This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
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Notes -
I always manage to kill everything I've planted (including an indoor succulent a friend gifted that I keep forgetting to water even occasionally). Any recommendations on getting started gardening as someone with no discernable green thumb, and who lives somewhere with dry, sweltering summers, and the yearly bout with a hard freeze or two?
If you're planting annuals like most vegetables and flowers, then just try a little of everything, and see what survives to figure out what to focus on next year. I'm also in the heat, and some of the stuff that grows well like peppers and okra was predictable ... but also I had very good luck with some plants like green beans and horrible luck with curcurbits (cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, etc) and I still have no idea why.
Basically everything we eat loves full sunlight if it's well watered; you can get away with a little shade, but I think I lost my strawberry patch to too much shade one year.
Basically everything hates drowning, so if you get even occasional heavy rains you'll want to worry about drainage. Raised beds are popular for that, though going high with them means you either need to have or add a lot of topsoil. I only went up a few inches for my first raised beds, and I still wonder if that (maybe indirectly through promoting fungi?) was what finished off my vines and my potatoes during a wet period.
If you have trouble remembering to water, getting a drip system on a timer is a reasonable solution. You still have to kill weeds, but the timing on that is more flexible.
If you just have trouble with frequent watering, cheap LEDs have made hydroponics an affordable hobby for growing herbs now, not just "herb". Topping off (and fertilizing and adjusting pH) has to be done about once a week.
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Horseradish is incredibly hardy. Everyone I know who plants it spends more time trying to keep it from spreading than they do keeping it alive.
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Green crops- plant the right one for your temperature range and keep it watered. Nitrogen fertilizer.
Tomatoes- plants from a nursery in a raised bed, with a cage. Keep it watered.
Fruits- generally take sandy soil, not clay. Usually takes a lot of water.
Peppers, okra- very heat tolerant.
Squash- needs good drainage, but also plenty of water. Probably best to plant in a berm or a pot that drains well.
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