Planting December 2021 Planting and Chat Thread

[packyderms_wife]

Planting Calendar - Gardening by the moon

This planting calendar helps you pick the best days for gardening tasks based a 200-year-old formula. Our readers swear by it! Learn more.

www.farmersalmanac.com

• 1st – 2nd
  Start seedbeds. Good days for transplanting. Plant carrots, beets, onions, turnips, Irish potatoes, and other root crops in the South.
• 3rd – 4th
  Do no planting.
• 5th – 6th
  Plant sweet corn, beans, peppers, and other aboveground crops where climate is suitable.
• 7th – 8th
  Barren days. Fine for clearing, plowing, fertilizing, and killing plant pests.
• 9th – 10th
  Extra good for cucumbers, peas, cantaloupes, and other vine crops. Plant peppers, sweet corn, tomatoes, and other aboveground crops in southern Florida, California, and Texas.
• 11th – 13th
  A barren period.
• 14th – 15th
  Fine for planting beans, peppers, cucumbers, melons, and other aboveground crops where climate is suitable.
• 16th – 18th
  Seeds planted now tend to rot in ground.
• 19th – 20th
  Start seedbeds and flower gardens. Good days for transplanting. Most favorable days for planting beets, onions, turnips, and other root crops where climate allows.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Not sure why they're going only to the 20th, so odd.

 

[Toosh]

I grow citrus. I'm not in the right growing zone for it so I move them outside in the summer and into the garage every winter. The garage is better than the house. These trees are 3 years old this December. Every December I am flush with grapefruit, oranges, lemons and key limes. It's amazing how much one little tree produces. Citrus trees are usually on sale 25-45% off in December, Maybe you haven't thought about citrus but if you have a garage or someplace to house them over winter you will be pleasantly surprised.

 

[packyderms_wife]

I grow citrus. I'm not in the right growing zone for it so I move them outside in the summer and into the garage every winter. The garage is better than the house. These trees are 3 years old this December. Every December I am flush with grapefruit, oranges, lemons and key limes. It's amazing how much one little tree produces. Citrus trees are usually on sale 25-45% off in December, Maybe you haven't thought about citrus but if you have a garage or someplace to house them over winter you will be pleasantly surprised.

My garage isn't heated, and I live in Iowa... not sure they'd survive in the garage over winter here.

 

[Toosh]

My garage isn't heated, and I live in Iowa... not sure they'd survive in the garage over winter here.

Heat is what kills them. In the house they die. I'm in KY. The garage is about 40ish degrees. I supplement with light a few hours a day but other than that they don't need me.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Heat is what kills them. In the house they die. I'm in KY. The garage is about 40ish degrees. I supplement with light a few hours a day but other than that they don't need me.

Depending on the month, and the system blowing through, the temp in my garage can get as low as -32F.

 

[spinner]

I have a couple of lemon trees and a blood orange that I overwinter in the house and they produce quite a lot of fruit. Where I live in zone 5 they would not survive in my garage or greenhouse. One of the lemon trees is a Meyer lemon. It produced 40 lemons one year and regularly produces more fruit than I can use. The other one is less productive and is more like a traditional lemon (they are huge), but it is about 35 or 40 years old. It is a reliable producer. It was my parents before it came to me. The blood orange has had fruit a couple times, but it is still young.
I give them some organic citrus food occasionally and pot them in compost. They go outside in the summer.

You can grow citrus inside. I would have more if I had places for them.

 

[Babs]

Heat is what kills them. In the house they die. I'm in KY. The garage is about 40ish degrees. I supplement with light a few hours a day but other than that they don't need me.

Will a basement work? Do they get much light in your garage?

 

[Toosh]

Will a basement work? Do they get much light in your garage?

I have one south facing window and I stack it to the rafters. That usually seems to be enough. If we have several cloudy days I'll turn on the grow lights that I use for seed starting.

 

[marsh]

I have several dwarf citrus trees in half wine barrels. In zone 9A, we only have a handful of frosts and a few freezes. I have used frost blankets to cover my citrus and my tropicals (hibiscus, jasmine, gardenias, tuberose.) On my big lemon I get a plastic drop cloth and cover it with that secured by clothespins. It has worked, so far, for the past few years.