View Full Version : Exercising my "risk muscle"
Going out on a limb this year and am going to try to grow sweet potatoes -- in COLORADO --- just on a dare. I love those darned things, and this seems to be a good article:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/growing-sweet-potatoes-zm0z11zsto.aspx#axzz2QAn4k41D
Are you taking any chances in your garden this year? Just to see if you can do it?
I took a chance by starting seeds a couple of weeks ago despite the fact that the weather hadn't turned yet. I will probably lose all those seeds and have to start over, since it doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.
I ordered some blackberry bushes that are reported to be hardy to zone 4. We are in the northern part of zone 4 and most blackberries are only hardy to zone 5, so we'll see how that goes.
fidgiegirl
4-12-13, 7:12pm
Rosemary, nooooooo! Us too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We should start a new batch. Good thoughts! Good thoughts!!!!!
I've lost all but one of my Red Pepper seedlings and all of my coriander :(
Not sure if I've watered them too much or just not enough sunshine. Although on a couple of nice days i put hem outside on the balcony and maybe the wind was just too strong for them. I'll have to buy a couple of small pepper plants plants when I return from vacation next week and replant the coriander. Everything pops up nice from their seeds , I am just murder on plants :(
I started all my tomato seeds in February and just planted them in the ground this morning. I bought 2 four foot grow lights so I could start my seeds indoors.
I work as a volunteer in a food bank garden and started all their peppers in late January. They have done really well, I was surprised since I had never started my own seeds. Since then I started some different pumpkins, melons and squashes; some for the food bank and some for my garden. The food bank garden gets planted on Tuesday and I will be happy to not have to water plants daily.
Can't wait until my tomatoes produce.
I work as a volunteer in a food bank garden . . .
Birdie, this is a really good idea. Did you start it, or was it already in place? I am actually going to volunteer at our food bank at the end of the month, but it's in a heavily urban area. I'm going to ask if they've considered doing this.
DH has had asparagus in cups all winter so I'll try planting those. The garden guides say now is fine to plant them but I always get nervous when it's supposed to be down in the teens or maybe even single digits (again!) this week. Asparagus should do fine in CO, but the rosemary I planted last summer, well, it liked the summer! But the folks at the nursery chuckled at me when I was asking whether to cut off the dead-looking stalks after this winter. They also recommended watering it, but considering I saw nearly feral rosemary in abandoned-house yards in Phoenix that were doing FINE I will take that with a grain of salt. I did heavily mulch the thing and it's in the hottest, sunniest location possible in the yard, so we'll see if it revives this summer.
My main experiment is with tomatoes: I got an heirloom mixed packet of seed last year and saved the seed both from the tomatoes we got and from the CSA, so I have a bunch of tomatoes labeled such things as "large purplish slicing" and "small yellow pear-shaped". Eventually I hope to do what farmers have done for thousands of years, and get some that have acclimated well to this area of the country...esp ones that survive light frosts. We seem to always get a light frost (or even snow!) in September or early Oct followed by 2-3 weeks of nice warm weather before winter.
The food bank garden where I volunteer had just started when I heard about it. One of the community groups donated the materials to build raised beds and a Boy Scout troop helped fill the beds with soil. A local nursery donated the plants. The food bank partners with a church across the street, and the church had some spare land they loaned for the garden. It is quite a community effort to support the garden.
Another food bank garden in another town teaches gardening and nutrition classes and if the students complete a specific program, they are given a raised bed (and everything involved) for free. The idea is to teach people how to feed themselves. Kind of the 'teach a person to fish' concept.
No risks for us. :) Mind you, we're pretty staunch in the choices we make Re: vegetables we plant.
P.S. Good on you, Puglogic, for trying!
RosieTR, I grow Sasha's Altai tomatoes here at 7500 ft (I think you're higher?) and they are amazing. Keep going even when the temps at night drop down into the low 30's. I'm on my third generation of growing them, so they're really well acclimated to where we are...tougher than I am, for sure.
Birdie, good for you with the food bank garden! We're opening our first community garden this season, and three plots are set aside for the local food bank, with additional stipends available from them for individual plots. We'll be doing workshops and classes next month to help them everyone have a chance at a good harvest.
Puglogic,
Good luck with your Community garden and the food bank plots. Workshops and classes are a great way to help others improve their gardening success. There are a lot of community gardens in the area where I live; more people are interested in gardening these days. The Master gardener program that I am apart of gives 10 workshops a year, so we do a lot of training. We have a lot of repeat customers who come back with their success stories. It's wonderful to hear.
I saw on pinterest that you can grow carrots in containers so I'm going to try it. I love carrots but they just don't do well in our yard. Anyway I always start out enthused about a garden but it doesn't last too long. So I think I am just going to grow a few things in containers and see how that goes.
Blackdog Lin
4-15-13, 9:57pm
Very neat to hear of everyone trying new gardening ideas. That's how we learn, isn't it?
We've always had an extensive summer garden; last year for the first time ever we planted a late cool-weather area of broccoli and romaine and they did wonderfully. So this year we planned early and have some broccoli, romaine and Brussels sprouts in already (all we have in so far other than the onion sets and the radish seeds.) I am also ready to order (if I can't find them locally) some snow pea seeds - something else we've never tried to grow, but something I could really use a frozen supply of during the year. So those are the "risk muscles" I'm gonna flex this season.
It's been a good-news, bad-news sort of gardening spring in our location. Good news: the rain has cooperated, in that we got lucky in getting the garden tractor-tilled just before the big rain of last week, and then got the bedding plants in after the garden had dried, but before the rain of last night.
Bad news: it's way too cold to be having fun with it; and we now have plants in the ground and it's supposed to get near freezing later this week. We'll be out there with buckets and coffee cans by Wednesday.....
Bad news: it's way too cold to be having fun with it; and we now have plants in the ground and it's supposed to get near freezing later this week. We'll be out there with buckets and coffee cans by Wednesday.....
Snow in the Thursday forecast here. :sick:
New house, new garden for us this year so everything is an experiment of sorts. A shade bed under a big oak tree is one. I'm going to try mixing several varieties of lettuce in with some shade loving flowers to see if it stays cool enough there to keep the lettuce from bolting. Like Lin we're doing a double crop, spring and fall, of cooler weather veggies in a pretty good sized bed. I usually buy tomato bedding plants, but this year also have several heirloom seeds starting inside along with some long maturity crops like watermelon, ghost peppers (Bhut Jolokia), habaneros and several herbs.
Ooooh, Bhut Jolokia. Hot stuff. We're not that tough LOL. But we are growing this interesting-sounding and pretty heirloom: http://www.rareseeds.com/fish-pepper/
My husband has decided to try to grow a pepper garden this year on the hot side of the house. His first real try at gardening!
I got my carrot seeds. No I need to find a contain to grow them in. I think I am going to grow green peppers in containers also.
I am kind of worried about my lettuce and radishes. Woke up to a dusting of snow this morning. And a low temp last night below freezing. At least the wind gusts did not blow the containers over! Oh, well, I have more seeds so I can easily re-plant.
Ooooh, Bhut Jolokia. Hot stuff. We're not that tough LOL. But we are growing this interesting-sounding and pretty heirloom: http://www.rareseeds.com/fish-pepper/
My husband has decided to try to grow a pepper garden this year on the hot side of the house. His first real try at gardening!
We use lots of habaneros so the ghost peppers are just the next step in our quest for the ultimate curry. Don't think I'll be snacking on them in the garden, however. The fish peppers sound cool. You have to let us know how they taste pug!
I am so excited! I was sure my lettuce & radishes had either been drowned, or frozen due to the horrible weather we've had. But I just checked and there are sprouts coming up! Yeah!
Thanks for the tomato variety, Pug! I'm along the front range so about 5000 ft. I'm impressed you're able to grow at 7500. Also the hot peppers which ha ha like heat.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2025 vBulletin Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.