The Gardening Thread: 2018 season.

[tater]

It's supposed to be 38C today, and under 10% humidity. Even watering daily... basil is not happy here. Mint is doing better, but it still gets eaten. The problem with a desert is that even traditionally unappealing plants are more delicious than cactus and chamisa, I guess.

[klesh]

I don't know if any of you cats play Fallout 4, but here I present my garden which is about a mile away from the real life inspiration for Parson's State Insane Asylum ingame.  You can see it off in the distance.

 

[Benjamin Kerman]

*Cue insane screaming*

[WinkAllKerb'']

same, nice pics , so relaxing

Edited July 11, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''
, ) ; 香 amusing sort of etymo related ^^

[regex]

Anybody else into gardening? Post 'em if you got 'em.

This has been a long-running project for us ever since we bought the place. The previous owner was very much into her flowers and herbs, and we're still finding random plants popping up nearly two years after buying the house. They also clearly used the plot we're using. The first picture shows the early stages right after tilling and planting.

You can see the marionberry fence was pretty overgrown, I finally decided I'd had enough and destroyed all the grass and weeds popping out of it. If you look beyond the garden in the second picture you can also see all the brush clearing I've been doing; there's some sort of invasive non-Oregon vine there that was trying to choke off a tree. I also lopped a limb off the cherry tree since last year (it went to a good home, friend of mine enjoys carving) but the "shady" part of the garden with the kale and lettuce on the left still get their shade (little patch of dill up front). Tomatoes and jalapenos on the right with six habaneros in pots, with strawberries, some kind of melon (I don't do the planting except for my habaneros), pumpkin (for my daughter), and tomatillos up the center. We just added the mulch after I cleared out all the thick grass and clover-like ground cover that is so prevalent in the plot, I look forward to less weeding.

Also, random cat picture.

[Bill Phil]

Not so much gardening, but I had to lay down grass on a big dirt patch in my back yard.

Also, I recall there being another thread... not sure, though.

[tater]

That said, wow, yours looks nice. I'm limited to herbs in my tiny walled in yard---the rest is desert and critters would eat most anything I planted without thorns or spines, lol.

 

Edited July 21, 2017 by tater

[Vanamonde]

Overlapping threads have been merged. 

Also, pretty cat.

[UnusualAttitude]

On 7/20/2017 at 11:52 PM, regex said:

Anybody else into gardening? Post 'em if you got 'em.

Hullo @regex. Sorry our threads were merged but, as improbable as it may sound, I started a gardening thread here a few months ago.

Nice plot you have going there. I'm particularly envious of your chilli peppers. I've tried growing them several times but so far the results have been pretty underwhelming. I managed to munch through most of my last crop without breaking sweat. Little capsaicin at all. I'm wondering if this is due to the species I grew, or due to the climate here (South of France, probably similar to the milder parts of California if you live across the pond...). Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

My tomatoes have finally ripened, though. I will leave you with the first 800g (1 & 3/4 lb) monster we ate this week... juicy. 

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[regex]

10 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Hullo @regex. Sorry our threads were merged but, as improbable as it may sound, I started a gardening thread here a few months ago.

No worries.  

10 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Nice plot you have going there. I'm particularly envious of your chilli peppers. I've tried growing them several times but so far the results have been pretty underwhelming. I managed to munch through most of my last crop without breaking sweat. Little capsaicin at all. I'm wondering if this is due to the species I grew, or due to the climate here (South of France, probably similar to the milder parts of California if you live across the pond...). Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

So we grow jalapenos and habaneros, being California expats (or just West Coast U.S. in general), and use them for general seasoning and hot sauce (the habaneros for hot sauce mainly). I've tried some Middle Eastern peppers (can't remember the variety off hand) and some oddballs, but they were never as reliable as the jalapenos and habaneros.

I've found the best way to grow habaneros is to pot them and ensure they have tons of morning sun to warm the pots and then shade in the afternoon. If the summers are milder then they need more sunlight. Oregon had a particularly hot summer last year and the plants were very warm throughout the day even being shaded in the afternoon; I got a pair of small bushes that put out some ~60 peppers total. This year is milder and we've had to put them into the direct sunlight for most of the day and let the pear tree shade them for an hour or so in the afternoon, they're not nearly as big as last year.

As for the jalapenos, we used to pot them like the habaneros but they grow differently and seem to love the space next to the tomatoes, being shaded but getting enough sun.

As far as the heat, peppers vary a lot. We've had jalapenos with pretty much no capsaicin to speak of and others that would do a decent job trying to rival a habanero. In general, try before you buy and then go back to the same seller, or find a seller you trust.

Or just grow habaneros, guaranteed to have some good heat and fantastic flavor. Use sparingly if you're not used to them.  

10 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

My tomatoes have finally ripened, though. I will leave you with the first 800g (1 & 3/4 lb) monster we ate this week... juicy. 

Good lord! Very cool!

[monstah]

Really dry winter, and I think the Cayenna peppers that had just sprouted, and also my mint plant, have all died. So has my tomato a few weeks ago.

 

35 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

(...)I will leave you with the first 800g (...)

 

@regex she looks like a damn happy cat in this plot

[UnusualAttitude]

34 minutes ago, regex said:

Or just grow habaneros, guaranteed to have some good heat and fantastic flavor. Use sparingly if you're not used to them.  

Looks like I need to shop around for some good habaneros, which may be a challenge. French cuisine is wonderful, but they wouldn't recognize a decently hot pepper if one jumped up and bit them on the nose. I've spent years trying to get my family accustomed to capsaicin by means of small, homeopathic doses. I'm getting there, slowly...

Your advice might also apply to my sweet peppers too. They often wilt in bright sunlight and heat despite my efforts to give them enough water. I'll probably plant all my peppers in pots next year so I can move them around and experiment... thanks. 

Edited August 1, 2017 by UnusualAttitude

[tater]

 Buddy of mine grows NM green chiles (same species as Anaheim peppers, but these are actually hot).

He planted 7 rows in his parents unused corral, and harvested hundreds of pounds of chile which we helped pick and roast.

NM chiles are way better than jalapeños for many uses because they have much more flavor for a given heat. Imho, anyway.

The stores are starting to get chile in, and soon NM will smell of roasting peppers.

Best. Smell. Ever.

On the actual gardening side, we've been eating indoor bananas the last few days. Woot!

[TheSaint]

19 hours ago, tater said:

 Buddy of mine grows NM green chiles (same species as Anaheim peppers, but these are actually hot).

He planted 7 rows in his parents unused corral, and harvested hundreds of pounds of chile which we helped pick and roast.

NM chiles are way better than jalapeños for many uses because they have much more flavor for a given heat. Imho, anyway.

The stores are starting to get chile in, and soon NM will smell of roasting peppers.

Best. Smell. Ever.

On the actual gardening side, we've been eating indoor bananas the last few days. Woot!

We had friends here in town that grew up in Clovis, they turned us on to NM chiles. My wife has some varietal of them planted in the garden this year, can't remember the specifics of it. She's the real gardener in the family, I just do the grunt work and the plumbing.

[monstah]

21 hours ago, tater said:

NM chiles are way better than jalapeños for many uses because they have much more flavor for a given heat. Imho, anyway.

Never tried NM chiles, but I love me some jalapeños. I got some habanero seeds lately, but I haven't planted them yet.

[tater]

Green chile stew, for example. There is as much fresh, roasted chile as meat.

[monstah]

15 hours ago, tater said:

Green chile stew, for example. There is as much fresh, roasted chile as meat.

You're making me hungry >_< 

[regex]

We're in the middle of a heat wave but, thanks to the mulch and the soaker hose, the plants are doing fantastic, even have a few cantaloupes growing. Also, the pumpkins have left the patch and are heading into the wild but you can't really see because we have some enormous tomatillos. There are some jabaneros trying to achieve banana status too.

Thanks for reading my bragging.

[tater]

@regex, Tuscan kale back left?

[regex]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

@regex, Tuscan kale back left?

Not sure what variety exactly but yes, kale. Prepared properly it's a real treat and it holds up in soups like nobody's business.

[tater]

We make a kale salad that is awesome. Usually use the curly kind, but both work.

chopped kale

dressing is lemon juice, salt, crushed red chile pepper, and olive oil. Sometimes swap good mustard for chile.

toss it with toasted slivered almonds, some dried cherries or cranberries (not too sweet kinds), and shave Parmesan cheese on top.

[regex]

I'm pretty sure that's my wife's exact recipe, lol. The trick, I've heard, is to "massage" the kale with something acidic like lemon juice to soften it up a bit, so you don't feel like you're chewing a cud or something.

[tater]

Yeah, I end up making it, but it's my wife's attempt to reverse engineer a salad from the Grove cafe (famous from Breaking Bad, it's the place Walt dosed the ricin in the stevia).

[adsii1970]

Well, I do flower pot and window box gardening. This year, most of my herbs and peppers were eaten by our over-population of tree rats (squirrels). Thinking about thinning out the herd this coming hunting season...

But on a more happy note, I did have some great success in the flower department:

Moss Rose:

And a week later...

 

[tater]

Bananas are getting smaller... still delicious! (daughter's hand for scale)