Green Fingers?

Old Mar 27th 2013, 2:34 pm
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Default Green Fingers?

So anyone into growing fruit/veg?

What have you lot started or plan to start this year?

I've been helping out at the town community garden, not that we need it but the kids have fun with the other kids.

Last year, folks upstairs got the garden at our place in good shape and went a little mental with the tomatoes, chillies and summer squash and our little herb garden just didn't do anything, but the basil did well.

We're doing some different tomatoes, mint and basil this year, in pots already, as they're what we use most and then poach the rest from the upstairs, well they gave us loads last year.

Anyone have any luck with fruit?

Strawberries here didn't seem to do anything and the blueberries were pretty rubbish. No fruit trees either, which is a shame.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 2:58 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

I've got an email in my "flagged" box telling me how to prepare for my vegetable garden - dated November 2008! Every year I have good intentions, and every year, it slips by for some reason or another....

I have got a good routine on composting though, and the last large lot in the Fall went in the front flower beds. Soon thereafter a bunch of stuff started growing and we now have about 5 or 6 healthy looking tomato plants laden with what looks like a decent crop of mini tomatoes. I'm just hoping they ripen before a late cold snap gets them, or the HOA swing by and decide I'm breaching covenant 547(D(ii(a))) by running a tomato farm on my property!
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 3:25 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

I have my onions in and are up but the cold weather is worrying me a little! Also have lettuce and tomato seedlings ready to go out (when it warms up!). We also have plum, pear, peach and apple trees in flower. And then there's the strawberries, raspberries and a grape vine too
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 3:26 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

I have grown strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, pears, apples and peaches. I find that strawberries do best in raised beds, blueberries do well in acid soils, and raspberry canes seem to do alright anywhere I have lived. However, I have never lived as far north as you. The one thing that does not seem to do well here in SE Tenn. is rhubarb. I have talked to the nursery people, and they tell me they have not had much luck with rhubarb either.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 3:55 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

There are a couple of lemon trees and an orange tree in the garden - DD (18mo) had great fun breaking into one of the latter and just sticking her hand inside to pull out lumps of orange!

I just planted a load of seeds - spring onions, Roma tomato, jalapeno peppers, snow peas, beans, and some herbs. Hopefully here they'll grow as it's a lot greener than our old place! And I managed to get the sprinklers to work, not that we need too much of it right now.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 3:56 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

Originally Posted by Redwing
The one thing that does not seem to do well here in SE Tenn. is rhubarb. I have talked to the nursery people, and they tell me they have not had much luck with rhubarb either.
Rhubarb seems to be really finnicky. My parents and grandparents, just doors away from each other in the UK, had opposite extremes - parents couldn't stop it growing; grandparents couldn't get anything. Even transplanted soil up the road. And it was the grandparents that were green fingered.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 5:04 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

The spring onions, we've got them on the window sill, when using them, we stop slicing around the white part and them dump them back into a pot of water and they keep regrowing and pretty quickly too.

We heard you could do the same with celery, but that's not worked out quite so well.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 5:54 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

I'm planting tomatoes and a herb garden. Staring tomatoes from scratch for the first time: Box Car Willie, Amish Paste, Riesentraube and Pineapple - all heirlooms. Tomatoes do REALLY well here.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 6:25 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

So all your tomato growers...how best do you keep them from collapsing?

Much luck up a chain link fence?

Had some bamboo poles to make a teepee type thing last year and they really didn't work, on the heirloom/beef steak ones at least, so had a lot hitting the ground and rotting.

Oh and has anyone had much luck with corn?
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 6:35 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

We grew corn a few years ago...they turned out like those minitaure dried ones you see in the craft stores in the Fall
And we did carrots one year in just the regular flower beds. Round here we have a lot of clay and the builders just throw a few handfuls of topsoil on the ground and call it a garden, flower bed, whatever. The carrots grew about 2 inches down, hit the clay and then curled. They came out of the ground like a pigs tail. Kids loved them! That was when I decided raised beds were the way to go....and we're still waiting!
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 6:39 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

Originally Posted by Bob
So all your tomato growers...how best do you keep them from collapsing?

Much luck up a chain link fence?

Had some bamboo poles to make a teepee type thing last year and they really didn't work, on the heirloom/beef steak ones at least, so had a lot hitting the ground and rotting.

Oh and has anyone had much luck with corn?
I use tomato cages (and I grow my tomatoes in containers). I've had good success with them. They're relatively cheap and you can reuse them year after year.

I've never tried growing corn myself, but when I was growing up, my dad planted a quarter acre at his house in NC. We were eating corn forever!
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 6:43 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

Originally Posted by Yorkieabroad
We grew corn a few years ago...they turned out like those minitaure dried ones you see in the craft stores in the Fall
And we did carrots one year in just the regular flower beds. Round here we have a lot of clay and the builders just throw a few handfuls of topsoil on the ground and call it a garden, flower bed, whatever. The carrots grew about 2 inches down, hit the clay and then curled. They came out of the ground like a pigs tail. Kids loved them! That was when I decided raised beds were the way to go....and we're still waiting!
Those carrots sound pretty cool

Weirdly, potatoes around here, didn't seem to do much, plenty of sprouting leaves and the like, but nothing under the soil. Never seemed that hard to grow them back home though.
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 6:45 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

Originally Posted by Pegster

I've never tried growing corn myself, but when I was growing up, my dad planted a quarter acre at his house in NC. We were eating corn forever!
When I was a kid and visiting my brother, who lived in Austria, we'd nip up the road and pinched them from the side of the road as the farmers only grew it as pig feed out where he was
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 7:13 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

Originally Posted by Pegster
I use tomato cages...
Same here

http://www.lowes.com/pd_159911-82704...age&facetInfo=
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Old Mar 27th 2013, 7:39 pm
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Default Re: Green Fingers?

Maybe your problem is that you have green fingers instead of green thumbs.
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