Best Posts in Thread: garden stuff

HI ALL for years i have not been able to have a garden so when we shifted to South Bagacay we 3 to 4 meters on 3 sides of the house all in lawn , I set out removing a one meter wide of lawn on every fence and wall this gave me 52 running meters , 3 inches under the lawn was stonr n rubble used as fill to build up the bloch above street level so i had to bring in soil witch i purchased from the place that sells the plants near Red Cross office 70 peso a bag this i mixed with lots of carabao poo and rice hulls raising the beds 1 foot above ground level.I struck my seedlings in large plastic tubs, the first to be ready to eat were long beans , cucumer, okar pechay ,. first lot of tomatos grew well to flowering stage then got brown curly leafe and died off. the locals told me i should have sprayed them with a mixture of soap and garlic. As of today i have egg plant, peppers, corn, tomatos, pechay,long beans, cucembers, all growing strong n looking well. trying some lettuce in pots. Yesterday i visited Watsisname seen his great patch of tomatos and got some good advice on the type n use of fertilizer . i will keep going through the summer months and see what dies n lives . sorry to bore you but i had to tell some one lol .

 

After trying hard for the last 9 months i have decided its very hard to go vegies out in the open here the heat, birds, and bugs drove us to build a shade house its only 6 meters by 4 meters the roof is double thickness shade house plastic 8 inches above the roof is shade cloth cover creating a air an air flow.As the pics show the walls are covered by a white fine shade cloth, here,s hoping it works.

 

garden


italian cucumber 11 inches and still growing,i have some seeds i anyone wants.

 

I once had a rooster that had gotten old, as he was not quit up to his duties either. He was a good rooster and could talk if you listened hard. I notice that all the replacement roosters I bought were “gay” rooster and would only chase the old rooster. I would have to shoot the new roosters, as they all seem to want to chase the old rooster around the hen house, ignoring the hens. Then one day, I listen in a while after I introduced him to his new replacement. The old rooster quietly told the young new rooster: “I am old, so please just humor me a little for one last time. I will not be doing my rooster duties much longer, and you will be enjoying life with all the hens. Race me around the hen house, but give me a little head start.” Then next thing I noticed is that the old rooster took off, and the young rooster was behind him, chasing him, almost catching him. I stood silently…. As this was usually the point in time I will lower my shotgun and shoot the “gay” young replacement rooster.

 

hi m8,i purchased a meter that tests ph, light, n moisture i have a spare if you want to have a lend of i , i notice that it is a lot cooler were you are than here things went better here when things got a bit cooler.i read Adam Dimech,s paper,all i know is when i spray it on plants close to flowering and fruiting i get a good result but i dont put it in the soil as as it would raise the ph . i got the scabies ointment from the chemist at hypermart i will find the name and let you know . we must get together one day

 

hey alex, thanks for posting your garden update.

how are you testing the ph? do you know if there's a soil lab in the area?

what's the product name on the package of those products?
we've got a moth that's shaped like a stealth aircraft that i'd like to eradicate, it has a mealy bug looking nest on the underside of the cucumber leaves. maybe the pyrethrum will work. hummm, i wonder if JB marketing has pyrethrum seeds...

i was mixing the natural farming version of microbase (LAB) with the plant water but i quit cuz it seemed to speed up the breakdown of organic matter in the soil. spraying on the leaves sounds like a better deal.

potassium sulfate? did you see this site? Potassium and Flowering | The Story of Flowers | Adam Dimech

we spray a fermented mix of banana, squash, papaya (1:1:1 ) for flowers/fruit. i've never done a control but i think it works.

despite the dry, warm weather, we've got a great crop of asian greens growing in a green insect screen hoop house that gets covered with shade cloth during the hot time of the day. also, we've got the best romaine lettuce we've grown here to date, it's under a double layer of the green insect screen during the hot time of the day. we got the screen at JB marketing.

i not sure what's working for us but i'm happy about it. we even have some japanese cukes that only slightly wilt in the sun where in the past the leaves hung like green rags at 9am. i've been watering morning and evening, trying to keep the soil evenly moist w/o leaching.

we're still feeding with natural farming fertilizers and i've recently started top dressing ever couple of weeks with freshish chicken manure in a base of rice hulls. i get the stuff from cleaning up the floor under the roosts and i keep it in a covered pile and water it about once a week with LAB. the stuff i put on the garden is scooped from the outside edge of the pile before i turn the pile. i haven't seen any evidence of leaf burn yet.

i dunno, i'm thinking the plants like the sun as long as they have proper water and some shade during the hot time of the day.

our chickens:
we kept 4 hens and a rooster out of the 12 day-old kabirs we bought in jan 2015. the kabirs are sposed to be like native chickens (broody, free range, etc.) but i think the hatchery stock has been inbreed too much cuz only one hen went broody until just recently when another caught on and set. but at 1st, we gave the eggs to native hens to hatch and now, we pretty much have our flock built up to where we'll be moving into some meat production soon.

the rooster was also slow to catch on to his rooster duties. he died from one of those chicken epidemics, however he did sire another rooster and hen before we lost him. his son is a lot like his dad as far as his rooster duties go, guess they never read the rooster instruction manual.

the chickens are free range but i give them a bit of grain twice a day. due to the weather, the bug foraging has all but dried up and they're having to work/scratch a lot more to find the insects they prefer. i'm thinking of trying composting cockroaches as a supplement.
Cockroach Composting

 

Hi all i have been going to add my garden findings for a while now so here goes, i was growing in pots spread out along the house and fences many problems the beans etc that grew on the fence got attacked by the birds eating the buds another problem was the heat generated from the walls and fence stopped a lot of plants reaching their full potential .White fly was a big problem nothing i tried seemed to work until a friend found a source pyrethrin one was a licealiz witch was 20mg 10 peso a satchel the other was a scabies ointment witch is much stronger 200 peso a tube at the chemest in hypermart, pyrethrin is a chastagenic and will work its way through the plant , one thing i learnt about white fly it carries a virus the causes curly leaf in tomatoes.One the other problems was the P.H of the soil, every thing i read said the soil for growing veg should be 6.o to 6.5 mine was 7.5 i tried compost, cow dung, seaweed, nothing seem to bring it down so i changed to using a mixture of ferrious sulphate,magnesium sulfate but it was not untill i added calcium nitrate did i see a change in ph i think the latter held some of the trace elements required to low and keep the ph lower .6 months ago we built a shade house (with the help of another member and our partners)4x6 meters this had a double thickness plastic roof with a shade cloth roof 6 inches above that it houses 70 pots and we are having success , we spray on Micorbase for leaf growth and spray on potassium sulfate for flowering and fruiting. if you asked the bigest problem with trying to grow veg here i would say its the heat, i am sure there is something strange about the effect of the sun here . has anybody have any good tips?

 

Hope that variety works out for you.

Here is a tip .... get some Epsom Salt and mix a little of this powder in water. Don't get it on the leaves (just put it on the dirt around the plants once they are about 12" in height)

Tomato plants need the magnesium sulfate and will really benefit from it.
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Chemically, Epsom salts is hydrated magnesium sulfate (about 10 percent magnesium and 13 percent sulfur). Magnesium is critical for seed germination and the production of chlorophyll, fruit, and nuts. Magnesium helps strengthen cell walls and improves plants' uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.

Sulfur, a key element in plant growth, is critical to production of vitamins, amino acids (therefore protein), and enzymes. It's also the compound that gives vegetables such as broccoli and onions their flavors. Sulfur is seldom deficient in garden soils in North America because acid rain and commonly used animal manures contain sulfur, as do chemical fertilizers such as ammonium sulfate.

The causes and effects of magnesium deficiencies vary. Vegetables such as beans, peas, lettuce, and spinach can grow and produce good yields in soils with low magnesium levels, but plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and roses need high levels of magnesium for optimal growth. However, plants may not show the effects of magnesium deficiency until it's severe. Some common deficiency symptoms are yellowing of the leaves between the veins, leaf curling, stunted growth, and lack of sweetness in the fruit.

National Gardening Association

 

I have tried growing tomatoes here in the Philippines. Like other people report, they start to grow really well, but at a certain point, they just die.

I was told by other people that the nights here in the Philippines (other than Baguio) just don't get cool enough to get a good tomato harvest. I gave up on the idea.

Same for lettuce ... it needs cooler night-time weather.

 

Dear Mr freak if you can't beat them join them you may learn to like it,i don't have experience in this field however i strongly suggest you take your teeth out to feel the full benefit .