potato dig

This is the first year I've ever tried growing potatoes. From what I read it's a dead-simple crop to grow, and many people grow them in pots or bags -- perfect for me since I didn't have space in my small veggie beds for them.

They seemed like they were doing quite well this summer, with decent foliage and flowers, but not having any previous experience I didn't know for sure. As most of the foliage had faded by now, it was potato harvest time this weekend. Let's see how it went...

Read more »

Read more...

Prickly pot

Remember those innocent-looking brown paper bags full of dangerously prickly plants? The ones I got in a plant trade a couple of weeks ago?

Well I've finally gotten around to potting them up. That's the great thing about Opuntia pads: you don't have to hurry, as they'll keep for weeks or months. Perfect for my schedule recently.

Read more »

Read more...

Do I really need more of these?

Last weekend I took another trip to my friend Mike's garden. If you've been reading for a while, you know what happens when I go to Mikes: I dig up a bunch of plants, usually bamboo. Well I did get more plants, but they aren't bamboo.

They're specimens of the next two items on the list of plants I really have a lot of already: Elephant Ears, and bananas.

Read more »

Read more...

Coir: giving it a try

I'm a gardener who makes his own potting mix. It's not that I'm really fussy about the mix I use (I'm not), or that I don't think there are good bagged mixes available, because there are. I usually make my own mix for a few reasons, including being able to customize it for special needs, but usually to save money. I use a lot of potting mix during the course of a year, and mixing my own saves me some money. When I make the mix, the ingredients are typically bagged topsoil, Perlite, compost (leaf and stick mold), and peat moss.

Recently I've decided to reduce my use of peat, and have started trying a material that is not too common in St. Louis: coir.

Read more »

Read more...

Transplanting bamboos and Potting Mix

I've mentioned before that I grow a lot of different species and varieties of bamboo (about 50). Many of them are in pots, and since most of these are running bamboos which spread via rhizomes (underground stems), they can quickly fill up their pots.

Here are a few that need to be moved into bigger pots. How do you know when they're ready for a new pot?

Read more »

Read more...