Victory Garden

[NeuroTypical]

Yay!

 

[classylady]

I’m going to be planting my seeds this spring. I’m hoping our Utah climate will grow these beauties and I get some sweet watermelon. 

[Carborendum]

Ok, so it has been about 30 days now.  Out of 36 seeds planted in 12 bins, only 7 have sprouted, each in separate bins.  About 1:5 to 1:6.  That's not a good ratio for heirloom seeds. 

The true leaves have formed.  I'm hoping the cotyledons fall off soon.  Once they grow weak, I'll be planting them.  I hope that's this week.  I'll plant some more in the seven used bins and keep the other ones watered.  Sometimes they just need a little longer.

My wife had been gathering a big bin of dead plants in a cart.  She had largely forgotten about them.  But by now they've composted quite a bit.  I'm going to be planting that mixed with our soil and lay down weed cloth so the watermelon will be easy to keep isolated.  I hope it works.  Next month, I hope to be able to plant some more sprouts. 

With this early spring (and hopefully normal or late fall) I will be able to have at least three crops * three plants per crop * 6 melons per plant = 54 melons this year.  Yummy!!!

[Carborendum]

I still haven't seen any more than the seven original sprouts.  I guess that's all I'm getting.

I just started 15 more seeds.  Hopefully I'll get at least two more sprouts.

As of yet, I can't plant outside yet.  The early spring turned into the statistical dip.  We have a cold front that was supposed to only last one week.  It is now forecast to last about 2-1/2 weeks.  So, it looks like we'll have spring begin right about on schedule after all.

[Carborendum]

  On 1/18/2021 at 10:30 PM, classylady said:

I’m going to be planting my seeds this spring. I’m hoping our Utah climate will grow these beauties and I get some sweet watermelon. 

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As long as you plant them after the final frost, you should have enough months of growth for a nice melon around July or August.

[mordorbund]

  On 2/11/2021 at 7:43 PM, Carborendum said:

As of yet, I can't plant outside yet.  The early spring turned into the statistical dip.  We have a cold front that was supposed to only last one week.  It is now forecast to last about 2-1/2 weeks.  So, it looks like we'll have spring begin right about on schedule after all.

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[Carborendum]

So, I found out that there was nothing wrong with the seeds.  I had simply planted them too deep for most of them to pop up.

I learned that the best result is if I bury them vertically with the point downward, and the top just barely below the surface.  I've been getting better results now.

About the winter, not only are all my old citrus trees dead, but one of my nectarines apparently died.

Do not buy the "Desert Dawn" nectarine.  Here's why.

I did some research to find all varieties of free stone nectarines with low chill hours.  The Desert Dawn had only 200 chill hours.  That was a shoe in for Texas weather.  No problem getting those chill hours here (average 300-350).

The problem is the Groundhog Effect.  200 hours is so low that the tree blossoms during the first thaw.  Then the flowers all die during the dip.  Other trees dont blossom until after the dip.  So they're fine. 

Maybe I should get a cold frame for that tree alone (if I replace it with the same variety).  I figured out a pretty cheap way to make a cold frame.  So it wouldn't be such a big deal.  PVC and plastic wrap.

But the nature of nectarine trees is that they are wide and short.  We'll see if it gets too wide to make my frames effective.

[Carborendum]

  On 1/18/2021 at 10:30 PM, classylady said:

I’m going to be planting my seeds this spring. I’m hoping our Utah climate will grow these beauties and I get some sweet watermelon. 

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You should be fine.  As long as you start them inside until the true leaves form, then you should have no problem with a full 90+ day growing season.  You only need 75 days of 70+ degree weather (high of the day) nights above 40, and a total of around 85 to 90 days.

Hints:

1) Lots of nitrogen until you see blossoms form.  

2) Add more potassium and phosphorus once the flowers appear.

3)  Once the melons get as big as a cantaloupe, spread about a Tbsp of epsom salt around the radius of the plant.  You should dissolve them in a gallon of water and pour it around.

LOTS of water.  But try to water in the mid to late morning so the leaves don't fet fungus.  But that may not be a problem in Utah.

Edited March 7, 2021 by Carborendum

[Jane_Doe]

It’s funny- I worked for a Botany department for 10 years. Never had any interest in garden then, before or after. 

But my daughter 6/7 has really gotten into it since the pandemic hit. I humored her buying some flowers last spring, figuring they keep her busy for a week, then be forgotten.  No!  She diligently tended and loved those things all through the summer until winter death came. 

Last week, a school teacher gave her a seed in a cup, and once again, my 7 year old is a diligent gardener.  I’m going to need to pick out some new things to grow I’m the backyard this year  

 

[Carborendum]

  On 3/7/2021 at 6:48 AM, Jane_Doe said:

It’s funny- I worked for a Botany department for 10 years. Never had any interest in garden then, before or after. 

But my daughter 6/7 has really gotten into it since the pandemic hit. I humored her buying some flowers last spring, figuring they keep her busy for a week, then be forgotten.  No!  She diligently tended and loved those things all through the summer until winter death came. 

Last week, a school teacher gave her a seed in a cup, and once again, my 7 year old is a diligent gardener.  I’m going to need to pick out some new things to grow I’m the backyard this year  

 

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if you want some sweet watermelon, send me your address.  I've still got plenty of seeds.

[Carborendum]

Cool discovery.  Chill hours.

Some of my trees require a full 400 chill hours for blooming.  We often get it.  But some years we're at 350 chill hours.  So close.

I just realized that if I spray the trees at night with water during those nights where it will hit just under 50 degrees, the water will evaporate, giving the tree the effective chill it needs to go over the 400 hr requirement.

It's just a theory at the moment.  But I'm going to test it next winter.  I'm confident it will work.

On the downside, I just discovered that any hours below 32 degrees don't count.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Carborendum

[Vort]

I was pondering last week why my wife and I experienced allergy symptoms in late February, right during the coldest part yet of the Seattle-area winter. It soon occurred to me that many trees and other plants use daylight, not temperature, as their trigger to start producing pollen. Specifically, I think they use the shortening period of darkness to biochemically determine when to set certain biological processes into motion.

As a child, I always found botany the least interesting of the biological sciences. As an adult watching my eventual old age approach, I have repented of that attitude. I've missed out on decades of interesting and enjoyable understanding of plant biology. Oh, well. So it goes.

FWIW, I bet those "chill hours" are not set irrevocably in stone. The water spray idea sounds like a winner.

[Carborendum]

  On 3/11/2021 at 4:37 PM, Vort said:

I was pondering last week why my wife and I experienced allergy symptoms in late February, right during the coldest part yet of the Seattle-area winter. It soon occurred to me that many trees and other plants use daylight, not temperature, as their trigger to start producing pollen. Specifically, I think they use the shortening period of darkness to biochemically determine when to set certain biological processes into motion.

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That is interesting.  I hadn't heard about that before.

  3 hours ago, Vort said:

As a child, I always found botany the least interesting of the biological sciences. As an adult watching my eventual old age approach, I have repented of that attitude. I've missed out on decades of interesting and enjoyable understanding of plant biology. Oh, well. So it goes.

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You and me both.

  3 hours ago, Vort said:

FWIW, I bet those "chill hours" are not set irrevocably in stone. The water spray idea sounds like a winner.

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For some trees it is.  But it isn't as bad as one might think.  It is somewhat more complicated than you'd think.

Supposedly, a "dormancy inducing hormone" is released into the plant when temperatures dip down.  Then when the ambient temperature is between 32 and 45, it degrades.  Different plants have different chill hour requirements based on how much of this hormone is generated to begin with.

However, I asked our local radio expert about this.  He said that the primary thing it affects is the "flowering mechanism" of the plant.  

I noticed in our first year that several of the trees with a higher chill hour requirement eventually did put forth leaves.  But they put forth no flowers.  So, they came out of dormancy enough to have leaves to gather sun and nutrition.  But it didn't have enough to bloom.

Several of my trees have yet to put forth any leaves or flowers this year.  I'll give them till the end of the month before declaring them dead.  The one Desert Dawn was so brown I was sure it was dead.  But I just noticed some buds forming.  So we'll see.

Many of my trees are blooming now.   I'm kind of excited.

[Backroads]

  On 3/7/2021 at 6:48 AM, Jane_Doe said:

It’s funny- I worked for a Botany department for 10 years. Never had any interest in garden then, before or after. 

But my daughter 6/7 has really gotten into it since the pandemic hit. I humored her buying some flowers last spring, figuring they keep her busy for a week, then be forgotten.  No!  She diligently tended and loved those things all through the summer until winter death came. 

Last week, a school teacher gave her a seed in a cup, and once again, my 7 year old is a diligent gardener.  I’m going to need to pick out some new things to grow I’m the backyard this year  

 

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So I teach kindergarteners virtually, and this past week I thought it would be fun to have a seed lesson, what with the lovely warm weather and false spring and all that. We would learn about seeds, I invited them to bring containers and seeds of their choice to the lesson. It would be cute.

I MAY have gone a little crazy when one kidlet said "Mrs. Backroads, why are you planting so many seeds?" 

Fortunately one of the farm kids registered to the school simply because he lives in the middle of nowhere backed me up.

[Vort]

  On 3/13/2021 at 2:42 PM, Backroads said:

So I teach kindergarteners virtually, and this past week I thought it would be fun to have a seed lesson, what with the lovely warm weather and false spring and all that. We would learn about seeds, I invited them to bring containers and seeds of their choice to the lesson. It would be cute.

I MAY have gone a little crazy when one kidlet said "Mrs. Backroads, why are you planting so many seeds?" 

Fortunately one of the farm kids registered to the school simply because he lives in the middle of nowhere backed me up.

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That's a cute story about adorable little children, but I confess I'm missing the punchline. What was the farm kid backing you up on?

[Backroads]

  On 3/13/2021 at 3:20 PM, Vort said:

That's a cute story about adorable little children, but I confess I'm missing the punchline. What was the farm kid backing you up on?

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Planting many seeds, like a practical person. Instead of hoping one itty bitty seed provides for your family's needs!

[Vort]

  On 3/13/2021 at 3:23 PM, Backroads said:

Planting many seeds, like a practical person. Instead of hoping one itty bitty seed provides for your family's needs!

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Gotcha. All the pieces have fallen into place.

[Jane_Doe]

  On 3/13/2021 at 2:42 PM, Backroads said:

So I teach kindergarteners virtually, and this past week I thought it would be fun to have a seed lesson, what with the lovely warm weather and false spring and all that. We would learn about seeds, I invited them to bring containers and seeds of their choice to the lesson. It would be cute.

I MAY have gone a little crazy when one kidlet said "Mrs. Backroads, why are you planting so many seeds?" 

Fortunately one of the farm kids registered to the school simply because he lives in the middle of nowhere backed me up.

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Ironically, two days after I posted here, my daughter came back from first grade with a cup of dirt and a seed.  Sure enough, it's already go a couple little leaves and my little gardener is so excited.  I'll probably have to get a bigger pot not too long though (cause its still 2-3 months away from outside planting time). 

[Carborendum]

So, here is the tree I thought was dead.

Then I noticed a leave sprouting on the trunk.

This means that most of the branches are dead.  But the trunk remains.  The leaves will have to sprout enough to allow the tree to grow this year and survive the winter pruning.  Then next year it can stretch some branches.  Only the following year can I expect a few fruits to develop.  But if nothing goes wrong, then we should be fine after that.

And here is my most mature nectarine tree.  It produced a lot of apricot sized fruit last year.

It was only after they had set that I learned about pruning and thinning properly.  Hopefully, this year I'll be able to do it right.  We might get some decent sized fruit out of it.

Here is the tree with the most blossoms.

 Leaves follow as the blossoms open up.  Each flower could become a fruit.  That is why they need to be thinned.  But that is tricky business.  You have to do it at just the right time of the fruiting process.  Then you also have to have a nice balance of fruit-leaf-branch quantity.  I hope I can get that balance this year.  I sure missed it last year.
 

[Carborendum]

This is my completely dead kumquat tree.

As I understand it, the most cold hardy citrus are the kumquat and the grapefruit.  I had a large grapefruit that was shielded on all sides by other evergreen trees.  It also died.

So, I'm going to replace this with a mandarin that I got.  But if these guys die with another cold spell, I'm not planting any more citrus.

[Carborendum]

ANTS!!!

Tons of ants everywhere.  They're crawling over cedar mulch.  I thought the cedar would repel ants.  NOPE!  So, I had to spread some triazicide around all my trees and my one watermelon plant that survived.

And now they're gone.  Triazicide works.  Now I hope that it doesn't make the fruit poisonous.  It says that it is safe for fruit trees.  But if I start to grow a second head, I'll let y'all know.

Of course, since I got the granular type, I hope that my chickens won't eat it up either.  We'll see.

[Carborendum]

And now...

HAIL!!!  

Yes, friends.  After Snowmageddon has come and gone, I thought everything was safe for my watermelons.  But I woke up in the middle of the night to a hailstorm.  I'm not looking forward to checking my watermelons today.  I may have been sent back to square one.

[Jane_Doe]

  On 3/23/2021 at 12:22 PM, Carborendum said:

And now...

HAIL!!!  

Yes, friends.  After Snowmageddon has come and gone, I thought everything was safe for my watermelons.  But I woke up in the middle of the night to a hailstorm.  I'm not looking forward to checking my watermelons today.  I may have been sent back to square one.

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Oh no!!   Please let us know how it goes!  

On my families (much smaller scale) front: last night daughter's flower graduated to it's "big flower" pot that we freshly decorated.  It'll be another ~7 weeks before the weather is safe for it to move outside.  In the next few days I'm going to try to ID some other things to grow this year and get some starters going in the house.  

[Just_A_Guy]

  On 3/23/2021 at 12:22 PM, Carborendum said:

And now...

HAIL!!!  

Yes, friends.  After Snowmageddon has come and gone, I thought everything was safe for my watermelons.  But I woke up in the middle of the night to a hailstorm.  I'm not looking forward to checking my watermelons today.  I may have been sent back to square one.

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Good gravy, man.  Are you, like, secretly enslaving Israelites or something?  The Man Upstairs seems to have it in for your family this year . . .

[Carborendum]

  On 3/23/2021 at 4:12 PM, Jane_Doe said:

Oh no!!   Please let us know how it goes!  

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Turns out my watermelon survived.  I forgot that I had virtually buried it under the mulch because the "trunk" was partially disintegrating due to over exposure to sun.

So more lessons in melon care.  Plant shallow enough to get sprouts.  deep enlut to develop the trunk before exposing it to too much sun.

  9 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:

On my families (much smaller scale) front: last night daughter's flower graduated to it's "big flower" pot that we freshly decorated.  It'll be another ~7 weeks before the weather is safe for it to move outside.  In the next few days I'm going to try to ID some other things to grow this year and get some starters going in the house.  

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What was the seed?