BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 09:23 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: LilyFestre
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 08:11 AM

Northern PA = Zone 5

When we are looking to plant fruit (I'm thinking blueberries if you are talking containers), we buy for the next colder zone and that seems to work out better.

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:45 AM

Northern PA. 16933.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Deckman
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 11:38 PM

What state are you in ... geographically speaking. bob(deckamnNelson

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 11:27 PM

Great ideas!

The chix litter is old, old, old in the ground-- exposed to air and sun. Nutrients well dissolved by now-- went on years ago as a top dressing.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Janie
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 10:10 PM

Crocus in pots overplanted with lettuce - what a great idea maeve!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Janie
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 10:07 PM

Correction. Summer squash are not really climbers. I meant small melons. I've grown canteloupe up a nylon trellis with good results.   I made slings to support the melons from old stockings.

Fwiw, if your season is not long enough for cantelopes or other melons to reach maturity, young cantelopes (say, lemon-sized) are really tasty - like a sweetish cucumber with a smoother texture.

Don't know how they would do in pots, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: maeve
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 09:51 PM

Susan-
Some ideas:

Strawberries, from alpine to day neutral. "Roman" has deep pink flowers and tasty medium size fruit

Blueberry bushes- especially "Top Hat" and the like

Dwarf fruit trees- the usual grafted on super-dwarf rootstock appropriate for container culture or the recently available columnar apple trees. They do cost money.

Daylilies, esp smaller repeating kinds like "Stella d'Oro", "Happy Returns", "Pardon Me" The flowers and buds are tasty in salads and in stir-fry.

Have some pots in which you plan to plant greens ready inside your potting area in winter. Right now plant crocus bulbs in each one, about 2" below the surface. Water, allow to drain. Pots should remain cold (not full of ice though). In very early spring plant seeds for lettuce (different varieties in a range of colors and varieties), kale, mesclun, etc. between the bulb shoots and move the containers outside. Bulb foliage should have ripened and dried before greens are ready to cut.

Rhubarb- There are showy ornamental cultivars. I also like the look of many of the usual kinds, especially "Valentine" and "Champagne" in big pots. Keep them in rich soil with plenty of water and they'll have pretty leaves and tasty stalks for quite a while.

Veggies happy in cooler soils than most: spinach, lettuce, kale, beets, sugar snap peas, carrots. Annual white, purple, and pink alyssum grows from seed, looks pretty, smells like honey, and draws in beneficial insects including pollinators.

Potatoes can take a cooler soil and are beautiful in bloom.If you use good quality soil you can easily harvest new potatoes and even full size tubers easily with your hands. There are many clever tricks you can try to grow potatoes in containers. Sweet potatoes work too and make a pretty vine, but need a long season and more heat.

Watering is, as you know, critical. With containers though, you have options for making less of a chore. Mulches can help maintain stable soil temp within the pots, control water loss through evaporation, and reduce both weeding and animal interferences (eg. cover soil with black plastic, poke or cut holes for seed and transplants. Prevents excess evaporation, heats soil, and helps keep feral cats from making your garden planters into litter boxes.)

Chicken bedding usually must be composted both to avoid burning plants with urea and (if in wood shavings) to avoid tying up available nitrogen as the wood fibers decompose in the soil where plants are trying to grow. It's worth the money to buy the best organic compost you can manage to add to the materials you mention. The soil is everything when it comes to food crops.

Have fun.

maeve

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: LilyFestre
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 09:40 PM

That would be 30 containers!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: LilyFestre
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 09:40 PM

We have 3 regular gardens on our little homestead and also about 3- containers on the deck for container gardening. I've had great luck with this and see no reason why it wouldn't work for you too.

Good soil temps, proper fertilizer, pH levels, etc....and ta-da....a great way to garden!

A good resource for asking questions and finding answers can be found here: www.homesteadingtoday.com

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 08:51 PM

Pots iz black. Pots iz from nursery. Iz tree potz.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 07:55 PM

Container gardening done here in Alberta, but it is done within a heated greenhouse.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 06:41 PM

Well, okay, WYSuz.... But if yer gonna do them yer gonna have to find some way to get the soil temps up 'er you won't have no food, other than lettuce, beets and spinich, until September... If that means painting the containers black, using black plastic and covers then that's what yer gonna have to do... Soil temps are half the battle with good veggie gardenin'... BTW, puttin a seedlin' in cold soil actaully stunts the tomatoe's growth later on...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 06:26 PM

Janie, that was totally cogent. Good leads for further research (online).

The BEST tomatoes I ever had were in smallish containers outside a basement apartment window. I watered them with gallon jugs from the nearby kitchen sink. The results were small and thick-skinned, but SO SWEET because the flavor of the variety just concentrated itself into the tad-dry pots.

A BIL has done them for years in pots. Good results-- I've et a few myself.

Watering these locations is not going to be an issue, and I do need the short daily walk to get out thee and DO IT. The doggies will enjoy playing with the squirting hose I bet. And get cleaner feet! :~)


Keep 'em coming, folks.

Bobert-- no worries. Lotsa folks here do container gardening. (I don't happen to know them, but I see the pots all around town.) A neighbor has ground-gardened for years and will advise on set-out dates for our climate. He's almost disabled now too, so there's another person who may enjoy coming over to putter with me.

This looks like another hobby that will probably turn into a ministry. I do have an old wheelchair that can be used for people who need to sit while puttering.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Alice
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 04:56 PM

It's snowing again. I can't even think of gardens.
Good luck and have fun.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Janie
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 04:47 PM

There is a lot of information on-line regarding container gardening, and your local library will likely also have some books on the subject. You are really asking for more information that we can probably supply here, tho' I'm sure several of us will chime in. Especially suggest you check those resources for information and guidance regarding soil mix.

For early spring, consider peas - snow, sugar and/or garden to climb the fence.   leaf lettuce, mesclun mix, kale and spinach all do well in pots and are attractive. plant more lettuce a bit later in the area that receives partial sun. Also green onion.

Cukes and squash will climb, but would do better on an incline than straight up. might be better to mulch around the pot and let them trail. You will need to keep very, very on top of watering with them. Pole beans probably would need string to twine up, but some one else would have a more informed thought about that - I rarely have grown them, preferring stringless bush fillet beans. Scarlet runners or hyacinth pole beans would be pretty, or some of the newer cultivars with very, very long, thin pods.

Nasturtiums, violas, violets and pansies are all edible and do well in pots. So do garlic chives and society garlic, but you may be too far north for them, especially society garlic.
I'm guessing turnip greens and radishes would do ok in pots.

This past year was the first time I tried tomatoes in pots. The cherry tomatoes did really well. The patio tomatoes (better girl) did not yield that well and the flavor was so-so. Magnesium deficiency can be a problem with container-grown tomatoes. Check the seed catalogs (print or on-line) for varieties of tomatoes that are suitable for pots. Johnny's Selected Seeds gives unusually complete and honest information. Park Seed and Burpee catalogs are prone to hyperbole. (Their seeds are fine, if you already know what you want, but don't trust the blurps.) I haven't tried peppers or egg-plant in pots.

Remember that with most greens, cukes and squash you will need to do succession planting to have a long yield time.

Good luck.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 12:51 PM

NONONO.

We are NOT going to replace the 2 doz. free pots with ties we cannot buy, and dig/import soil onto rocky, rented property! We MIGHT rototill up the LAST raised beds to get the DIRT, to re-use IN THE POTS.


Back to square one, please.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 12:47 PM

Well, WYSuzie, I hate to tell ya' but container gardenin' in Northern Tundravania isn't the best of ideas... Ya' see, it isn't when seedlings are put in but the temperature of the soil... Containers just don't hold heat like real dirt, however...

...there is an answer... Poor Hardi needs to build you some raised bed containers out of RR ties... You can build them any height and use reinforcement rod to hold them together by drilling them and pounding the r-rod down to act as pins...

The advantage of these will be that they will hold heat and be at a level that you are comfy with... They are also decorative, easy to mix variuos soil ammendments into and user freindly... And they are cheap... Relativeluy speakin', of course...

There is an organic hippie farm over outside of Mt Jackson that gardens this way and they get super yield out of very little space... If you want, I have their contact info and you can call them and they will be more than happy to walk you thru setting up an attractive, user friendly and high yield raised bed gardens...

Bobert

Subject: BS: Spring Plantings (Winter Planning)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 12:23 PM

OK. I know this is not the time of year to plant annuals or veggies.

But I want to start planning (budgeting, making space allocations, doing dirt prep) NOW. I have an unheated shed I can work in (no windows, boohoo).

I am not a bad pruner and tender of plants, but I have not STARTED many gardens. So this is a great place to get going with Mudcat expertise.


THE PLAN

This is totally a container-gardening plan. That is for several practical reasons too numerous to go into, but not least of the reasons is that by raising them off the ground, the gardening will be far more accessible than the raised beds we used to have. And while Hardi can and does do it all, his time is usually pretty short. So I want a garden to feed at least two, dazzle drive-bys, create privacy screeening, and take up primarily just MY time. Though a mobility-impaired friend also may also find this a good place to garden, with me. (He just called and said YES! His daughter is also the local herb expert.)


THE SUNLIGHT, POTS, SOIL, AND PLANTS

1. Quite a bit of all-day, full-sun space is available along one side of Dog World's chainlink fence. I plan to put the termaters there to keep the foliage low in spots so they keep their view.

Between those, what veggies will climb vertically that will not be harmed (inhibited) by the chainlink's heat in the sun? I'll put the 'maters next to the chainlink posts to loop support-wires there like mater-cages. Between those, it would be OK if the climbers cover the chainlink as the season goes along-- I can always cut low view-holes for the doggies! :~)

The pots are big. The sun is from the south. Tomatoes are such a priority that all the dirt I know have, which is not much, will go toward these with a good commercial compost. We want sauce and table varieties-- what's new in that regard? We want fridge-pickles. How much/little cuke action do I want to plan for? We want beans and peas-- will pole beans do OK on chainlink? Should I plan on running some string there as well? String-- THAT I can afford! :~)


2. A partial-sun area fronts the road, and the sun moves east/west along that fenceline resulting in some shadier hours of the day due to large trees and house blocking AM and late-afternoon sun. A lot of the all-day southern light will be blocked as well. It's not TOO close to the road-- no road dust or winter salt to worry about. But the plantings there are more likely to sit on TOP of wooden fence posts, and I'm thinking flowers. I've hung portulaca (in the past) as basketed, wild profusion. Other fast-growing, start-from-seed annuals that will spill over or even cling to and climb sideways along the ag panels (heavy wire) that fence that section?

These smaller pots will sit on the posts and be wired also to the ag panel (which is a tad taller than the posts) for additional support for the weight of the watered pots. These are flat-bottomed, straight-sided plastic pots with drainage holes, and I have rubble for drainage. What dirt mix will I need-- that I can "make" onsite from clay-based soil, poultry litter, and sand?


3. Fruit. I have a very short section of southern-exposure, all-day-sun where I can place several of the larger pots on the ground. Is there any fruit I can grow in these, in a single season, and what soil will they need? I have another western-exposure area I can extend into if a great fruit-variety idea comes along.


4. Herbs. Have local expert, no help needed.


Thanks,

~Susan