Oh yeah

Interests Gardening
#1

Spring is here, I’m going to have to mow soon… my garden is looking better, I’ve got sprouts and a few small lettuce…

So far I’ve planted… and a lot of this stuff has sprouted, some of the lettuce is getting bigger, I can see it out my window now.

Tons of lettuce in about 4-5 different spots.
Lots of onions
A good sized patch of Arugula.
A patch of Kale
A patch of Alfalfa
Peas
Half a raised bed of carrots, with the rest spinach, a row of the colorful swiss chard and some broccoli in a back corner section.

Just dug up the bed along the house for more swiss chard… a half hour of work and it will be ready to plant. I’m going to grow the colorful type chard mostly this year, bright lights I think it’s called.

What other cool weather crops do I need to plant? I’m going to be planting some potatoes soon, I’ve about got that spot ready, what do I plant by potatoes though?

1 Like
#2

You seem to be a week or so ahead of me temperature wise. I am getting some really nice weather the last few days, 65 and sunny.

I never planted potatoes but I am going to give it a try. It should be nice to have potatoes that are not all beat up.

Along with the regular stuff I am thinking of planting a pineapple, a coconut tree and and some sugar cane. Novelty stuff.

#3

From what I understand they used to grow some nice Tobacco up yer way.

#4

They still do, cigar type stuff. If I was still a smoker I would be growing my own or doing it the way Billdo does.

#5

I’ve been preparing this potato spot for a couple weeks… I’ve got a big bed of loosish soil, I might add some more leaf compost to it still. I’ve tried to grow them in bags of leaves and stuff before but never got many potatoes out of them . The ones I did get though were awesome and like 1000 times better tasting than the store potatoes.

Won’t stuff like a pineapple, coconut tree etc. take longer than your short season? I got a coffee bean seed thing for xmas from someone, I might plant it. I guess it takes like 3 years though to get coffee.

#6

If you grow things like that you have to bring them in every year and you will need a sunny window.

I grew some orange/lemon/tangerine(?) trees that way once. They were beautiful. They need trimming. A friend grew the coconut tree once. He needed to bring it in.

These things can be fun to grow but they can be a pain as well.

#7

Yeah my sunny window situation isn’t very good… I did manage to keep a couple pepper plants alive this winter underneath a single 23 watt light bulb.

I’ve seen some people online growing lemon trees in containers with tons of lemons on them.

#8

I’ve looked into tobacco a little and it sounds kind of tough to grow and even harder to cure. Can’t wait until I can grow some pot like DM is doing.

#9

Sounds like we might be able to buy the factory weed sooner than we thought, the Legislature is considering opening the Medical Marijuana stores up to us regular people coming this july (Instead of July 2016 as originally planned for retail sales)

#10

Are you gonna run out and get some hash and do some hot knives on the stove like old times? lol

#11

How long will the cool weather last? They might be better to plant in the midst of summer, because your fall season gets cool pretty quick, right? Do you have an herb garden? Rosemary, basil, Italian or flat leaf parsley, spearmint, thyme and sage are great in gardens.

Garden sounds fabulous btw.

We have tomatoes and one bell pepper at the moment, also some Serrano peppers. The serranos survived over the winter though.

The rest of the stuff is coming along nicely. My herb garden is doing very well. I’m very pleased with the garden as well.

#12

Don’t know about hot knifing hash, but it’ll be fun to stroll in and browse around and buy a bud or so.

#13

I don’t have an herb garden but I do plant some herbs along with other things, pretty cool for a lot of them still but it’s warming up fast… the traditional date for putting tomatoes in the ground here is May 15th and the swimming pools open up on May 30th, that’s about when it starts getting hot and the lettuce starts bolting.

#14

Fresh herbs really do add so much to a meal. I love going out snipping an herb and adding it to what we cook.

Basil, chives and cilantro are my favorites, sage is up there too. They add so much flavor.

Herbs, garlic and extra virgin olive oil, must haves and some balsamic vinegar…yum.

You can probably plant some garlic near the onions.

#15

I always have basil, cilantro, oregano and dill… I tried to plant some sage and chives last year but they never did anything, I’ll probably try some again this year. Garlic you plant in the fall around here.

Speaking of herbs though, a raised bed just for herbs would be great, I’d also like to grow some thyme and rosemary, I think rosemary might survive the winter around here… my oregano looked like some sticks a few weeks ago but now it’s taking over the bed it’s in, makes a great ground cover, no weeds inside of it. .

#16

A raised bed with your herbs is a great idea. Chives seem to grow easily in our climate, they seed themselves in late summer. Before I know it there’s another patch of chives coming up on its own.

Sage grows like crazy here. There this Mexican cook I know and he asked me to bring him the clipping I cut up. Apparently, they dry and smoke wherever in Mexico he was from…he said it was fairly common to smoke it there.

I gave him a bunch. He was happy with it.

#17

I was taking a look at Illinois’ medical marijuana law the other day and saw that no home cultivation is allowed. I would be tempted anyway.

#18

You have to be half dead to get MM in Illinois… it’s tempting but if you got caught they’d string you up like Jesus Christ… I know one guy that had a single plant come up in his yard out of nowhere and he just let it grow (and watered it and stuff lol) and they setup a whole surveillance thing on him and had photos of him out there smelling it and stuff they showed in court lol. He got like 3 years and did like a year and a half in state prison over it!

I know another guy that had a little grow in his basement and he had a furnace guy come in to work on his furnace and the guy smelled pot and turned him in. Everyone that comes into your house is supposed to support anything suspicious these days under the TIPS program that Bush put in. I think he ended up getting like 3 years probation.

#19

They did open a dispensary in the backwards town I’m from though and it’s in a very commercial part of town, they’re also starting a grow op in a little backwards hick town about 30 miles from there that was hiring like 60 people to work it… never thought I’d see something like that here!

#20

You would think Illinois wouldn’t be so backwards. Clearly, I don’t know very much about your state.