feeding the soil first!

Ok. signing off. Gotta run to the feedstore for my stuff!

Lol. That's a beautiful cabbage that ought to go in the Guiness Book as the most abused plant in 2008. Truly a miracle. Some of my best success has resulted from my being too ignorant to know I shouldn't try something.

Kelly I forgot I sent you those seeds. And it sounds like you know more about cooking Chinese than I do. I was afraid somebody would ask about a recipe. I looked for a recipe and didn't have half they called for so I winged it. I cubed some chicken breast, let it sit for 30 min. with a little sesame oil and soy. Then coated it with corn starch and browned in a little canola. Then I stir fried some sweet red pepper strips and coarse chopped onion, then added the Pak Choi, greens too, that I'd chopped about 1". I took it up when the stuff was half cooked. I used some corn starch, water, 2 TBS oyster sauce, 1 TBS soy and some chicken buillion powder to make a sauce, added everything back to the skillet until it thickened and served it over rice. It worked but needed mushrooms and carrots at least.

I have trouble growing spinach and I think this could be used in soups and whatever that calls for spinach. I can't detect much taste but it has texture, color and has to be healthy.

Well I'm truly flattered by all your kind words but I assure you that ya'll teach me far more than my little contributions. Linda, maybe you should be designated our cabbage specialist. I even learn lots from the Yanks on here but along the Gulf Coast and the desert are different worlds garden-wise.

Linda can sure be the cabbage expert looking at the size of that baby!

I sure didn't forget you sent me those seeds - lol. I've been so waiting for fall to plant all the fun veggies! Gardening in the summer here is a lot of work just to keep some things alive! Fall and winter are more easy going and more forgiving if you plant late. Summer you plant too late and you can kiss your plants goodbye!

Your recipe sounds good! And you can sub the leaves for other greens like spincach and chard and whatever. I like Bok Choy (I don't know the difference between all the names either - they all look the same to me!) in a recipe I got from Martha Stewart of all people. The woman can cook, I'll give her that. If you google Martha Stewart's Sauteed Bok Choy & Broccoli you'll find it. And you're in for a treat! It's very delicious and pretty easy to make. She also has a recipe for pork egg rolls I've made a few times. A little more work (but not so much that I swore never again - lol) but very delicious!

Well, I'm off work in a few so gonna head home. Maybe I'll see you ladies tonight?

How Linda what a beauty! It's funny I don't like cabage much either but I am sure that it does taste different when you grow it than when you buy it in the store. I do love Chow Chow though and I think one of the main ingredients is cabbage.

The asian greens look pitiful and with all this rain I just have not added any fertilizer, since the fertilizer I have is either fish emultion which you have to mix with water or compost tea, I just did not feel like adding more water to the plants that already look overwatered anyways.

Yes twiggybuds I agree with Linda, you are full with knowledge and the best part is, you don't mind sharing it with us newbies, thank you for all your help.


Thank you for the website too, I just added it to my favorites and I will look there from now on for all my assian veggies, I think I might like to try the bock choi or pack Choi.

By the way the recipe looks delicious, I'll have to try it out.

c - you can foliar feed with the fish emulsion. Just mix as directed and spray on the leaves. Just don't do it when the leaves are in full sun as they may burn. If they're in containers you could feed in the evening and they should be fine by morning. I would let them dry out first maybe and see how they do, but the foliar feed won't introduce any more water into the soil . . .

Thank you Kelly, I never thought of that, will they get enough fertilizer when you do it this way?

They should - I feed mine about once a week, twice a week for heavy feeders like tomatoes . . . I'm organic, so compost and fish poo are all I use for fertilizer.

Wonderful! This is what I will do then.

Kelly, have you tried to make compost tea, I made a few batches before it started raining like crazy and it is supposed to be the best fertilizer that you can use on your plants.

c - I haven't yet, but sure plan to. It is supposed to be good stuff . . . I saw some info on it somewhere here - maybe sustainable alternatives? Can't remember. There are so many great forums here I keep finding new ones I need to check out . . .

Hey Linda - I planted those Osaka Mustard seeds on Sunday and I saw teeny tiny sprouts today!!

You non-lovers of cabbage need to try this.

Butcher a cabbage by slicing and dicing to about 1/2 inch. Homegrown is always preferred but even one of the antiques from the grocery store will be transformed. If it's a fresh one, put a little salt on the core and munch that while you cook. Don't let the kids have any because they'll like it too much and you'll always have to share.

Brown 3 or 4 strips of bacon in a pot or skillet big enough for the cabbage. Add some chopped onion and fry a little. Add the cabbage, mix the works and add just a tad of water to start steaming. Put on a tight lid and turn the heat down some. It will be done in about 20 mins or less. Toss occasionally and don't let it burn. It should be sweet and still a bit crunchy. Yum

Another one that comes out totally different is to use bacon or ham and add a bit more water so it's more like boiled but not drowned. You cut it in wedges and it breaks up when you stir it a few times as it cooks. Treat the core as above.

Cole slaw made with a homegrown cabbage is superb. I butcher the cabbage with a knife to about 1/4" to 3/8". Toss it in a bowl with 1 tsp. sugar for a homegrown and 2 tsp for a store bought. That gets the juice flowing. Then stir in a tad of minced onion, some sweet pepper and sweet relish. Just before serving add some mayo. Excellent with barbeque, fried fish or chicken.

Yeah, what Twiggybuds wrote in her recipes!

(Girl, have you been looking over my shoulder?)

Ok. I ended up with EIGHTEEN cabbage plants (they were cheaper in the six-paks) and 6 broccoli plants. To add to the seedlings I already bought...not to mention the ones I had already bought which have since died!

Next season, I will not buy ONE seedling from anyone!!! I have enough fresh seeds to feed and entire small nation. There is no reason for me to have to go spend money on seedlings someone else started....

I'm gonna build that cold frame, or else! :=(

carminator1 -

Something tells me we're not going to have much of a winter, or else a very SHORT winter...bummer. Probably rainy, too....miserable...

Honey Bee.

Today I checked the rubbermaid container and I noticed that the container just does not have enough drain holes. With all this rain we've been getting the container always feels wet and the compost is always wet, this plus the fact that the temps are just too hot. Next time I'll try to grow the oriental stir fry if I get more seeds in my raise bed and see if it does better.

I have some broccoli rabb that I can place in this container, once I solve the problem with the drain holes.

Thank you so much for your advice, please keep them coming. :)

I also started some sugar snow peas about 3 weeks ago, this ones are in an earthbox and for some reason some of the tips of the leaves are a little brown, I probably planted this too early as well, but I will keep it in there and see if it recuperates, hopefully we will start our normal winter temps soon.

Boy if I knew this heat was going to last so long I would have kept the tomato plants that I started back in September, I ended up throwing them in my compost bin because I thought that they would not have time to produce before the colder weather got here, I guess just live and learn. LOL.

I

C,
That's exactly why my cabbages grew for a whole year!

Ha ha ha - the year of the cabbage as 2009 will forever be known...

Like Honeybee said smaller pots then move up to larger pots does work better in my experience too. Some things like greens and lettuce you can grow fairly close together in fairly small pots. As long as you keep harvesting the leaves here and there they will keep producing more yummy leaves...

twiggy - that cabbage recipe is making me hungry. Is it lunch time yet?

You know, I can't stay outta my garden for a whole week...I had my purse on my shoulder this morning, and gazed across the yard to my little growing corner wondering what was happening. Since I was already late, I decided, hey, and stepped on back to see what was up. Good thing I did!

I pulled two small hornworms off the rooted cuttings I've kept alive (I'm hopeless) since before the summer, not soon enough but just in time! They'd stripped almost all the lower leaves, but met their Maker before they got to the growing tip!

I simply cannot stay away too long....things must be checked regularly....so much for the housework....

I have the same problem gymgirl, I always forget to spray and when I do remember is sunny outside and my pest control just does not work very well in the sun.

I just had another bowl of my delicious Black seeded simpson lettuce, I am thinning it out and taking a few leaves here and there, they are still very small and fragille but hopefully very soon they will grow bigger and stronger. I love to eat salads daily and veggies so if I can just grow lettuce and eat it at least once a day that will definetely save me some $ in the store.

Well I have to go and spray the plants with some BT expecially the legumes.

carminator -

Everything is sprouting in my newly planted raise bed, I am very excited, some seeds just took 3 days to sprout, very fast if you ask me. No catterpillars on the raise bed just yet but I am keeping my eye open just in case.

So far I've planted some mesclum salad, beets, swiss chard, oak leaf lettuce, endive and radishes, 4 season lettuce and iceberg lettuce.

The beets have not sprouted just yet but I guess they just take a little longer.

Also I need to do something with my 2 rubbermaid containers, I think I am going to place some more holes and also prop the containers up for better drainage, plants in these containers are just doing horrible and I am not sure why but I am going to see if this will help it or not.

Boy I really hope we get some normal weather here, I am getting tired of the rain and the hot humid temps.

carminator

Thanks Honeybee, things in my containers just don't seem to grow very well, I have a couple of earthboxes and these are doing a little better but plants are just growing very slow, probably all this rain is not helping at all. How are things growing on your containers?

Carminator - Right now the only plants I have in containers are herbs. During the summer I had plum-type tomatoes in 25 gallon pots. I also had some sweet pepper plants in pots at the beginning of the summer, but they seemed to be doing so poorly, that I transplanted them to one of the garden beds. Unfortunately, this sent them into "shock" and they took so long to recover, that (so far) I've only had one red pepper. If the frost holds off long enough, I should get some more, because the plants really look great now!

Honeybee.

Boy yes my containers are doing horrible, the plants are just so small and they just don't seem to want to grow at all. I planted some radishes in my raise bed and they are already bigger than the ones in my container which I planted about a week earlier plus the ones in the container look yellowish. I don't think is the soil, I put organic potting soil that I purchased from the store and mixed it with my own worm compost to give the plants a boost, plus just the other day I sprayed with fish emultion to see if that was the problem, but I really think is all this rain we are getting, the soil is just saturated with water and for some reason my containers don't seem to want to drain too well, I even proped them up with some blocks to help them drain.

Even my Earthbox containers are doing poorly, I planted some beets and chard in one of them and they just stay the same size no matter how many weeks pass, I am probably going to have to take them out and try something else, maybe loose leaf lettuce or something.

I also have 2 small containers where I planted some mesclum salad, they are looking a little yellowish but I'll just live them there a little longer and see if anything changes.

If anybody has any suggestions as what will grow well under this conditions please let me know, part of me does not want to keep wasting seed if the plants are not going to be doing well.

We are supposed to get into teh 70's starting tomorrow we'll see how long that lasts.

carminator - Unfortunately one can never "second guess" what the weather is going to be from year to year. If I could, I would mix lots and lots of perlite into my potting soil in those years when it was going to rain like heck, and much less in those years when it rains everywhere else but my backyard (giggle)

Yes, I think your over abundance of rain is the cause of all your potted plant problems. Another problem with pots is, that you can keep adding fertilizer, but heavy rains will wash it right out again!

Honeybee,

I never thought about the perlite, that is a good idea, I might just try it and see if this works. Thanks.

I wanted to post a picture of my raise bed with the new seedlings comming out, so far they are doing well, much better than the ones in the containers. I will probably turn my other raise bed's green manure tomorrow so I can start planting on that one as well, so many veggies, so little space!

Carminator - that looks like the "Square Foot Gardening" approach - Mel would be sooo proud of you :)

Yes, I am following his method on this raise bed, I am not sure if i'll do the same in the other raise bed or not. I guess I am just experimenting to see what method is better.

I am also thinking of doing what is called intensive gardening, this method is used by the Dervaes family, mainly what it is, imagine you plant tomato plant in your raise bed, well you can plant other smaller plants underneath such as lettuces, mustards, onions, carrots, bush beans etc... this way you use as much space as possible, you get various crops from one bed and also this acts as mulch. They also seem to plant lettuces and other plants a little closer together than what the package says.

I placed 4 lettuces for every square foot but I am thinking of trying to put one more in the center and see if I can do 5 lettuces per square foot or even more.

Anybody done this?

"I placed 4 lettuces for every square foot but I am thinking of trying to put one more in the center and see if I can do 5 lettuces per square foot or even more."

Do it Carmen. 2 or 3 will grow faster than the others and the smaller ones will continue growing after you harvest the larger ones. That's what I'm doing with my Pak Choi and will do with my lettuce. I also will try to have some babies to transplant into any spaces that open up when I harvest the others.

Last winter my lettuce got tip burned only twice with frost and I just trimmed that off with scissors. I was just taking the big leaves and it grows so fast that it didn't hurt a thing.

Cucumbers do much better with some shade and should do very well running under tomato plants.

I went to bed with my windows open and woke up freezing with just a sheet on. Yaaaaay. My plants are happier too. I hope it has convinced the bugs and caterpillars to give up. They've been unmerciful and it's hard to find a perfect leaf on anything.

c - I plant 5 lettuce and pretty much any greens 5 per square. Like twiggy said they'll grow at different speeds. If you keep the outer larger leaves trimmed here and there they will do just fine in the tighter space.

Thank you for your imputs. I started many little seeds today, I even have some baby lettuces under grow lights, as soon as I get the true leaves I will transplant them out and see how they grow.

Also I started more broccoli seeds than I was going to put out, I am glad I did since one of my broccoli plants died of transplant shock, I was able to replace it with a new one in no time.

Yes twiggybuds, I can't tell you how happy I am with this weather change and so far no rain in the forecast for this whole weekend, I really hope this lasts, last night we had a huge storm come thru, this morning I looked at my black seeded simpson and the poor thing took a beating last night, we will see if it survives.

I wanted to share this site with you, you can find rebates and coupons for many stores in here and I even found some rebates for some of the seed companies. I have not tried it myself just yet. www.Retailmenot.com

Carminator - as long as your soil is high in organics and nutrients, I see no reason why you cannot plant several types of veggies together.

This past summer, I had a volunteer cucumber grow up a tomato plant, which in turn was in a cage. Both did fine.

Two summers ago, I planted sweet peppers in my strawberry bed and they did fine, too. Then I read that these two should not be planted together, so I didn't repeat this summer. As it turned out, the peppers planted with the strawberries did waaaay better than this past summer's sweet peppers!

Carminator1 - I read your link about grow lights for your seedlings and I thought I might share with you the cheapest seedling lights I've found. Daylight CFL bulbs you can buy for roughly 4-5 dollars apiece. Then I put them in a reflector from box hardware stores for roughly eight dollars. Low heat- great light- and most of all cheap. The wattage of the bulbs is very low also. I also have switched to using coconut coir for seedling medium. Hope this helps.----------- G

Uh, Gerryd41,
YOU HAVE GOT TO POST EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW YOUR GROW LIGHT BOX IS CONSTRUCTED. THAT IS AN ORDER--ly request, please, please, please?

Linda

P.S. Post pics of the interior, please and let us know how to make this. Winter sowing could be made easier using this contraption!

Thanks!

Ditto what Linda said. I have to start seedlings beginning the first week in January and have limited space. I put a bookcase in front of a French door to germinate my seeds. Then I have to rush them out to the greenhouse to make room for more. That contraption would be a great help.

Wow Gerry, that really looks like a good system, and cheap too, which is what I am looking for.

How many plants can you place in the tub though? The problem with mine is that I am running out of space to put seedlings in so I need more space.

I have been looking to purchase a shelving unit to place in my dining room and then hang the lights on the different shelves, this way I'll have a lot more space, but your idea might work as well.

Carminator1,
Go look at this shelf system. I built my own...

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/48/

Great thread here!

Gymgirl, what type of lights do you use?

Hpyndixie,
Just plain 'ole flourescent shop light kits from HD ($10). Some DGers advocate using one cool light and one bright? light in the fixture, to more effectively mimic real sunshine. I keep 'em 1"- 2" from the top of my 'mater seedlings at all times, and raise them as the seedlings grow taller. The great part is you can keep raising the shelves as necessary by putting blocks/phone books, etc. under the shelves, after the seedlings outgrow the height of the cinder blocks.

Also, your shelves can be painted to match your room decor, to help it blend in and not be an eyesore! (Ask me how I know this...)

What I've found that works is this: Keep the 'mater seedlings growing close to the light to keep them from getting leggy and, after they germinate, grow them in the coolest (non-drafty) room you have available. The cool and the light makes 'em grow stout, fat, healthy. Keep them out of drafty areas, and feed them a very WEAK solution of fertilizer after they germinate. Bottom feed from your tray.

That's all I know.

Linda