Edit: I realised that the body did not come over so here it is…

Good evening hive mind!

I have successfully (mostly) kept two vanilla vines and 2 sugar canes alive over winter. As the weather is now warming up, what is the best way to plant both of them? I have a garden bed that is on the right side of my house near a frangipani tree, facing West - catches the majority of sun throughout the day.
Location: Central Coast NSW
Zone 5 for those who are interested and no agricultural activity happening around here…

Hi! I have a large garden in south texas zone 9b. I try to avoid using any type of treatment that will endanger native bugs or plants. I grow edibles and flowers in this garden. I have three problems-sandburrs, aphids, and whitefly. I'll divide it into two paragraphs for ease of reading.

Sandburrs-extremely annoying, make it hard to work in the garden and stick to my socks. I haven't tried anything yet because the treatments I could find online seem a little dodgy as far as hurting the other local organisms. They grow amongst grass stands which I don't mind but makes it hard to find them all if I were to manually remove them, and also the soil is very very hard which is another problem I am trying to remedy over time. Any suggestions?

Whitefly and aphids-I have tried a lot of things including captain Jack's dead bug brew, neem oil (both soil drench and applied to leaves), and even got desperate enough to try a pyrethrin. The pyrethrin actually did seem to work but I don't want to use it more because it was really expensive for the area treated and is dangerous to basically everything. This is a very large garden and some of these plants grow 10 feet up a trellis so it's hard to consistently apply anything to leaves especially if I'm trying to avoid spraying certain plants that have caterpillars on them. Next year I might try planting the caterpillar plants in a whole different area. My garden attracts a lot of butterflies, including them hatching caterpillars, other cool bugs, and some "pest" bugs like stink bugs in more manageable numbers that I'm fine with, lizards, birds, etc. and I don't want to harm them. I released some native ladybugs and that did nothing. I haven't tried Lacewings, maybe I will next year at the start of the season to see if they can keep it under control.

I did try waiting out the whitefly and aphids to see if they would be taken care of by beneficials, but that did not do the trick 😅 some showed up but not enough/too late and I had to do something to save at least some of my crops. The pests are really damaging to my squashes/gourds, cucumbers, melons, and eggplant. Also I CANNOT use diatomeceous earth it complicated but my property won't allow it.

So any tips? Pic attached of one of my harvests for tax. Thanks!

Looking to build some large raised beds in my garden varying from 6 inches to 24 inches deep. Wanting to grow a variety of veggies - so would prefer a recipe that would be pretty versatile. Will be building the beds mostly from reclaimed timber.
Yes, I’m aware that they will break down over time, and don’t mind having to rebuild at a later point.

I don’t mind spending a bit of cash on some quality topsoil and compost while I start to set up my own composting system. Would love to build in ground beds, but I think that the volume of rainfall where I live wouldn’t make this ideal or even viable.

I am wanting to minimise upfront expense and use as many waste materials from my own garden and neighbours’ farms as possible.

In my own garden, I have many freshly pruned branches, fresh leaves and lawn clippings, and many dead leaves and branches.

From neighbours gardens/farms/workshops I have access to a lot of free much, sawdust, and really cheap cow and horse manure.

Any tips as to how to layer these materials correctly would be great.

Thanks in advance!

Have had two 10year old honey crisp and one 15year old honey crisp battle powdery mildew, caterpillars, porcupine and mice over the years. First year to have the 2younger ones die... I noticed in spring all 3 trees had mice/rabbit damage as about 1 foot of bark eatten off base of tree. Oddly, all 3trees had some "red bark" - I trimmed them all off, but whatever caused the bark to turn ree, it ended up killing both younger trees but the oldest survived. Now, my oldest tree has a single large "red" bark branch - I know I should trim it off but when would be best time to trim, when and what should I treat the last tree with so it lives vs dies? The redness is on entireity of the branch (so not sunscald), no leaves as its entirely dead... the leaves and flowers up and dried and died on the younger trees. Pics of the "red" branch along with some pics of leaves and normal greyish brown bark of the rest of the tree. Would love some advice on how to best save the tree: removal of affected branch and fungicide? Hydrogren peroxide? TIA!

So this fig tree is located in southern Mississippi and years ago.It was a beautiful fig tree, producing a lot of figs.

Other than the grass growing up in between it, which I know needs to come out, what is going on with the leaves? What type of fertilizer should be used?

I just got down here and told my mother that come hell or high water, next year, this tree is going to put out.

Thank you in advance, and I'm brand new to this sub. Don't know anything whatsoever other than it's a fig tree. All of your help is appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I am new here and would like to ask about the ratio for mixing Perlite and Fox Farm soil.

1 bag of Norcal Perlite equals 4 CF.
1 bag of Fox Farm soil equals 1.5 CF.

I have heard people suggest mixing 3 bags of Perlite with 7 bags of Fox Farm soil. Does that sound correct?

I plan to use a 25-gallon pot for my guava and mango trees.

It is simple for me to calculate the number of bags once the mix is clear.

Tell me in a way where I don't ruin the roots (if possible)

I don’t want to throw these away - so - any advice for me sunflower lovers who loiter here? It seemed a shame to waste them by putting them in the compost …

And why don’t they look like regular sunflower seeds? Please and thank you :) (excuse the cat hairs) 🌻

Im in zone 7a at 2000ft elevation and this summer has been unseasonably hot with daily temps consistently getting above 100 for the past two months. Running a farm has been wild this year and I haven’t had a break in the high temps last long enough to plant fall crops until now. I direct seeded radishes, lettuce, and arugula yesterday morning and over 90% of those have already germinated, so we’re off to the races that should’ve started a month ago. Now I’ve got about 1,200 seedlings to transplant out and 300 feet of carrots to sow in the next couple days.

Zone 6 Chicago here. I have several red Habanero plants I started from seed growing in my garden. My question is , with the cooler temps here in Chicago right now will my Habaneros that are green on the plant still turn ripe and red ? I have so many peppers on my plants but I’m afraid they won’t ripen. Any help out here from zone 6 people ?? Thank you.

I recently purchased a house and the backyard is overgrown with wineberry, some 3-5 feet tall. I've cut it down, but it will likely regrow. I was thinking of placing cardboard over it for weed suppression because it will likely grow through mulch. I tried using cardboard boxes but I need to cover about 6000 sq feet and would need 500-700 boxes; I've tried visiting stores, but it is really hard to find that much and removing the tape and staples is a real challenge. Instead, I was thinking of getting a corrugated cardboard roll from U-Line or Staples. This is often used to wrap up delicates, like dishes, for shipping, and has a flat cardboard backing then corrugated cardbood on the other side. It would cost me about $600 to get 6 rolls, about 6 feet wide and 250 feet long, which also has the benefit of being easy to just roll out and apply to the yard. I was planning to let leaves fall on it to create a natural mulch cover. All told, it will come to about $650 for the rolls and $200 for shipping (each roll is about 80 lbs). I have a few concerns: 1) It is recycled, so I worry about contaminants, and 2) I don't think there is any glue, but perhaps there is some. I was wondering if anyone had experience using this for weed suppression? Thank you in advance for your advice.

Update: thank you for all your helpful advice! I did an experiment with three options: 1) Biodegradable Weed Barrier, 4 x 100 Ft Heavy Duty Garden Paper; 2) corrugated cardboard role; 3) cardboard boxes. What I found was that the cardboard boxes were by far the best that preventing shoots or cut stems from poking through, but it was extremely tedious to pull off the tape from a box. The corrugated cardboard roll degraded very quickly and became shreds in just a few weeks. The biodegradable paper still looks surprisingly good after a few weeks, however, cut stems poked through. From a time and cost perspective, I think the paper is the best option, and I’ll probably need a dethatcher to get rid of the cut stems (after the string trimmer) for the 1/6th acre

So we've purchased a house with about 2 acres of open land for farming. However, the first 6-8" of dirt in the fenced area has layers of plastic netting. In order to use the land properly, this is obv going to need to be removed. Any ideas on how I can get rid of it quickly, efficiently, and with as few microplastics as possible?

😭