Winter indoor garden

[Rick]

Great point, Nell. Hybrids are sterile.

My green beens I allow to grow on a fence in the garden. I harvest all of them when they are about 4-5 inches long, blanch them for 3 minutes, ice them to stop the cooking process then freeze. I can harvest every other day for beans. If you have wild animals or dogs then you want to stay away from bush beans. They have little tiny hairs that will collect and hold animal hair. So if you dog walks through the garden your whole crop of bush beans will be ruined. Climbers don't have the hairs but most do have a string (hence, the name string bean) that runs down the seam of the bean. If you want until they are longer than 4 inches the string will be very tough and you will have to remove it from each bean.

Squash or cucumbers or zucchini can be harvested and you can dry and save the seeds if you like.

My tomatoes I buy the plants and I look for plants that will produce throughout the summer. I look for an early bearing variety, mid variety and late so I have tomatoes all season. I have fiberglass fence posts that I use in the garden and the tomatoes are staked to the posts to grow. You can also blanch tomatoes and freeze them as well for use in spaghetti sauce, etc.

Look for heirloom plants if you want some of the best flavors. Today's plants have been engineered to produce pretty fruit at the cost of taste. Heirloom plants are generally the older generation plants that might produce an uneven or uglier fruit but has a much better flavor.

[wareagle69]

how do i know if its a hybrid? some of the seeds say heritage on them but we bought all the seeds cheap like .33 cents a packet i see some going for 2.49 a packet whats the difference?

[Rick]

Heritage and Heirloom mean the same thing. Heritage generally applies to animals and Heirloom to plants but they are plants that have been around for a long time. You might have found that same plant in a garden in 1870 Virginia for example. While it has been grown to bring out certain traits such as disease resistance or a particular hardiness for a geographic area, they are sustainable. You should be able to harvest viable seeds from those plants.

I've seen definitions that say heirloom must have been passed down in the same family and others that say the plant type must be 50 or 100 years old. I just call it a grand old plant.

[wildWoman]

Wareagle, just a tip to transplant the seedlings when they get too big for the pot they're in. I'm very bad at this and always end up with crippled because soil-starved plants, and by the time I can put them in the greenhouse or garden they're so far behind that it takes them a long time to get up to speed. Problem is we don't have much space in the cabin to stash all these pots of seedlings.
One thing that we always do is we have a "trial" garden bed where we experiment with different veggies or varieties. Just a few plants, that way if the new stuff is a failure you're not stuck with gigantic amounts of it.

[Rick]

You will want to thin your seedlings to a couple of strong plants. For the tomatoes, you will want to thin again once you have one really strong plant. Start setting the seedlings outdoors about a week before you get ready to plant them so they can acclimatize. Bring them in at night if it's cold are chance of frost but let them sit out in the sun during the day. When you plant, just peel the moss of the bottom of the container or at least part of it and pinch some holes in the sides and plant the whole container. If you have any in plastic, of course, you'll have to remove them. But moss or other biodegradable containers will rot in the soil and pinching holes in the sides will give the roots a nice chance to take off long before the pot rots.

[Rick]

Here is a great link that will show you how to test your soil for soil type. That's important to know because different types of soil hold moisture better than others.

http://www1.umn.edu/webdd/prepcare/soiltype.html

For those in the States, you can have your soil tested at your County Extension Office. Now is a good time to do that. For those of you in Canada, I assume the Ministry of Agriculture will perform similar tests but I don't know that to be true. Just my guess.

Here's a link to all the Extension Offices in the US.

http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/

A link to the Master Gardener information in both the U.S. and Canada

http://www.northerngardening.com/extension.htm

[bulrush]

I tried doing a hydroponics experiment. I tried growing lettuce from seed on floating pieces of foam with holes in them, in my fish tanks. The lettuce sprouted fine but quickly grew too leggy, because it was too warm in the room (about 70F). So I tossed the experiment.

This room is closed from the rest of the house and has its own room heater. The tanks must be kept at least 70F so I could not cool down the room just for the lettuce.

[Rick]

70F? That should be fine for lettuce. Did the plants have access to sunlight or a grow light? If not, that might be why they became leggy. I would think leaf lettuce would do better hydroponically than head lettuce from a weight perspective. Just some thoughts.

[bulrush]

They did have their own light fixture but perhaps it wasn't bright enough. It was not a special "plant light" but a regular flourescent light for fish tanks.

[Rick]

Flourescent lighting is great for seedlings but mature plants need more light. You might try a 6500 Kelvin T5 floursescent bulb. They put out more light than standard flourescent bulbs and don't produce much heat.

[coldkill13]

WildWomen, and anybody else, How do you keep Moose out of the garden??? Some here use Irish Spring soap. My garden is a 1/4 mile from the cabin, and gets raided by Bears (Black and Brown) and Moose.

I live in Michigan so I really dont have much of a problem with the moose... However the deer, racoons, and mostly, groundhogs, love tearin up my precious plants! I find that the best way to keep these pesky critters out of the garden, that I work so hard on, is .223, or .22. Sometimes I use a little 12 guage or a 44 mag, but that seems like overkill to me. For moose I would recomend .308 or 30-06. If your looking to put em down in their tracks, you might try a .50 cal!

[coldkill13]

But seriously, I got bout 4 racoons, 4 groundhogs, and 2 oppossoms this summer. I put a live trap out with a little fish scraps in it overnight and catch racoons, never fails! I leave them out there till mornin and I set up with my .22 and a bipod and wait. Almost everytime, believe it or not, a groundhog will come out of its hole and taunt the trapped racoon first thing in the morning. I pop him and then I go pop the racoon and dump em in the compost pile. Leg traps, though illegal, work very well for racoons, thats when the .44 comes into play... My dad has some great racoon stories but I'll save them for later to conserve space! If you trap in the winter, you can keep the pelts, otherwise, the ticks and fleas wont jump off the body and you'll end up with lime disease ( Thats why I put em in the compost heap ). I would try eating these varmints but my pa wont let me for fear they'll make me sick. If you've ever read any Foxfire books, they're excellent books by the way, you may have seen recipes for the strange critters and their inards. If you have any recipes for me let me know! Also I am just getting into coyote trapping and hunting to try to thin them out. They're really taking a toll on the deer population and I can use all the advice I can get on exterminating them. And finally, I was wondering if anyone knows any ways of growing and harvesting yeast, yes, yeast. I want to get into wine-making but yeast is the one thing I dont know how to acquire on my own, if indeed it is possible. Any good wine recipes or tips on making wine are greatly apreciated as well!

[Rick]

Cold - That's cold. I don't kill anything I'm not going to eat. Coyote are a valuable part of the ecosystem (did that sound too treehuggy?) and will keep the deer in check. You have a deer problem in Michigan as does the rest of the country because 1. They've lost their natural predators and 2. There's an abundant food supply. Think twice about taking out the coyote. You'll have the deer in your garden, too. If it's small enough, put up a fence to keep the critters out.

I don't toss anything into the compost pile that isn't brown or green vegetation. It goes into my garden and I don't need rotted carcases in there.

For growing yeast, you'll need a medium to grow it in. Sourdough starter is just that. It's nothing more than a medium for the yeast to grow in. OR....there are a number of sources of wild yeast. Wild grapes and berries have a white powdery substance on them. That powder is actually yeast. Wild yeast. Here's a great article on wild yeast.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Moder...ild-Yeast.aspx

[coldkill13]

Rick, I think I may have left something out. We built a fence to keep the deer out of the garden but the racoons and groudhogs have dug under it. We'll put a rock in their hole and they dig a new one. It's them we shoot in the back yard, not the deer. The problem we have with the coyotes is that they're destroying our deer population. There's carcasses all over and the hunting is going down the drain. There is no wild rabbits, quail, pheasants, and very few squirrel left to hunt. The coyotes are outnumbering the deer and the DNR wont do anything about it. As for the varmints, haven't you ever had racoons tear up your garbage or groundhogs tear up your garden? Do you ever trap or shoot them and eat em? We used to live trap them and relocate them but at the current price of gas it aint even worth it. I would use them for fur or meat but, as I said, my old man wont let me cause of the diseases and ticks they carry. If you've got a better idea thats cost effective lemme know. But hey, I didnt come up with this name for no reason...

[Rick]

Touche'. Good name. The only problem I've had with raccoons is they raid my bird feeders. They must play baseball with them because they can tear them up faster than a squirrel. I have rabbits and raccoons that get in my garden but the generally don't do enough damage to warrant any intervention. I try to protect the young plants 'cause the rabbits will chop them right off.

[coldkill13]

Heck ya man. I cant even begin to tell you how much money I've lost on seeds and plants, especially the beans and tulips. Dang I gave up on the tulips now. Between the groundhogs and rabbits I'd come out of the house everyday all summer and find our flower garden rampaged so bad its as if the NFL had hosted a game in my front yard. I dont know why I even had flowers in the first place, I'm now replacing them with vegetables. And about the birdfeeders, I end up making a new one every six months or so. One day I put in the fat scraps from dinner and later on we hear some fumbling on the deck. I grabbed my gun and popped in a clip, turned on the outside light, and went outside to find the feeder in pieces with racoons scattering everywhere. I managed to get one of them, but thats not even the worst they've done. One time I went out fishin and caught some little rock bass and bluegills for my aquarium. I'd had my aquarium on the deck to wash it so I just stood it up, filled it up, and put in the fish and an airator in it. I forgot to cover it up and by morning our deck was covered in water, scales, and racoon sh*t! I was so ticked off---Thats when it became personal... I immediately set all my traps and went on the hunt. To this day I've never let em live that down.

[coldkill13]

Oh and on an interesting side note, It was that year that I'd got my highest kill score...

[wildWoman]

I live in Michigan so I really dont have much of a problem with the moose... However the deer, racoons, and mostly, groundhogs, love tearin up my precious plants! I find that the best way to keep these pesky critters out of the garden, that I work so hard on, is .223, or .22. Sometimes I use a little 12 guage or a 44 mag, but that seems like overkill to me. For moose I would recomend .308 or 30-06. If your looking to put em down in their tracks, you might try a .50 cal!

Electric fencing, electric fencing, electric fencing is all I can say regarding deer, moose, coyotes, wolves and bears. It works, doesn't cost much, is extremely low maintenance, and you don't have to go around maiming wildlife.

Hey coldkill, if you have problems with deer in the garden, I guess their numbers can't be all that decimated by coyotes. Could it be the ever-expanding human population that wants venison for dinner that's to blame?! Just a thought....

[trax]

There's an overpopulation of deer across North America because of the decimation of predators, not the other way around. Anyplace they say that coyotes are outnumbering deer never had deer in the first place.

[Rick]

See! Trax knows.