Hey there,

How are your gardens doing? What’s gone well this year, and where are you having problems?

Things are looking good for me so far. Like every year, I had some trouble with black bean aphids on my fava beans, but that seems to have resolved itself (even though the affected plants aren’t yielding much).

I’m happy with my onions and potatoes… does anyone know why some of my onion sets are deciding to go to seed?

Wishing you all a great week!

We've just got our first house and with it came a lot of new challenges in the shape of gardening.

One issue I have not managed to solve is weeds in our lawn.

I have been ripping these things out of the lawn a lot (see pic in post) but I feel like I can't win. There are big patches where you can hardly see the grass.

I know not everyone want the perfect grassy lawn, and I don't need perfection. But these things are growing and spreading at an alarming rate. I need to do something about them.

Where we are at now, I feel like we are past the point of ripping them up one by one. We need some wider, more effective solution.

What are these and how do I fight them in scale?

Extra pic:

It's the time of year again when I find my citrus plants covered in wiggling bird poop. The caterpillar form of the swallowtail butterfly is extra fond of citrus plants and they make a point to have their first point of life in my garden. I have a rule that I make plain to the little critters: you can stay if you don't eat too many leaves. Eat too much and you get evicted. It does no good for them if the plant dies.

It got me thinking: where do others sit on the scale of "magazine perfect lawn piece" to "it's less garden and more forest area I found to live in"?

Do you have everything where the animals can't get to them or are you fighting the birds for the perfect ripeness of a fig?

During the pandemic when everything was locked down I tried rooting a pineapple top and now 6 years later I have little pineapple garden.

There's a small bed in the corner of my landscaping. It's separated from the landscaping coming down the side of the house by a stone drain for the downspout. Behind it is the back porch and it's edged by grass on two sides. I want something in the corner of the bed. Currently there are three English lavender along the curve of the two open sides with a red double knockout rose at the center of the curve. There's a catnip in the center of the bed and catmint filling in around it. The corner closest to the house has orange canna. I want something on the other corner that's out against the yard. I'd like it to be in the five to ten foot range with a spread of no more than three feet. A little taller would be better because I want it to provide some color above the lavender and rose as well as a little privacy for the porch. Along the back of the porch are orange rocket barberries so the plant would be a transition between the barberries and lavender. I'm not overly particular about the color but yellow or orange would stand out from all the purple or red would match the rose. A dwarf tree would be great there but I'm concerned about how close it would be to the concrete porch. My best idea right now is a to put a trellis there with a clematis, there's already a sturdy upright that I could connect it to. I would really like something with a longer bloom season though. It's full sun, zone 6b, with rocky clay soil.

Hello, /c/gardening! It has been a solid little while since I posted, or in fact grew anything.
Life dealt me a really harsh hand of cards at the end of last year and I'm finally getting going again.

What broke the seal for me was someone else needed plants, and I was like 'don't buy those, I'll grow you some'. And then of course, why not start some for me.....?

And here we are! I hope your gardens are thriving.

We grew corn when I was a kid, first time growing it myself. Impluse bought a few stalks to throw into the garden bed, and now this corn is bringing me a lot of joy. Grow corn, Grow!

Love the way it looks.

Think I prefer the basic salad mix taste though. Think this would be better for adding some color to another green.

My sage has never flowered before, so this was a pleasant surprise! I’m surprised it’s not commonly grown as a decorative plant now that it’s put up these very pretty purple spikes of blooms!

So, you've probably never heard of silicate/ silicon use in plants. It's included in no fertiliser I know of, and "only" semi-essential.

I grow pretty much all of my plants hydroponically, and the fertiliser I use has all nutrients (micro and macro) included. All of them grow healthy and fast, without any signs of deficiencies, probably even twice as fast as in soil.

But I often had the feeling that "something" is missing.
They get hugely stressed when drying out (including nutrient burn), get light or heat stress, and I had to fight pests all the damn time I couldn't get rid of, even with systemic pesticides.
This may sound more hard on paper than it is in reality, but it still was a bit annoying. They grow well, but are physically weak.

This also isn't some obscure hydro issue, soil plants have it as well. Most soils are lacking silicon as well.

Silicon (in form of silicates) is known to fix that. It reinforces cell walls, both in the leaves/ stem and the root system. It makes them tougher and therefore more resistant to wind, heat, pests, drought, nutrient burn, light, pathogens, and so on. It also improves nutrient absorption, and can be just as powerful against powdery mildew or other fungal infections as fungicides according to a study I read.

If it is THAT great, why isn't it used everywhere?!

Simple. Because it's chemically unstable and hard to include in your standard fertiliser. And even if it already is in soil, or applied via plant extracts like nettle tea, it's not that bioavailable.

The benefits have been known to commercial growers for ages.

The most widely used form is potassium silicate. Which is shit imo. It's highly alkaline, so even a bit throws off the pH and hinders nutrient absorption, so you have to adjust the pH all the time, adding junk into your nutrient solution. It also degrades very quickly, so you have to apply it multiple times a week, preferably via foliar application.
That's why it doesn't make sense to use it for hobbyists.

So, what's the solution? Another form!
Tetraethyl silicate (TEOS).

I've been using Grow Genius Mono-silicic for a few weeks now, and the results are phenomenal. But I have to say, this product is overpriced for what it's made out of. You can get TEOS way cheaper, it's wide spread in chemical industry.

Compared to potassium silicate, it

• doesn't alter the pH
• doesn't polymerise as fast, making it way more stable in solution, and
• is more concentrated

I currently use the recommended dose in my nutrient solution, and apply it via foliar spray weekly for now.

I noticed its effects most strongly on my cannabis plants.
The leaves got very rough, almost like velcro at this point.

When I bend a stem now, it really cracks, which it didn't before.

And it grows more compact, tolerating almost double the light intensity than my last grows, resulting in WAY faster growth.

My living sphagnum moss also got more robust. It can tolerate more fertiliser and doesn't instantly die when dry. Before silicate, it felt spongy, and now more like wet steel wool.

And most of my houseplants now look like fake plastic plants. Especially my calatheas just shrivelled up and got crispy before when I forgot to water them. The leaves are thicker and glossy.

It also helped to get rid of the powdery mildew that plagued my mums' zucchini plant.

All in all, I'm really pleasantly surprised that it works THAT well. 10/10, would recommend :)

Squirrels are taking a few but I think the thorns are doing their job. 3rd year for this bush if I remember right.

When one of my lettuce plants started wilting, I pulled on it and found I could just pull it straight out of the soil with no resistance. On the roots, I found these maggots. (You may need enlarge the picture a bit.)

Does anybody know what these are?

How likely is it that those are why the lettuce started dying?

Can they spread to other nearby potted plants?

What can you do against these?

Some are growing! Hoping for no end rot this year!

It's not a nutrient issue, I tested the pH and EC.

I also doubt it's dehydration or suffocation, because it's in an optimal hydroponic environment.

So, there's only three options left I guess.

Option 1: wind damage.
It was quite stormy about one or two weeks ago. Maybe it got root damage (unlikely, small plant), or it bend too much?

Option 2: temperature fluctuations.
At the same time of the storm, the night temperatures dropped quite a bit (lowest: 12°C). And now, it raised to 40°C just a few days after.
Or,

Option 3: sunburn.
It's under a shaded cloth, and gets direct sun only at afternoon, if at all.
All other plants (e.g. pepino) do very well and have no light stress.

Or is it something different?

It also lost a few pollinated buds. Is that a very bad sign?

New growth this week has appeared wrinkled as well.

Cross post from !hydroponics@slrpnk.net

I made a guide on how to pre-treat coco coir to avoid nutrient lockout or toxicity issues.

One of my favourite things about summer is making "Gubbröra" with my own vegetables 😁 I'm not sure how to translate "Gubbröra" so I'm taking suggestions....

@allotments@fedigroups.social @outdoor@fedigroups.social @gardening@fedigroups.social @gardening@lemmy.world @nature@fedigroups.social @joinin@fedigroups.social

#GrowYourOwn #OC
#FreeFood #Free #Food
#SelfSufficient #Urban #Garden #Gardening
#Bokashi #Compost
#April #Southern #Finland

P.S If you haven't tried the vegetarian caviar callled Cavi-Art, you're missing out!

Southern Wisconsin

Leaving aphids alone to help encourage a crop of ladybugs for the future.

Moss gardens (balcony)

I had to cat proof my balcony, and for that, I filled containers with cement and put a rod into them. They are solid 3/4 and had about 10 cm air space.

I initially put stones in them, but they always filled up with rain water and were a breeding ground for algae and mosquitoes.

They used to look like this:

Then, I decided to do something more useful and less labour intensive with them.

I put lots of leftover hydro substrate in them, mostly LECA, lava rock, pumice, zeolith, and so on, as well as a small net cup as filter, to pump out the water in case it's needed.

Most were left as is, with no organic layer on top.

Then, I went outside and collected all different kinds of mosses I could find. Only small patches of course, both for sustainability and the sake of the experiment.

The goal is to establish a living, organic top surface, and a very airy moist environment below with lots of air gaps, where puddled up water from below gets drawn up and evaporates.

All pots do have different environments. Some are in bright sun all day, some very shaded. Some get fertilizer leeched in from flower pots above, some are very nutrient poor.

This means, quite a lot of species lost the "natural" selection game and got outcompeted or died, while others thrive in this environment and cover big areas.

They are all getting drained from time to time to prevent nutrient buildup, or in case the cement below leeches out. In dry times, they get a small shower with RO water, especially my bog pots.

How they look now, after about a year

Here's the first one. Very bright light and quite nutrient dense. 100% inorganic substrate.
I put a bit of osmocote in it, and it stays relatively dry.

There are lots if "weeds"/ grasses in it, which have formed a dense sheet of rhizomes and roots. I trim the grass from time to time.

Second one. 100% inorganic substrate, very bright, very nutrient poor.

I put some "random" moss, as well as living sphagnum in it. There's also a sarracenia in there, but it's not looking very happy.

My goal was to simulate the natural formation of bogs. In theory, the sphagnum moss will acidify the environment extremely, which makes it inhospitable for most other mosses and plants.

Initially, the random moss got a great jump start from the decomposing other mosses around, releasing nutrients. It covered most of it.

But it seems like, due to the constant flooding and lack of nutrients, that the sphagnum now strikes back and takes its place.

The third one is the exact same as the one before, but a bit drier maybe.

It took lots of living sphagnum to decompose itself and turn the habitat livable for other living sphagnum. I also put a sarracenia in there last year, but it sadly died. There's also a hand full of (used) peat on top to give the spagnum a jump start.

Then, the fourth one. This one is very shaded and nutrient rich. It gets lots of synthetic fertiliser by surrounding plants leaching into it.

It's very similar to a forest environment.

Here's my newest one. It has got a base layer of lava rock, followed by coco coir, and finished with some used peat I got from a fellow gardener. It's somewhat flooded most of the time and is a 100% bog environment (very bright, acidic, nutrient poor).

I put the sphagnum and sarracenia into it about two months ago, and they're already thriving!

Then, there's my Drosera binata. Peat as substrate, and some freshly planted sphagnum as top layer.

And the final one. Shallow bowl, filled with a few cm of LECA, nothing else, and quite a lot of living sphagnum. There's a venus flytrap and a Drosera rotundifolia in it, as well as some seeds (either weeds, or carnivorous plants).

After that one or two years, the moss garden transformed my "sterile" balcony into an oasis for life. It's like living in a forest!

There are SO many critters in there. Beetles, arthropods, springtails, nematodes, snails, you name it.

Indoor Sphagnum cultivation

I'm also growing some sphagnum indoors for further use.

The outdoor stuff in the bog containers is mainly for habitat formation and contaminated with weeds and bugs.

Right now, the amount harvested is insufficient. I mostly use it for making even more sphagnum 😅 You can easily propagate it by sprinkling small chunks on other substrate.

It took a while for me to get the hang of it. I've killed lots if it, mostly by overfertilizing or letting it dry out too much.

But now, it grows very fast and I already got my first harvest.

Some of it uses a few cm of LECA as substrate, and others have peat as base layer. I noticed that peat works way better, mostly due to the inherent low pH and nutrient buffering capabilities.

I'm also testing coco coir as a substitute for peat right now.

The moss is in plastic deli containers without drainage inside my grow tent. I'm growing weed there, and the boxes get lots of very bright light because of that.

They are getting flooded regularly and are then allowed to dry out a bit. Sometimes, I add a splash of hydroponic fertilizer to them when flooded. This makes it grow extremely quickly.

As soon as I notice the moss is getting too dark green, I flush it and stop fertilizing for a while. If I don't do this, it will get nutrient burn as soon as it dries out a bit and die.

Here you can see different shades of green:

My goal is to get regular big amounts for harvest. I wanna use it as a sustainable replacement for peat, because many carnivorous plants NEED those specific conditions to survive.

It's also very decay resistant and holds on to water like a sponge. I could use it for propagation, e.g. cuttings or air layering. It has so many uses!

I also have some growing in front of my window in a glass vase. It started with a few cm of LECA and now colonized the whole jar. I use it in this case as substrate for my Nepenthes and Drosera.

I'm thinking about buying a few fabric pots and would like to hear some user experiences.

But my main concern is sustainability.

Does anyone have experience using them outside at harsh conditions, e.g. UV radiation, freezing temperatures, all year around?

1. Can you wash them in the washing machine? Are they hard to clean?
2. How well do they work for perennial plants in winter? They are pretty airy after all, does this insulate the cold, or makes it even more destructive for the hibernating roots?
3. How long do they last under those conditions? Will they disintegrate after some time and shed microplastics?
4. Do they dry out significantly faster than regular pots? How is the water consumption?
5. When using coco coir, should I use less perlite?

Thanks a lot!

My basil plants are thriving too much.

This is my thai basil:

And in the same pot lemon basil:

I've topped them quite a lot, as you can see in the bushy growth pattern.

They already started flowering months ago, even before I put them into the big pot. I read online that you just have to snip them off, and done.

But there are basically only flowers coming, and I don't want them to waste all their power into developing seeds.

Is this normal and just a part of their lives when they reach a certain size?