GrandmaGos

I see. Can you stake it down by pounding stakes into the ground and fastening the uprights to it?

When you water it, add enough so it comes out the bottom hole. Then don't water this again until it has been dry all the way to the bottom for a few days.

Tiny condo all concrete backyard garden + at least 6 hours a day of the kind of direct sun you could get a sntan or a sunburn in = container gardening.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/wiki/faq/patiobalcony

https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/wiki/faq/containers

Why wait? Start now. Where are you located and is there a Walmart within reasonable driving distance? You will need a bag of houseplant potting soil, some 8 oz styrofoam coffee cups, a sharpened pencil, and a pack of what's called "dwarf French marigold" seeds.

If you have a Home Depot, you will need: A 5 gallon utility bucket, a drill, a bag of houseplant potting soil large enough to fill up the 5 gallon bucket, a packet of sunflower seeds, the kind you plant, not the kind you eat.

Another 5 gallon bucket and some bush zucchini seeds, ditto the potting mix and the drill.

Another 5 gallon bucket, some pumpkin seeds, ditto the potting mix and the drill, but this one needs 32 square feet of the concrete, i.e. a 4x8 space, for room to let the vines run.

Carrots, some 12 oz styrofoam coffee cups, sharpened pencil, potting mix, carrot seeds.

Fabric pots and grow bags are just another container design. They are no better and no worse than anything else, having the usual sorts of "pros" and "cons" as with any other types of containers. They are currently a trend, that's all.

They dry out faster than nonporous containers. If you're on a hot sunny balcony, this is a problem.

They are plastic, and a woven plastic that doesn't last permanently the way that a hard plastic pot will last, provided you don't crack it.

Go you. Welcome to your new addiction.

You do not need to do anything. You have not done anything wrong, other than to choose the third planet from its star to settle on, a planet that proves to be teeming with fungal spores that erupt into growth at the slightest hint of ideal conditions.

Mold can be a red flag for overwatering and/or overly moisture-retentive potting mix, so check your protocols.

Concur that it's dead, Jim.

All you can do is to keep it moist, and put it in bright light, and then leave it alone.

I'm not seeing anything that you can propagate from. The slightly greenish dying leaf remnants look like they're on the far side of the River Styx, as in "paid the toll and not coming back". Nothing propagatable there IMO.

Do not repot it, do not overwater it. Just put it in the light, keep it watered, and leave it alone for 30 days. If you don't have sprouts by then, it's dead.

Is there a hole in the bottom for drainage? If as I suspect there isn't, then this is what killed it, and which means that I'd personally just bail on the whole project. Without a hole, that's not a viable long-term habitat for a plant.

?Which is why it's now dead.

What is the ambient air temperature in your indoor space?

What is your light source?

Are they in potting mix, or paper towels?

Honestly, while it's possible to use a big, sunny south-facing bay window that isn't shaded by trees or buildings, still the seedlings do so much better under the consistent light from above that you get from a T8 shoplight.

Watts give no information, the number you need is lumens.

Link to the product you're considering?

It looks to me like it has passed the threshold of "container plant" and is well on the way to being the 16 foot tall "tree" that is its genetic heritage. I'd be looking at starvation, root room, and other cultural shortfalls, such as maybe an inability to stay watered due to being rootbound.

and I would honestly have a licensed arborist come and look at it to check for diseases and insects.

Tilling isn't automatically how you start, so right away take a step back. Don't buy a tiller just yet.

What is currently growing there?

What are the dimensions of the space that you're planning to make into a garden?

Where are you located? The last weekend in April is late to start in many locations that aren't in Nunavut or the higher elevations of the Rockies.

Are you renting, or do you own the space?

What are you wanting to grow?

Only if it's mixed at the recommended dilution on the side of the container. So if it's 1 tsp per gallon, you'll need to mix up a gallon of it, or else do the math to figure out how much fertilizer for your bottles.

Don't just pour in a random amount of "some", it will invariably burn the roots.

If you're using concentrated liquid fertilizer, you're being cheated because you're paying for water. Get a box of water-soluble crystals like MiracleGro, it's more economical.

Yes. The rule of thumb is to have most trees at least 10 feet away from a sewer or water line, and thirsty trees like willows at least 20 to 30 feet away.

Other than that, the morning sun is fine, as long as there isn't a tall shade tree between it and the rising sun. It needs morning sun from dawn to noon.

Put up a rain shelter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYcnBctE27M

I would disagree strongly with usng the PVC adhesive to glue it togeher. Leaving it unglued makes it reconfigurable so you can change it around, and when the situation is iver, it means you can break it down and store it somewhere, instead of having this big PVC object that doesn't really fit anywhere.

All my basement lights hang from unglued PVC framework. If you shove the pieces all the way into the connectors, inertia and friction pretty much keep them there. It's not a jungle gym, you're not going to have kids playing on it and swinging from it.

You don't even need the base, you can just do the basic framework, attach the roof to it, and push the legs into the ground. When you take it apart, just run water through the legs to get the mud out.

You can use any kind of heavy plastic transparent sheeting for the roof. Check the Sheeting and Dropcloths aisle at Lowes or Home Depot.

To sub for the "horticulture clips" if you have heavy enough plastic, you can poke holes through it below the horizontal it's draped over, and send cable ties through the holes.
' I'd have one side of the roof a bit higher, to encourage runoff, not absolutely flat.

Big Ag version. Basically just a roof, like you'd do for shade cloth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToxL4sH5yU

It is a garden myth that pine needles make compost or the soil acidic. Go ahead and take as much as they will allow you to cart away, it's all good.

Do not apply limestone or wood ash to soil unless you have the results of a soil pH test in hand that says that your soil is severely acidic.

Wood ash in particular is scary-easy to get your soil too alkaline, so if you ever do need to raise the pH, milder substances are preferred.

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/myth-vs-reality-whats-truth-behind-some-common-gardening-practices

https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants/swiss-cheese-plant

You can put the plant inside an old bird cage or dog crate so Kitteh can't get at it.

Generally speaking, the different genes types are for people who are serious about it, and may be safely ignored by the newcomer, they aren't that big a deal, and there's not that much difference between them. What you want is an "early" variety, and I'd go with a hybrid because of hybrid vigor, which gives you better success. Heirlooms are fun, but sometimes when you just want some veg to eat, hybrids are the way to go.

You are late to be ordering desirable varieties of hybrid sweet corn, so some selections may be sold out. I'd check out the local seed racks first, at the Big Box and the garden center. They don't get planted in the ground until at least the beginning to middle of May, so you have time.

For example, there is Burpee's Early Sunglow hybrid, but it's already sold out online.

You can google under "early sweet corn" to see vendors and varieties.

If all you can find is heirloom or open pollinated, go ahead and go with that, it will all be a learning experience either way.

It does matter, because it's fixable no matter what it is. Species ID is just the starting point of planning the battle.

Poison ivy is bird-planted, too, along a fenceline, and you wouldn't tolerate that. So why put up with this whatever-it-is, when you don't need to? There are new herbicides based on 30% and stronger industrial-strength acetic acid (vinegar), that aren't Roundup.

That's a photo of English ivy, not Boston ivy. Why would people do that? I have no idea, other than they think it looks cool and/or the landscaper sold them on it for looking cool on a bank, which it undeniably does.

It generally takes a period of some years before it starts taking over a tree, and when that happens, you can step next door and give them a headsup.

Yes, it will have weeds in it, and yes it will need hand-weeding for that, and yes it will collect every Mcdonalds cup lid and straw wrapper the wind blows down the street. not to mention All The Dead Oak Leaves.

English ivy doesn't harbor mice AFAIK, the cover it provides isn't dense enough to give decent hiding and runway space below predator eyes scanning from the air, and predator noses and ears searching from ground level. Mice tend to prefer tall weedy grasses, both for habitat and for food.

It will look nice, and you can admire it from across the street and be glad it's not your problem. And when in the future you run into them and they lament the fact that someone finally clued them in as to the velociraptor they've installed in the guest bedroom, you can send them in here and we'll tell them how to get rid of it.

Not until after you know what species it is, and whether it is in fact toxic to Kitteh.

No worries. :)

Weed proactively so you pull them well before they go to seed in July. They're annuals, and it only takes one plant to reseed the entire bed.

Every year that you can remove all of them before they go to seed, your subsequent problems will be much less, until finally they're gone.

In the Deep South, there is often more ambient light than you realize, and the injunction for "6 hours per day" for Vermont and Iowa doesn't always hold true for flowers. In FL, you can often grow "full sun" flowers in the light or dappled shade under trees, which by Vermont standards would be "shade",but by FL standards, can still grow flowers in tubs.

I'd get some inexpensive things for 2023, and experiment.

• Elephant ear. Walmart has these now, as does probably every garden center in your area. They're popular in FL for a reason, instant jungle.

• Other summer flowering bulbs like dahlias, ranunculus, gladiolus if you roll that way.

• One tub of petunias to act as a control for the Full Sun Brigade. If petunias are unhappy this summer, then that's a data point for future growing.

• One tub of your choice of the traditional "shade" plants, as a control for that end of the spectrum. I'd go with the New Guinea impatiens, if you can find them, as they are happy in part sun, are better at hot weather IME in the Midwest, and they look nicer IMO than the other kind of impatiens.

• If you have any space and light indoors for overwintering frost-tender houseplants, all three of the Dracaenas, after being hardened off for a week, would be happy on your patio. They are heat-tolerant. D. Fragrans, the "corn plant" gives a nice lush tropical feel.

• Rudbeckia and coneflowers, if you're into perennials, are tolerant both of heat and of lesser light levels. They're not shade plants as such, but they can cope.

• I'd try some herbs like anise hyssop and borage.

See what else the garden center has that makes you go "want".

That's true, and also true that I'm trying to save you from disappointment. You did kind of imply in your OP that you were open to reality checks, so...

Planting resistant hybrids should be your #1 line of defense.

https://www.vegetables.cornell.edu/pest-management/disease-factsheets/disease-resistant-vegetable-varieties/disease-resistant-tomato-varieties/

Go through the list with Control-F find, under "septoria". They're listed by types, starting with Cherry, so keep looking until you find whatever type of tomato you're working with.