Gardening Hobby Thread - For growing vegetables, flowers, fruits, houseplants, and more - General

Honestly am surprised no one has posted that yet in here.

I tracked down some banana plants. Going to do my best to keep them alive in a USDA zone 6a locale. Will update whenever they actually ship to me.

Full sized or dwarf?

Three dwarf varieties. I'm not expecting them to bear fruit until next year if I manage to keep them alive, but we'll see what happens.

Anyone have any good experiences with epson salt? I've read a lot that it's a good fertilizer to help darken the green on plants leaves, but really didn't see any difference last year.

I reckon it depends on the plant species. Currently diagnosing translucent yellowish spots on my pepper plant's leaves, so I'm going to try epsom salt to see if it's a Mg deficiency. Will report back on its effectiveness (if it turns out to be the problem).

Whelp, my peas, lettuce, leeks, spinach, and broccoli are all dead from a severe late winter snow storm. The lettuce and peas might recover, but the rest are definitely dead for sure.

Planted my grape and blackberry bushes today. Grape is at the the top, blackberry at the bottom https://i.imgur.com/aH8a8xL.jpg

Since I'm actually moving in properly somewhere sunny (south of sweden) my partner and I will be trying our hands at having a little veggie garden on the balcony. Off to buy seeds and soil in a bit - here's to hoping we'll get something growing during the summer!

Used to grow ttons of veggies year-round here in So Cal, but having to move was too much a pain to retry. Some advice for womever is trying to grow plants from little seed packets, learn from my experience and be prepared for different gene types. In a tomato seed packet from home depot you might get some resistant to the cold, some heat, and on occassion, both. The seeds they sell are from batches so some might acclimate to your location slightly better than others. Just this last winter we got hit with massive snap frost, and only one of my tomato plants survived with a habañero plant. No barked stems, just naturally strong. Heck, those two thrived until the heat wave came and gobbled them up. I suppose they weren't resistamt to cold AND heat. Oh well, gonna try again once I get the chance!

Well my peach and plumb blossoms made it through the nasty weather, I was pretty scared this late winter blast thing would cause them to drop the blossoms.

How do you guys germinate your seeds? From what I can gather, paper towel + water/hydrogen peroxide solution seems to work but is it really more efficient than planting?

@Buttergoose I just put mine in a small planter with plastic wrap over the top and set them indoors in my most sunny window, it worked pretty well 11/12 of my pomegranates sprouted when I did that. Although I have no idea how well it works for any other plant as I only have one result.

That's the way I've seen it done most often too. Well, I might save some money on the peroxide and just go get a little tray instead

I just use little peatmoss pods and hope everything sprouts, which normally it does. I've heard of the paper towel method, but never tried it. Never heard of including hydrogen peroxide though?

I usually put a little bit of soil and the seed in a small styrofoam cup with some plastic wrap.

Peat plugs in small pots of soil for large single seed plantings or just a small pot of soil with holes poked in for scattered seed plantings. Then they go in a heated prop.

Thanks for the ideas guys Seeds planted now! Now to wait. Some of the seeds were tiny tiny tiny, I may have put more than one in by accident. Though, I'm guessing that's not that much of an issue. Anyhow, so far I've planted: parsley, sallad, lemon balm, oregano, kale, spring onion, cayenne, tomato and cucumber. Next up is onion and garlic as well as some more herbs. Also need to get some boxes for the balcony to put all this up when the summer comes. Looking forward to seeing this progress forward!

Us too, you should post pics when you got everything set up

Will do. I'm gonna be away for about a month so hopefully the plants will have grown a bit when I see them again. Now, neither my partner or I have learned how to water properly. For these little seedlings, how do?

For seedlings I normally water immediately when the soil/peatmoss becomes dry. When they're bigger, depending on the plant, I water twice a week if there is no rain. Unless there is a heatwave, in which I water 3 or 4 times.

Hi guys. I want to grow some herbs inside because I don't ever go outside and whenever I do I smell dog shit I don't know if anyone will know the answer to this but here goes: I'm making something like THIS I just have sort of an idea of what lights to get. I was looking at these, which will definitely work, but they're expensive. But from what I've read, all I need is some full spectrum LEDs, I was thinking I could get by with a bunch of philips 6W bulbs, which will cost me the same as one of them. what do?

You probably could, I know plants will grow with just about any kind of light, it's just a matter of the quality of it. I can't say they'll grow well, but they will to a degree. I use these things (a tad more expensive) https://www.amazon.com/Plantation-Products-KLIGHT-Seedling-Cuttings/dp/B075J55295 They do really well with seedlings, I suspect they'll do just as well with herbs.

Reports from the south are that some seeds have started growing!

I planted a peach sapling in my front yard this fall, it should be producing fruit in 3-4 years Aside from that, I just bought this house mid-late summer, and there is a garden in the corner of the backyard, but my fiance wants to re-shape it and replace the rotting retaining logs with cinder blocks and a small fence so our rottweiler cant barrel through the mud and fuck shit up. Ive also got 4 plastic 55 gallon drums that I wanna use for rainwater collection this year and set up an electric pump on a timer to water the garden twice a day without me having to do shit.

I have a rain barrel, though the wooden supports for it need replacing this year. It's pretty great, one good downpour and the barrel is filled for almost an entire summer. We often have to let it overflow out after a week of heavy rain. https://i.imgur.com/J9zYFrh.jpg

I grow succulents and pitcher plants. I've run out of room on my shelves, this weather needs to warm up so I can move some plants outside. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133358/545cea6b-5ede-46a7-91bf-5d288609c1fb/0331181522_HDR.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133358/b87f7896-bd27-448e-8ab2-483bf9fa8d65/0331181522a_HDR.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133358/a73eeb0c-228d-4879-80d3-69689ab1391a/0331181523_HDR.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133358/e910209d-cf6f-4609-a366-0e9bb8192f9a/0331181523a_HDR.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133358/0e827dcf-4541-4c27-898c-bb0461602837/0331181524_HDR.jpg

How do you take care of your flytraps? I tried keeping one about a decade ago, but died nearly a month after I got it. Do you have any specific recipe you feed it or just keep it watered?

Water: give them distilled water or rainwater, minerals in the water kill them. And don't fertilize them either. I also find that they don't like sitting in a tray of water 24/7 like sarracenia so I let the tray dry out between waterings. Light: As much as possible, try to keep them outdoors in full sun. Feeding: I don't, I just put them outside so they can catch stuff on their own. They don't need to eat a lot either, once every few weeks is fine. Also if you are gonna feed them, feed them insects, not meat. And just because a trap dies doesn't mean the plant is dying, traps die after 2-3 meals

Nice, do you have one of those runoff thingies that dumps the first few gallons of water off the roof so the bird shit and leaves dont get in the barrel?