Boron - how do I add boron to the soil? Fertilizer?

ETA: and I'm going to try and be more careful how I plant seeds next year - this year I planted beets too close. I guess I'm still learning.

I'm not going to bother with tomatoes or cucumbers next year - instead grow more turnip, lettuce, and carrots. I think I'll try growing lettuce in my small greenhouse, and see if they grow faster - and then plant second and even third crops.

My second crop of lettuce is doing really well, the second crop of carrots is coming along very slow.

[ 25 August 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
Boron - how do I add boron to the soil? Fertilizer?

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Moreover, adequate Phosphorus in the soil promotes early plant growth and brings about maturity quicker, for those plants that require hotter conditions.

Hang on will look for a link or 2...okay here is one on Phosphorus

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/DC6795.html

Here is one about overcoming Boron lacks, it also details that Calcium is needed in equal amounts to Boron.

http://www.basic-info-4-organic-fertilizers.com/boron.html

Though I do not agree with their promotion of using Borax to put Boron in soils, such a small amount is needed that applying Borax to soil can render it sterile, as too much is used usually.

Yesterday we pickled two bushel basket full of beets. Beets are the best food in so many ways, plus they have an exciting finish in most people's bodies.

Our corn is late this year, but it is in good shape. Tomatoes are a jungle but they have been very slow this year to bloom and ripen. Not enough heat. Last year it was the exact opposite, not enough rain and too much heat.

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Yesterday we pickled two bushel basket full of beets. Beets are the best food in so many ways, plus they have an exciting finish in most people's bodies.

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Beets are great. Big production for little input, plus they're nutritious.

Once when I was a kid, after a visit to the loo the day after a big feed of beets, I thought I was haemmoraging...then realised what was going on.

Eaten freshly baked or cold!

- Plant after all danger of frost has past or when the soil has warmed to 21-27°C (70-80°F) as seed will not germinate in cool soil.

- Full sun and a soil pH of 5.5-6.5. Moderate feeders; mix plenty of organic matter into soil as squash prefers a rich loamy soil of good fertility and moisture retention. Even and sufficient soil moisture is essential. Benefits from mild feedings with a fertilizer high in phosphorous to initiate fruit formation.

That's going to be a good challenge. They obviously would have to be grown in a greenhouse here because the outdoor soil is almost always cool.

'Natural' farmer Masanobu Fukuoka passes away at 95

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a) If I planted a bulb of garlic I bought at the store, would it grow more garlic?

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a) If I planted a bulb of garlic I bought at the store, would it grow more garlic?

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That's where I got my seed stock from.

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I've noticed that garlic bulbs, if you keep them long enough in the kitchen, start sprouting.

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Of course they do, they're alive. You can take a carrot out of your fridge and plant it too. You won't want to eat it, though, but you might get carrot seeds.

[ 28 August 2008: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
A couple of my garlic plants have seed bulbs growing at the top of their stems...

If I plant these little cloves will they grow?

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Those little "mini cloves" are called "bulbils". They are the seeds of the garlic plant, although garlic is usually propagated vegetatively by planting cloves which produce a bulb in one year.

A planted bulbil will produce a small clove-like bulb in one year, and a proper garlic bulb in the second year. This is rarely done but it is done when you have a small amount of seed garlic and you want to grow out your seed rapidly.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
A supplementary to al-Q's question - I've noticed that garlic bulbs, if you keep them long enough in the kitchen, start sprouting.

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Last years crop will start to sprout now. If you have a lot of sprouting galic I have a good recipe for garlic soup. This years crop should have been harvested in early summer and should be in good condition until next summer.

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a) If I planted a bulb of garlic I bought at the store, would it grow more garlic?

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It would but a better choice would be a hard necked garlic which is the type usually grown in more northern latitudes.

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b) Can you grow garlic indoors, or in containers on a balcony?

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I've always wanted to grow and make horseradish, neither of which is supposed to be difficult. I find most store boughten horseradish to be either weak and tasteless or bitter.

On the same line, I really want to make sauerkraut, too. We've got a over a thousand cabbage to get rid of, so why not experiment? Anyone make their own sauerkraut?

On the preserve front, I'm beginning to dry jalapenos in the greenhouse. I love the flavour of slightly immature jalas in sauces and chilli. Jalapenos don't dry the best (food dehydrator helps) but cayenne peppers preserve really well.

I planted a ginger root that was sprouting, once. It was a cool houseplant until the cats gnawed on it.

I made ratatouille last night with my own eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and herbs. It was lovely.

I'm going to harvest some brussels sprouts this weekend -- thinking of pairing them with some roast beef and yorkshire pudding as it's going to be cool and rainy Sunday and Monday. I should have some home-grown spuds and carrots, too.

[ 29 August 2008: Message edited by: Timebandit ]

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Oh, yes, I've had that happen, too, Michelle. Also tomatoes. And I had tons of "volunteer" tomatoes and pumpkins in the beds where I spread household compost last spring.

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Yup, my garden's always covered in potato sprouts that grow from the peels I toss back there.

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Originally posted by Farmpunk:
Seriously?

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Yes. Did you think I was makng this up? The guy specialises in producing animal feed these days.

I planted Straight 8's in containers this year. They certainly aren't producing like those Orient Express cucumbers.

I picked a dozen rutabagas for myself and some carrots. I can't believe I still have about 25 rutabagas in my garden!

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I'm going to harvest some brussels sprouts this weekend ...

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I love brussels sprouts. I par-boil them and then toss them with olive oil and coarse salt and roast them in a hot oven until they're starting to caramelize. Squeeze a lemon over them just before serving and they're so delicious.

Unlike boom boom, I love winter (or autumnal) squash. Don't forget to use some pieces of it in couscous.

This is our second go-round with b-sprouts. Last year I tried them from seed and they didn't get quite big enough. We got bedding plants this year, and I'm hoping to get a couple of meals out of them.

They look really cool growing in the garden, too.

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So, Mr. President, no doubt you need radioactive iodine to treat hyperthyroidism. But if your Mother were preparing breakfast on Air Force One she would make sure you ate grapefruit, melon, peaches, oranges, bananas or rhubarb all loaded with potassium.

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Originally posted by Farmpunk:
I've always wanted to grow and make horseradish, neither of which is supposed to be difficult. I find most store boughten horseradish to be either weak and tasteless or bitter.

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Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana, syn. Cochlearia armoracia) is a perennial plant of the Brassicaceae family, which also includes mustard, wasabi, and cabbages. The plant is probably native to southeastern Europe and western Asia, but is popular around the world today. It grows up to 1.5 metres (five feet) tall and is mainly cultivated for its large white, tapered root.

The horseradish root itself has hardly any aroma. When cut or grated, however, enzymes from the damaged plant cells break down sinigrin (a glucosinolate) to produce allyl isothiocyanate (mustard oil), which irritates the sinuses and eyes. Once grated, if not used immediately or mixed in vinegar, the root darkens and loses its pungency and becomes unpleasantly bitter when exposed to air and heat.

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According to Greek mythology, the Delphic Oracle told Apollo that the horseradish was worth its weight in gold.

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How about Broccoli and Brussel sprouts? I'd love to try them here, but I don't klnow anyone here on the Quebec coast who has luck with them. I think I'm the first person here to grow spinach.

ETA: Veseys says: Broccoli loves cool weather and will head prematurely in warm temperatures.

[ 30 August 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
Tomatoes are still, green though. I'll have to get that Fried Green Tomatoes recipe.

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You're not alone, Boom Boom. Last year in an allotment garden in Toronto? Lots of tomatoes
This year? green tomatoes. Same day, two different years. Oh, and the jalapenos did absolutely nothing. Plants are the same height they were at the end of May.

So yup, Boom Boom, time for fried green tomatoes, green tomato and lemon marmalade, green tomato chutney, green tomato jam, or even green tomato pie.

Yup, I'm starting to look at recipes for what to do with lots of green tomatoes.

Oh... and if you are going to get a hard frost and still have green tomatoes, tear up the whole plant and hang it upside-down in the basement. My parents swear by that method to enable the rest of the tomatoes to ripen.

[ 02 September 2008: Message edited by: Digiteyes ]

Buy organic mung beans to make sure they will sprout - Boom Boom can probably find those in Sept-Iles.

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Originally posted by lagatta:
This has nothing to do with any specific seasoning of gardening, but Boom Boom and anyone living in a remote location might look into growing sprouts. I've been sprouting mung beans - it is fun and they are very nutritious. Much fresher and tastier than storebought.

Buy organic mung beans to make sure they will sprout - Boom Boom can probably find those in Sept-Iles.

As for tomatoes, you can't really eat them cold as is, but some tinned dice tomatoes are nice enough now to use in preparations like taboulé. Seems tomatoes are a good thing to eat to protect against prostate cancer.

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Far from being niche, our research shows that as the price of oil increases, organically farmed food is the most profitable option

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I planted a store bought garlic bulb years ago, and still have feral garlic growing in what has become a very neglected herb garden.

Never plant thyme.....

We had an accidental tomato plant come up in the flower garden this year. I left it alone to grow. Now we have a daily supply of cherry tomatoes. For those who like those sorts of things. I'm not a fan of raw tomatoes. Texture is all wrong. Wrong I tell you! Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Speaking of wrong, brussel sprouts are very easy to cook wrong. There seems to be a narrow window between under and over done. I suspect the enemies of brussel sprouts have probably never had them cooked just right. My wife--Morgan Fairchild-- was treated to bug infested brussel sprouts as a child, and no amount of cajouling, pestering, nagging, or promises to be fullfilled later in the boudouir can convince her to try them in her adulthood.

So we are a sproutless household.

Ever since Diazinon was taken off the market I've been looking for ways to stop onion maggots. My organic gardening experiment this year included planting marigolds and nasturtiums with the onions. I had five onions with maggots in an area without flowers, while the rows that had the flowers had no maggots. One problem was that the nasturtiums grew too well. Some made five-foot vines. They were so big they crowded out the onions. I think I'll stick to marigolds next year, as they're more compact.

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Oh... and if you are going to get a hard frost and still have green tomatoes, tear up the whole plant and hang it upside-down in the basement. My parents swear by that method to enable the rest of the tomatoes to ripen.

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I always pick my tomatoes green and leave them in boxes. I process them as they ripen.

Been quite a year for insects. I've seen types I rarely see and a few I have never seen before. And the insect predators are having a ball. I have pet orb spiders, and I'm tempted to steal the egg sac of a black and yellow argipore I saw at my niece's place a few weeks ago. I know, I know, I should probably just leave it alone... but they are sooo cool looking....

The weather people insist that we are going to have lots more rain starting this evening. I thought Hannah had tracked east of the Appalachians, and up toward Nova Scotia, but I guess it got over the mountains.

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
I always pick my tomatoes green and leave them in boxes. I process them as they ripen.

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Where do you place the box of green tomatoes? In the basement, or near sunlight?

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
I suspect that Boom Boom is going to be getting a lot of rain later this week.

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Geez, I hope not, as I just got started on outdoor painting at the church and my home. I spent a full day scraping the old paint off the church bridge, and another day painting it, and I have at least another full day of painting at the church to go - and no one's helping. Sometime this week I have to get started on painting all the trim on my woodshed and garage, and then the bridge on the house.

My beets are finally a decent size - I made the mistake of planting my beets (and carrots) too close together, so I had to go in and thin them all out a few weeks ago. I must have at least 50 beets and 60 carrots to pull up, not to mention I still have 20 rutabagas and 20 heads of green lettuce to harvest.

Next year I'm to be more careful about spacing everything out more.

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Originally posted by Bookish Agrarian:
...they may not ripen but it is the cheapest way to make green tomato chutney.

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My mother made the best green tomato chutney ever, but she died in 1989 and I didn't think to get her recipe before she passed on.

ETA: This is close to her green tomato chutney recipe, I believe.

And this classic Fried Green Tomatoes recipe looks fantastic!

ETA: I love southern cookin', from my days in Virginia, Florida, Georgia, and New Mexico. Here's a page of Green Tomato Recipes from the glorious south!

[ 14 September 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Where do you place the box of green tomatoes? In the basement, or near sunlight?

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I keep mine in the basement. We used to keep them in the upstairs crawl spaces on the farm.

Tonight the salad consisted of Cos and Buttercrunch lettuces, red onions, the sole green (although it was black) pepper I grew, tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic and Italian parsley.

The only non-garden ingredients were olive oil from Lebanon and lemon juice from Iran that I bought from the Pakistani Halal store in town.

[ 17 September 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
Question: is it really necessary to pull up all my veggies before the first frost hits? I'd like to leave my carrots, beets, rutabagas and lettuce in the garden until at least October. Can't they all survive the occasional frost?

[ 17 September 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Rutabagas are a sneaky word for turnip, isn't it? I think they grow turnips in England all through their "winter", and a number of other vegetables under cold frames.

Hmm. I seem to remember watching this or that show, which made me think that 19th century gardners knew a lot more about this kind of stuff than we do today.

I've tried using a plain plastic jug filled with water as a kind of "battery"-- the water would keep the enclosure warm during the night, but I found it didn't work too well. But that kind of heat storage might work if you tweeked it a bit: aluminum cans instead of plastic? Paint them black?

Hmm. I'm not working five days a week anymore, maybe I'll have time to fart around with stuff to see how much I can mitigate the cold weather in the garden.

I've got a couple of old texts and they do talk a lot about these techniques. I've found Mother Earth News a great web source. They have all of there mags online from the beginning.

A few things I remember... I think the south face of a brick wall will give the soil within a yard of it the same climate as the unsheltered ground 300 miles south. Often they'd train exotic fruit trees to grow against the wall-- I think the term for that is called 'spillating'.

There was also the social pressure-- in the age before mechanical refrigeration-- to have a table with fresh food all year round. Not so much from a nutrition aspect, but from an outdoing the Jones' perspective. Well, maybe not the Jones'-- Jones is a Welsh name, and all yer Welshmen were easy to lord over because they were stuck at the bottom of a coal mine fueling the industrial revolution for which they got paid a pittance. Ah, the bitterness of a Celt matches that of a rutaturnip.

One other thing they did was to dig a hole in the ground and build a stone dome over it, and fill it with ice during the winter. The ice would keep, along with the food stored with it, all summer.

I seem to remember, on a trip around Quebec city, "cold cellars" dug into the rocky bluffs across from the farm houses whose long skinny fields stretched down to the St. Lawrence. Most of the cold cellars were separated from the house by the road.

I initially had plans this year to be able to put up some cold protection for my tomatoes to extend the season but they have grown way to big for how I planted them and it's not going to work. It's been a bit weird for me this year because I've been dealing with problems coming from plants that have grown twice and sometimes thrice the size that they grew last year. I've got two tomato plants that have broken the 8ft mark. I measured my squash plant vine again today and it's now 35ft long. Never seen anything like it in my life.

Crap. I just remembered I forgot to look for paw paw fruit this year! I was obsessed by it last year.

[ 17 September 2008: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
I love just about every fruit I've ever tasted, the exception being kiwi fruit - that one doesn't do anything for me.

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
Speaking of fruit, I think strawberries are overrated. I like raspberries and blueberries more.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Kiwi, btw, has more potasium than bananas.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
So do lima beans. I happen to love them, but nobody else I know does.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Have you tried sampling Kiwi at various stages of ripeness, Boom Boom?

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I think the kiwis we get here are always overripe.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
So do lima beans. I happen to love them, but nobody else I know does.

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Which isn't the best treatment for most vegetables, from either a nutritional or taste perspective.

Fast forward to my separation years ago, when I had to not only learn how to cook regular meals, but regular meals for three daughters who have different dietary requirements than middle aged health indifferent males. One of the firt things I did was purchase one of those metal steamers that sit in a pot. It really helps with the vegetables, both in terms of taste and nutrition.

In fact, the last time I had lima beans was with this method, and they were great.

Not to malign my mom's cooking. I think she did wonders given the knowledge of the day, and considering the conditions she grew up in. AND I have never had Yorkshire pudding as good as she made it.

[ 19 September 2008: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
My mother's cooking. My mom was a war bride. She married youngish, and suddenly, so never had cooking skills handed down to her. She used to say that she didn't even know how to boil water when she arrived in Canada.

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My mother's youngest sister married an American serviceman stationed in post war England, and came to the U.S. with him after his commitment to Uncle Sam expired, sometime in the late 50's.

Anyway, when she'd come to Canada to visit, she'd buy a box of "Lion's Golden Syrup", a British product that was not available in the U.S. I think it was just run of the mill corn syrup in an ornate tin that reminded her of home.

Before the war, my dad worked as a delivery boy for a local butcher. He learned how to pick out a good cut of meat from the dross in the grocery stores, or got the butcher to make special cuts. And there were trips to local abatoirs from time to time. So, we always had superlative roast beef dinners.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
"Lion's Golden Syrup"

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A lot of kids used to call it "Lions" because it has a picture of a lion on it.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
My wife inherited her mother's Robin Hood Flour cook book that was published in the 1940's. The recipes are good, and I think it reflects the stuff available in the stores at the time. I would never have thought of a cook book being an historical reference, I should give it a close looking over, just to see what is familiar and unfamiliar.

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It's the freakin' lion on the label that makes me think "Lion's Golden Syrup."

I've never gotten into putting peanut butter on my banana sandwiches. I think my banana sandwiches are just comfort food for me because my dad made them for me as a kid, and I think he didn't like peanut butter on his banana sandwiches and so I grew up being used to them without.

I'll bet it's probably good, though. I still like toasted peanut butter and jam sandwiches, though! (Preferably strawberry or blueberry jam!)

[ 19 September 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

[ 19 September 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]