Have you started your seeds yet? What are you planting? Got any useful tips, tricks or tools to recommend?
Also, could use specific info on growing potatoes…
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It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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Oh, yeah. My sunroom is blooming. I’m trying a new garden system growing veggies in straw bales. No weeding and much less bending over.
That no bending over is key especially at my age… Chip
Who would have thought just putting on underwear is an arduous task?
and remember when you order your firewood, as a newbie with a wood stove, have them include a chopping stump, cuz bending way down sux..
I have 4 kinds of lettuce and will start picking some this week, spinach that should be ready for early harvest next week, beets, kale, mustard and turnip greens and sweet peas. The plan is to put in tomatoes green beans and cream peas next week, followed in a couple of weeks with okra, peppers, cucumbers, summer squash and sweet potatoes. My neighbor plants about an acre of purple hull peas and shares with any neighbor who wants to pick and shell them. Last year, we put up about 20 quarts and are still eating on them.
My neighbor runs a farm supply store and has told me numerous times that gardening is an annual experiment with many uncontrollable variables. Go out, experiment and get some dirt under the finger nails. It is the best therapy in the world.
and its healthy… literally…
Making contact with the earth, either walking barefoot on soil or grass, or playing in the dirt gardening, etc. helps to literally GROUND you. Great for your health.
Scorpions, fire ants, cutter ants, copper heads…
…no going barefoot in TEXAS!!!
Fire ants are the worst! Chip
The fire ants need to step up their game and chase the damned Californicators outta Texas!
True dat…I had a small homestead on the edge of a West Texas small town (Robert Lee) in the 80’s…walk barefoot on my lawn then and you would be jumping around like popcorn on a skillet.
Now, the BURRS follow you inside, so when you walk around barefoot in the house you STILL get stuck.
Gotta love it!!!
Rooster Cogburn: Everything in Texas will either bite ya, stab ya or stick ya!!!
Those sticker burrs are the worst. I think they are worse than goat heads. Because they travel everywhere.
As for the garden, Jack Heraer, G-13, Amnesia Haze.
My opinion on the potatoes is whatever variety, they seem to do best in 100 gal grow bags. Maybe even set on pallets. That way if you have a tractor with forks you can move them around as needed.
Also the grow bags are the best for aeration and root development. We have even found the previous years recycled potting soil mixed with some compost gives a nice yield, about 10-1. Russian fingerling potatoes are best IMO
So true. Children know. I can barely ever get them to keep their shoes on in the summer.
(This pun is for you, Iska!)
Yes, on the gardening being an annual experiment. I change it up, some things, every year to see what works best. I have had carrot seeds come up in 3 days, and the next year, it takes several weeks, this is even covering them with plastic to make them come up faster. Is it the seeds or something else? A friend says you need to plant on the right moon. I am everything else came up fine. With proper sunlight, water and fertilizer most plants will do well. I am surprised no one has yet talked of fertilizers. I find blood and bone meals are a must. I also use others as fish meal and kelp. I get a great yield out of my potatoes, carrots, beets, lettuce, zucchini, and peas. Other things like broccoli, I still have not perfected. Cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli grow well up in AK. But you can have trouble with root maggots. Most warm weather crops are not worth it as you may only get a few tomatoes. You also need a 6 foot fence in Alaska or the Moose will eat it before you do.
Took me 3 yrs of semi-failure before developing a green thumb.
Black Kow is highly recommended. Bone meal too.
I don’t have a green thumb…I have relentless persistence.
Relentless persistence has worked in every aspect of my life I have applied it on.
But, the Shadow Knows…
Relentless persistence can make up for a green thumb
Yea buddy…and a lot of other things…
Just harvested radishes for making radish kimchi. Turnips are a week or two away from being ready to harvest. Cukes and cantaloupe just coming up. A dozen tomatoes in the ground inside the greenhouse, two more dozen in row covers outside. Summer squash sprouted. Pepper plants in greenhouse ready to transplant outside in another week. Basil plants bushing out and doing well inside the greenhouse. Fruit trees that survived 2021 freeze all made it though this winter.
Now if I only had some good sources of protein like HSF I’d be in high cotton. Well if I have to I have plenty of places to fish around here. Including our Resaca in the back yard. Had a six foot gator sunning on our grassy bank yesterday. If SHTF I’ll be having some gator tail. (-; Chip
High cotton? Racist!
I have some raised beds and will grow the tried and true: kale (lots of it because I love it), Swiss chard, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, eggplants, radishes, basil and rosemary. Also, I will try growing 3 different potato varieties in Home Depot buckets this year, which I have never done. Some day, I want to try growing potatoes under just some hay (no dig) and try the Hugelkultur, but I think we need to buy a property with more than 0.22 acres…
What I don’t grow: broccoli and cabbage (too many cabbage moth caterpillars), beets and turnips (nobody in our family likes them), corn (I won’t grow GMO and the non-GMO has the corn moths in it, plus, it takes too much space).
My tomato seedlings under the grow light have become really thin and leggy because I often forget to turn on the grow light in the mornings, so I will try to replant them deeper and hope they become stronger.
This works…
Kale and northern beans make for a delicious, and healthy, soup. Of course, any meal with beans has me sleeping in the guest room!
You can just leave the lights on, unless you have other plants that might be daylight sensitive or perennials under them.
Get a timer for your grow light.
I do. I run it every night.
Potatoes are easy. Mound up about 2-3 feet of soft dirt ( mix in some leaves and small sticks but not too much to keep it airy). Cut potatoes in half or small potatoes whole as long as they have a few eyes on each piece. About 3-4 inches down, when the plants get about a foot and a half high cover most of the stalks with more dirt ( mounding) and just let them grow. Occasionally I will use a pitchfork and come from the bottom of the rows and just lift up to loosen the soil. You don’t want to jab into the middle of the mound and spear/damage your spuds.
You can cheat and dig in throughout the summer and grab some small ones for a roast or whatever but I usually get a few rubber bins full by August with little maintenance. Don’t wait too long to harvest or they can get a tougher skin and if the vines above ground start dying then harvest so they don’t get soft or rot underground in the dirt.
PS: leave most of the dirt on them uncleaned in a cool dark space and they’ll last past Christmas.
I do 35′ rows about 3 ft apart. Start with hilled about 12″ and press the seed potatoes in to be covered. I hill when the sprouts are 6-8 inches long and again after. (I do run the tiller down the valleys to get loose dirt for hilling.)
Ending-up with huge mounds covered with potato vines. A LOT of work, yet easy to harvest as the hills are soft. I tried drip irrigation in 2020 & harvested more than 450 lbs from 30 lbs of seed potatoes. Gave lots away that year. Planning to do the drip & plant 30 lb this year…
Stop watering a month before harvest (mid-august in Ohio). Especially stop watering sweet potatoes as they won’t bulk when they have lots of water.
Great source for potatoes & information: (edit, link doesn’t show. Search for Maine Potato Lady) Must be the link location?
I use beets to make my mom’s recipe Borscht. Out of this world. We have trouble up here with root maggots attacking the cabbage, cauliflower, and Broccoli. You have to pick it right away or it gets the whole bunch. We can grow humongous cabbages up here called o-s cross. People have grown them over 100 lbs.
BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) will take care of brassica loving caterpillars and is harmless to humans. For tomato seedlings, put the grow light right on top of them and they will grow straight.
and don’t forget a light fan or brushing them with your hand occasionally–outdoors it is the wind that stimulates tomatoes, peppers etc to grow stronger stalk/vine and not be spindly.
In NE Georgia it is still too cool to plant the garden (except for the onions and the garlic planted last fall). I do have a lot of seedlings going in the barn. I started using a grow light 2 years ago along with heating pads under the pots.
Here is a link to a short video I took a few weeks ago on my seedlings.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jn6c5fvpknv2997/Gardening-seedlings%202022.MOV?dl=0
Note: I highly recommend using only heirloom seeds, especially in the days we are now living in. Most of the plantings you see in my video are heirloom. I’m transitioning to ALL heirloom now as the seeds can be stored from what I harvest this year.
Me too.. tomato seeds and pepper seeds on paper towels, dried bean and peas grow great the next year..all of my grape and cherry tomatoes are volunteers coming up in the same bed every year.
If you like green peas, sugar snaps will grow when it is cold and I even had a couple of plants from last fall survive our first snow. Lettuce & kale also do quite well in the cooler weather. I planted Mesclun mix lettuce early March and will begin picking baby leaves this week. I should have fresh salad for the next 4 – 5 weeks, unless it gets too hot.
once my lettuce starts getting bitter in the heat I just compost/chop it into the dirt and turn the bed from lettuce to green beans or black-eyed peas.
I have spent many fall hours cracking open pinto bean and cowpea pods and filling up large glass jars of them– it’s almost meditative.
A large pot of slow cooked beans with a piece of fatback or smoked turkey necks etc in the winter months is ambrosia.
I spend most August & Early September evenings on my back porch with a pail of peas/beans and a glass of wine. It is not as therapeutic as diggin in the dirt, but comes might close.
“My wife took up gardening…”, every night she plants…tulips.
I don’t get it.
tulips = grave
If this helps at all, in my early days working as a technician with ‘Ma Bell’ one of my co-workers used to say he knew what he was going to get “…when my wife takes out her dentures before getting into bed…”
Sheesh…two lips on the organ…get it??
What’s better…roses on your piano, or tulips on your organ?
Nothing. I’ve got the black thumb of death.
Time to back off on the graphene a bit ;o)
Whatever the farmers bring to the market.
I have all kinds of critters that make gardening difficult…including wild hogs, with tusks, that come out every night and destroy my yard. The neighbor usually shoots them and hauls them off, but they just keep coming back in droves.
There’s a greenhouse I want, but it’s expensive. Not sure if it makes sense to buy when I have easy access to farmers.
I mentioned in the last post about spending 4hrs in the green house yesterday starting our vegetables from seed. We are doing a couple different varieties of tomatoes, mostly for sauce and ketchup, but the kids love cherry tomatoes so we grow them too. Doing sweet peppers and cucumbers to make pickles and relish, some of the peppers will be canned separate. We also grow pole beans and peas and whatever doesn’t get eaten off the plant will be canned. Bunch of broccoli bushes that will be frozen. We don’t do much lettuce/kale just a few plants, we find we don’t have a good means of storing then. Got the beets/turnips/carrots/radishes growing in a different garden..they will all be dehydrated or canned. Another garden houses the super sweet corn, that never makes it to storage it goes so fast. The pumpkin patch will have some pie pumpkins and jack o’ lanterns for the kids. Oh and we do some watermelon and cantaloupes in that patch as well. I think I am forgetting something…oh ya potatoes on the ridge and the herb garden, not sure what to grow in that this year yet. Ahh and the garlic patch, we did raised bed garlic this year. They are already sprouting, about 50 plants.
We are doing 8 more apple trees in our apple orchard. Starting to add pear trees this year. Adding a couple more cherry trees to the cherry orchard. Re-doing the raspberry bushes this year as the old plot was in a bad spot. Did a good plot up last year for growing strawberries this year. Adding 10 more blueberry bushes to ‘berry hill’ that will total 50 bushes. Our rhubarb plants are flourishing. By fall we are going to create a plot for grapes, which will go in next year.
If you got the land…use it!
Not that we’re doing it since moving ‘to the city’, but when living on the OR Coast, we had 2 of the greatest treats a garden could provide: artichokes and asparagus … nothing quite like them fresh …
Best to all of you …
89 degrees here today in Southern Nevada, cool nights make for a wide temperature swing. Lots of leaf lettuce, spinach, mustard greens. Potatoes (Yukon Golds) doing great in thick straw mulch bed. Some small tomatoes forming on my potted plants. Later planted tomatoes doing well but weeks until those bloom. Vine plants cucumbers,squash and watermelon love the hot weather so far. Cool weather plants cabbage and broccoli will be harvested before May. Lots of Hummingbirds coming in to my flowers and sugar feeders. Great entertainment!
If you need manual laborers to help you till a large patch of earth for planting,
Go on Facebook and Twitter and post:
“I’m all ready for social upheaval.
I have over 20,000 rounds of various calibers of ammo, and plenty of arms to use. Shh. Mum’s the word. Nobody has my address anyway. But if the ATF tries raiding me, they won’t find any of it. Midnight gardening, anyone? Hah. ”
You’ll get a whole slew of guys to come visit, with shovels, ditch witch machines, excavators, etc.
Hell, they’ll even bring a couple metal detectors over, to make sure and root out old nails and bottle tops. Your yard’ll be aerated in a day or two, max.
~You’re welcome.
See me for more gardening and landscaping tips and hacks.
Knew a fella here in the Okanagan with an orchard. He mentioned at the coffee shop one day that he’s thinking growing weed would be more profitable than apples. A few days later he got a visit from 4 rcmp that had a piece of paper to look around his place…
This was when weed was ‘illegal’.
So I think your farming tilling methodology would work well… first couple seasons anyway. Afterwards you could state you lost your hoard of gold and you’ll give the person that finds it half…
I used to have a farm (citrus, herbs, vegetables), but now all I have is excuses:
live deep in the woods (limited sun/cleared space)
not fenced (many deer)
limited water (on top of the mountain, have to pump water up from the well down below)
and like others here, advanced age/limited mobility
BUT, I have kind farming neighbors who plant a row just for me – and I help them with the canning
I would suggest everyone who is still physically capable to grow some amount of staple crops, even if it is just for the experience.
I would be very careful with straw, manure, or hay that is not your own
Traditional methods of potato growing seem to work best for me if you want large amounts.
potatoes went in about ten days ago. this week digging the vineyards (one of them that’s steep and inaccessible, this is very slow tiring work by hand to basically turn over the top foot or so of soil and bury all weeds etc, in the other that’s more readily reachable it’s done with a walk-behind cultivating machine..) and today also watered a few fruit trees i’d put in over the winter and now starting to bud.
once finished with the vineyards the next task is to plow the field where im putting onions and get those in.
properly speaking this week i should start seedlings for tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, beans, cucumbers, watermelons, etc etc etc. that might slip as some other things are creeping into the schedule and if i’m away for 2 or 3 days and cant keep them watered theyre ruined.
those along with sown beans will go in in a few more weeks. garlics go in later on, early may… and by the end of may or early june it might be time to harvest wheat (a small patch, harvested by hand with a sickle, should get maybe 100 lbs of grain).
too much work and not nearly enough yield, and all of this is done in a very unsuitable arid climate (it’s a gamble if well have any more rainfall from here on out til october or november) and rocky sandy soil.
and in the bigger world out there the shit continues to hit the fan.
Here in Utah, the weather goes from frozen to mush to high summer, often in as little as two weeks. Gotta start seeds indoors in February – March if you want to have survivable plants in the ground by April – May, as the recommended first planting (past last frost) is Mother’s Day!
Take today as an example – rain / snow mix at 38 degrees. We’ve had multiple days past 60 degrees already! But there are plants that ignore the recommended date, such as spinach (two clippings already), marigolds, broccoli, various others. Spinach will damn near grow in snow, and a cold frame can get you started far earlier than Mother’s Day.
Haven’t grown potatoes here – maybe next year. But green onions from last year (overwintered in a pot with a glass cover) are already up and growing. My plum tree in the yard started blooming today. I have three varieties of tomatoes (started from seed indoors) going, two varieties outdoors and one that needs to be, with green peppers. Last weekend I was planting seeds outside, for pole / bush green beans, more green onions, green peas, celery, corn, lettuce …
Last year I was trying to get better at gardening. This year it may become vital for continued eating! My wife was washing the second cutting of spinach last weekend – it filled a container from the store that had held spinach, and she said (That was four dollars we just saved!). Gardening might keep my family healthier, better fed and more full this year.
Plant potatoes when the soil temperature is 6 to 8 degrees centigrade, and about 2 weeks before the last air frosts. Water well during dry periods. Plant in well fertilised soil.
I planted small back yard gardens with my kids starting when they were young. One of them is going on to get an ag degree.
Something eats little tomato plants (moles get the big ones). My solution is to take clear kitchen cling wrap and wind it around the bottom foot of tomato cages. Nothing eats them any more. As to moles, some people used raised planters with wire mesh gopher barriers, but I find that awful and a problem when roto tilling. Instead I recommend burying all the way in the soil (gardeners call dirt soil) redwood planks vertically (with 8 in side vertical) all around the perimeter of the plot. Not 100% effective, but they really, really have to work at it to get through.
Try not to roto till, it breaks up all your good living soil. Aerate with a broadfork instead.
Tried growing in straw bales last year. Not good. Plants need dirt.
I know; you coulda toad me.
Been planting a stand of peach trees all day. Should be all in by Friday.
Lots of potatoes. Reds, purples, and russets. Our 1st time for potatoes but we do use a lot of them regardless. I figure they kept my ancestors alive for many generations until the potato famine and British politics got them on the boat.
Today I moved the chickens in their tractor over to where the corn will be this year. They are tilling and fertilizing for me all the while turning our food scraps into delicious eggs.
Apples, strawberries, blueberries, and cherries are slowly coming out of winter slumber and so am I. My bees did very well through winter and are booming. I will need to keep ahead of them or I will lose lots of bees and honey production to swarms. I am never happier than when my hands are dirty. Lord willing less than 2 years until I can pack it in and move to a farm.
We have a year round growing season, so there’s a wide variety.
In mid-December we planted lettuce (romaine & bibb), celery, collards, & cabbage. All have been maturing for a month or so. The 2nd re-growth of celery started two weeks ago. On the 4th re-growth of lettuce.
Our 3 parsley varities are re-growing, and three week old cilantro plantings are now 12-16″ high.
Last week: 2 crookneck squash, 50 scallions, & jalapeño, cayenne, red bell peppers.
10 hybrid & heirloom tomatoes.
Radishes planted tomorrow.
Soon to come, green beans & cukes.
We have 6 acres, of which 2 will be used in a greenhouse/fenced garden (f*ing deer) mix. Due to ancient live oaks, grow lights will suppement in the greenhouses. Mist irrigation from our well.
Potato grow bags seem to be a thing.
I culled three cows from my herd because cows are are too expensive to feed in the Winter now; plowed a field into another garden; bought a dozen different winter squash varieties of seeds from Seed Treasures that will produce gourds that will store 6-12 months on a shelf. I will sell any varieties that do good and encourage others to plant them. This Winter I rooted a dozen Pakistan Purple Mulberry, two dozen Jujubee and two dozen Moringa trees to plant this year. FJB and Deer.
Trying to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of those who believe the bs media narratives. For the most part, the only thing blooming is weeds.
I do plant sprouts in my small apartment.
3 different kinds of peas all in and germinated, onions planted, and garlic planted last fall looks good and healthy. Next week will plant stuff I started from seed 6 weeks ago and under the lights in the basement now (plum tomato, lettuce, spinach, pak choy, 4 types of peppers (mostly poblanos- mmmmm), cabbage and brocolli. Will start direct seed carrots, green bush beans, zucchini. Will also plant sweet potato slips. Also hope to find a ginger plant and a turmeric plant for the buckets. I hope the deer stay away. Any suggestions? I put dog hair all around. A master gardener at farmers market had one: Piss in a bucket until you get a bunch, add in a bunch of crushed garlic, a beaten egg and some dish soap. Let sit in the sun two days then pour around the garden. It STINKS, but seems to work pretty well.
whole corn bait at close range from a blind, 12g semi-auto, or AR-15 if farther way; deer will eat everything a farmer plants and the criminal government is 110% on the side of the deer
Pee around it. Mark your territory. It keeps them out of my blueberries and strawberries. When I take the dog out for the last time I do my part. Works 100%.
Just don’t pee ON your produce.