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We finally had some nice weather this weekend, so I worked on expanding my garden footprint. I raked out all the old mulch and stuck it on a tarp to reuse later, then I took out the chicken wire fencing and dug up a bunch of grass in front (south) of last year’s garden. It’s going to rain the next couple days, but once it dries and I can get a load of compost from the city tilled in back there, I can put the fencing up in the new spot. There is a row of hard neck garlic coming up just inside the old fence line to the left that needs to get covered back up before it freezes in a few days.

Nice

So did you dig the plants up and give them away or sell them? They look like some really nice plants. Will you be creating a bog of some sort or is it this just the space you will use for your potted plants? Either way, it looks to be a really good start.

It was a bunch of pepper plants mainly, along with a few pitiful onions, a bottle gourd, and some kind of big marigolds. I did dig up some of the peppers to try my hand at bonchi (pepper bonsai), but I forgot to tell my husband to keep my plants alive while I went to visit my parents right afterward, so they died.
This year it will be lots more varieties of peppers as well as a few other vegetables. My CPs are mostly babies, so they wouldn’t take up all that space….yet. I haven’t actually figured out where they will go yet.

That's looking great!!! Some good-looking soil!!! Have you considered growing anything on the fence (if it faces a good direction)?....some chicken wire tacked to the fence would give several things a good grip...cukes, beans/peas, small melons, etc.,. Man, that's a garden FULL of pepper plants!!!

I've overwintered pepper plants before without much problem as long as they have some good light and kept slightly moist they seem to do okay. I had early peppers but, as I recall, they did not produce the volume of peppers that they did their first year from seed. If I recall correctly, I root-pruned the plants I desired to over-winter, cutting a circle around the plants with a sharpshooter roughly the size of the pots I intended to use. I then left them in the ground for a week or two. Finally I lifted them out of the ground a set them down into the pots, adding a little more soil in the bottom of the pots before putting them in and then filling in any gaps/voids around the "plug" once I had put them in the pots. It worked well. I did not try to bonsai them, though, just pruned them back a little, mostly taking out questionable branches.

But, "...freezes in a few days"????!!!!!!!

Thanks! Yeah, we have excellent soil here. Last year I tried to grow the gourd up the fence, but it preferred the warmth of the pavers next to the garden and hauled itself over there to sprawl out instead.
I’ll have to try your method to overwinter a few pepper plants this year.
And yup, lows in the 20s Thursday through Saturday nights. The last frost date here is sometime in mid-May.

....mid-May!

Hedonista wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 3:56 am Thanks! Yeah, we have excellent soil here. Last year I tried to grow the gourd up the fence, but it preferred the warmth of the pavers next to the garden and hauled itself over there to sprawl out instead.
I’ll have to try your method to overwinter a few pepper plants this year.
And yup, lows in the 20s Thursday through Saturday nights. The last frost date here is sometime in mid-May.

Do you hand pollinate your gourds? I know that birdhouse gourds benefit greatly from hand pollination. I took the lazy way and simply broke off male flowers and "spun" them back-and-forth gently against the female flowers. I had comments like "Wow, man!!! Those are the biggest gourds I've ever seen!!" and such. Of course I also dug a pit beneath each mound and shoveled some good ol' cow ssh..., uh, manure in, mixed it with a little garden soil and covered over with some not-so-fertilized soil...kinda like a gold mine for the plants once their roots hit it.

The gourds should be fine if there are night time pollinators (mostly moths). If there aren't you'll have to pollinate them if you want any gourds.

Do you have any pictures of your gourds?

thepitchergrower wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 3:09 pm The gourds should be fine if there are night time pollinators (mostly moths). If there aren't you'll have to pollinate them if you want any gourds.

I hand-pollinated last year. Lots of daytime pollinators, but the gourds didn’t get pollinated until I took matters into my own hands.

Do you have any pictures of your gourds?

You are asking this of a plant person? reminds me of a meme I can’t find about how when I die, someone will inherit my 682,465 plant photos. Yes, here are some from last year. In the harvest photo, the darker ones are mine. The lighter ones are from a plant I brought down to my mom in Iowa.

Intheswamp wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 12:00 pm Do you hand pollinate your gourds? I know that birdhouse gourds benefit greatly from hand pollination. I took the lazy way and simply broke off male flowers and "spun" them back-and-forth gently against the female flowers. I had comments like "Wow, man!!! Those are the biggest gourds I've ever seen!!" and such. Of course I also dug a pit beneath each mound and shoveled some good ol' cow ssh..., uh, manure in, mixed it with a little garden soil and covered over with some not-so-fertilized soil...kinda like a gold mine for the plants once their roots hit it.

Yes I did hand pollinate, the same method you used. My gourds weren’t what I would call “giant” like they were supposed to be, but they were bigger than the ones grown in junky Iowa clay by my mom.

What type of gourds were you growing? Mine were "birdhouse" gourds for purple martins.

Giant bottle gourds