>>1599
>Irl all my gardening ends in desaster, barely able to grow small tomatoes or 5 inch pumpkins without them mysteriously turning brown and dying long before their time.
I remember you talked about salt mist from the nearby sea making rust bubbles on the cars in your area or was that another place? It does sound like salt, either from the soil or from the water. We'd need a pic of thee plants to make sure. Tomatoes are relatively salt tolerant though so that's a bit odd.
Or it's a fungus like Fusarium or Phytophthora. They can persist in the soil and reinfect new plants year after year.
https://gardenerspath.com/how-to/disease-and-pests/common-tomato-diseases/

You're a smart bear you should be able to figure out the root of the problem, I'd recommend starting with fresh compost next year to eliminate any sort of biotic or abiotic soil problems.

>>1609

The cause is not lost, I'm going to get a soil tester, moisture tester, I'm going to use greenhouse sprayers for water with rain gages to make sure only the exact amount of water is used, lime to lower pH (or raise it, I forget) neem oil on the first sign of mold etc.

Look, there's a heck of a lot of plants that magically grow in untreated and unfertalized awful, clay ridden soil like in the middle of nowhere without any water from me like surprise barley, mysterious undying tomatoes growing out of a crack, a giant cucumber vine that made literally 10lb cucumbers before I looked at it twice, a huge corn stalk growing like a weed under the bird feeder, so it's not salt spray which is insane if you have a car, but plants don't care. Yes this is the same place, I can see the ocean and smell it of the wind is right. Thankfully I'm not so close that I smell rotten fish like at my work which is literally 1ft above the high tide mark at the water, but the occasional stray wind will bring me an algea scent. My poor truck was in rust free condition when I bought it and now it's a consistent dark orange on every free inch of metal.

No, the plants are fine, I am a noob and actually deter their growth. But that will change. I don't do pesticides or herbicides but neem oil seems to help mold.

We have morning mist and that's how native plants live because our rainfall totals are less than 1/8 the square root of a square horse per year, our temperature is always between 15.67 and 21.5 Rømer daytime temperature all year and never goes below 491.7 Rankine. So it's not frost. In fact a stray tomato plant that I did nothing to survived winter and is still growing to this day over a year old.

Well then it's clear, the problem is you!

No but seriously, those wild-growing surprise plants are one-in-a-thousand super selected champions of evolution, like those concentration camp survivor Jews who lived to over 100 after the war. The ordinary simply die, only the best survive. Modern commercial high-yield crop varieties often need optimal conditions to thrive and are not resilient to stress at all. Also they're clones with no variation so natural selection doesn't work.

Bottom line, plants most likely don't turm brown from your malicious bear aura alone, there must be some physical cause and we gotta find out what you are doing wrong. But it may very well be that the varieties you tried to grow are simply unsuitable for your location. It's always easier to adapt crops to your environment than your environment to the crops you'd like to grow. Host learned that the hard way because he's a fool.

>>1637
>lewd tomato
Pussy pareidolia at its best
would grow

>>1645

Those tiny happy people are doing lewd things

how about lewd pumpkin?

sometimes i wish i had a garden but then again its lots of work and responsibility so nah. i'll help out my relatives a few times a year thats enough

>>1678

I am so in agreement here. Even the word "Pumpkin" is lewd, it's the most lewd fruit just based on that alone.

Host has been tilling a field to grow spinach last weekend which included shoveling 5 m³ of soil into a wheelbarrow and moving it 20m. Worked over 6h on 2 consecutive days without noteworthy breaks. Body may not be strong but it does have decent stamina. Even more interesting, there was no soreness afterwards. Didn't even feel tired or hungry despite not eating all day. This should be in the fitness thread.

Anyway, spinach was planted just in time, autumn arrived full force and it's cool and rainy now. We'll have a looot of spinach this fall and winter. Thanks to climate change it grows until late December.

>>2043

Nice.

Yeah that last day I was dying, it was probably the heat.

>>4190
That's cool!
I wouldn't dare to harvest any wild flowers here in nature, a lot is poisinous. But you can buy a lot of flowers for food decoration. Not sure how many pesticides are in them though.

>>4190
we make juice out of elder flowers its like lemonade you can buy it everywhere

>>4203
thats what you get for living in a tropical hellhole where everything wants to kill you

>>4256
Yeah that's also awesome but the syrup contains too much sugar. We will try to make some with a bit of xylitol and sterilize it so it lasts without sugar as preservative. Just like our jams.

>>4391
>>4392
>>4393
Awesome pics!
Did you take all of them?
Which are the parasitic and carnivirous flowers?

>>4395
Thats some huge grapes! That's inches right?

>>4398
>That's inches right?

Yes, the post ww3 units

>>4398
Host took all those pics with the Pixel. He took a lot of the choughs to catch a few in flight.

The carnivorous plant is Pinguicula alpina. It catches tiny insects on its sticky leaves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinguicula_alpina

The parasitic orchid is Neottia nidus-avis. It has no green parts and gets all energy from mycorrhizal fungi that live in symbiosis with trees. The orchid pretends to be a symbiotic plant and attracts fungal hyphae into its roots, then digests them without giving them anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neottia_nidus-avis

>>4395
Grape roots easily go 5-6 m deep into the soil, old plants can reach more than 20m. We have a grape in the garden that's about 20 yeas old but it doesn't do too well due to lack of sun. It has a few handful of fruit every year.

Our Epiphyllum cactus is flowering, th flowers are the size of a child's head and smell like soap. Unfortunately they only last a few days. Pic related, we missed the flowers in full bloom. The Pithaya and Queen of the Night refuse to flower like almost every year.

Moar!

Lots of grubs, this one and 5 others. Some on the mother plant and others just on seedlings like this. I can't tell where they're actually eating though.

>>4558
wtf how do you know the names of all the bugs and plants thats crazy

EU elections today who will Alice vote for? how many germans will elect putin?

>>4558
No, even an autist like those can't identify these beetles by heart but he knows how to look up the necessary information. It's like solving a riddle.

For example there's an almost identical species of ground beetle but the first 4 segments of its antennae are red. In the one we found only the first segment is red, the rest is black.
There are also 2 extremely similar bee-wolf species but the other has a red band on the tip of its hindwings. The one we found has a black band, you can barely see it. That's the easy stuff. Identifying tiny moths is a completely diffferent matter and often impossible. But why would you want that to begin with?

Got these planted in April and they're 6ft tall now.

The sunchoke is edible raw and cooked, it tastes ok alone, when I baked some they were similar to chips (baked potato) but weren't as starchy.

They also cause a lot of gas unfortunately.

Also I see a ton of milkweed in both yards.

>>4624
Oh yeah, terribly invasive weed here. The tubers go so deep that you'll never get rid of them. Don't really like the taste and consistency either, not to speak of gas. Nope, you can keep this one.

>>4629

Interesting, that's what I wanted, though I doubt the tubers will become invasive. They're very big, it might be a different species. They're so calorie dense, 1/16th acre can sustain a person intdefinately.

>>4631
There's tons of such sunflower-like asteraceae in the Americas but host is pretty certain yours is the common sunchoke or topinambur. Like with most crops, there's a ton of varieties bred for different purposes with varying tuber shape, size and color. In Germany it's mainly grown for liquor destillation but also animal feed and biofuel. It's healthy and has quite some potential but is invasive ans many don't like the taste and consistency. Also the tubers can't be stored for long. Don't know about California but in Europe it can only be harvested in autumn and winter. The tubers are hardy deep in the soil but while growing in spring and summer the plant exhausts the tubers so there's nothing to harvest. Only makes sense after the new tuber is formed in autumn. So it's a seasonal crop that's unavailable for half a year.

Have you tried sweet potatoes? They should grow in your climate. It's too cold here.

>>4625
And I see your pomegranates are already flowering? Our biggest one has several buds but I think it will drop them as usual. It's too small to produce fruit yet.

>>4654
>Have you tried sweet potatoes?

Too many pillbugs, they don't stand a chance. As with radishes, carrots, beets and other near surface tubers. The bugger bugs just live everywhere, but these are the cute small ones that walk snail speed and roll into perfect spheres not the big flat scary ones that run fast.

>>4655
>And I see your pomegranates are already flowering?

They flower three times a year, Early spring, late spring, summer. All three form fruit and so the fruit are several stages. These are two years old and had fruit last year, I have two different species planted together for cross pollination.

They were mildly tasty, hopefully this year they'll do better because they dried out several times last year, now that they're in the ground they'll be fine.

Ah I remember your pillbugs. Weird. They're not a problem here, it's rare for them to eat plants but they're a different species and don't curl up.

Harvested cherries, there's a lot this year after almost nothing last year because there was heavy rain and cold during the flowering period. We only harvested a little because no idea what to do with all the cherries. It's a lot of work to remove the stone and occasional maggots of the cherry fly

They look beautiful but don't taste like much. We froze some and made jam from the rest just cooking the fruit to preserve them. It can be added to our yogurt or as a chocolate cherry pancake filling but the usefulness is limited.

We also had tons of raspberries but they are infested by fruit flies since a few years so they're all full of maggots as soon as they are ripe and liquefy smelling like vinegar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_suzukii

You can't do anything against this as the fruit flies lay their eggs when the raspberries turn red and they develop within days. So you can't use pesticides. Only a fine netting would help. We'll have to try next year. Sucks, I like raspberries more than cherries but we only ate a few half-ripe ones and threw away the rest.

Those monarch catapillars ate all the baby milkweed plants now there's a dozen on the big one.

>>4718
Is that all the milkweed? They'll eat up everything!

Saw fireflies today, at least 4 in the garden and dozens in the park. There are lots this year! They only fly for about 1h at dusk starting around 10pm. But impossible to photograph. They're ugly anyway.

>>4728
>Is that all the milkweed? They'll eat up everything!

And in our hubris, we thought only humans consume without thinking of the future, yes they ate everything, all the seedlings, all the leaves, they're chewing on seed pods now so even new seeldings won't be sewn. When will they ever learn, when will they ev-ever-learn...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PS3-lyqCl80 [Embed]

Where has all the milkweed gone... long time passing...

>>4730
It's a common human misconception that nature is about balance or even reason. Most creatures inevitably destroy their own habitat if left uncecked. The only thing that prevents them from doing so are predators and diseases. It doesn't always iron itself out however. Not just animals, even plants and bacteria. The invention of photosynthesis by cyanobacteria caused 2 of the most massive environmental catastrophes ever, the Great Oxidation Event and probably Snowball Earth, eradicating almost all early life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_earth

Caterpillars killing their hostplant and starving isn't uncommon btw, it's often seen in Birdwings. The older larvae move down the vine they feed on an gnaw it off at the base. The entire plant dies with all younger caterpillars on it. Don't ask me what's the evolutionary advantage of that.
https://images.peabody.yale.edu/lepsoc/jls/1970s/1975/1975-29(2)85-Straatman.pdf

>>4810
Well there's a reason California is the agricultural powerhouse of the US. Ideal climate for all year round harvest. Do your sunchokes even die back in winter? Here they can flower until frost kills them in Nov or Dec but then they take a loong rest, only re-emerging in late May, later than most other plants. So they need to live off their tubers for about half a year, probably more.

Weather continues to be moist, after the hottest day of the year so far with 34°C yesterday, temperatures will remain below 20°C for the whole week. Expected night temperatures around 12°C. Feels arctic man. I bet even Kashtan has warmer weather.

>>4813

I haven't seen frost for a while. Maybe this year? We used to get frost in the canyon but not for two years now. Nothing died in winter, everything is evergreen and perennial now.

Did you know tomato plants and beans turn woody in year two, like a tree?

>>4815
Yeah, we overwintered a tomato once, it turned woody but also senecsent and didn't recover next spring and died. Beans can turn woody at the stem base even in one year.

Here it's another year without sunflowers and tomatos. Snails ate them all. Host is always too late vegetables them anyway. Too busy with other garden stuff.

It's an unusual moist year and there are tons of slugs and snails. I'm not gonna cook them but we poison them with iron(III)phosphate. It works pretty well but new ones migrate into the garden within days like sandniggers storming our borders.

Do you actually have citrus? I forgot if I already asked. They should grow there. We have an orange and lemon, both about 1m tall but only the lemon flowers. It rarely produces edible fruit because not enough sun. But the flower scent is awesome! Needless to say they grow in large buckets and have to spend the winter indoors. They hate it and get all sort of diseases but they would just die outside. Needs more climate change!

>>4829
>Do you actually have citrus?

I don't but the neighbors do.

We also have orchids and other tropical plants in the neighborhood.

The orchids have edible flowers and lots of honey-like nectar.

>>4831
>The orchids have edible flowers and lots of honey-like nectar.
Interesting, what do they look like? I mean there's about 30K orchid species.

>>4869
Nice!
I don't think I ever managed to grow a tall sunflower, they were always eaten or stayed ridiculously small.

Plums and apples look promising this year. They both are infested with caterpillars though. Larvae of moths. In contrast, cherries and raspberries have maggots from flies. Strangely apricots have no pests. It's extremely rare to find a caterpillar. Quince also appear to be immune.

Wasp invasion.
They built their nest in the attic and the colony kept growing. Well we don't really mind them, host wanted to leave them alone but they were pestering the neighbors so we eventually had to poison the poor wasps with permethrin. Shit works, all ded now.

I wish we had hornets again, they're cool! Had a nest in the attic for 3 consecutive years but then they didn't come again. They eat wasps and a lot of other insects and are very docile compared to wasps or bees.

>>4936
Awesome.
How tall?

>>4952

That one's only about 7 feet, the big one only has one flower and it's about 7.5 feet but it hasn't opened yet. It's the biggest one I've seen yet, I wonder how big the head's going to be?

>>4963
Based.
Now much 137Cs in them from Chernobyl?

This year is unusually moist so I eexpect a good mushroom turnout compared to the dry last years. But we didn't have time to look this year. Soon.

>>4967
>Now much 137Cs in them from Chernobyl?
What??
Your mushrooms are contaminated with radioactivity? Just how close does Kashtan live to Chernobyl?

>>4975
>Just how close does Kashtan live to Chernobyl?
about 500km. never heard radiation being a problem in mushrooms here so i looked it up and lol contamination is higher in bavaria than here! super weird how uneven the distribution is. but is it actually relevant anywhere outside the exclusion zone after almost 40 years? you been there right Alice?

>>4985
>contamination is higher in bavaria than here!
Yes, you were lucky though you're far closer. It depends where the contaminated rain fell back then. South Bavaria and the alps were severely contaminated as you see.

> is it actually relevant anywhere outside the exclusion zone after almost 40 years?
137Cs has a half life of 30 years so more than half of it is gone. It's not a health concern unless you exclusively live off mushrooms and boar meat but continues to be a legal problem in Germany. Especially boars which accumulate Cs by eating mushrooms which already accumulated it. So quite a lot of hunted boar meat can't be sold and must be destroyed beause it exceeds the extremely tight radiation levels. But it's not dabgerous. Cs doesn't bioacummulate like Iodine. That was the main health concern after Chernobyl but 131I only has a half-life of 8d so it's long gone.

>you been there right Alice?
Yes, we've been in Chernobyl exclusion zone and NPP twice for a week each in 2015 and 2016. Saw the reactor up close before it was sealed under the new safe confinement. We had planned to go again after the pandemic in 2022 but you know, it turned into a war-zone. I wonder if we'll ever be able to go there again. It's one of the most awesome places I've ever been. Even there surface radiation is very moderate nowadays except right in front of the destroyed reactor and a few hotspots. But I wouldn't eat any mushrooms from the area.

>>5002
Oh I know that one!
It's Gaillardia pulchella. Is it native in California?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaillardia_pulchella

The other looks like a weird sunflower cultivar.

>>5019

They're both native and heirloom. I don't buy hybrid or Frankenstein seeds. I want them to self seed and fight to the death.

Which usually means Bermuda grass and fucking moonflower vine which has spread through lateral roots everywhere and chokes everything. Bane of the garden right up there with Bermuda grass. Should both be illegal.

>>5022

Friggen out of control sunflower. Like this soil is crazy good where I've been taking care of it. It's 10ft tall.

>>5019
you've been INSIDE the chernobyl npp??? you for real?

>>5027
Not inside the exploded reactor #4 of course. The NPP is huge and has 6 blocks. #5 and #6 were never completed. I was in #5 I think, don't remember It's just an abandoned construction site. And in the more or less intact block #2 that was shut down in 1991. You can see what it looks like here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reactor_Hall_of_Unit_2,_Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant.webm

It's not like the entire area is a death zone, people still went to work there every day to secure the NPP and work on the containment. Most areas are basically safe nowadays. You could live there.

>>5023
>10ft tall.
10 times my best sunflowers

>>5031
That's pretty crazy I didn't know that! Did you work there? I assumed Chernobyl was deadly.

>>5023
Never tried growing sunflowers but it works here too. I've seen some in gardens but not that tall.

>>5043
>not that tall

I've seen 6 feet in my yard, this is unbelievable. Like that time I grew zucchini the size of watermelons and they were tender too, that was a while ago. I'm an awful gardener so these flukes are always a surprise.

>>5115

Welp the milkweed grew back and now it's just a stalk again. There are at least another dozen monarch butterfly larva on it. I found the "last molt" of three about 2 weeks ago and now this place is teaming woth butterflies, all fluttering around that same sad milkweed plant that refuses to die.