^^I would love to see pics. Do you have a homemade bog for it?

3/17/2014 2:33:44 PM

Planted 5 HoneyCrisp apple trees in a full sun location. Anyone know if I REALLY need to get a 2nd variety planted or will they be ok by themselves?

Planted 14 Blueberry bushes - 7 Rabbiteye Climax, 7 Rabbiteye Premier, also in full sun.

I still need to plant my Pecan tree, Fuji Persimmon tree (ordered from Stark Bros), and some Blackberry/Raspberry plants I got from Sams

And then, of course, start the tiller and get the garden planted and transplant our strawberry patch from the old house to the new house.

3/19/2014 1:10:23 PM

Honeycrisps are self-sterile, so yes, you need other trees. You should pick from 'mid-season' apple and crabapple cultivars. If you're in the south, be aware that honeycrisp was developed for zones 3-6 and may suffer as a result, so pick some good apple varieties that will do well in your zone- having 3 varieties total is a good plan. also, check out the tag on your honeycrisps and find out what kind of rootstock it has- there's semi-dwarf, dwarf, standard, and some other designations. the main thing is that you want the other trees you buy to be the same type.



^^I would also like to see a picture of the bog. I have a big aquarium that someone left in the basement of this house, and I've often thought of using it for some sort of vivarium. I may end up using it as an incubator for some ferns I have until the need to heat has passed, since my hare's foot fern has some browning, despite showers and running a humidifier

I have a small (4 inch pot) staghorn fern that has just sort of been hanging on this winter. The soil it came planted in was retaining way too much water, so I just took it out of the pot and added it to an over-potted Rhipsalidopsis cactus, and their weird symbiosis has so far gotten them both through the winter in a sub-optimal situation. I'm planning on mounting the fern with orchid moss on a board when it finally warms up.

3/19/2014 1:43:01 PM

^^^No, I have a large plastic tray that I sink in the ground once we're past the point of freezing again. Each plant is potted in peat moss, some have peat/sand/long fiber sphagnum mixes, nearly all have live sphagnum growing at the surface with sundews mixed in. There are a few pics in last year's gardening thread, but I think that was around late summer. I'm considering just filling my big black tray with peat and sand and sinking it in the ground. A good friend had a bog setup last year and it was awesome. The tray method gets tedious once mosquito season gets here, though some Gambusia did a phenomenal job of cleaning that up. Still, would be nice not to have to mess with the water all the time. Algae inevitably grows, leaves fall in, bugs fall in, mice fall in, birds shit in. The only welcome guest was a leopard frog that randomly appeared last fall right before it started freezing.

So I clipped the flower from the weak plant. We'll see how it plays out. In the meanwhile, a big flower broke the surface on my white-top pitcher. I bought it at a plant sale last year, and it's my favorite plant of the bunch. I'm pretty sure it came with two growth points on a single rhizome, so I need to look into when it's appropriate to split. Might not be til fall. Probably going to pick up another at the plant sale in a couple weeks. Also looks like the "boob tube" is developing a flower. While it produces the biggest pitchers, I'm not the biggest fan of that particular plant. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

All of the flytraps made it through the winter and have been rapidly putting out growth. Most are young plants, there are about 6 or 7 total. Not seeing any signs of flower growth, which would be cool, but doesn't bother me. Probably going to move them outside in a couple of days after this cold spell passes.

My peppers started sprouting just before the weekend. I'm really hoping the habaneros come up, that should just be within the next couple of days.

I also collected a bunch of seedling Japanese maples last spring and potted them. They all made the winter. Some grew a lot last year. The first leaves are starting to come out now. I think I have roughly 2 dozen plants started with maybe a quarter of them being 1ish foot tall. Should I just hold onto them and sell them after letting them grow a decent bit more?

3/25/2014 1:10:59 AM

Anyone around the Charlotte area? UNCC is having its spring plant sale April 18th and 19th. I'm gonna get at least one or two more pitcher plants while I'm there.

3/27/2014 12:45:00 AM

I think I'm going to have my first spinach tonight, and will have collards, kale and choy soon.

I'm thinking of putting my tomato and pepper seedling in the ground in the next couple days.

4/1/2014 1:01:09 PM

So I just moved into an apartment, second story, wrap-around balcony that faces mostly East but Northeast somewhat. I'm a little bummed because I guess that restricts me vegetable-wise for the balcony, but I have done zero research. Need to see what could grow or thrive in that light level.

4/1/2014 10:46:55 PM

Anyone have any experience with one of these?



This year I tried transplanting from a seed starting tray but had terrible luck getting the root balls out without completely having the soil crumble apart. About 40% of my plants are withering under the transplant shock. It's terribly heartbreaking watching them wilt away. Hoping that a soil blocker may ease the transition to containers.

4/10/2014 8:10:19 PM

I just started getting signs of hope from a yellow pitcher plant I started rehabbing last fall. This is the one I had to pluck a flower off first thing this late winter. Flower is gone, but the first pitcher is starting to go up. Keeping my fingers crossed.

It's a little bittersweet that I just had a job drop out of thin air on me. I'm moving to a warmer zone (yay!), but the area is pretty much a shithole. My housing is being provided, but it's a fucking hotel room. On the upside, I'll be running a fairly large facility and I'll be able to move all of my carnivorous plants. On the downside, I'll be losing the ability to hook up a rain barrel for when it gets dry. I don't know what I'm gonna do with all of the hot pepper plants I just started sprouting a few weeks ago. I'm also going to miss out on the UNCC spring plant sale by a matter of just a few days.

I guess I at least get to look forward to finally making enough to start realistically looking forward to buying a house. Or at least renting one once I figure out the area a bit. I'm pretty sure land will be cheap since I'll be out in BFE, SC.

4/11/2014 12:45:27 AM

^^were you cutting the trays apart, or pushing up the rootball from the bottom? it's really better to just cut the plastic... and it sounds like maybe your plants should have stayed in the trays for another week or two if the roots weren't filling the soil. If you've got any left, maybe you should just wait a little while before trying again.


if there are still some alive but struggling, mist the plants and put a pot over the plant, and check on them frequently. They'll have to stay moist for the roots to recover, and they don't need light until that happens.


^well, congrats on your new life circumstances, though it sounds like your transition might be challenging. Even if your plants take a beating, they're still just plants, and you can always get more later. I lost my entire collection when I moved 5 years ago, but i'm back up to a ridiculous number of houseplants now. And even if the area you move to is lacking in things to do or interesting stores, gardening is one of the most widely popular hobbies on the planet, and the calling cards of fellow enthusiasts are usually easy to spot, so I bet you can find someone who shares your interest and may have some plants for you to enjoy. When all else fails, just take a walk and look at the weeds

[Edited on April 11, 2014 at 6:25 AM. Reason : ]

4/11/2014 6:14:10 AM

Thought I was being frugal by pushing the rootball out to save the plastic. Little did I know it would so devastate my seedlings.

Desperately misting the survivors.

4/12/2014 5:38:01 PM

I put in 12.5 hrs of work this weekend. Most of it today as we drove to the nursery yesterday to get plants and that took most of the morning.

Raised beds: 6 Roma, 3 German Johnson, 3 heirloom purple beefsteak, 3 jalapeño, 3 banana peppers, 3 pickling cukes and marigolds.
Containers: 3 okra, 3 cayenne pepper, basil, rosemary & cilantro. Also flowers: geraniums and petunias. I love them. Should really try something different one of these years
Also added to our back yard: butterfly bush to help attract pollinators.
In the front where I removed the Indian Hawthorne (there were 8): decided on a section dedicated to zinnias for cutting. I already had hostas along the front border, and I added a cluster of day Lillies staggered between some. I planted a lime hydrangea where one hawthorn was. I filled in 5 holes and planted two mums in the remaining 2 holes that I had in pots. I also another forsythia next to my existing one next to our property fence.

Still need to plant my elephant ear bulbs, but I ran out of dirt. Back to the store tomorrow.

[Edited on April 13, 2014 at 9:35 PM. Reason : ]

4/13/2014 9:08:02 PM

planted five 3 gallon azaleas in front of the house today

4/13/2014 9:29:17 PM

mealy bugs.......

4/13/2014 9:32:07 PM

Just bought 12 bags of gardening soil from Home Depot.

4/13/2014 10:17:43 PM

Spent all weekend building a raised bed in the backyard...even though my back is killing me I'm feeling accomplished.

Also built a worm tower for it, does anyone know of a good place to get composting worms in Raleigh? Looking to get those guys started soon.

4/14/2014 11:32:28 AM

I bought my composting worms from someone on craigslist.

4/14/2014 3:09:12 PM

Today I mounted my antler fern with antlers.

[Edited on April 14, 2014 at 3:54 PM. Reason : photo]

4/14/2014 3:52:35 PM

Freeze watch for tomorrow night through wed 9am for RDU and surrounding areas

4/14/2014 7:54:51 PM

Effin cankerworms are already out in force. They've been doing some damage to my Japanese maples, mostly...but they've started working on little bits of the new growth on my pitcher plants.

Not thrilled about the next couple of nights getting down to the freezing point. I'm gonna haul all of my plants inside for the night. Not gonna take the risk of a big loss. It's especially frustrating, seeing as I'm supposed to be moving later in the week.

4/14/2014 8:36:18 PM

All my cool weather pants are already bolting.

I think I'm going to take my tomatoes/peppers/okra out of their pots and put them in the ground this week.

4/23/2014 12:06:26 PM

my plants wanna go out so bad, but we still aren't going to have a night over 55 in the next two weeks I have some 50 day tomato seeds I haven't bothered to plant yet. guess it's not too late to give it a go, the planting season is late everywhere.

nice staghorn G.O.D!


here's a pic of some orchids I got at a show a month ago. they're still going strong!

4/25/2014 5:57:06 PM

Two questions:

1) How long do you give a plant before you say fuck it and tear it out? I have three rose bushes in my yard all planted three years ago. Two of them are going like gangbusters. One of them isn't doing anything at all. Maybe puts out one or two flowers and doesn't really grow. I've tried every trick in the rose book to encourage it to do something but I'm starting to think it's just a dud. Would you just get rid of it this season or give it a longer reprieve?

2) What's the trick to growing decent sized carrots? I grow carrots in one of my raised beds. They put out lots of green and seem to do well, but when you harvest them they are wee little things. They are varieties that are supposed to grow "normal" length but never do. Not enough nutrients in the soil? Too much? The soil is nice and loamy so I know they're not getting compacted by clay or anything.

4/30/2014 8:40:43 AM

1). If it's producing flowers, I'd leave it. I had a butterfly bush that 2 years ago looked like it was almost dead. Brown with very few flowers. Last year it was lush and beautiful, and this year it's budding well again. But it's your call. Rose bushes are cheap enough that it wouldn't hurt to tear it out and replace it with a new one.

2). Can't help you on the carrots. I've never had any luck with below ground veggies. I tried onions 2 years ago with the same result as your carrots. Looked great and healthy above ground, but when I harvested them they were tiny. In my case, I've been told it's because my ground is too hard for them to fully grow to their potential.

On a personal note, I got my garden completely planted except for the corn and watermelon. Both are growing well in the flats, just not quite ready transplant yet. Looking forward to the good soaking rain today, just hoping the wind doesn't blow up all my garden plastic.

4/30/2014 9:16:47 AM

ditto on carrots, I've never had a good one. I've had luck with onions and garlic, though. I plant those mostly for defense of critters, because the garlic ends up being really strong.

^I usually plant corn and vine crops straight in the ground. It was my understanding that vines especially didn't like being transplanted.

4/30/2014 10:10:22 PM

Looking forward to some tomatoes, peppers and okra soon!

5/5/2014 12:12:08 PM

My bibb lettuce is huge and delicious...although I think we're "cultivating" it wrong. I think I saw where you're suppose to cut off the full head and you may or may not get a second one. We're basically just picking off leaves as we need them. Either way, I feel like we've already got our money's worth out of it. We've done several recipes and salads and I've been putting it on my sandwiches for the last few weeks.

Here is a picture of our garden a few weeks ago. Each bibb lettuce head has probably doubled in size. The kale is coming along slowly...but it's getting there. The rest are mostly herbs. We have a jalapeno plant in the back right corner that is starting to get its first peppers and we've got a couple tomato plans in a different section of the yard. Although it's getting a lot of shade, the stuff on the left side is still growing pretty well. We didn't know that damn loquat tree was going to grow so fast/big. Going to have to move the garden bed next year.

5/5/2014 12:35:27 PM

My Kale and lettuce and spinach are still going strong. My choy kept bolting so I ripped it out this weekend. Collards are getting bitter. Spinach is trying to bolt too.

[Edited on May 5, 2014 at 1:28 PM. Reason : ]

5/5/2014 1:00:56 PM

Some of my pitcher flowers are opening! Sweet pitchers started a few days ago, "boob tube" started today. Flytrap looks like it'll just be a couple of days. Everything is doing well in the new digs. Nice sunny spot for everything!

I left the rehab pitcher plant back home, and when I saw it on Monday it was setting out 2 new pitchers. A little late, but at least I don't regret pinching off the flower it tried to throw out.

I might have to look into getting a second tray! Looking forward to possibly have some seedlings to deal with in the future. Can't wait for the white top pitchers to start opening!

5/8/2014 9:59:19 PM

Complete n00b gardener here...

Planted some a couple Ameilia Tomato plants in containers (1.5ft X 1ft) today and placed them in the closest thing I have to full sun. Also placed a few zucchini plants in the ground near them.

Started a herb garden in an planter where I get 3-4 hours of sun per day with some basil plants, but plan to add some parsley and maybe some other herbs and veggies in the same bed.

For the in-grounds I mixed 50% native soil (maybe a bit less) with 50% garden soil/mushroom compost. For the containers I mixed like 80% potting soil/20% mushroom compost with an inch of two of rocks in the bottom.

Any general advice? Like am I going to need any pesticides or anything? Have I fucked anything up so far?

Any other ideas for idiot-proof veggies that will grow in containers in full sun, or idiot-proof veggies that will grow well with 3-4 hours of direct sun per day?

5/13/2014 10:45:19 PM

you can generally get away with 4-6 hours for most plants, but it needs to be morning sun.

5/14/2014 8:06:20 AM

^^ every time i plant cucumbers I get a ton without doing any work, even planting them in crappy soil. the hardest thing about cucumbers in my experience is finding people to give them to since i always get more than i can eat.

5/14/2014 8:36:29 AM

Make sure you keep them watered, potted plants can dry out and die a lot quicker than plants in the ground.

I've been using a baking soda mixture to try to fight off disease (mainly blight, which wrecked my garden last year). Also been using a cayenne pepper mix to try to ward of insects, we'll see if it works.

5/14/2014 9:20:38 AM

monsoon just ruined my lettuce

5/15/2014 2:35:06 PM

My bibb lettuce is almost head high. I'm assuming that we weren't suppose to let it get that high?

We just didn't want to cut it because it was so beautiful and delicious.

This is it about week and a half ago...I feel like it grows about half a foot a day:



Kale is starting to come in nicely as well.

[Edited on May 15, 2014 at 3:11 PM. Reason : .]

5/15/2014 3:08:35 PM

How do you all feel about morning vs afternoon sun?

wlb420 feels like veggies need either add day sun, or just morning sun, as the afternoon sun on it's own can be too hot and mess the plants up...eg wilt the leaves of my tomatoes currently receiving afternoon-only sun.

Also does anyone know of some other easier to grow veggies that don't need full sun. Def going to try some cucumbers as mentioned.

5/17/2014 7:11:21 PM

Is there anywhere local to buy an avocado tree?

5/18/2014 6:51:43 PM

Also for my herb garden, what are some ideas for keeping bugs away without dousing everything in pesticides?

5/18/2014 10:11:29 PM

Quote :

"How do you all feel about morning vs afternoon sun? "

Afternoon sun can be brutal. Our window boxes get a ton of afternoon sun and we have to make sure to pick plants/flowers that can stand up to it, or they'll wilt.

5/19/2014 7:48:21 AM

Got everything in the ground. Trying corn again this year, 50 stalks to be exact. I read that it's better to plant them in blocks of 4 rather than 2 long rows, but I didn't plan it out right. So 2 long rows of 25 each is what I had to settle for. Fingers crossed.

5/19/2014 9:14:55 AM

The rain last week surely helped and my tomatoes are starting to take off, and I have a couple on two of my plants.

Okra question: first year doing them, and I chose to put them in pots. Haven't had a tone of growth yet, but I read it can take a while to get started; then they flourish. I think it's just not quite hot enough for them yet. Typical from everyone's experience?

5/19/2014 1:06:09 PM

i think mine were usually growing by this time, but i guess we had a pretty cool spring this year.

how big are your pots? my okra always got huge.

[Edited on May 19, 2014 at 1:07 PM. Reason : .]

5/19/2014 1:07:22 PM

In my experience, the okra doesn't take off until it gets hotter. I went to a friend's last night who has ~50 okra plants, and they hadn't grown much yet either.

edit: and last year my okra didn't get too big, but the year before it got to almost 8 feet tall

[Edited on May 19, 2014 at 1:50 PM. Reason : ]

5/19/2014 1:44:46 PM

It's a 5 gallon pot. Glad to see that it's not just me though.

5/19/2014 3:21:59 PM

Got my tomatoes, hot peppers, zucchini, cucumber, summer squash, some sunflowers, marigolds, and zinneas in the ground. Planted 3 rows of corn and some onion, beets, and carrots. I'm running out of space, fast!

5/19/2014 4:42:29 PM

So I've discovered that my driveway (and my front lawn) is the only place that gets any decent sun...so I've decided to plant most of my stuff in containers in the driveway. How dumb is that? The tomatoes and cucumbers (burpless bush) are supposed to do well in pots. Also have a bunch of herbs, zucchini (that will have to me moved once it starts growing) an a Carolina Reaper pepper plant.

Outside of the containers needing more frequent watering, are there any other considerations? I'm mostly worried about people walking by and messing with them, especially when they start producing.

Also where's a good place to get cheap containers from?

5/20/2014 9:33:59 PM

Also the soil I planted everything in said "feeds for 2 months"...do I need to feed them soon, or just wait until those two months are up?

5/23/2014 11:39:59 AM

i'm no expert, but I'd say to wait two months before adding fertilizer. you probably don't even need to add it after that if it's getting rainwater, but it can't hurt.

5/23/2014 12:26:21 PM

The beauty of container gardening is you can move them. Try them out in the driveway and if problems arise (people taking your produce, too much/too little sun, whatever) just find another spot. Only thing with containers is on really got days you will probably want to water morning and evening so they get enough. They will dry out faster.

I would start feeding/fertilizing your plants once they begin producing.

5/23/2014 12:55:22 PM

Garden update as of this morning.

6/2/2014 9:03:48 AM