Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 29, July 20, 2012

July 20, 2012 | JustaDumbBlonde

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Good morning, FRiends, fellow gardeners, and yet-to-be gardeners!

Thanks go out to all that participated in the thread last week. Beautiful photos were posted, and info was shared that will make big differences in the gardening lives of our members.

If you can ... please remember to add keywords that will make our threads more useful when searched. I think that I was the only one that added keywords as the thread progressed.

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone that needs a good rain. Drought is an awful situation.

I am off to the back end of the yard to tend my bees. I have 3 new queens that came in the mail yesterday, and need to get them installed before they are stressed any more. Then, if I have the strength after the heat zaps me, I need to harvest honey. This will be the third harvest in a few weeks ... the girls have been extremely busy.

What is going on in your neck of the woods?

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.

This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.

It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread ... there is no telling where it will go and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Previous weeks' threads:

Weekly Gardening Thread (Catalog Fever) Vol. 1 Jan 6, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Seeds) Vol. 2, January 13, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 3, January 20, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (U.S. Hardiness Zones) Supplemental Vol. 1
Weekly Gardening Thread (Soil Types) Vol. 4, January 27, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Vacation) Vol. 5, February 03, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Vacation) Vol. 6, February 10, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Vacation?) Vol. 7, February 17, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Home Sweet Home) Vol. 8, February 24, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Soil Structure Part 1) Vol. 9, March 2, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Transplanting Tomatoes) Vol. 10, March 9, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Useful Links) Vol. 11, March 16, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread -- Vol. 12, March 23, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread -- Vol. 13, March 31, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Happy Easter!) Vol. 14, April 6, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 15, April 13, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 16, April 20, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 17, April 27, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 18, May 4, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 19 (Getting Projects Done) May 11, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread (Harvesting Wheat) Vol. 20, May 18, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 21 (Keywords) May 25, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 22 (Keywords 2) June 1, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 23, June 8, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 24, June 15, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 25, June 22, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 26, June 29, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 27, July 06, 2012
Weekly Gardening Thread Vol. 28, July 13, 2012

[JustaDumbBlonde]

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[JustaDumbBlonde]

Detailed State Plant Hardiness Zone Maps

Alabama	District of Columbia	Kentucky	Montana	Ohio	Texas ( East )
Alaska	Florida	Louisiana	Nebraska	Oklahoma	Texas ( West )
Arizona	Georgia	Maine	Nevada	Oregon	Utah
Arkansas	Hawaii	Maryland	New Hampshire	Pennsylvania	Vermont
California ( Northern )	Idaho	Massachusetts	New Jersey	Puerto Rico	Virginia
California ( Southern )	Illinois	Michigan	New Mexico	Rhode Island	Washington
Colorado	Indiana	Minnesota	New York	South Carolina	West Virginia
Connecticut	Iowa	Mississippi	North Carolina	South Dakota	Wisconsin
Delaware	Kansas	Missouri	North Dakota	Tennessee	Wyoming

International Plant Hardiness Zone Maps
Australia
Canada
China
Europe
Japan

[tubebender]

First!!!???

[JustaDumbBlonde]

By golly, you are! That is a first! See, if I wait until you are awake, good things happen! :)

[painter]

How is your corn crop doing? I mean farm crop.

The corn crops up here in Missouri have burned up from drought and heat.

[Augie]

Still miserably hot and dry here in Central Missouri. I’ve got 20 gallons of tomatoes picked that need to be made into salsa and canned over the next day or two. Got the first picking of okra yesterday evening. Peaches on one tree are ready to pick. Cucumbers are going nuts but have been bitter due to the extreme heat. And the weeds are winning. LOL

[yoe]

Good morning,

I have a question for the Lavender gardeners where ever you are. How hard do you prune your plants and when. I planted three little Grosso plants last June, got them through that summer successfully. This spring they began to really grow in their 30 inch pots...they are huge but no flowers. I am at a loss as to why no flowers but now wonder if I should prune them now or wait for cooler weather.

Here on the desert (actually a step land)the Kissing Bug is a pest for about six weeks each summer....I started growing and bagging Lavender in silk organza bags I make to keep in our beds and closets....it stopped the Kissing Bug from getting in our beds...moths I knew about but the other was just a guess.

Thanks for any advice.
Johanna

[Oshkalaboomboom]

A rack full of Ghost peppers, with a few Habaneros sprinkled in, ready for drying. That is a dehydrator rack but for now I am using the dashboard of my car to dry them out. Last time I checked it was 135 degrees inside and at that temperature it takes 1-2 days for the Ghosts and 2-3 days for the Habaneros. For now no Tabascos go out to dry. Any ripe ones I pick go directly into a jar that will end up as bottles of Tabasco sauce.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

painter, I am almost ashamed to report that we have the best corn crop ever. It is absolutely huge and full ... pollinated every kernel. I will have to post a photo or two of some of the ears ...

We saw some really burned up corn when we came through S. Dakota, Iowa and Missouri recently. Every irrigation system between Louisiana and Montana was running. Our hearts were hurt looking at the dry land crops. We've been there and done that and know how devastated the farmers are.

[goodwithagun]

Tobasco sauce recipe please?

[freedommom]

I heard a garden show last week and they were talking about biochar..
the indians a long time ago put their charcoal into their
land year after year..
alas it's been years since this has been done and our soils are depleted.

anyways when you add biochar it really helps with drought
and makes plants grow like crazy (one man said he had 162 tomatoes on one plant after he added the biochar)

I'm gonna order a stove to make my own biochar as we have 267 dead trees from last year

[tubebender]

Benderville is suffering under a canopy of dismal overcast skies but it makes for great photos. First up is our Raspberry patch which yielded 5 gallons plus in the first picking and should produce a great fall crop…

We took the row covers off the Pumpkins and winter Squash…

Potatoes have a ways to go but I did a C Section on a few hills of Red Gold and Yukon Gold…

The battle lines have been drawn and weapons gathered…

[Petruchio]

Good Morning!

Started to harvest some Cucumbers from along the driveway. A bowl of sliced cukes with Ranch dressing is a terrific lunch.

Also I diced and steamed a Kohlrabi snd served it in a cream sauce for dinner. 45 minutes from Garden to table. . . YUMM!

Still a moderate drought here. I water kinda heavy once a week. Those water crystals I mixed in the soil this year are helping.

[Red_Devil 232]

I have been getting some nice rains for the last few weeks but it looks like the rains are gone and the heat has arrived for good. My tomatoes have shut down producing and I will have to nurse them through this heat until it cools off a bit.

[FiscalSanity]

I’m in the midsummer “tomatoes won’t set fruit” doldrums here in NW Florida. It’s so hot and humid that it’s just not fun to be outside and I am doing the minimum necessary to keep the garden going. I have watermelons, cantaloupes, peppers, herbs, long beans, tomatillos, sunflowers, and okra that are still going strong, but I am starting to think forward to the fall garden more and more.

I have a replacement crop of cucumbers started, pumpkins (C. moschata types) just starting to run, and some new pepper and eggplant transplants to add to my garden. I’ve just started tomatoes for the fall garden. I really hope they do better than the spring tomatoes! It’s too early to start the cool weather crops, but I am beginning to plan where they’ll go and when to get them started.

However, I haven’t given up on the summer garden entirely. I just planted two tomato plants that are supposed to be heat-setting varieties. Maybe they will give me some fruits to tide me over until the fall crop comes in.

[4everontheRight]

Oshkalaboomboom -
Do you dehydrate those peppers whole?
I have about 8 different varieties of hot peppers right now and usually I cut them up and freeze them but I would love to use my dehydrator on them!

[bgill]

Same here, too hot and humid to venture too far from the A/C. Was out watering at 6:30 this am and it was still muggy. There are a few blooms that came out due to the rains last week but I know they won’t do anything with the heat so looking forward to the fall.

[tillacum]

You are one busy Bee, just like your girls.

[tillacum]

Any of us with fireplaces, stoves or use wood in our bbq pits should have a lot of charcoal. Do you grind (smash) the charcoal and plow it in?

[tubebender]

I just had lunch of Snap Peas right off the vines in the garden and discovered that a Blight has set in on my Red Gold potatoes so that means the other varieties will be next

>;(((

[Red_Devil 232]

NO!

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Tobasco sauce recipe please?

I use a Ragu spaghetti sauce jar then fill it with 6 garlic cloves, a dozen cherry tomatoes (if you grow tomatoes you can also take tomatoes that have spots or insect damage, cut up the good parts and put them in)tabasco peppers and apple cider vinegar. Everything is approximate depending on how strong you want your sauce to be.

I let the peppers sit anywhere from a month to a year, depending on when I need to make up another batch of sauce. I'll also cut the peppers in half before I put them in the jar so the juices mix with the liquid faster. The main thing is to let it sit long enough for the vinegar to soften everything up.

Once I'm ready I pour everything into a blender and puree it. I add more apple cider vinegar to make it the proper consistency and a bit of salt. Pour it into bottles suitable for sauce and store it in the fridge.

If you like I can post pictures of the process as I'm getting it ready.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Do you dehydrate those peppers whole?

Yes, I do them whole. If I want to save seeds I'll break a few in half to separate them out. Otherwise the peppers go, seeds and all, into a stone bowl where I grind them up and put them into jars to season our food.

I do freeze some peppers but drying and grinding is the fate for the overwhelming majority of my crop.

[goodwithagun]

My husband is a hot sauce and hot pepper lover. I’ll have to do this for him. I make him hot pepper butter and I’m thinking of selling it at the farmers’ market this year: http://www.food.com/recipe/Hot-Pepper-Butter-Mustard-for-Canning-137562

[Black Agnes]

Does anyone have any experience making veggie/fruit powders using dehydrated stuff? I’m thinking tomato powder mostly. Do you take out the seeds before you dehydrate? leave them in? fish them out of the powder once you’ve put it in the blender/processor?

Made any other powders? Zucchini, onion, garlic, english pea, pepper, cucumber, broccoli, spinach, banana, strawberry, blueberry?

Inquiring minds.

[freedommom]

you can use charcoal but it’s not the same as biochar...

here is a good link
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Make-Biochar-To-Improve-Your-Soil.aspx

[freedommom]

the charcoal is ok but he ashes are not

[Black Agnes]

I’ve had a really evil blight infestation of some sort in my tomato patch. So, I joined tomatoville. There I learned of a recipe from an old timer that involves bleach. Yes. Really. I was >< close to pulling up my entire patch of maters, burning them and calling it quits.

Instead I took a regular pump sprayer (bought one just for this), filled it with exactly one gallon of water. Then added exactly 1 cup (8oz) of clorox bleach. (not splashless, not kroger or other store brand, not scented. Just regular clorox bleach (it’s a formulation issue, some stronger in their bleach component than others)). Sprayed them at/after sunset till they were dripping making sure to thoroughly saturate the new growth.

They have survived. the leaves that were going to die, died. The new growth looks spectacular. The vines are putting out suckers where the old leaves died. I’ve had to redo the spraying 2-3 times a week depending on weather. It’s cheap, doesn’t accumulate in the soil like copper and unlike most ‘organic’ controls for blight actually works. The bleach oxidizes really quickly and is ‘gone’ within an hour or two. Do it after sun goes down so the plants don’t ‘cook’ in the sunlight and after all the bees go home. I usually follow up with a dusting of DE to kill aphids/other critters and then feed them some mater food.

Be sure to stand UPWIND! I wear a mask too just because.

Yes, we mulch. Thoroughly. Once the blight has a hold on your plants though that makes little difference in the deep south.

Now, having said all that, if you have nothing to lose with your potatoes because hey, they’re already going to kick the bucket why not try this?

The guy on tomatoville that uses this method swears it stops most/all foliar diseases/infestations. If, on the other hand, it’s a systemic disease you’re screwed anyways and haven’t really lost anything but a little time.

Again, a day or two later the plants looked like hammered heck as all the infected leaves went ahead and died. BUT, the vines remained green and healthy and the new growth just took off.

The original poster on Tomatoville uses a lower amount of bleach to ‘control’ for and prevent once he’s got his initial outbreak under control, like 6oz in a gallon of water. Too weak and it won’t work. Too strong and you’ll kill the plants.

[Ellendra]

We have rain!!! My strawberries are ripening again already, and blossoms are opening all over my zucchini and watermelon vines. Some of the radishes I’d planted back in March turned out to be very prolific pod radishes, even though they were marketed as the regular kind. The 3 plants that flowered before they could be eaten are now covered in so many pods it’s hard to see the leaves.

[tubebender]

Thanks for the information however I fear it has spread to all 3 varieties and is moving fast. I had hoped the Purple Haze would not succumb but I found it there. In years past it has consumed the tops in 3 or 4 days but at least the RG and YG have set tubers of a fair size. I will post more photos this evening...

[Black Agnes]

I’d give it a try on at least a few plants. Can’t hurt anything. I’ve picked 25-30 gallons more tomatoes that i’d have picked had i not sprayed.

[WorkingClassFilth]

You seen this: http://www.rodentblaster.com/?

[tubebender]

With my luck I would blow the house up as this gal is within 6 feet of the foundation. I’ll catch her as soon as I put my mind to it.

[WorkingClassFilth]

I understand. Plus, $1,400 is pretty steep. Still, a clever boy might be able to make his own system and have fun doing in the little buggers - whoomp!

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Here are some average ears ... we've got some that's larger and some that's a bit smaller. The ear on the right is not far from harvest ... the two on the left are later, planted behind wheat.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Last year I dehydrated some butternut squash and then put the 'chips' in a coffee-type grinder and made a powder. It is great for adding to pasta flour for ravioli dough. I do the same thing with spinach.

There are instructions for dehydrating just about any fruit or veggie in the Ball Blue Book that I have. I'll dig it up tomorrow and post some of the ones you've asked about. I also have lots of info in the Excalibur book that came with my dehydrator.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Some random shots from my flowers:

This is a shot of my "surprise" bed ... so named because you never know what is going to come up or bloom. The bed is full of all kinds of bulbs. There were crocus, paperwhites and iris earlier in the Spring. The mums have been planted there for 4 years now (they were leftovers from my fall yard arrangement) and they bloom almost continually during the year. The lilies that are there now I planted 2-1/2 years ago and had totally forgotten about. They surprised me beginning 2 weeks ago.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Here are a couple of photos from a hive cutout that Mark and I did this past Tuesday.

[tubebender]

Are those Amaryllis (Naked Ladies) or Rain Flowers?

[tubebender]

It had crossed my mind to empty a can of starting fluid down a fuel hose into the run and lighting it off but my eye brows would not grow back at my age

[Lera]

Visions of Caddy Shack lol
If those don’t work you might consider getting some dry ice and dropping a few small pieces down the hole .

[tubebender]

Gases only work on Moles if you can find the vertical shaft to the lower permanent chambers.

[ApplegateRanch]

Picked a Cherokee Purple before evacuating tonight. 8,000 acres burning a couple of miles from us, and sherrif advised us to leave tonight. Staying with friends in town who helped us get stuff out all day.

Also, lost another air tanker today, though not an actual crash: had engine troble after take off at Rapid City, and had to dump the load of retardant...all over the runways!

Flights had to divert to Wyoming, as the airport was closed while the cleaned up the runways. The tanker, AFAIK, was able to fly empty back to Denver for repairs.

Garden looks great, considering it has been baking under triple digits for several days.

Shower & bed; then do it again tomorrow, if they have our road open.

Pray for rain!

[rightly_dividing]

That’s a very interesting post. Thank you.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I have not much of a clue what kind of lilies ... a guy in Arkansas that works on our cotton picker gave me a small bucket of them that his wife thinned out of her beds. Supposedly they spread rather easily. Seems like he said star lily, but I really don’t remember. They last forever as cut flowers though.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Gorgeous peppers!

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I am going out back to spray my raspberries with roundup after seeing your beautiful photos. Mine don’t deserve to live.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I've been meaning to thank you for the update on the water crystals. Good info. You are doing exactly the right thing by watering deeply and less often. That discourages shallow roots and plants remain strong.

Haven't done it yet, but you and Sir Bender are killing me with the kohlrabi stories. I have got to get some planted!

[rightly_dividing]

Good morning!

Your flowers are beautiful!

I really like you tree rings, and flag pole, too.

Here's a few of my wife's flowers.

And my latest project, please excuse the fuzzie photo. It is the bed for a three tiered fountain. I hope to finish the electrical work today and level out the existing soil so that we may fill it with some really good soil from the garden center. Then my wife will start the planting and make it beautiful. I am no brick layer, so working on that incline was an experience. Then it's off to the next hunny-doo.