April 2022 Planting/Cooking/Baking/Sewing/Crafting Thread

acleverusername · April 2022

Image: https://media3.giphy.com/media/l1KVcBUAktpYbYE1i/giphy.gif

How are you keeping your hands busy this month?

optimistgardener · April 2022

Plant babies in the greenhouse!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5020794/uploads/editor/w5/ac14mf0m7bs2.jpeg

ETA they may seem ridiculously tiny but we can't put most of our warm-weather stuff in until the end of may, so they'll be good to go by then.

kiki047 · April 2022

@optimistgardener wheeee! I'm way late getting mine started but I'm cheating this year and I'm going to get some of them started in my new Aerogarden. MIL has one and she loves it, and I have all sorts of indoor plant shelves/stations with grow lights and whatnot so this was just a natural evolution to something meant for indoor hydroponics and not my mickey mouse setup that I've been using for the last 2 years.

optimistgardener · April 2022

oooh cool! let me know how it does as a seed starting station! i just googled an aerogarden and am curious to see that in addition to the normal countertop size, there is also an XL "full garden inside your kitchen" size. if the interior of my house weren't already chaotic enough, this would be seriously tempting for winter months.

caseys02 · April 2022

Ugh I feel so late! I need to get my veggie starters going. I don't do many but still need to get going. I did transplant two Rose of Sharon trees this weekend and I am now searching for an easy ground cover flower that can be started next week.

kiki047 · April 2022

@optimistgardener MIL grew a dwarf tomato plant this spring "by accident" and now I think I want to try it for real next winter. She intended to just start it in there a few weeks ago fully intending to transplant it when it got big enough, but it grew so fast that it already had fruit set within a month and now she's panicked because we're Zone 6a so tomatoes don't go outside until early May. The light situation in her house is terrible and now she doesn't want to take it out from under the grow lights so I guess it's living in there until she can safely move it outside lol. She's excited it's growing but also annoyed that it is now hogging all the room LOL.

I started my seeds last night, will report back. I said I'd do less tomatoes this year, 8 varieties isn't excessive, right? (I think I planted 13 last year, LOL).

Image: https://media.giphy.com/media/26gsccje7r5WUrXsA/giphy.gif

anniemarie887 · April 2022

i am really impressed by those of you who grow from seedlings!! i'll be chiming in come may when i buy my baby plants from the farmers market and garden center

gingermama29 · April 2022

@kiki047 I realize google could probably answer this (though it wasn’t super clear) so apologies in advance but since you mentioned tomatoes- are cherry tomato plants perennials? I planted a brunch last year that were very fruitful (haaaaaaa pun). Just curious if I need to plant them again this year? I live in NY so I imagine cold weather affects them.

optimistgardener · April 2022

@gingermama29 i know you aimed this at @kiki047 but i'm gonna jump in on this too. you mean like will it resprout this year? probably not unless you get some volunteers that come up from seed, which may or may not be a viable way of doing things depending on how long your growing season is. i suppose a tomato could be fairly long-lived if you are based somewhere that never freezes, but even when i lived in the bay area i never saw (other people's) tomatoes grow past december or so. i think they're pretty trenchantly annuals.

kiki047 · April 2022

@gingermama29 no, they're not perennials but if any fruit fell to the ground last year or you mulched them at the end of the year sometimes they end up self-seeding and will come back on their own. I've only seen this happen when people let their gardens grow wild and out of control. Tomatoes, especially the indeterminate vines, are very prolific and their life's goal is to creep along and spread their seed - quite literally.

When I helped my great-aunt move into a new house last summer I tried saving as much of her garden as possible by transplanting some of her veggies and she had tomato plants cropping up ALL over her yard because they just let them go and they did whatever they wanted lol. It was kind of funny. And also a PITA to clean up.

optimistgardener · April 2022

@kiki047 jinx!

gingermama29 · April 2022

@kiki047 and @optimistgardener oooh thank you both! Sounds like I’m safe to dig up the old dead ones them and plant new ones.

kiki047 · April 2022

@optimistgardener you said it much more eloquently than I did. Verbose is my middle name, lol.

I also realized I never responded to your second comment earlier about the XL garden. The Farm Family series is seriously tempting. I have quite a few grow lights that I've rigged up in various places with equally varying results, but there's something so tempting and beautiful about such a clean and professional setup like that. I just got the Harvest countertop model for now.

anniemarie887 · April 2022

@gingermama29 We have never left our cherry tomato plants in our beds but we have very aggressive squirrels and birds who steal tomatoes and without fail we find random little cherry tomato plants in our yard every year

optimistgardener · April 2022

@kiki047 funny how i was just thinking that your reply was way more coherent than mine! thanks for your thoughts on the growlight setups. I might be tempted to get one. Especially for the winter months it would be lovely to be able to grow my own greens indoors.

bbrahmbhatt · April 2022

I am loving all the gardening wisdom! I have a couple of questions maybe someone knows the answer to! We have vintage roses along our fence line (think the ones that stand straight up, like you'd see growing wild in an old cemetery or garden) and they keep spreading beyond where I want them and are encroaching on our newer rose bushes (hybrid ones). BUT they are crazy sensitive and if you trim them wrong they will not flower for at least 1-2 seasons. How should I handle them? Can I ask our lawn service to pull some of them out? I don't want them to choke out the hybrid roses, since they bloom so much longer than the vintage ones.

Second question: I would like to do a garden, but it would need to be like a planter garden with just a few different types of things in pots. Has anyone done anything like this? We don't have the space currently to do a bed garden.

kiki047 · April 2022

@bbrahmbhatt I don't know anything about roses but someday I'd like to try my hand at growing them.

As for the container garden, yes! I grow peppers and tomatoes in pots, as well as some herbs. Tomatoes you'll probably want to look for a determinate variety, which means it'll just grow to a certain size/height which I've found to be easier to manage in containers. As long as they have proper drainage and good soil there are quite a few things you can grow that way. I've even seen people attempt to grow watermelon in pots.

kiki047 · April 2022

@bbrahmbhatt I have millions more photos but here are some pics for reference:

These are a variety of a cocktail tomato I think.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5020794/uploads/editor/2n/os7pbsdti4zt.jpg

I think we had guests over so I moved all my planters to one spot to get them out of the way, but those are hot peppers and dwarf cherry tomatoes in the small pots, pattypan squash in the middle square planter, and bok choy in one of the back pots (these never really did anything, they were eaten by bugs faster than I could grow them).

The rectangular hanging planter on the right has carrots in it, those have always done well for me. And then the big wood raised beds are more tomatoes, peppers, and I think maybe some snow peas in the left one.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5020794/uploads/editor/za/n40ghh1b4nba.jpg

bbrahmbhatt · April 2022

@kiki047 oh wow, you have quite the garden! Thank you for the photos, that is exactly the kind of thing I am looking to do! Good to know about the tomatoes; I tried tomatoes in pots last year and they were growing way too tall/wide and didn't do as well, even with the cage. I'm going to try some more things this year! If you go for roses, I like the hybrid ones personally. They don't smell, but they grow well and flower for a really long time (mine were still flowering into early October last year). They're easy peasy to care for. The vintage ones tho...think Mariah Carey or Elizabeth Taylor in flower form.

kiki047 · April 2022

@bbrahmbhatt the thing with container gardening is you just have to be way more diligent about pruning - tomatoes in particular are total monsters and will have all sorts of "suckers" (those are the sprouts that pop up in the joints of a branch) and you'll have better results/it'll be way more manageable if you pinch those off when they pop up. They're a little more work in that sense, and needing to really stay on top of watering, but totally doable!

Thanks for the tips on the roses, I will keep that in mind. I've only ever grown vegetables, in my mind if I was going to spend time/energy on upkeep it might as well be on something productive, but now that I think I have the hang of things I might expand my horizons lol. We have these massive, overgrown hydrangea bushes that the previous owners put in because they thought they were low-maintenance, but as a result they're way overgrown and kind of ugly/falling over so if we can't cut them back to a manageable size I think we're going to rip them out. Some nice rose bushes would look really nice in that spot instead.

ReadyForaB · April 2022

I just came here to say that I am so envious of you all and your gardens. Every year I swear I am going to try and I never do. The one thing I do do is a herb garden every year but that is just in a strawberry pot I have on our deck. Thinking of asking DH for a raised bed as a gift for something. I think once I have one of those I will get into it at least a little. We always had a garden growing up and I hate that I don't do it. I don't know where to start. Any good resources? I am definitely talking small scale.

optimistgardener · April 2022

@ReadyForaB i am not sure if such a resource exists in your region but they do in many and so I would check: our county master gardeners' group has for years been publishing a guide (which has grown to a fairly large book) for local gardeners. it's super handy because it has month-by-month instruction on when certain plants can be sown directly or transplanted, how to deal with local soil types, organic and inorganic methods for dealing with pests, reliable plant varieties for the region, etc. i rely on it when trying to plan my garden.

you may also want to drop by your local farmers' market and chat with folks in any of the booths where people are selling starts about your plan to put in a garden. those folks do this work for a living, so their starts are always impressively large and ahead of the calendar. but in general they'll only sell plants that are ready to be planted in your region. ask what are the easy keepers, what to be aware of, etc. think also about what kinds of things you'd want in a garden! you already do an herb garden: what do you use most from it? what kinds of greens or fruiting veg would pair nicely with the herbs? maybe tomatoes or peppers, maybe some chard or spinach or lettuce? i would start small, with just a few plants. consider getting your hands on a few pots and just doing a handful of producing plants in pots for a year where they can keep your little herb garden company. it's less of an investment and potted tomatoes, etc., will still fruit impressively. like @kiki047 recommended above, make sure they're a variety that won't sprawl.

bbrahmbhatt · April 2022

@kiki047 I love hydrangeas! I have two the limetta ones in pots out front. If you want to keep them, they're pretty hardy; if you trim them off before they're starting to get nice green leaves they should still flower for you this season. I just chop the heads off mine and they come back like gangbusters every year!

mambo5-2 · April 2022

I'm just sitting over here going, I kill all the plants. And my grandfather was a botanist, did I learn anything about planting, nope, can I identify random trees, yes.

I really want to start painting again but I don't have time.

anniemarie887 · April 2022

@kiki047 we also inherited massive hydrangeas at our house. You should be fine to trim them back, we went really aggressive on ours, that spring/summer they didn’t bloom as well but the next season they were happily back to their smaller, and gorgeous, selves.

mrsmtothek · April 2022

@kiki047 Ditto to what others have echoed - don't be afraid to trim the hydrangeas, they'll thank you for it later. I trim mine every year and they always flourish. Super satisfying.

kiki047 · April 2022

Thanks ladies. We do cut them back and so far they've come back each year but even the bases/trunks of the damn things are huge and woody now. I know they flower on new growth but they're bigger than I am and just take over the entire side of that garden. I might leave one or two of them in because I think they're good for the pollinators but the one by the shed is way too big for that space and we're already cutting down the overgrown half-dead evergreen trees on either side too.

gingermama29 · April 2022

Do home projects count? I’ve almost got all of the carpet ripped up in my attic. I bought vinyl flooring today and am hoping to put it in by this weekend. We have a twin day bed that we’re still have to get out of the attic but I’m feeling great about the progress. Pictures included if anyone is interested. The space is about 525 square feet so this is definitely a big project!
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