I got spring fever, and the only cure is gardening

Part of the reason my wife wants so badly to buy an overpriced house here in Flagstaff is that she so dearly misses gardening.

Spent some time in the yard yesterday! Got some pampas grasses moved to better spots, trimmed the roses, and planted some peonies for wifee.

Picked up my jars of seeds to prepare for for seed starting! Don't know what I'll grow but I have a much better location and soil.

Thinking of doing some ornamental stuff, too, have a few Titan arum seedlings growing decently well, though those cant go in the ground, can't handle winters.

Got most of my seeds in the mail. And today we got 5 inches of fresh snow. Figures.

I’m in California and I want to grow pumpkins as one of my daughter’s was born on October 31st and it would be nice to kick off the season with a real pumpkin patch.

I’ve got gophers and rabbits to contend with and the whole point of this endeavor is to have something that looks nice rather than some sort of Check Point Charlie reenactment.

Does anybody know if the critters will leave the pumpkins alone or if there is a non visually intrusive way to keep them away?

I've never personally had critters mess with pumpkin plants. I have had them gnaw on the pumpkins themselves, but not usually. We grew a half acre of pumpkins every year as a kid and had rabbits and deer standing out among them and they never bothered them.

Last year the deer patiently waited for all my sunflowers to bloom before munching the whole head off of them....

I was growing scorpion peppers last year to make a rodent repellent spray, and the deer ate one of the plants right to the ground before it started fruiting! The hooved jerks..

lots of seedlings growing at the moment, including a striped cavern tomato, which I've never tried before. Supposedly it tastes kinda like a brandy wine but has big air channels inside, hence the name cavern tomato.

Wifee surprised me last week with a hilarious amount of Lilies and other goodies from Aldis. They were running like 5 different types of Lillies for $0.99 per bag of 6. Think the final tally was 60 of them but they should be awesome. My Amazon.com deal for 250ct of tulips and daffodils last fall worked out well with lots of spring color.

I just bought my mom some lilac's from Spring Hill as an early mothers day gift. She will enjoy planting them.

So I just walked around the small yard I have, took some pictures... (and waiting for Yahoo to remember who I am...)

The watering system is working well- all the stuff I've planted is coming up.

You may remember last year I experimented with bags- which didn't work. So I got 3 gal buckets from my local ice cream store-

And added the system to another part of the yard-

Total of 39 spots (14 in a line and 25 new ones)

This is what it looks like before the buckets go in The water goes in one end and is regulated by a float- and each tube has one. And in each bucket there's a 3" hole in the bottom where I place a little lined basket. That small thing wicks up the water all by itself.

And all of that is fed by a 55 gal drum of water I get off of my garage roof. Depending on how this summer goes, I may get a few more.

Some other things- a few years ago, I got some blackberries from my neighbors trimmings, and I also bought some raspberries that I game him some back this year. Both are doing great-

Both are old school thorny- to the point I need eye protection for the black berries.

And since I've struggled with strawberries- the ones that came up, I've moved a bunch into containers on my patio-

Peach and plum tree look great, grapes are starting back up.

And I have a month to get some seedlings going when it really warms up.

Nice setup! Was just checking things out tonight as my Irises are just popping and my Peonies are start to stick their heads out. Should have split the Hostas as they are steroid pumping this year.

So my early stuff has been growing for a while now- and I planted some tomatoes too early- but I forgot I got them via a fund raiser.

Anyway, the system is working really well- I've been able to keep the floats really low and water is still wicking up into the containers. Really cool.

I'll plant a few things this weekend, but the rest of the warm stuff will have to wait until after memorial day.

This is a pretty cool experiment!

So I bought some jalapeño seeds on Amazon last summer, they were coming from China so they didn't get here until mid fall. It being Florida, I planted them anyway and they grew great straight through the winter. Fast forward to now, as they're fruiting and we're finding that they're not jalapeños. They appear to be Bird's Eye Chili Peppers, as best as we can tell. A breed of thai chili pepper. And let me tell you, they are painfully spicy. Anyone else have a seed mixup like this?

I've had similar seed mixups before. I grow these Thai chilis each year and the plan is to grow, harvest, hang to dry, and then grind in a coffee grinder. I never use them fresh. They take 2 months or so inside to dry out and then they can be ground in an electric coffee grinder. I then use then to season the cooking that occurs at the 84FSP household.

In reply to 84FSP:

I was thinking of doing something similar with mine. But we're in florida, so my attempt to hang to dry ended in moldy peppers. Any suggestions on drying chilis in humid climates?

In reply to KatieSuddard: I dried mine under an old metal halide light (minor UV output so beware) and a fan blowing on them. I also cut them open to dry out the inside, seemed to work for me but I'm not in Florida so YMMV

Try your oven! Life Hack Veggie Drying

Just thought I'd share that the 84FSP garden is up and rocking! Made my first haul tonight of garlic, Kung pao peppers, Thai chili peppers, and jalapeño's! Looks like I put a few too many tomatoes in this year but I think they'll still work out.

Just thought I would throw this up. From a week ago, everything is much bigger now, but one of the peppers has mysteriously wilted and isn't coming back.

Home made raised bed, obviously. Soilless mix, 5 tomatoes at least 3 kinds, and 2 kinds of hot peppers. Not sure what's what, my friends dad just had some extra plants.

It will be expanding next year, probably another set of boxes like that and more room for the tomatoes.

Anybody have any ideas how to keep a chipmunk from digging holes in containers? They can be pretty destructive. I currently have cayenne pepper on the dirt, but not sure how long that will last (and also not sure if it's working or if the chipmunk is taking a break).

I find the lack of cowbell in this thread disturbing....

So the growing year 2016 is coming to a close here in North America. Here in SE MI, we are getting our first real frost warning for tonight.

May get a little more.

This is more a report on my watering system. It actually worked REALLY well. The only time I had water issues (after tuning it a little) was when there was a big drought. So I had to fill my 55gal drum just twice this summer.

I may try to get a second drum to go right next to it, so that I have roughly 100 gal of water constantly on the system.

The buckets worked well, too. Really happy about that.

What I learned- with container gardening, you need to feed your plants far more often. And that keeping the chemistry balance is also a little harder- some of my tomatoes got end rot- which was due to low calcium. Once I treated that, they recovered pretty quickly- but the damage was done- I didn't get much in terms of romas.

Some things grew really well, fast- the squash plants did well early, but my feeding issue caught up with them early, too. I want to put some of those to a sunnier spot.

Next year, I plan on adding one more 5 ft section, and possibly one 10 ft section- which will be 15 more spots.

So I managed to fix the problem where I had invasive roots!

Other things- grapes should have been a big harvest. But animals got to them.

Black raspberries and red raspberries did really well, and I'm looking forward to expanding both. Blueberries in pots did ok- one new plant died. Maybe I see if I can get a cheap one tomorrow.

Reminding myself what plants actually taste like is really cool. Onward and upward!

I moved since starting this thread and my new, much larger garden is going to rock next year. I'm already pumped, but it needs a lot of work. I tried a few plants this year but after the bugs and bunnies I only had a few tomatoes and one pepper plant. The pepper plant got buzzed to the ground so many times it only now is starting to fruit... I think I'm saving it indoors this winter under my big light. Next year I'll have a super pepper plant!

Since we are in a cold streak- it's a good time to think gardening, as it's warm. Been looking into a few things and have learned some key things.

For the garden set up I currently have, I need to roughly increase the pearlite by a lot- so that it's 1/3 the total mixture. That way, it wont be soaking in so much water and staying wet, preventing some extra greenery I got.

Second- I'm "breaking up" my compost next spring. I'll leave the one full container I have going, but I'm going to add a 3x5 gal bucket set up for worm composting. Saw some interesting thoughts that basically suggest leaving shredded leaves on their own, and keeping food waste on it's own.

Third- with the above shift, I'm also going to make some compost tea to feed my self watering system. That plus some more regular feeding should take care of a lot of stuff. Or lack of growing...

The real new part- fourth- I'm going to experiment with aeroponics. Which is like hydroponics, but you spray water on the roots, and that's it. Which should let me free some buckets instead of lettuce and other greens. This system was researched by NASA, and it appears to work quite well. Should be interesting to play with.

And I also plan on experimenting with other forms of hydroponics- primarily the Kratky method. He's a professor at the U of Hawai'i and figured out that you can do non-circulating or pumping hydroponics set up. Basically, as the plant uses water out of a container, it finds it's own air. This should be a fun experiment- and it also means that the auto system only expands the last 5' piece I have for now.

What got me more into it- right now I have an old AeroGarden system that I have 2 smaller tomato plants growing on. In the middle of winter. It will be cool to see if this can work outside.