Gardening

[jpbago]

I wonder how much of this is the climate vs. soil conditions?

 

I think that is the answer there. The vegetables that you mention that do well are more native than tomatoes and peppers.

 

JJ, that organic garden looks great but too much for me. I have only about 12 sq m in my backyard.

 

Mike, when my tomatoes got tall with heavy fruits on them, I had trouble keeping them upright. Someone told me to lay them down on bamboo trestles about 1 foot off the ground. Your soil looks good. Mine is lighter and somewhat sandy. There might have been a beach here at one time. I have shade from a star apple and a santol tree.

Imo, I got only one crop of tomatoes then the plant withered up.

I hear that potatoes, carrots, and peppers grow better up north in Baguio where it is cooler.

Thomas, I have lady bugs and earthworms in the garden too. Lots of butterflies. I think the rats ate the greens.

If I was here year round, maybe I could do better. While in Canada, I got my wife hooked on good vegetables but the rest of the family here don;t care. When I make a beef stew in the slow cooker, they lick the sauce off the carrots and potatoes then leave them on the plate.

[i am bob]

 

I wonder how much of this is the climate vs. soil conditions?

 

I think that is the answer there. The vegetables that you mention that do well are more native than tomatoes and peppers.

 

JJ, that organic garden looks great but too much for me. I have only about 12 sq m in my backyard.

 

Mike, when my tomatoes got tall with heavy fruits on them, I had trouble keeping them upright. Someone told me to lay them down on bamboo trestles about 1 foot off the ground. Your soil looks good. Mine is lighter and somewhat sandy. There might have been a beach here at one time. I have shade from a star apple and a santol tree.

Imo, I got only one crop of tomatoes then the plant withered up.

I hear that potatoes, carrots, and peppers grow better up north in Baguio where it is cooler.

Thomas, I have lady bugs and earthworms in the garden too. Lots of butterflies. I think the rats ate the greens.

If I was here year round, maybe I could do better. While in Canada, I got my wife hooked on good vegetables but the rest of the family here don;t care. When I make a beef stew in the slow cooker, they lick the sauce off the carrots and potatoes then leave them on the plate.

 

 

First thing that I thought of when I read your earlier post was that your soil needed a re-work.  And, now, after reading about your beach garden, I am sure - you need a soil replacement!  hehe!  Seriously, massive composting will help but sandy soil is not great for a lot of crops.  For those that are growing well, no problem.  Others, like tomatoes, need a nice rich soil with the proper levels of nitrogen and potassium along with a shot of rum.  (The rum is for me!)  For things like this, it's easier to just bring in some soil to meet your needs.  Pots will do well if they are big enough (like a bath tub) but are hard to find and can be expensive.  Raised beds with the proper soil mixtures will be much easier and better to work with.

 

Now some products are doing quite well for most people.  When you look to see where they are native to, hmmm...  local stuff for most of it.  Yup!  They are already acclimated to the weather and the soil.  Things you have that are imported (like that Money Tree) don't do well on initial planting without some playing with the plants.  Eventually, after a million years or so - and about the time you are ready to kick off, these plants too will be acclimated and do just as well.  It's the in-between time we have to worry about that and that is just making sure that whatever plants we grow have the right growing medium...  Warm or cold...  Wet or dry soil... Nutrients...  And don't forget the natural bacteria that resides in the soil.  They all make a difference.  The best thing to do is to order a book or go online and learn how to grow your plants...  If you do it right, it should work.  But please!  Don't try GMO seeds if you want to have a pure product.  Tomatoes crossed with fish genes?  Sharknado really could be a reality!

 

(If anybody liked Sharknado, Sharknado 2 is suppose to be in production now....   :mocking: )

[Mike S]

Good advise Bob .... but here in the Phils the simplest things can be the hardest to find ..... example take fertilizer .... sounds simple huh .... go to any K-mart ... Wal-mart or other garden center and you will find bag after bag of the stuff with so many different varsities it will boggle the mind .... same with pesticides ... but here you are VERY limited in what is available .... example .... in City hardware .... Ace .... True-Value and Handyman only Handyman had any type of granule type fertilizer in a small plastic package and it was way to strong (use 1/2 TEASPOON per plant) tried some and it burned my peppers (but they came back) .... I haven't found any garden centers here in Bacolod yet or anyone who can recommend one .... there are plenty of commercial fertilizers in 100lbs. sacks that are used for commercial farming but again way to strong for residential gardening ..... and as most people living here know the yellow pages here are worthless .... unless you have an outhouse out back .... :hystery:  :hystery: 

 

I know my tomatoes need fertilizer as the leaves are a pale green instead of bright green but again finding a fertilizer formulated for tomatoes I have not found yet .... and I brought my soil in to grow the suckers .... but on a positive note I have not seen any bugs yet like tomato worms ..... anyway mine are just starting t turn red so I will hopefully by next week find out how good they are ..... :thumbsup: 

:cheersty:      

[jpbago]

Mike: May`s Organic Garden (on the highway near Sumag) has a sign saying organic fertilizer for sale. I haven`t stopped in yet as the Ceres bus won`t wait for me. I had a great salad there once and later, I bought some lettuce but it was very bitter, old, I think. You know how ``old things get bitter.``I did buy some chemical fertilizer from some hardware store. It is pink crystals that you mix with water. We are saving and burying our compost in the garden now.

 

Bob: Some of the seeds, like tomatoes, I bought here. The peppers are seeds from the peppers at the market. Most of the leaves have fallen off the money tree.

[Curley]

Tomatoes love foliar feed. A very good natural fertiliser is PEE, collect it and dilute it ten to one with water and you have a wonderful natural fertiliser.

[Mike S]

Tomatoes love foliar feed. A very good natural fertiliser is PEE, collect it and dilute it ten to one with water and you have a wonderful natural fertiliser.

 

:hystery: :hystery: :hystery:  ..... can't get much more organic than that ..... I wonder what your tomatoes taste like ..... :mocking:

 

JP ..... I know where that is we pulled in there one time but didn't get out and look around as we were looking for plants to buy .... they are down the road a bit headed toward your neck of the woods ..... the problem with our soil is that it is 60 percent clay and that plus all the construction crap they mixed with it (like concrete ... tile ... and other crap) means we have to haul in any good dirt we need .... thinking of hiring one of the local boys to dig this crap out and find some decent soil to put back there ..... at least with the clay the good soil won't leech out .....

:cheersty:

Edited August 14, 2013 by Mike S

[Curley]

 

Tomatoes love foliar feed. A very good natural fertiliser is PEE, collect it and dilute it ten to one with water and you have a wonderful natural fertiliser.

 

:hystery: :hystery: :hystery:  ..... can't get much more organic than that ..... I wonder what your tomatoes taste like ..... :mocking:

 

 

 

 

It all depends on what you've been drinking lol. If you don't want to pee on your tomatoes then you can still feed the roots. Seriously though, tomatoes do much better if they have a foliage feed. As for the flopping over, it's usual to have an overhead support that you hang strings from and then tie the plants to that as they grow but tie them on an angle so that the light can get through the leaves more easily.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Curley

[JJReyes]

I had purchased a Bogashi bucket. You can make your own fertilizer using biodegradable kitchen waste. They are priced around $50 on the Internet, but you can make your own using a bucket with a tight cover. 

 

I changed my mind about making my own fertilizer. Our lanai garden is too small. The bucket was shipped to Bruce's charity in Catbalogan, Samar since it could be used as a drinking water container.

[Curley]

You can make your own composting drum out of any old barrel or drum check the various ideas on you.tube........ or just use some wire mesh and four posts...... or four old pallets.

[Mike S]

Went by Mae's Organic Garden today to check them out .... man ... has that placed changed in the past 6 months .... got a nice local style restaurant inside but only local food (which we like) a great big tent in which to eat ...... it also a huge open sided pavilion out back for meetings and what not .... swimming pool and of course the gardens .... food looked good but we had already ate so I just had a carrot shake .....

 

Asked about organic fertilizer and was told all they have is worm castings so we got 10k of that but it won't do much good with out mixing it with the clay so I guess I'm back to looking for chemical fertilizers ...... OH .... and we harvested our first veggies today 5 tomatoes and one bell pepper ...... there were orange color but we picked them anyway to keep the birds from pecking them .... we'll finish ripening them on the windowsill ...... :thumbsup:

:cheersty:

Edited August 15, 2013 by Mike S