/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>3904652
>>3905513

Well thank you. I also have some rabbits, now that you mention it. It was going to be my next post until I got demotivated by some anon incapable of applying simple grammar making faulty assumptions about my sexual preference in an effort to insult me.

They were added to the garden this year, also in May, and were originally intended for their meat. However the cute fluffy bastards thwarted my plans by getting me emotionally attached. Their poo works wonders by 'activating' my compost bins and heaps though, so they still have practical use.

I'm located in Belgium, yes :). Flat and fertile.
My girlfriend got a bit creative/carried away writing the signs.

>>3905162
I myself would just thin them out. You'll be happier with a few decent sized plants than with more but stunted ones.

If you are willing to put in the effort you could still separate them. Just be careful not to damage the taproot of each individual plant, and leave all of them with some rootmass. Above ground growth will stop while the plants recover from the shock and grow new roots for a week or two. Also keep the soil moist to compensate for the loss of water absorbing roots, but be wary of mold(s).

>>3904376
>>3904460
>>3904513
>>3904599

I had some problems with beetle swarms during this time. The swarming happens every few years. My chickens took care of this for me. I covered the seedlings they like to eat with some bent fence wire and let them roam freely throughout the garden during the day.

>>3904376
>>3904460
>>3904513

Once the nightly temperatures rose high enough the tomatoes got transplanted outside, a few weeks after the lettuce. (End of May) Pea's and scallions were sown at the spot after most of the spinach was harvested.

Some sunflowers popped up as you can see. I only planted them once, 6 years ago, and they keep appearing every year again. I keep them around since they attract a lot of (bumble)bees and thus facilitate pollination in the entire vegetable garden. Transplant them when they're small; they really don't take well to it once bigger. I made the mistake of allowing a few to grow in the beds; my biggest mishap this season. They use up a lot of nutrients and shaded the raised bed more than I anticipated.

>>3904376
>>3904460

To compensate for the short season I germinate my tomatoes in the basement. I always have three different 'kinds' of tomatoes; meaty big 'beefsteak' tomatoes, cherrytomatoes and 'normal' slicing tomatoes. The cultivars themselves vary every year. This year I respectively went with heirloom Marmande, Yellow Plum and heirloom Roma's.

The lettuce-seedlings got a 'free ride' since I had the lights on anyway and there was some space left the first weeks. During winter I use the set-up for some hydroponics on a small scale (DWC and ebb&flow).

The growing season over here is rather short. Nightly frost persists well into May. I tend to only grow spinach and different kinds of lettuce from February until mid-May, facilitated by their tolerance to colder temperatures and raised beds covered with some plastic domes I made to keep the soil from freezing.

I also built a 'shelter' for my tomatoes which can be seen in the last photo, hoping to keep them dry during summer rains. We had a wet summer 2 years back, which resulted in blight-ridden tomato plants and the fungus gaining a foothold in my gardensoil. There was no tomato harvest worth mentioning that year and the following.

I grow as much of my food as I can considering my busy schedule as a working engineering-student.

Finding a gardening thread on /ck filled with like-minded souls always makes my day, though the past few months they have rarely been of decent quality, with little to no original content and decent pictures. I remember a truly glorious 'homegrowmen'-thread on here back in spring, with more than 100 original photo's posted by numerous quite knowledgeable anons, sharing all they knew.

Now that the gardening-season is over (for north-hemispherefags) I was hoping for some harvest- and progresspictures. I will dump mine in remembrance of the thread earlier mentioned.