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1500 questions
18
votes
3 answers
Are there any benefits from leaving dead leaves in the soil around a plant?
Do the dying/dead leaves that fall off young plants provide any nutrients or any benefit to the existing plant, if left in the soil around the plant?
user14541
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18
votes
5 answers
Do's and Don't's for a backyard compost?
We have a backyard compost bin for our vegetable garden and a few flower beds. Forgive me for being a total noob on this, but can someone offer me couple of good resources on what's ok and not ok to put in it and some best practices? Currently we…
TheSmallestOne
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18
votes
3 answers
Do seeds from fresh tomatoes need to completely dry before they will sprout?
I have been growing cherry tomatoes for about four years now. My method is hardly scientific. I throw the bad fruit on the ground and let them germinate the next year.
Last year I got some different varieties which I thought I would add to my veggie…
CJ Dennis
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18
votes
1 answer
Is it worth keeping indoor pepper plants alive over the winter?
It's not quite time yet1, but I'm wondering if it will be worthwhile keeping my indoor peppers plants alive over the winter. What I've stumbled across so far seems to indicate they will probably just stop producing fruit when conditions are not good…
DMA57361
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18
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3 answers
How can I effectively grow plants from peach, nectarine or plum pits?
I have a few plum, nectarine, and peach pits from locally grown fruit and I'd like to try growing them, mostly indoors in pots. I'd also like to try one or two outside. What's the best way to go about doing this?
I looked around online and found…
Sarah
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18
votes
5 answers
Should I remove the tree roots coming from the neighbouring garden?
When I was digging out* a patch to grow veggies earlier in the spring I found big roots in the soil unconnected to anything in our garden. It looks like they're coming from some kind of palm trees planted right at the edge of our neighbour's yard.…
Lisa
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18
votes
6 answers
Fast-propagating, inexpensive ground cover / border
I'm looking for a ground cover / border for my flower beds that's:
Fast-propagating
Will tolerate zone 6 (although zone 5 might be more appropriate given the way the past few winters have been).
Morning sun.
Mostly wet. Soils here tend to be pretty…
FMM
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18
votes
3 answers
Can kitchen waste be used as manure?
Can kitchen wastes (like potato peels, onion skins, orange rinds, egg shells, tea inside tea bags etc) be used as manure? If so, how to use them?
Right now, I'm just dumping them in soil, which I feel is a wrong way to do this. Apart from looking…
Sheshbabu
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18
votes
6 answers
How do I encourage my plum tree to produce fruit?
I have a victoria plum which I planted almost 3 years ago and hasn't produced any fruit.
Last year (1st summer) it produced a small amount of blossom. This year it produced a lot of blossom but no fruit but it has gone into a growth spurt. I haven't…
Twisted
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18
votes
2 answers
How frequently should I prune a tomato plant?
My tomato plant is about 6 months old and about a foot and a half tall.
How often should you prune your tomato plant during this stage? Is it possible to over prune the plant? I usually use the pinch method of removing stems.
About my tomato plant.…
chrisjlee
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18
votes
3 answers
Is there any reason not to add commercially produced flowers to compost?
Is there any reason to avoid putting flowers purchased from the florist in compost?
The flowers were gifts but are now wilting. Would florists or growers use anything on the flowers to preserve them that might be bad for compost?
WW01
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18
votes
2 answers
Are millipedes good or bad for the garden?
Are millipedes considered good or bad for plants?
From wikipedia:
Millipedes are detritivores and slow moving. Most millipedes eat
decaying leaves and other dead plant matter, moisturising the food
with secretions and then scraping it in with…
Sheshbabu
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18
votes
3 answers
Should I remove fruits afflicted with blossom end rot?
A few of my peppers are, it seems, suffering blossom end rot - first identified a week or two ago - this is based on the descriptions on the condition elsewhere on the site, but here's a few pics to help confirm:
From what I read on here, and in…
DMA57361
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18
votes
2 answers
How do I deal with millipedes eating my vegetable seedlings?
After cursing all the slugs in my yard and removing the few that I could catch, I was quite shocked yesterday to discover 100+ young plants all chewed to the ground.
I was going out at 9 - 10pm to find the slugs but was only seeing one or two per…
going
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18
votes
2 answers
Why did my orange bell pepper smell of ammonia?
A week ago I harvested an orange Bell pepper from my garden. It was still halfway green, so I put it on our kitchen counter to ripen. When I finally cut it open for a salad after a week of ripening, it had a horrible ammonia smell, unlike anything…
Caffeine Coma
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