Planning or planting?

Which are you doing right now? I am in zone 6a, and by my calculations, I am ok to start sowing broccolli indoors. And, I'm not that far from lettuce. Once, the hoop houses go up, I'm about a month away from peas, carrots, and spinach, too.

Anyone else excited about starting this early? Or, like me, are you scared to death that we will get a huge March snow? (Although, I guess that doesn't matter as much with a hoop house.)

I'm still planning. I'm planning on starting seeds in February, and direct sowing what I can in March. For my area for frost, they're saying April 27th as the last possible day of frost, which makes sense to me, we had a sudden temp drop in April one year and I lost most of my tomato plants, correction, all of them, that's when I stopped gardening for awhile.

I plan on planting the first weekend in May. A bit later than I want to, but I'm going to work on the whole hardening off thing with the seeds I am going to start. I'm actually having to replan a lot of things because with the beds I'm going to buy I'm tripling my garden space for less money. So I have 16 squares still to put stuff in, plus 3 planters.

I'm jealous of everyone who has fresh anything growing.

Both. I just put artichokes into pots in the kitchen and started chamomile, Echinacea and parsley using the winter sowing method. Stuck the container into my cold frame in box #4 just because there is lots of room still.

Deborah....counting down the days until President Lincolns birthday so I can plant a few squares of peas and fava beans.

Both!

We had a beautiful warm day today (mid-40s) so my son & I constructed a 2 x 24 bed along a fence line. I also planted broccoli, cabbage (head & savoy) & onion (seeds) in the greenhouse today.

Tomorrow it will be cold & snowy again.

Will start gathering the Mel's Mix ingredients soon.

Both here, too! I just re-seeded my mixed salad box and a new container of just lettuces. I still need to pot up my sprouted ginger; I hurt my back last week and the big container, as well as the big bag of mix I need to haul around, are still too much. But it's still putting out new leaves from inside its ziploc, so I think it will hang on a couple more days until I can get help from the lovely husband.

After about 9 months with this indoor garden, I now have a sense of how many things I can grow at once/how much I can fit on my plant shelves over the winter. In summer I'll be able to take advantage of the radiator surfaces again, for things beyond seed-starting (the radiators, with an old dampened towel over them, make really good DIY heat mats!) So, my next steps are to really map out where to put each plant that I want to try now, along with the existing ones that I can reasonably expect to keep.

The setup right now in the south-facing windows is one 6' wire unit in one window, and two shelves hung across the windows that have radiators, about 18" above one radiator and about 24" above the other (because that one runs hotter). I do have two more window shelves I could hang, one above each of those, but I'm sort of holding off because the two that I've got are both holding some pretty fantastically large (for small breeds, anyway) tomato and pepper plants, and I want to try a couple more tomato varieties. So I'm making an effort to really map it all out and see what I can fit.

I also have something like 8 basil varieties I am itching to plant, which may mean clearing the top of one of my bookcases and hanging some lights above it!

We are doing both. We live in 6b and going to start broccoli, cabbage and kohl rabi this weekend.

ribarr4 wrote:We are doing both. We live in 6b and going to start broccoli, cabbage and kohl rabi this weekend.

Is this the earliest you can start broccolli for your area? Or, the earliest you care to start broccolli? I am curious because my counting backwards has shocked me by telling me I can plant broccolli in 6a well back towards the beginning of January.

Awesome window idea. My old house had it's best windows on the north side. So, we never really grew anything inside. However, I have a fair amount of sunny south windows in our new house. You have me tempted now, El....lol.

BackyardBirdGardner wrote:

ribarr4 wrote:We are doing both. We live in 6b and going to start broccoli, cabbage and kohl rabi this weekend.

Is this the earliest you can start broccolli for your area? Or, the earliest you care to start broccolli? I am curious because my counting backwards has shocked me by telling me I can plant broccolli in 6a well back towards the beginning of January.

Starting it now is just the right timing to get it in the ground for spring. We have grow lights in the basement and a greenhouse so we could start them earlier, but between Nov. and the beginning of March things grow so slow without alot of energy using help and for us in the past broc. started too early has gotten spindly.

2/13/11

so much for my starting with a 3X7 by the looks of her list i need more like 10 4X4's oh well, i'm game jus lookin at cataloges checkin the puter for differant veriaties,

boog

My 3 - 4X4's are not going to be enough either

Tried to get into the garden today to level up the area I will be putting things. However, with all this snowmelt going on, it's just too muddy right now. It would be possible, but it is far from enjoyable. And, I have a few days before my deadline (Feb 25th). I should have no problems getting in there Tuesday-ish.

So, for this week, the MM goes in, the trellis goes up, and the hoop house gets built. After that, I wait a couple weeks and transplant what is started indoors. We'll see how well my aggressive nature works when I KNOW winter isn't over. I want to see how well this hoop house works with a good starting point of some moderately warm soil and some sunshine.

And, if it all fails.....I'm out about 4 weeks of watching seeds sprout and maybe $5 in seeds....and that's probably way overestimating the cost.

I have a few different things in my little indoor green house. The beds outside are still covered with 10 or more inches of snow! I think I may go out in the morning and scoop the snow off of them, it's all supposed to melt in the next few days and I don't want my new (late fall) MM to get too sloppy or have all the goodies leach out of it.

I will start seeds inside starting this week.
I have my salad beds planned. I am going to use a hoop cover so I am going to try starting my outside plantings a couple of weeks early. I will have the cover up around the 1st of April so the soil will start warming up then plant about the 20th of April.

I have tomatoes, peppers, basil all sprouted.

boog1 wrote:2/13/11

so much for my starting with a 3X7 by the looks of her list i need more like 10 4X4's oh well, i'm game jus lookin at cataloges checkin the puter for differant veriaties,

boog

Welcome to the forum, Boog.

SFG is addicting - it's like the old potato chip commercial - "No one can build just one." Living in Michigan you should still have plenty of time before warm weather to get started on those 10 4x4's.

Keep us posted on how your garden grows.

Welcome, Boog!

Planning (and catalog browsing) are such great fun! Let us know how it goes.

i think i've come up with a feisable plan where i only need to buld one 2x8 box for the shorter veggies ie: the other half's salad fixin's and make it a table top and place outside the back door she has fibromyalga, less walkin an stoopin an bendin on her part. the other taller stuff will fit in another 4x4 the FUN part is going to be figurin out how to support the watermelon,cantalope,zucinni,squash and cucombers all on a single trellis. that might take some extra thinkin.

boog1 wrote:the FUN part is going to be figurin out how to support the watermelon,cantalope,zucinni,squash and cucombers all on a single trellis. that might take some extra thinkin.

Love the idea of the TT. It's really nice to have all the salad fixin's growing near each other so you can make one pass in the evening and grab all you need quickly.

That is going to be one INTERESTING trellis, though. You're going to try to cram all that in one 4x4, too?? Hope you've got plenty of walkway around that area. Maybe a periscope, too.... Seriously, those are all huge space hogs.

Are Melon plants strong enough to support a fully grown melon on a trellis or would you need to give the melon support aswell. Something like a hammock.

jumiclads wrote:Are Melon plants strong enough to support a fully grown melon on a trellis or would you need to give the melon support aswell. Something like a hammock.

Depends on the size of the melon. Last year I had 5-6 pound rampicante squash hanging by their stems on a trellis. Supported them and then found didn't need it (any bigger though, I think you would.) Ymmv. However... I do suggest some sort of support or at least control. I tried shifting a vine, one of those big fruit came down, and it took the rest of the vine down on top of me with it. Quite a sight... glad the hubby was not there to see the squash plant eat me.

I was thinking that if the SFG was about 2 feet away from a wall you could do a sloping trellis up to the wall to take some of the weight off the vine.

was thinking of using the old pine 2/3 in. 8 foot logs from the tree i cut down a few years ago maybe making an X on the ends and 1 or 2 more times in the middle layin them in the top notch and using some old electic fence wire i got layin around to tie it all togather not sure what i'll use for the vines ta climb on yet.

boog

Megan wrote:...I tried shifting a vine, one of those big fruit came down, and it took the rest of the vine down on top of me with it. Quite a sight... glad the hubby was not there to see the squash plant eat me.

I would give a lot to see a picture of feet dangling from underneath a huge vine....I don't care who is underneath. That's just funny stuff. If it happened to me, I think I would yell to my wife to go get the camera because I "know a bunch of people that will get a kick out of this."

On a more serious question...I thought I read that some have seen 10+ pound melons hanging 7 feet in the air supported by no more than a EMT conduit trellis and nylon netting?

Yes, it was pretty darn funny. Especially so since I was a) flipping out because there were BUGS in those vines, and b) trying ever so hard not to thrash around out of fear of breaking same vines.

My understanding is that big melons have been grown quite high in the air with some netting support, yes. I got a spare box of nylon "footies" (ankle length nylon stockings) and used those as ties (and slings, til I realized I didn't really need the slings.) For really large fruit you'd probably want something that spreads out a little wider than pantyhose legs, though. They tend to curl up on themselves. That's what brought the vine down on me. (You could probably use the "seat" out of regular stockings, but given the cost of pantyhose these days, that's an expensive solution!)

Here are a couple of hanging squash before they got really big. You can see my attempt to support them... rather precarious, as it turned out. Silly me!

The thrashing about is killing me visually. Yelling, "bugs, bugs.....don't break vine, don't break vine!!" It's a quandry I tell ya. And, I can relate. Having to make choices between being more afraid/freaked out or destroying something you've worked so hard to create. I giggle just thinking about it. Not AT you...with you.

I thought about supporting things, but this year I am not wanting to tackle bigger melon-type fruits. Although the discussion came up with some friends the other night, and my mind may have been changed for me. They were trying to tell me I can't grow watermelon or pumpkins vertically.

I just tipped a beer back, thought about my All New SFG book and told them that I am taking all bettors at the window. I put on my green, see-through poker visor and told them I would be offering 3:1 on their money. If word spreads without youtubing it first, I may buy a new car next season.