What do you Grow?? The Garden Thread

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Karamazov
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27 Mar 2020, 4:03 pm

blazingstar wrote:
As much as I love the subtropics here, I am jealous of domineekee and Karamazov and your temperate vegetables. :D :D :D I do love hearing about it though. :D

Sharp eyes, Karamazov, that is a lemon juicer. :D

I will eat the tomato tonight. :heart:

The deer got about half of the rose bush, it had not really gotten going well yet. Right now, I am covering it at night until I can get a fence around it. I have lots of cylinders of woven wire fencing that I can put over plants if necessary and I guess I will get those out. The longevity spinach does not come back from deer browsing. :-( but there are branches that were either low to the ground or trailing in the pineapple leaves that were untouched, so I will hope those will regenerate. The edible hibiscus doesn't look too good. :-(

I have lots of pineapples plants all over the place. So I am planning great fences of pineapple plants. :-)


Hope it tastes even better than it looks! :D
I love homegrown tomatoes: the intensity of the flavour is :heart:

I’d expect the rose to survive from that: they are in essence fancy-pants brambles, tough plants really... give it a little extra fish blood & bonemeal and with one of your protective cages it should pull through. :D
Longevity Spinach: is that what gets called Perennial Spinach in the UK? Not grown it myself, but my aunt has: think they’re pretty tough if I remember rightly (and it is the same variety).
I know nothing of edible hibiscuses 8O maybe they don’t do in our climate, or maybe they’ve just never been on trend in this country :scratch:

Good luck with the spikey living barrier!
(I guess in the British isles we’d just use the standard farmers hawthorn hedge with the occasional holly: which is basically the same idea in a different climate)



Robert312
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27 Mar 2020, 4:08 pm

[quote="blazingstar" This tomato plant is a volunteer. It popped up early in January. It is very healthy and growing with a very thick healthy stem and leaves. [/quote]
Volunteers are always the best.


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Noca
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27 Mar 2020, 5:19 pm

I grow yarrow and lavender, but I don't plan on eating them. I have a garden full of perennials, but they haven't come to life yet.



Randomosity
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28 Mar 2020, 10:31 pm

I have couple of questions:

I'm kind of a novice at gardening - so far I've had success with really hardy perennials - and I want to try to get into herb container gardening.

Does anyone have experience with this? If so, which ones do you suggest starting with and are there any certain online sources that you guys often go to for general gardening advice?



Karamazov
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29 Mar 2020, 3:29 am

Randomosity wrote:
I'm kind of a novice at gardening - so far I've had success with really hardy perennials - and I want to try to get into herb container gardening.

I suppose the two first questions are what type of climate have you got, and are there any particular herbs you want to try growing?
They come from a variety of different natural environments and have different growth habits: some are literally herbaceous, some are really bulbs, some are small bushes, and some are trees!
Counter-intuitively Bay Trees can do very well in (large) pots, whereas Parsley I’ve only ever grown successfully in the ground.
Randomosity wrote:
Does anyone have experience with this? If so, which ones do you suggest starting with and are there any certain online sources that you guys often go to for general gardening advice?

For ease of care to get you into it I’d recommend starting with Chives, Oregano and, if you can get a big enough container, Mint.*
I’d also recommend a Bay Tree: they do well in pots, are a great stock herb and have glossy mid-dark evergreen leaves. Not 100% frost hardy when young, but we move ours next to the house during winter and escaped warmth from the house is sufficient to keep him happy and healthy. If you have harsher winters than we do in England I’d recommend the Scottish practice of wrapping the trunk in horticultural fleece for the cold months.
My main source of gardening advice/knowledge is the RHS: although as has been noted upthread from here their advice assumes a UK climate and that needs to be taken into account to apply effectively. (That link should take you straight to their advice search page: it works best if you type the plant name in :wink: )
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* Chives are a bulb, part of the onion family, but you use the leaves in cooking: lovely dusky pink flowers as well.
Oregano (also Marjoram which is a sub-species) is a a true herb, I’ve seen it grow happily in a variety of soil types and positions: much more tolerant than other Mediterranean plants.
Mint is a bit of a thug and hates to be constricted: one plant will quickly fill a sizeable container on its own, and will need to be lifted out, split and re-planted every time it fills its home. It does come in a variety of colours and scents though, I like Apple-Mint: lovely crisp scent and almost silvery leaves.



Amity
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29 Mar 2020, 4:13 am

I'm itching to get out and do anything gardening related.
:heart: Loving this thread.
3 more days should do it I hope.

Can only imagine growing pineapple and mango, fresh fruit salad options from the garden, how cool!



Randomosity
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30 Mar 2020, 12:10 am

Thanks for the advice Karamazov! That's a good start for me to go off of.



Karamazov
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30 Mar 2020, 1:50 am

^ Coolness 8)
Hope you’re enjoying aromatic herbs in both garden and kitchen soon :D



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30 Mar 2020, 2:16 am

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blazingstar
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30 Mar 2020, 8:31 am

Here is the above tomato picture in my first salad of the year. I have a lot of greens, but tend to not eat salads per se unless I have either tomatoes or tomatillos or something besides greens.

[url=[url=https://imgur.com/IdkkaKe]Image[/url]]Salad[/url]

Ingredients are one tomato, several tomatillos, radish and the tropical greens are bits of: moringa tips, ceylon spinach (Talinum fruticosum), Cuban oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus) and growing wild, tips of greenbrier (Smilax sp.) (I include the scientific names so that people can look them up if interested, as these are not commonly known in temperate regions and have many, many common names because they are grown around the world in tropical areas.

Karamazov, the plant I am calling longevity spinach is: Gynura procumbens. It has many other common names. The young leaves are not tough. You could grow it as an annual, as well as the others above. -- And I have never gotten around to getting a bay tree and really regret it. Perhaps this will be the year I put one in.

Traven, lovely photos! Can you tell us what they are? I do not recognize these. Where, in general, do you live? I can recognize the sheep and the apples. :D I had a herd of sheep when I lived in upstate New York. Are you growing for meat? wool? both?

Randomosity, chives also do well in pots, if you want to keep them small.

Not for pots, but is anyone growing Walking Egyptian Onions?

Amity, what are you starting your garden with?


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Karamazov
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30 Mar 2020, 9:22 am

^ Turns out I was thinking of Perpetual Spinach :oops:
Which is a beet, very closely related to chard in particular.

Although come to think of it Randomosity that might be a good one for you to try: not technically a herb, but hardy, slow to bolt, long harvest season, happy in a reasonable sized pot and can be either a salad leaf, or a leafy vegetable. :D
Just thought thymes: you can get low-growing varieties that hug the ground as well as upright bushes, in my experience they’re hardier to frost and better looking than the upright varieties. Bees love them! :D

That salad looks yummy! :D



Magna
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30 Mar 2020, 9:55 am

I planted some potatoes this weekend.



Stardust_Dragonfly
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30 Mar 2020, 4:24 pm

I planted some seeds the other day for Radish, Onions, Salad leaves, carrots and peppers :D. I'm on the hunt for courgette and tomato plants or seeds. I really enjoyed my time outside in the sun planting them, I can't wait to watch them grow! :flower:



Sahn
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30 Mar 2020, 6:33 pm

This is what I've got to work with. I planted some red stem pak choi today

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And these are my purple sprouting broccoli

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traven
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31 Mar 2020, 1:52 am

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Primula veris
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Pulmonaria officinalis
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mâche (veldsla) with strange name of Valerianella locusta Common names include corn salad, common cornsalad, lamb's lettuce, mâche, fetticus, feldsalat, nut lettuce, field salad.
this one too, Chicory Sugarloaf
these grow around already, im still preparing the garden
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talking garden over translations isn't all that practical



Stardust_Dragonfly
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31 Mar 2020, 2:25 am

domineekee wrote:
This is what I've got to work with. I planted some red stem pak choi today

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And these are my purple sprouting broccoli

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I love purple sprouting broccoli! :chef:

Is broccoli difficult to grow?

Or does anyone have any recommendations for vegetables that are easy to grow (and grow in the uk...)? I ask for easy as it's only my second attempt to grow things. :D