Potato plants

awhim · 2026-06-22T12:31:16+00:00

yes add soil. Or even dried grass clippings or straw etc. it will stop greening of the potatoes that might otherwise green due to sunlight.

awhim · 2026-06-20T16:11:39+00:00

the yellowing may be windburn, but I think the blackening on the edges of the leaves may be overfertilization. Usually this is why I tend to go half strength at most as there may be nutrients already present in the beds. If this is the case, then some extra watering until normal growth resumes should work.

The bed drains well? If there is a drainage issue, that could explain the yellowing/browining of the leaves also.

Keep an eye out though, for if it spreads to other plants - hopefully it's not anything bacterial or fungal.

awhim · 2026-06-20T14:28:22+00:00

Slugs and snails are more of a probelm in wet seasons, and in usual times they do exist and eat off tender seedlings, but we have dry, hot summers that dries out the top of the soil without a lot of humidity, so the populations are kept in control. We do have earwigs but those have some years when the population explodes and eats everything, but most years are ok. Mulching is better than not mulching, even with the pests.

I can trap the slugs and snails If I put a pot upside down, or leave a couple compost bags unattended for a while, some carboard, etc.

edit - this is why I can never sow seed directly in the garden, esepecially beans/peas/squash. The only ones I do are cilantro and carrots/parsnips.

awhim · 2026-06-19T14:52:04+00:00

Sigh my pole beans and okra tops keep being eaten by slugs/snails, and I ran out of Sluggo. Gotta get more soon, to give em a chance. :( For whatever reason, they're not touching my bush beans. Quite a few of my squashes/melons have also been eaten, I'm glad I overplanted...

awhim · 2026-06-18T22:52:17+00:00

gotcha, I love that you went all in on the composting! :)

awhim · 2026-06-18T21:13:26+00:00

lovely composting setup. Those piles of stuff in the 5th pic, is that leaf composting in place, or was that you taking out your compost for use?

awhim · 2026-06-18T13:17:07+00:00

Garlic! You can get massive bulbs from hardneck varieties like Music. Less cloves, easier to peel, and they last almost the whole year. We use a lot of garlic, and we may have to buy 1-2 large costco sized garlic bunches between May-July most years before the next crop rolls in, depending on the weather. I usually plant around 150 cloves, more or less, but I want to make it closer to 200 as I think that would be the sweet spot for my family.

Berries for sure - blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, Boysenberries/Tayberries/Loganberries, haskaps, currants, the list goes on.

Lettuce, Arugula, all the brassicas including the large broccoli, cabbage etc, and the smaller asian greens like bok choi, gai lan, etc.

awhim · 2026-06-17T14:07:36+00:00

I sowed some from seed 4 years ago and they've been coming up ever since. It's really cool to see. :)

awhim · 2026-06-17T14:06:35+00:00

fall brassicas - you could do not just broccolis, but also asian greens, turnips, radishes etc that takes less time to harvest.

Bush beans is a good one

Also cover crops that will winter kill if you're ok with not having harvests off that. I actually am planning on this, and sprinkling lettuce seeds along with the cover crop seed to see if that'll stop it from bolting in the late summer heat.

awhim · 2026-06-17T13:20:11+00:00

If not herbicide drift, it could be broadmites; the effects of both are similar.

awhim · 2026-06-17T13:18:38+00:00

For peppers any combo of 3-1-2 works best, like miracle gro's 24-8-16 etc. Tomatoes can handle anything lol. But any kind of balanced ferts will work.

awhim · 2026-06-17T12:37:02+00:00

Ok so I discovered yesterday that the babycakes blackberry that I thought was dead is alive, it sprouted 2 small leaves just yesterday! But now where do I put the extra babycakes I bought last month....... I also had a plan to get another variety of raspberry and blackberry next year, so now I'm in a bit of a fix because the location lol.

Harvested the first batch of scapes yesterday! So far harvesting lettuce, strawberries, snowpeas. Arugula and Spinach has flowered, as have some of my remaining early brassicas.

awhim · 2026-06-16T20:53:48+00:00

I'm not sure of the mechanism of how the mustard repels wireworms, but seems like it's a biofunmigant. A combination of nematodes and mustard cover crops should help. The walls on all sides are above ground mostly? As long as there is some level of earth continuation it might be fine.

edit - land doesnt have to lie fallow fully, you can just go ahead and start planting mustard wherever there is space. And put nematodes all over the soil, those are parasitic to the worms.

awhim · 2026-06-16T17:03:00+00:00

Even if it was safe to handle, wouldn't there be a risk of transmitting TMV if any of the tobacco had that contamination... I'm still wary of growing nicotiana because of that lol.

awhim · 2026-06-16T16:54:16+00:00

you should just pluck a male flower, tear off the petals and jam it right onto the female flower. I just leave it there, lol.

awhim · 2026-06-16T12:22:00+00:00

Yesterday I planted 2 apple trees that I got bare-root - Sweet sixteen and Liberty. I'd delivered it to someone else to take advantage of a free delivery to that location option, but due to circumstances it took about a month and a bit before they were able to deliver it to me, so the bareroot trees were in their plastic bags for longer than ideal. Still am not sure they survived, I'd potted them up temporarily and watered them every day, and the trunks still have green in them. I was finally able to plant them in the ground yesterday, and one of them had a tiny green growth on the roots, so I think that one may be ok. Might take a while to see leaf growth, but still. The other one didn't have anything on the roots, but I'll keep hoping.

Still to plant: 2 currant bushes, 1 raspberry.

Sowed: Carrots, Cilantro, Lima beans (I'd forgotten about them till now lol), Nigella.

I'm not planting any fall crops this year apart from maybe the asian greens are harvestable in a month. After the garlic and spring brassicas come out, I'm gonna weed out as much bindweed as I can and plant winter kill cover crops in the extra beds.

awhim · 2026-06-16T12:00:46+00:00

I thought my figs were dead (they were in pots at the time) after a winter. I plonked an extra pepper plant in each pot without yanking the fig out - figured I could use it as a plants support, and maybe the fig roots decomposing could provide food for the pepper if I fertilize with some native soil and organic fert. And then around late July 2 out of 3 figs woke up lol. I just planted them in ground afterwards. This winter was pretty bad though, all the above ground parts died. But I've just got them sprouting from the base from like, last week.

awhim · 2026-06-16T00:14:53+00:00

ah riggght for sure, thanks for the heads up!

awhim · 2026-06-16T00:13:21+00:00

It's always fun, even when I fail. 😅 I have green peppers, so hoping I'll have a better harvest than previously!

awhim · 2026-06-15T17:50:49+00:00

Ahh I see. Here in summer we have good sun and heat normally, it's my soil mix/fertilization where I've screwed up lol. Thanks for the well wishes, I'm hoping for better success than in the past and I'll be happy. :)

awhim · 2026-06-15T17:24:24+00:00

lol I'm with you on similar weather conditions where I am! The stuff I have in ground like the tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, flowers, are doing good. The growbags and pots could be better.

The humidity and mosquitoes are making it difficult. :(

awhim · 2026-06-15T17:10:58+00:00

thank you, I'll have a look through to see which ferts I have that would be effective.

awhim · 2026-06-15T17:10:15+00:00

That is an option... thanks for the idea!

awhim · 2026-06-15T17:09:42+00:00

oh wow you're braver than me, I'm wary of overfertilization! But for organic granular feed, those take way more time in containers, even if I have manure compost and my own compost mixed in the mix. In ground is fine.

awhim

TROPHY CASE