New to Gardening

[pandorathewise]

 Hi guys, I'm new to gardening and new to this livejournal community.  But I do have some childhood experience with my Mother's gardening, but I was much too small at the time to really absorb all of the information that came from this experience.. so I don't count it.  I also tried to plant things a few years ago, but that didn't go so well as the

Comments

[squid_ink]

cut plz? your lj cut didn't work

[pandorathewise]

Fixed, sorry about that.

[squid_ink]

also, is there a reason you're screening comments???

[pandorathewise]

Sorry, I was screening comments after all. Fixed that as well. Not sure how that got turned on.

[soldiergrrrl]

Ooof. Could you put some of these behind a cut, please?

[pandorathewise]

I tried to, the HTML didn't work at first and I didn't know it didn't until my post went past moderation and was finally posted. I've fixed it. Sorry about that, really I am.

[soldiergrrrl]

It's not a huge problem. :-)

Thanks for fixing it!

[low_delta]

Your LJ cut isn't working.

I have a Mr. Stripey. The bush is huge, but it has few fruits, and they're still very green. They're slow. I am getting cherry tomatoes. Two months sounds about right, for those. But I'm in Wisconsin. Don't know what normal is for your area. Water a lot. You'll know if they're getting too much water when they start to split. If they split, eat them. I'd do like you're doing. Pool the water around them. Especially when young. They need deep watering.

[pandorathewise]

Fixed the LJ cut, sorry about that.

And Thank you for responding!

I planted the Mr. Stripey in the ground in the beginning of July; how long did it take between the time you planted yours and you started seeing fruit? I was stunned when our Solar Fire (a heat resistant hybrid tomato plant) started baring fruit so soon, but now I'm worried about the fact that Mr. Stripey hasn't really started to fruit yet. It will be nice here (California) for a while, so it has time to still bare fruit.. but right now I've got more Mr. Stripey plant than I have Solar Fire plant. As you can see from the pictures, and in the last few days, the Mr. Stripey has gotten huge!

[low_delta]

I planted the tomatoes the first week in June (they were foot-high, at that point). I started getting cherries from them in mid-August. Two and a half months. Stripeys are still green, but like I said, they're a fairly slow variety. First frost comes some time in September, so I won't be doing them again.

Tomatoes require cool temps at night, and warm temps in the day time, in order to set fruit. I can't remember the numbers, but I think it's below 70° at night, and above 80° in the day. I'm disappointed in Mr. Stripey, because I think we had that all summer. Maybe we didn't have any bees, early on?

You should be able to buy bags of compost or composted manure at a garden center.

[pandorathewise]

I know I didn't have any bees early on, we're just now swarmed with the guys! They are going nuts all over my pumpkin and zucchini flowers. So that just might be one of the many problems I've encountered this year with Mr. Stripey.

Glad to know that my tomatoes aren't really stalled or something, its only been a month, I believe, since the plant started to grow the fruit. So I won't lose hope! Thank you for your reassurance.

Will look for compost at a garden center, I saw mulch and a few other things, but I didn't specifically look for compost.. but I'm sure they must have it.

soil improvement

[pooklaroux]

Okay -- I'm really no expert, but just from the photos the color of your soil looks a lot like the color of our soil -- that is -- full of clay. The way the water is pooling up in some of your photos says the same thing to me. We had terrible luck with growing anything until we added some manure and topsoil. Actually we added a bunch of things, mainly organic material, and pulled soil from the compost bin we had been keeping for the past few years. You are actually doing a lot better than we did before we added soil improvments. Anyways, I would highly recommend adding as much good stuff to you soil as you can -- it will help with drainage and feed the plants. Plants love manure, btw. Our garden looks terrible right now, because I haven't been home to deal with it. But instead of dry hard soil with a few weeds, we actually have herb plants and flowers growing. I know it's because of what we did with the soil.

Re: soil improvement

[pandorathewise]

That is exactly what our soil is.. lots of clay.

Before I planted the majority of plants I tilled in Miracle Gro topsoil, it had manure in it. I'm considering trying to start up a compost for the plants, but worried about my neighbors complaining, same thing with straight manure, the smell could get us told to knock off our gardening. :-( But if I can slip some manure past my neighbors, how often would you recommend adding it to the soil for the plants?

Re: soil improvement

[dangerduckie21]

You could try mushroom compost if you're really worried, no smell whatsoever.

If a compost pile is set up properly that shouldn't smell either. But there is a learning curve sometimes...

Other things you can add directly into your garden soil for organic material include tree leaves (I use a cold compost pile and let the leaves break down into leaf mold before I use it, but they can also be used directly on the garden), used coffee grounds/tea leaves (also a good nitrogen fertilizer), grass clippings (if chemicals weren't used on the lawn), any pulled weeds (if they weren't seeded), straw, wood ashes, and old newspapers/plain cardboard. I don't know how available all of these are in a desert but you do have options besides a compost pile if that's not practical.

Re: soil improvement

[pandorathewise]

I will look that up, and look into doing a mushroom compost, thank you!

Yeah, I read that it shouldn't smell too much, but I also read its all about experience. And knowing how green I am, I'd likely have the smelliest compost to ever exist.

We are in a drought area, so we don't have much grass around here. But the rest of the stuff I should be able to get to help the garden. There are a lot of home and garden centers around here that sell that kind of stuff specifically for that. I just wasn't sure how well it might help my small garden. But at this point, with so much growth, I'm willing to do just about anything to keep things going in the right direction.