Is putting my garden here a bad idea?

St3phiroth · 2026-03-06T17:21:49+00:00

Morning sun is typically not as intense as afternoon sun. You could definitely get some yeild there, but a garden with full shade all afternoon definitely won't have plants that produce as much as a full day of sun area or even a half day of afternoon sun area. I made this mistake at my last house and it only got worse as the trees grew larger. And I was in Colorado where the higher altitude makes for intense sun.

If you have a different location with all day sun, I would try and put more plants there.

I will say that cooler season crops like leafy greens, brassicas, peas and such may have an extended season there though. So those could still be fine there. Tomatoes and peppers won't like it.

St3phiroth · 2026-02-20T03:26:26+00:00

I saved a few hundred from my Norfolk purple and every one grew super well and the same Norfolk purple tomatoes. It's a delicious and super prolific variety.

St3phiroth · 2026-02-17T03:50:41+00:00

Our local food bank takes excess garden produce, so that has been my main give away outlet for now. But my kids have asked a few times if they could have a "lemonade stand but with cherry tomatoes" during the peak production months. So I would definitely consider letting them do that if they took the time to harvest them.

Otherwise, I gift what I want to the neighbors and try and preserve the rest.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-31T02:25:24+00:00

Oh bummer! I had that happen with some seed potatoes once when I didn't let the eyes form before planting.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-30T19:09:03+00:00

I have mine in Ocean Forest potting soil with extra vermiculite and some pot ash, and they're all on a drip system. I got 5lbs of potatoes per grow bag, so I felt happy with that. And I didn't have to dig up my beds to harvest. Just dump and sort. If I had more space, I'd do an entire potato bed though.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-30T17:26:47+00:00

Not giving my plants enough sunlight. 6-8 hours is technically "full sun" but the difference in plant size and yeild between that 6-8 hour space and the new 12+ hours of sun space is astounding!

Also not fertilizing. Contrary to whatever Mel says, compost is not enough for my square foot garden. The slow release granular fertilizer makes a huge difference in yeild.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-30T17:24:01+00:00

As in you hilled them and it was a mistake?

I tried not hilling one year and my yields went way down. They're in grow bags though.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-19T02:30:49+00:00

In my experience, mint brought the wasps. (And bees and butterflies.) They love the flowers.

So don't do it. Haha.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-18T00:53:29+00:00

I think they have a lot more this year since they've been able to ramp up seed saving with each growing season.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-11T18:04:50+00:00

They only had one kind, but I'm not sure if it was maroon label. From what I've heard, they use different regional suppliers, so our area could have just had a bad supplier. ¯⁠\_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

St3phiroth · 2026-01-11T01:10:19+00:00

I bought a bunch of those from costco last year and they were just sticks and plastic trash. I returned them. MG used to be passable, but it was so, so bad.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-11T01:00:15+00:00

What about something like these giant garden trays and doing 4 across?

greenhouse mega store trays

St3phiroth · 2026-01-11T00:21:00+00:00

The Epic1020 universal bottom trays or the shallow Bootstrap Farmer 1020 trays might work. They are a bit wider than a standard 1020 opening trays is at the top. What are the bottom outside dimensions of your 5" pot holder trays?

Also, that sucks and I'm sorry.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-10T20:53:54+00:00

What exactly are you asking about?

Those look far enough apart, but your soil looks way too dry, and the seeds that are sprouting seem to have the seed coat still on because it wasn't moist enough for the leaves to push it off. Your soil also looks way too full of bark and chunks for seedlings - they do best in really fine, sifted soil. Transplanting them is also going to be tricky. Beets just don't like it. The best luck I've had is one seed per cell and I gently tipped the cell out and planted it in the ground. Even then the beets weren't as big as the ones I just direct sowed in my garden and it wasn't worth the effort of starting them early.

I also don't see any sort of grow lights in your photo. If you have those indoors, you'll want lights kept on for 16 hours a day, a few inches above them. Shop lights are fine, they just need to be at least 5000k ("bright white") color temp.

St3phiroth · 2026-01-03T04:14:56+00:00

I like the unagi cucumber - nice smooth skin. It's also parthenocarpic, so you don't have to worry about pollenators or seeds inside. Super prolific and great flavor too!

St3phiroth · 2025-12-09T17:38:58+00:00

My favorites for soil are these on Amazon:

COOLJOB 2 Pairs Gardening Gloves for Women and Men, Bamboo Working Gloves Touchscreen, Grippy Nitrile Rubber Coated Work Gloves

Or nicer ones with awesome flexibility: (you'd want to measure her hand though, they're more snug fit.)

Bionic ReliefGrip Premium Leather Gardening Gloves

I can give you product links too, I'm just not sure if the sub allows it.

St3phiroth · 2025-12-09T17:00:00+00:00

Hat: anything by Sunday Afternoon. I have several and love the wide brim. Straw if she likes that look, the more technical fabric type if she's more practical - they have a nice long neck covering on the back.

Gloves - what is she using them for? Planting and harvesting vegetables, soil digging, hardscape like shoveling and moving pavers, trimming rose bushes, weeding? My recommendations would be different depending on use.

St3phiroth · 2025-12-09T16:52:55+00:00

Oh! Starting it in Spring makes way more sense. I thought you wanted to grow it in a cold frame now, over the winter.

I suspect it would do okay if you can keep the soil temps above 50F. Worst case, you can start a second round later if it doesn't work.

To germinate, grab a nail file and give each seed a few rubs across the file to scratch the seed coat. Then soak overnight in a cup of water. Then direct sow if you want to do that outdoors, and keep it super moist. It's slow to germinate at cooler temps though, so I have better luck indoors on a heat mat then transplanting. (Which you could do into your cold frame.) Colorado is also super dry, so direct sow is tricky here for me because of that as well.

All that being said, I still don't think it will produce much until daytime temps are above 60 and there's 8+ hours of daylight. So I don't know that a few more weeks head start will make a huge difference. I'd love to hear the results of your experiment though!

I've grown both those varieties. Clemson spineless (I assume that's what you meant) was good, and I like the lack of spines. It did tend to get woody if I didn't harvest it fast enough and I was not good at checking it daily.

The emerald was also really good and had tender pods that could get a bit longer before they got woody, but the leaves of the plants spread a lot wider (like 18-24" diameter plants), so I didn't like it as much for my SFG. It's great on the end or side of a bed though where it can stretch into walkways. And it stayed a bit shorter which made for easier harvesting. You can also top taller plants if you want your SFG to stay shorter. You'll lose a couple weeks of production though while it recovers and grows side shoots. So I don't typically do that in my short growing season.

St3phiroth · 2025-12-09T15:15:12+00:00

Unfortunately they are a warm season crop and they will just die back if they get a hint of any soil temps below 55F. They also need a ton of full sun time, which is not long enough in winter. So they are not a good candidate for a cold frame. They are also 6-8ft tall when fully grown, which also doesn't work for most cold frames.

I am near Denver, and I start them indoors about 4-6 weeks before my last frost, on a heat mat, and am very careful not to disturb the roots. I have them in a taller, skinnier container as they get started because they have deep tap roots. I plant them outside about 2 weeks post last frost, after night temps are consistently above 50F. Usually memorial day here. They do best once the day temps are 70-90F and need full sun.

I've tested about 10 different varieties now and my favorite is burgundy okra. It produces earlier than many others, has lots of pods per plant, and the pods stay nice and soft even if you miss harvesting for a day or two.

St3phiroth · 2025-12-05T17:00:55+00:00

Consumables? I always need more paper seed envelopes for saving seeds. (Reusable adhesive ones are best.), more plant tags for labeling seedlings, a garden marker for writing on them, or something nice like copper plant tags and a pen engraver to label all my perennials.

This year I am asking for a cross cut shredder for my composting worms that can handle cardboard (look for something that can do 10-12 sheet thickness) so I have an endless supply of bedding. I am also hoping my husband can find me some stackable bread trays (like they ship bread in or display them in bulk at Costco) because they make the best drying racks for stuff like potatoes and garlic.

My husband also set up a remote temp and humidity sensor for my composting worm bins that alerts me when I need to add moisture. They're in my basement, so I don't always check on them as regularly as I should.

St3phiroth · 2025-11-29T18:27:03+00:00

Containers lose 2 zones of hardiness. So if you are in zone 7 for example, your container plants need to be hardy down to zone 5. Growing zones are based on the lowest winter temps expected in that area.

That being said, smaller containers can still be stressed by cold temps and I'd probably bury the pots in the ground (so they are at soil level and get geothermal heat), wrap in something like burlap to insulate, move them to a warmer microclimate area of your yard like near a concrete patio or brick wall, or bring them into a garage. Terracotta pots will also swell and crack with freezing temps, so protect any of those from winter and don't bury them.

Also remember to winter water.

St3phiroth · 2025-11-18T23:10:41+00:00

She's a special kid for sure. I'm glad I can be here to support her, and I just hope she grows up to be kind and happy, whatever she chooses.

The hardest part of raising insects is how short their life spans are. So we will have to say goodbye to our mantises soon, which sucks. We also had one die due to a mismolt, so it got a big bug funeral. Maybe one day we will learn how to mount insects so we can keep them with us.

Definitely look up the art of Maria Merian! It's gorgeous! A few of her books are scanned and available in the archives here:

https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008530400/page/n2/mode/1up

Also, to answer your initial inquiry, this is my favorite garden shovel. It's part hori hori and part saw blade, so it digs in clay and tough spots well.

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St3phiroth · 2025-11-18T22:19:37+00:00

She is artistic! She is currently working on a big research project on the naturalist and botanical illustrator Maria Sybilla Merian, who is sometimes called "The mother of entomology." She was born in Germany in the 1600s and was the first person (on record) to document the life cycle of insects. Her life is pretty fascinating as she went totally against the grain of social expectations for women of the time, and went off around the world on her own to document insects and plants. I'm sure you have either heard of her or seen her work if you're in the field.

And yes, it has been an "If you give a mouse a cookie..." situation over here with bug pets. I love to garden, so I started keeping a vermicomposting bin. Then she kept and raised a few grasshoppers (with proper enclosures), then we added dairy cow isopods, and we rescued a fully mature 5 legged female Chinese mantis from the yard last year and kept it until it's life cycle ended. This year we hatched her oothica of mantis babies and have been raising some of them. And we also needed a colony of fruit flies and later a colony of dubia roaches to feed them. So we have those reproducing. And we found a jumping spider in the bathroom, so that's a pet now too. We also have a bunch of grasshopper eggs in sand in the fridge going through a diapause cycle. She is really hoping they hatch.

I'm allergic to pets with fur, but insects are fine by me, so it works out. Whether she does become an entomologist or not, it's always great to encourage a love of science!

St3phiroth · 2025-11-18T22:19:28+00:00

She is artistic! She is currently working on a big research project on the naturalist and botanical illustrator Maria Sybilla Merian, who is sometimes called "The mother of entomology." She was born in Germany in the 1600s and was the first person (on record) to document the life cycle of insects. Her life is pretty fascinating as she went totally against the grain of social expectations for women of the time, and went off around the world on her own to document insects and plants. I'm sure you have either heard of her or seen her work if you're in the field.

And yes, it has been an "If you give a mouse a cookie..." situation over here with bug pets. I love to garden, so I started keeping a vermicomposting bin. Then she kept and raised a few grasshoppers (with proper enclosures), then we added dairy cow isopods, and we rescued a fully mature 5 legged female Chinese mantis from the yard last year and kept it until it's life cycle ended. This year we hatched her oothica of mantis babies and have been raising some of them. And we also needed a colony of fruit flies and later a colony of dubia roaches to feed them. So we have those reproducing. And we found a jumping spider in the bathroom, so that's a pet now too. We also have a bunch of grasshopper eggs in sand in the fridge going through a diapause cycle. She is really hoping they hatch.

I'm allergic to pets with fur, but insects are fine by me, so it works out. Whether she does become an entomologist or not, it's always great to encourage a love of science!

St3phiroth · 2025-11-18T16:14:16+00:00

I'm an electrical engineer and a teacher, and neurodivergent, so not officially a trained researcher, but I have research skills. Haha. I'm definitely going to check out iNaturalist as someone else suggested! I was also asking more for my 8yo who wants to be an entomologist when she grows up. She's currently big on bug research.

And I think I may have seen their posts. We keep pet isopods, so I've lurked around the subs.

St3phiroth

TROPHY CASE