gardening question?

[LIBRA]

I can never remember when its a good time to start or prepare for flower gardens and veggie gardens?? every year I always start to early or to late and this year I am in a new house with no garden so I'll have to turn one over which Ive never done, so another question is once Ive turned the ground over should I mix any other dirt in with it like boughten or manure??
I bet Pedeta can help me!!!! outdoor goddess, help me if ya can!!!
thanks

[Pedata]

You called? Lol!

Weather can be so tricky. Your best time to plant is probably April or May, since you're way up there in Penn. May would be safer.

You can start turning over your dirt anytime now, unless it's frozen and hard. Add manure and lime. If your soil is clay-like you'll need to add peat moss. Mix it all up. Use your hands, it feels wonderful and will get rid of warts. Rabbit manure is the best, imo. Stay away from horse manure, it's too caustic and has to be treated to be used. Chicken manure is also caustic but can be used if it's been sitting and cooking for about a year.

If you're on a hill or high up your ground will need lime for sure. If you happen to be in the bottom of a valley you can almost just stick seeds in the ground and have a wonderful garden. All the good stuff flows down to valleys :)

You can start your seedlings inside, in a south facing window. It will give you some leeway if the weather turns on you. Try to plant the seeds about six weeks before you want to put them in the garden. When it gets near time to plant them outside let them sit outside for a few days in thier seedling pots. Start with shade, then move them into the sun. If they droop, don't panic, they're just going through a bit of shock from change. Plants can get sooo stressed.

When you go to plant them in the garden but sure to use your own shadow to block the sun from hitting any roots that may show when you take them out of their seedling pots. The sun will hurt roots :eek: A cloudy or foggy day is great for transplanting.

If you smoke cigarettes wash your hands real good before handling them, especially with tomato plants. Smokers carry the tobacco mosaic virus on thier hands and it will kill some plants. Also some plants naturally carry the virus, such a ground cherries. So don't pull up ground cherries, then go touch your garden plants, lol :p

If you want to have a garden just about all ready for next year, this works well- Starting now, or soon, dig trenches where you want next years garden to be. About a foot or so deep. Fill in the trenches with kitchen scraps and add a little lime, then cover them with dirt- a few inches will do. It will decompose by a year's time and all you'll have to do is dig it and mix it up, maybe add some lime, and poof! instant garden :D

Hey, what are you planting?

Peace,
Cassandra

[LIBRA]

:) oh your great that helps alot thanks!!!! I knew you'd come to my gardening rescue!! LOL!!
well I will be planting corn, carrotts,beets,lettuce, onions,garlic,tomatoes,peppers, snow peas and green beans, I used to live where there was a huge garden and I could fit all this in it but I never started any of it right it would either be to early or late usually to late and it take all summer and fall before things were good to pick. I do alot of canning so I want to have a large garden and I have room for it and a little boy who loves to play in the dirt, to help me turn it over!!!
I am not sure if there is anything elese I will be planting but I am sure I'll see some seeds somewhere that I'll have to have!!
thanks again Pedeta you truely are a outdoor goddess!!! :D

[Pedata]

I'm glad to help :)

That sounds like a great garden! I have elephant garlic right now. I think it's as slow as an elephant- it's been growing for two years and I'm up to four cloves to a bulb now.

Lettuce can take cold temperatures and it likes shade or partial shade. You can plant it twice, once in spring, then again in fall. Same for spinach.

I'm planning on onions this year. The deer eat up the gardens so much I'm going to have to do things in pots, up high, where they can't reach them. I want to grow some habenero peppers and make sauce. Can't get enough of the hot stuff :D Let's see, what else? Snap peas, tomatoes (of course), broccoli, yellow squash, okra, and I'd really like some pumkins, but those darn deer.....can't exactly grow pumkins in a pot, lol.

I'm so ready for spring :)

Peace,
Cassandra

[LIBRA]

I am so ready for spring too!! last year I grew my tomotoes out of the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket and they were the biggest best tasting tomatoes Ive ever had, It was weird to see but it worked well, a friend suggested it to me and I didnt believe it would work but does and you can hang them so hungry furry friends cant reach you can do that with ("herbs") too :D !! oh I love hot stuff too, peppers of all kinds yummy!! and I think it helps fight colds and stuff, thats what Ive heard. oh yellow squash and pumpkins I forgot about them, see I knew there'd be things Id forget about but have to have!!! I am going to build a fence around my garden Ive been picking up material here and there, I have lots of deer that seem to have a liking to my yard, and rabbitts too!! I like talking gardening with someone its something I really enjoy I am just learning by trial and error though every year is different.
last year I had so many tomatoes I canned 50 jars of small pickled green tomatoes and in some of the jars I threw soem hot peppers in they were delicous I love em, if you'd like I could get ya the recipe if you like green tomatoes pickeled in hotness!! I still had enough red tomatoes for sauce and salsa after canning that many green ones!! I also had some planted in the ground and with all the rain we got last summer the plants were HUGE!! oh I am getting hungry for them now!! ok I am rambeling, thanks for the help!!! do you grow your own herbs? real ones hahaha I am going to have an herb garden too.

[aprilawz]

Hey Libra,

What zone are you in? You can start working your soil as soon as it's dry enough not to clump up and dry hard on you...the worst thing for soil structure and organisms! I'm in zone 5 and have a sandy loam, so I'm out there in March or April (breaking ground for new gardens). But I garden in permanent raised beds, so after the first year of getting the garden set up, I just leave it until I have to either turn under my green manures a couple weeks before planting, or if bare, rough up the surface a bit, and plant seeds or seedlings.

I like to get my seeds in by mid May, and plant depending on average temps and frost warnings...usually, I can safely get them in at the same time, or within a week of seed planting.

Yes, rabbit manure is great! You can use it "fresh" from the buns. Horse and chicken manures are excellent...IF you age them properly...that means at least six months sitting in a compost pile. If sawdust bedding is used, all the better, it will do wonders for your soil tilth. Put directly into the garden, fresh chicken or horse manure will cause nitrogen burn, and you will have weed seeds coming out of your ears! If you have any concerns about manures, you can always take the safe road and stick with green manures.

There are plenty of tricks out there for getting a head start on the season, but mostly, it's more trouble that it's worth, unless you're (like me) a market gardener trying to get the first tomatoes, beans, what-have-you. But if you are just doing it for yourself, make sure it's fun. Don't stress if you get everything in a week later than you'd planned, if your first year is weedy (it will be! :eek: ), or if the kids decide to eat all the carrots when they are an inch long (yep, pulled that last one from my own shenanigans ;) ) Every garden is different, and by trial and error, you will get to know your dirt quite intimately as the years go by. Listen to her, take care of her, and she'll take care of you!

Blessings!

April:D

[Pedata]

Hey Aprilawz :) You're a free range chicken rangler! I'm getting chickens in a month or so (they will be free range, of course). Silver lace wyandottes. What kind do you have? How many? Do you eat them? I'm looking sooo forward to real eggs :D and real meat:D . Let's have some chicken talk here! lol.


Peace,
Cassandra

[LIBRA]

I have no Idea what zone I am in I now some of the seeds Ive boughton show the zones but I dont remember, anyway I live in the northeast. and the ground right now is slighlty frozen and its been raining for 2 days now but its only 35 degree's so the ground is a mixture of things!! but thanks for all the advice from you guys I appreciate it!! and I talk chickens but they only thing I know about raising them is from when I was a kid growing up on the farm and they would chase me!! then my dad would cut there heads off and hang them from my swing set, nice huh!!! I hated that swing set yuck!! I think I was the only 6 year old vegetarian on our hill!!! my dad was awesome though I am making him sound bad which he was not!!!

[Pedata]

That must have been quite a sight, dead chickens hanging from your swing set! I never cared at all for dead things on my swingset :eek:

I must have been a sick and twisted child. My Grandma would ring the neck and the body would seperate from the head. Because of those nerves that don't shut off right away, the headless chicken would go running around crashing into things. I (the sick and twisted child) would laugh and laugh at the sight and fall on the ground peeing myself. It must have been from watching too many cartoons :confused: It didn't turn me into a vegetarian tho, I liked fried chicken too much :D

Peace,
Pedata

[aprilawz]

LMAO!!! Oh, you guys are a hoot!! I do a quick cut across the carotid arteries while they are hanging upside-down by sturdy rubber bands around their feet...quiet and calm until they bleed out. Then, there is a bit of thrashing as they go to birdy Valhala, but nothing too traumatic, and the rubber bands act as a good shock absorber. But jeez, for sheer entertainment value, I might have to reconsider my technique...now, where do I sign up for the "sick and twisted" meeting?? :p

I've heard really good things about wyandottes....good dual purpose! I have Dominiques (one of the oldest heritage breeds out there!), Buff Orpingtons, Black sex-links, and a couple dozen 5 month old Araucanas...hoping for "easter eggs" for the market!! ;)

I picked my girls mostly for winter hardiness, brooding ability, and foraging ability. So far, I'm really pleased with them, although the Buffs did take a lot longer to start laying than the others. I'm only going to keep a couple of Dom and Araucana roosters, and then breed my own birds from here on out.

I sell eggs at one of my farmers markets. During my "off season", I sell eggs and soap...now, how's that for variety? Makes for one strange looking display!

And, speaking of dead things hanging off of yard fixtures....

A few weeks back, our mailbox blew off (kinda jerry-rigged to begin with!), and in the week it took me to get a replacement and get it back up, our mail lady would just drive up to the house with the mail. Sweet woman, kinda grandmotherly. So, I was butchering rabbits one day, and I had one hanging from the clothesline post in the front yard as I was skinning it. Now, about halfway through this process, it occurs to me that this would not be the best time for Mail Lady to stop by....sure enough, I turned my head just in time to see her coming down my road... :eek:

She pulls up, and as I walked over to her car trying to think of a PC way to explain why I had a poor little bunny in this predicament, she starts commenting on how nice the half-removed pelt looks and gave me skinning tips...she really knew her stuff!! We talked for a few minutes on the best way to clean and butcher rabbits...I only wish she could have stayed to walk me through the whole procedure!! I love my Mail Lady!! :p

[Pedata]

Dominiques are my second choice. I like their patterns, they blend in well, and we have a lot of hawks here. It really depends on what the livestock/flea market has.

I hear orps are great eggs producers. You have real araucanas!? Wow, they aren't so easy to find. Mostly it's the easter eggers, with the green and also brown eggs. I would love to have sussex, but they are mostly popular in the UK.

We're going to start with 2 roos and 6 hens. Friends have warned me that they will turn into 30 chickens before I know it. lol. The plan is to cull some of them when they get about four months old. Or am I counting my chickens before they're hatched? I've been told I'll end up with more eggs than I can eat or give away :D

[Pedata]

Your mail lady sounds so sweet :) The old timers aren't the least bit squeamish, are they? I guess that comes from living in a time when you grew and raised a lot of your own food (before all the commercial businesses came along). I have very happy memories of plucking ducks and pheasants when I was a kid. So Peaceful...and then I got to eat them :D Kind of a survival feeling- or was that the sick and twisted child in me?

Your egg and soap display sound interesting. Don't make any egg-shaped soaps...the public may have a real problem with that.

Yes, wyandottes are great birds. We're going with hardiness, good foragers, and good mothers. They were suggested by a nieghbor who grew up with chickens. He had about 200 at one time. He'd come home from school and they'd come running up to him. He said it was like having 100+ pets.

Your araucanas should be laying anytime :D

When you started out- with your first chickens- what age did you get? We're thinking of maybe 2 or 3 months old, so they are still kind of young and have a better chance of getting along with each other. I don't want to start with day olds. Might end up with too many roos. There'd be a terrible war. And hens with no back feathers :eek:

Cluck,
Cassandra

[LIBRA]

hey, this new house i have has flower beds already well last night me and my son were playing outside when we got home cause it was 50!!! heat wave!!
anyway I have lavender and lots of it should I cut it back now or is it to late?? also rose bush's and lots of other things I dont know what are but they were never cut after blooming, so should I cut it all back??
theres rodadendrums too and I am sure thats spelled wrong and 2 apple trees which I am loving should I do any thing to them??

[Pedata]

You know it was almost 80 degrees here, yesterday?! Now it's 50 and feels like winter again.


Ok, usually perennials are cut back after the first frost- at least that's the rule that some magazines go by. I have some ornamental sage that I don't cut back until I get around to it, lol, sometimes not until the new leaves start at the bottom. They always do fine. You've still got some winter to go through, up there, so I think they'll be fine if you cut them back.

I know a trick for apple trees if you don't get fruit. Go around the drip line of the tree and dig a trench about 4 to 6 inches wide and maybe 6 inches deep. That cuts off spreading roots. Apple trees will get too happy and lazy if they have too many roots spreading out. If you chop the roots (along the drip line) they will think something is bad wrong so they'll make a bunch of apples in order to keep the species going. Kind of like having a bunch of kids :D You could go ahead and dig the trench now, just in case, otherwise, if there is no fruit you'll have to wait for next year. It doesn't happen very often, tho, so there's probably nothing to worry about. Ooh, I wonder what kind of apples you have? (apple pies, apple cobbler, apple sauce, apple fritters- yum!)

An apple is technically an ovary wall. It houses the seeds. But I digress.....

I am ignorant on rhododendrums :o

This weather lately has my irises coming up. My daylilies came up a month ago (about ten inches tall), then got fried by the returning cold. Sometimes that makes them not do so good in the regular growing season.

I'm looking forward to the next month or so. Then everything starts growing like crazy.

Your flower beds sound great! Don't you just love mystery plants? :)

Peace,
Cassandra

[LIBRA]

I cant wait for spring its so fresh and new I love it I have some plants coming up I think they are tulips but the weather here is weird now its 30 and snowing!!! and I cant wait to see what flowers will be growing, its exciting to me I really cant wait I love to be outdoors and have my hands in the dirt, I was ready to start yesterday cause it was 50 I had such energy from it now its cold again and blah again, funny how sun light can lift ya!