Alien Strawberries From Outer Space" because they've totally taken over the garden, lol. I must have pulled hundreds of plants last summer growing in the lanes, up into the beds, everywhere.  But they're SO tasty,  they're worth keeping. I saved enough plants to restart them this year. I just have to do better at keeping them contained.  

Here's where I'm at today: 



Not much since the snowy photo from a few weeks ago except that I carefully hand-weeded the whole 8x4 bed on the far right side of the garden and half of the 2x8 that's along the fence also on the far right side.

I found many, many perennial weed roots already sprouting.  I pulled out what I could but I know from experience with these plants (I don't know the name for it, but my own nickname is "Mini Evil") as well as the main weed villain in my garden "Evil" (Leafy Spurge), will be putting up a fight to get eradicated.  I just have to be diligent and pull them immediately when I see them.  The problem is that they both send out long underground root runners which then multiply into a hydra of weed sprouts if you pull at the main sprout but don't get the whole root.

I was also able to dig up most of a horseradish that I'd also thrown into the 4x8 bed a few years back when everything happened just to give it a place to bide until I could figure things out.  I knew it wasn't a good idea to plant horseradish into the MM but I did.  And now I may have to deal with a 3rd pernicious weed, we'll see.  I understand that young horseradish leaves are edible, so either we'll be cooking with the leaves until the roots are spent or maybe I'll transplant the young 'uns when they pop up above the ground, wherever they pop up.  The main crown is now in a non-SFG part of the garden, where it is likely to get eaten by the woodchucks but I'm willing to take the risk.  

The other thing I did was harvest one Jerusalem Artichoke plant that had spread into the lanes (again, I knew it was a bad idea to plant JAs in my SFG but I did).  I'm not too worried about this one, though.  I still have some 50 plants to harvest in that bed, but I've got a new home for them (my belly), so it's all good.  

Plan for tomorrow when it's supposed to be a cool 50 degrees and sunny?  Have my little weeding helper over to tackle the asparagus beds that are outside the protective fence.  I grew asparagus for years without protection until a few years ago when some outlier woodchuck found out he had a taste for them and he's absolutely devastated my asparagus beds.  I bought new crowns (Jersey Supreme) which are going into the bed on the far left of the garden, but I'd like to see if there are any of my old Purple Passion left at all in the devastated beds.  If there are, those will go into the SFG now also.

Dan in Ct wrote:

With that said, I am trying to find a toilet paper tree so I can grow my own. I know they grew them in Maine when I was a child and they would float them down the rivers to the mills in the spring. I am just hoping you can grow them in a greenhouse so I can have a year long ever ready supply. I don't know if I have ever had a really fresh roll, picked right from the tree but looking forward to that day.

Update: today my plan was to plant some asparagus crowns into an sfg bed inside my fence enclosure, so I set about removing the weed carcases that I'd just thrown on top  of that bed last fall.  Much to my delight, this is what I found underneath:



GARLIC!!!  Lots of garlic!!! 

 

 Now I just have to go back to my notes from fall 2016 to see what I planted where and try to figure out what I've got growing.  

Plan B is now going to be to move those little garlic sprouts into the cleared (old) asparagus bed outside the fence that you can see a corner of in the first picture and then plant the crowns.

Now if I could only remember how many garlics per square again....?

Nice!  Like finding a $5 bill in you washed jeans!  But better...lol.  I plant garlic at 9/sf, but sometimes 5/sf depending...usually 9.  They get decent sized.  This is debatable!

Thanks, SR. Felt more like finding a $100 bill to me, lol.  I'm very grateful.

In other news, I decided to start my seeds so I sowed toms, peppers, eggplants & tomatillos.

Between yesterday and today, I've sown pretty much one or two of each variety I had in my seed library.  Some of them go back to 2008.

Here are my little seed blocks sitting on a heating pad with a timer:



If they all germinate, I'll be thrilled.  If they don't,  then I'll know which seeds are no longer viable.

All in all, a very productive few days. 

The plan for the rest of the week is to start moving those garlics and just keep weeding.

I've bought clear plastic sheets to solarize the other beds once I clear the weed carcases out, so that once I clear a bed I can start forcing those pesky weeds to start sprouting and then smother them with cardboard and a layer of fresh compost on top that I can plant into.

Wish me luck!

Yesterday was a lovely day outside!

I moved 80% of the garlic sproutlings into the old asparagus beds that are outside of the garden fence. The rest I'll do today. I'm sure that most of the sproutlings will only make one large bulb this year, because most are about the size of a small pearl onion or smaller, but that's OK. I didn't think I'd have *any* garlic to use, so it's all a bonus to me! And if some of them head-up, the better!

Hopefully I can also get the new Asparagus planted today into the beds that will now be vacant of garlic.

I didn't get any pictures because it started to rain, but I'll get some later today.

Oh, and good news for my old seeds: many are still viable!!! So far so good with fairly high germination. I'm crediting this to having stored my seeds in the fridge all this time. Yay!!!

Hi Molly!

I just found the SFG notification email in my spam folder! I need to catch up on reading the posts, but yay about the sparkles!

My garden got so neglected and overrun with grass and weeds the past few years that the strawberries have gotten choked out. So I have everything covered in black plastic right now and sacrificed what was left of the strawberry plants. I figure next spring I'll order more sparkles and start all over.

Let's hear it for Complete Garden Makeover! Yay! I'm going to post photos of mine. I've been busy building 6 more 4x8 cedar boxes to double decker.

Wow!  You guys are doing it!  I have grass invading my strawberry bed, too.  I need to get out there and tear into it.  Now that I have most things going, I should be able to do that.

You can do it, SR!!!  Just a little at a time, and eventually it will get done! 

NHG: YES!  Pictures, we need pictures!!!  I seem to remember you saying something about your garden tended to get too soggy at times to work in.  Have you moved it?  Is that why the double-decker beds?

My news today is that the asparagus crowns are finally in the ground.  

Some had broken dormancy while waiting for me to finish transplanting those garlic sproutlings into a new bed, but I think they'll be fine.  

I was also able to get two more beds weeded and ready to get solarized with the help of my little garden helper.  He's a HS Senior this year and bummed about how COVID-19 is affecting his last few months of school, not to mention no senior trip, no graduation, etc.  We commiserated over weed-pulling, a very therapeutic thing for both of us.

So that leaves two beds still to weed in the front (main) fenced-in garden, and another two to go in the back garden.  There are three beds out back, only one is done.

In other news, my freak asparagus-loving woodchuck has been making an appearance...sniffing at the greens now growing in the bed that *used* to grow asparagus, but which now has garlic.  He doesn't seem to have a taste for garlic, but I can see where he's been in the bed, sniffing around. So far he hasn't trampled anything too badly but I think I'd better make a critter cage for those beds just in case.

Ok, so here's the pictures to go with yesterday's post:



Starting from the left, that's the bed with the freshly planted asparagus.  The next two beds have been somewhat weeded and are awaiting a good soaking rain that's been forecast so I can then cover in clear plastic to solarize. 

Beds 4 & 5 need serious weeding, and I just discovered that there is one HUGE black ant nest in bed #5. It takes up about half of that bed. They're not going to be happy when I start weeding.

Bed 6 has the Jerusalem Artichokes from last year waiting for harvesting, and the potato onions  I found still alive when I weeded that bed a few weeks ago. 

It's been SO much work, but it feels awesome to have my garden back from where it was last  summer. In case anyone is new to this thread, this is what I started with in August:

Hi mollyhespra,

I will be looking forward to seeing your garden beds come this August. You have done a great job and hopefully you get to reap in abundance what you sow. This is my year back to production gardening after about 5 years off, maybe less, seems like forever. I garden mostly in 5 gallon buckets but have a couple of 16 gallon containers that I like growing a tomato plant and 4 basil plants, if Roma or San Marzano tomatoes, a pasta garden especially with the garlic beds being back. I bought a couple of Grow Bags a couple of years ago that I think I will set up on landscape timbers on cinder blocks as an elevated way for physically challenged gardeners to garden as a demo at a family farm foundation site that I teach beginning gardening over the summer. I was hoping to do the online Instructor Course and be certified. Maybe next year. I will try and post pictures. Celery finally popped up and if I get fresh celery, I will consider this a great gardening year. I hope you are enjoying your time in the garden because when I am it doesn't seem like work and more as an educational moment. I learn more than I could ever teach in my time spent in a garden.

Dan in Ct wrote: I garden mostly in 5 gallon buckets but have a couple of 16 gallon containers that I like growing a tomato plant and 4 basil plants, if Roma or San Marzano tomatoes, a pasta garden especially with the garlic beds being back. I bought a couple of Grow Bags a couple of years ago that I think I will set up on landscape timbers on cinder blocks as an elevated way for physically challenged gardeners to garden as a demo at a family farm foundation site that I teach beginning gardening over the summer.

I have 2 container gardens now and would love to see pics of yours. I think I'll revive that topic right now and see what everyone else is doing, too.

Molly, You have done a great job!!