Gardening

[wtxbadger]

Looks like we'll start picking tomatoes in a few days, made a stand with yellow squash, pole beans and blackeye peas. Have a couple of butternut squash plants up and the bell peppers are looking good. Planted a different variety of cucumbers this year that don't vine as much and they're looking good. Onions are looking good as well. Our blackberry patches are doing good and we will start picking them in a day or two and putting them in the freezer a they get ripe.

[Ranger99]

No harvest here yet,  but everything
is looking better with the consistent
warmth

[Bob Riebe]

Re-tilling and corn planting this week to beat the rain.
I have to uncover my roses down South, partly because I use the leaves as mulch over my potatoes which thank God are already in the ground.

It is only May but when I look at the gardens I get this , ITS already JUNE, feeling like I am way out of sync.
I am forcing my self this year, little joy in some thing I normally love doing.

[Bob Riebe]

FINALLY got both gardens finished last week.

Poatoes are near all up already and looking good, while corn is mostly up also and after almost cold-cocking a turkey with a thrown shovel, they will destroy my corn plot as they have done in the past.

Radishes and lettuce all went in late and the warm weather may zap the radishes, but onions are going gangbusters.

[Drilling Man]

  Most years I re-shape my back garden, this year was no different,



  Once that was done, it was time to hit it with the tiller,



  and it's now ready to plant,



  Mostly, it get's put into flower bulbs that I trade to a greenhouse.

  DM

[mcbammer]

FINALLY got both gardens finished last week.

Poatoes are near all up already and looking good, while corn is mostly up also and after almost cold-cocking a turkey with a thrown shovel, they will destroy my corn plot as they have done in the past.

Radishes and lettuce all went in late and the warm weather may zap the radishes, but onions are going gangbusters.

  I feel your pain ,  The crows pull up mine when it starts to emerge to get the sprout kernal . And  I hate to work skippy corn .

[ironglow]

  I finally left gardening behind...and believe me, I miss it.  This summer I will be hitting up the neighborhood Amish for tomatoes..

[Ranger99]

Nobody in this area to buy
fresh vegetables from.
As far as I know, I have the
only vegetable garden for
miles in every direction.
There used to be an elderly
man a few miles away that
grew a large garden and
donated a huge amount to
his church's food pantry, and
sold some to supplement his
tiny income, and ate well off
of the rest

[Ranger99]

Just brought in about a dozen
okra pods.  Very unexpected after
having to replant more than half

Dill is growing back after the
birds ate most of it.
I had no idea birds would eat it.
My granny always grew enough
for several families, so I never
had any need to grow any, but
nothing ever nibbled on hers.
Tomatoes about quarter sized after
the shaky weather earlier in the year.
As long as I can have my traditional
4th of July tomato I'll mostly be happy

There's nothing that tastes the same
as a tomato minutes off of the plant

[wtxbadger]

Been picking tomatoes and yellow squash for a couple of weeks now, blackeye peas are starting to put on pods. Pole bean plants look but not making anything yet. Planted a different variety of cucumbers this year and lots of blooms but no cukes yet. Best guess they aren't suited to high temps and not good for our area. Butternut squash is doing good, made a small stand of beets and they're looking good. Planted eggplant and while the plants look good haven't seen any sign of them making fruit.

With the 100 plus temps the bigger tomatoes are already slowing down but the cherry tomatoes are doing good.

[Ranger99]

None of mine did good at first
with all the cold snaps we had.
My one relative has already had
tomatoes, but they live near S.A.
where it's considerably warmer
year round, and they started with
the started plants whereas I grew
from seed.  Most all the plants around
here local were $4.78 each, so that's
very cost prohibitive for me.
Not to mention the cost of plant loss
from cold fronts, frost damage, etc.

[Bob Riebe]

corn is mostly up also and after almost cold-cocking a turkey with a thrown shovel, they will destroy my corn plot as they have done in the past.

Went home (Got towed the last 25 miles as the radiator on my car went pffft, while towing a trailer full of garden mulch.) and while the car problem was annoying, found out that the turkeys had stomped 6 six of my 8 corn plots into history.

I could see where they had scratched in the dirt while walking over and killing the young corn plants. --( The whole town is in a wildlife refuge so killing them is illegal , the reason the local Police cannot shoot them,  but I am seriously thinking of sighting in my father's old .22 to the accuracy it had before I cleaned it, and using a box of sub-sonic .22s while sitting on the roof)

[wtxbadger]

corn is mostly up also and after almost cold-cocking a turkey with a thrown shovel, they will destroy my corn plot as they have done in the past.

Went home (Got towed the last 25 miles as the radiator on my car went pffft, while towing a trailer full of garden mulch.) and while the car problem was annoying, found out that the turkeys had stomped 6 six of my 8 corn plots into history.

I could see where they had scratched in the dirt while walking over and killing the young corn plants. --( The whole town is in a wildlife refuge so killing them is illegal , the reason the local Police cannot shoot them,  but I am seriously thinking of sighting in my father's old .22 to the accuracy it had before I cleaned it, and using a box of sub-sonic .22s while sitting on the roof)

I use a .22 Gamo pellet rifle that shoots around 1000 fps and does a good job on controlling squirrels, grackles and other pests. It's more quiet than the subsonic ammo and doesn't get the attention of our neighbors who tend to feed everything that walks or crawls.

[Mule 11]

Depending on how much my give a s... is working that day I’ll use either cb longs or cci stingers. One good crack and it’s done...

[Ranger99]

Had some okra and peas from my
plantings so far. Somehow I'm going
to have to scale up drastically to
be able to have enough to put up
for those rainy days.
If everything holds up, I'll be having
my traditional July4th tomatoes

Shame none of the mad scientists
have invented a cornbread plant
yet

[wtxbadger]

Calling it quits on the pole beans, cucumbers and eggplant. Guessing it's to hot and they're not making, in their place I'm planting blackeye peas that don't mind summer heat in Texas.

[Bob Riebe]

North garden is doing very well, but I just realized I did not put in any carrots.
Wind blew so hard it blew a broccoli out of the ground, did not see that till it was too late.
Tomatoes and chiles look good but oddly are not huge like they were in last years nasty weather.

South garden,  purslane has covered all of the garden except where I mulched the potatoes; another hours on knees weeding job again.
Corn that the turkeys did not stomp to death is doing well and squash are up out of the ground now; I watered for 80 minutes last week as all the rain Minn. has had went around my South garden.
Onions , which were put in as an after thought seem to be doing well also.

When I go home to fix my automobile I will do garden work, but the BIG task painting the garage is the one I am NOT looking foreward to.

[Ranger99]

Looking kinda bleak here
I've had a couple of small
batches of okra, but not much
else

[Bob Riebe]

Went home to work on the car and garden last week; Southern Minn. is  terribly dry.  I put in some  squash plants and the ground was dry, zero moisture, six inches down where I planted.
Spent 11 hours on my hands and knees pulling Purslane , so the garden is black now rather that a sea of green.
Worthless turkeys did not bother to eat the potato bugs that decimated my potatoes, spent part of three day walking through the potatoes squishing the SOBs between my finger.
Watered heavily, over an hour, four times; the onions went from tilting  to mostly standing up after the last time.

Fertilized the corn, of which the surviving stalks look not too bad, but I need some high Nitrogen fertilizer which I do not have right now.

[Bob Riebe]

My North garden is doing very well, found a volunteer tomatillo which looks healthy so I  may have some to add to the chilli base I make every year.
Sweet corn up there is about 1 week from ready to pick, tomatoes and potatoes very healthy, with picking one or two tomatoes every day.

Onions are bent over now and not real large, depending on color but I will have a large amount; elephant garlic turning yellow but very small.
Broccoli and cauliflower doing/did well and chiles are producing abundantly even with plants a lot shorter than last year.

Down South corn is tasseling even though it is feet shorter than it should be do true drought down South, Potatoes look like crap due to potato beetles (I squished dozens every day, 3, I was there and could not get them all so yield will probably not be woth much.
Onions will be small but still have a goodly amount for use.

Minnesota is one state where spot droughts, just part of state while other parts have excess rain, is not common but not rare either; this year it hit parts that are opposite of where it usually hit 15-25 years back.
Did see some corn fields where parts were the blue-grey color of death, which is better than entire fields which were too common a years back.

[Mule 11]

I have been eating tomatoes for a few weeks now and not tired of them yet. Made a pot of chili with some and no beans because I’m out. Mighty good without as for me they’re just fill in chili. Had to use plan b on two whistle pigs with 2 left. If they enter my live trap I’ll just relocate them, if not, plan b never fails. Also relocated a wood pussy this morning.

[Bob Riebe]

LOL, I wanted to get a pet skunk but the other half said no, now they are not cheap, but from what I read pretty much like have a cat and we  have two of those.

[Mule 11]

LOL, I wanted to get a pet skunk but the other half said no, now they are not cheap, but from what I read pretty much like have a cat and we  have two of those.

I told my kids about them making good pets after scent gland removal and my son wanted to keep it, of course I said no. He told me he had $160 saved, so I asked him if he wanted to use that to de scent the skunk, after a few secs he said no. I’m sure it would be much more, just wanted to know if he’d spend his candy and toy money.

[Bob Riebe]

North garden is flourishing.
Have been eating sweet corn all week, Precious Gem, and I planted some field corn to feed the critter and make corn shocks, but one Baxter Yellow had tassles white like sweet corn, SO, picked a cob and cooked it with the sweet corn.
It has far more corn taste, though it was more mature than the sweet corn, and the second and third time I cooked a cob, after putting it in the hot water, I poured a line of sugar along the cob which dissolved in the heat.
It came out sweeter than the sweet corn, and was good.

Some potatoes are starting to die down, tomatoes are still slow to ripen but there are a lot of them, chiles are going gangbusters and have all summer.
Squash has vines all over but I have not seen a an actual squash yet.
Picked all the onions; red were smallest with white the largest and tan ones in the middle, both in size and plantiing.

Brocolli and cauliflower all did very, very well.

I have not been to the South garden in almost two weeks but potatoes were stripped of vegetation by beetles, corn is as written in the last post while squash also were vining all over and I did see some fruit down there.

[Ranger99]

Not much to brag about here
this year.  The drought and the
unseasonable heat really messed
things up for me. The deluge
we had helped considerably as
far as salvaging many of the plants,
but some were too far gone and
just withered away. If we're still
able to buy seed as the peasant
population of the country, I'll have
to double up somehow and plant
twice as much as I have been.
What little I got was pretty good
and I was grateful for it, but I
really didn't get any return as far
as the labor etc.

[Mule 11]

Never got tired of eating garden tomatoes this year. I had my first bacon, cheese and tomato omelette of the year for breakfast.

[Bob Riebe]

Tomatoes up here are producing heavily  still, without disease which for this time of year is odd.
I should go out and start denuding the plants till there is just enough greenery to suppost ripening; had to cover for frost (though I doubt the garden had any frost as nothing showed results of a frost.

Ten and more years ago I would fight a battle to keep the plants free of frost damage well into Oct. but the desire to do so just seems to be fading away.
It is a lot easier to cover 4-5 plants that 10 or so but thses are 5 feet tall and wide.
Nost sure why in the past years they were usually 4 feet wide but only 3 feet high; different cage systes I guess.

My one surviving plot of corn up North is now averaging 12 feet high but is still green so I will let it stand till frost fishishes it off.
Got approx. one bushel of potatoes up North, a lot of large bakers and one bigger than a mans hand; fewst marble size potatoes in a long, long time.

Have get back down to the South garden and finish postatoes , pull corn stalks.
My Hopi Cushaw squash down there did incredibly well; must have like this summer's weather.

[Mule 11]

This year it was strawberries and tomatoes. Had a good run for 3 or 4 weeks on strawberries. Still have tomatoes and have a bunch of quarts frozen. A good year as far as vegetation goes.

[Ranger99]

The first part of the growing season
was too erratic. Good rain then high
heat and drought. I've had some yield,
but not even close to what I was
hoping for.
If I'm able this next year, I'm going to
have to expand drastically to get a
yield to be able to put up some extra

[Mule 11]

Research plants that do well in your area before the next growing season. Don’t know if you do or not.