Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

If you are speaking of Jimson weed it can;

Effects: The phrase “Red as a beet, dry as a bone, blind as a bat, mad as a hatter” has been used to describe Jimson’s effects, and it does a good job of summing them up. All parts of the plant are toxic, so pleasant effects are limited — a big reason the plant is used only by novices. Atropine and scopolamine block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, causing dry mouth, dilated pupils, high temperature (but reduced sweating), and blurred vision. Psychological effects include confusion, euphoria, and delirium.

Side Effects/Risks: Potential for accidental poisoning increases with higher doses. Symptoms include incoherent speech, impaired coordination; rapid heart beat; and dry, flushed or hot skin. In extreme cases, users can experience seizures, intense visual or auditory hallucinations, or cardiac arrest. A Jimson weed overdose should be considered potentially serious and medical intervention sought.

Trends: Most Jimson weed use tends to be of the one-time-only, (((thrill-seeking))) or curiosity variety, typically involving (((younger teens.)))
http://www.doitnow.org/pages/525.html

GardenersCardiff answers:

Try watching a show called DEA, and see how you feel about it after. Great show, but you will realize you can get caught very easily…

GardenersCardiff answers:

Growing your own veggies is great. Fresh tomatoes, cukes, green beans, summer squash and so on are really enjoyable when they come from your own garden.

Veggie gardening is a little trickier than it seems before you try it. Each veggie type has its favored soil conditions, and space conditions, and water demands, although for the water and soil issues, most plants are tolerant of a wide enough range that you don’t need to separate things all that much (don’t need special gardens for each plant).

The space issue though can be very important. Some plants, like cukes or summer squash, or fall squash (pumpkins and friends), live on vines that can run quite far and take over areas occupied by other plants. Tomatoes, which seem so lonely when tiny, end up growing all over each other if you don’t leave enough space. The flip side is that if you leave too much space, the ground dries out too easily and you have all that wasted area to be taken over by weeds. You are going to have to learn by experience.

I like to grow everything except tomatoes and peppers (green or red peppers) straight from seed. It is usually easier to overseed the area you are planting a given plant and then winnow out the weaker plants as they grow than to try to give a proper spacing at planting time. So you can row seed with a closer spacing than the plants will need. Important to give each row a good separation distance though. Seed only need to be placed about half an inch down; you can use your finger to draw a row for seeding, or use it to punch seed holes at regular intervals down a row. You don’t want to go beyond your first knuckle for depth, in my experience. Obviously you cover the seeds after you place them, and then give the soil a good watering.

Carrots are really good for overseeding and later winnowing, because you can actually have a lot of baby carrots in midseason and still have a good late mature harvest.

My suggestion, since you are apparently new at this, is to only plant 3 or 4 different veggie types to start. You will learn a lot about your particular garden and gardening in general in the first year. I would suggest carrots, tomatoes (buy a little flat of six baby plants at the local garden place), and cucumbers. Carrots should be on the sunny side, because they won’t grow as high as the tomatoes. The cukes can be trained to follow poles or a trellis and thus can be placed at the back (furthest from the sun. Tomatoes can be big so give enough space so the tomatoes don’t block all the sun for things behind.

Soil is a special issue­. Usually you want something that is a good mix of sand silt and clay, so that water drains but not too fast, and so the soil will stay damp well after watering. You need to add black earth or compost or something depending on the soil, and that is hard to explain off hand. Definitely at the end of the season turn all your dead plant back into the garden so it will act as compost for next year. May even get the random bonus plants next season (from seeds left over after this year-tomatoes are pretty good for this, I find).

After you plant, you want to keep the soil moist until the sprouts start coming up, usually a week to 2 weeks after planting. Some things may start coming up after a couple-few days.

Watering and weeding and thinning the garden are things you sort of have to learn by practice. Too much water can be bad, not enough water can be bad, watering in full sunlight can cause leaves to get burned, that sort of thing that you only learn not to do because you did it. Sometimes even figuring out what is a rogue weed or a plant you want can be difficult when everything is young, too. Gets obvious as the things age. You do have to weed quite a bit, espectially if you make your own compost and aren’t careful to keep weed plants and seeds out of it.

But I love having my own veggie garden. Good excuse for an hour outside at the end of the day, and fresh straight out of the garden veggies are the absolute tastiest things.