So far we have some russets, dakota pearls(best for chips), and red potatoes. Corn is all harvested, processed and frozen. Beet and peppers are left to harvest.
Hubby has bought the lumber to make my "produce cart". It will be kinda like a bookshelf on wheels, except the back, sides, and shelves will be slatted so that air can circulate. The shelves will also be only 5" in between them most everything will just be one layer while finishing up the ripening etc.
Have 3 lbs of tomatoes frozen. When we get another 3 lbs of ripe tomatoes, I'll be making some spaghetti sauce to can.
I added a core conditioning class to my schedule this past week. Wow ouch. Muscles I forgot I had a smarting a bit.LOL
Hope everyone is doing well. Have a great weekend. God Bless.
Been waiting for this thread! Thanks!!
Pinging the List.
Working until midnight. Garden burning under Texas sun. Peanuts ok. On tablet, typing is difficult.
Miss ya’ll, but work is work. I’ll be glad to get out of the heels and cocktail dress. ;)
/johnny
Hi Everybody!
((((HUGS))))
I got caught driving in a hue tropical storm today with flash flooding on the roads.
I managed to get home, call my students and cancel the lessons, and lose a day’s pay in the process.
((((SIGH)))))
Y’all can have some of our cool and wet.
This summer has been so crappy. Here it is, the middle of August and the high today was 60 and we’ve hardly seen the sun.
Trade you.
It’s been a GOOD day - we finally, after almost a month, got our big tractor back from the shop today - yay!!! We had a nice rain about 2 weeks ago which greened everything up from a brown and crunchy state. Tuesday, we got 1.5 inches of rain and everything, especially the weeds/grass in the fields is growing! There will be some major bush hogging going on this weekend.
I’ve been making tomato pies to use up the tomatoes before they start rotting and now I’m about “even” .... what is coming off the vines, I should be able to use/eat without too many accumulating. The bell peppers are coming in. I have two baseball-size Cucuzzas and a Trombetta that I’ve let go, just to see how big it will get. The cukes are slowing down - finally. I just wish the poblanos would do something - no peppers on 4 plants and I’ve only gotten two jalapenos on one plant (the other has none) so that’s been a disappointment.
A relative visited Tuesday (great way to spend a rainy day - visiting!) and he said he uses powdered milk to keep his tomatoes from getting blossom end rot - works like a charm. He just works a little in the soil around the plants. I did some research online and some folks also spray their plants with milk to discourage fungus growth - very interesting stuff - here’s a link (good overall website, too):
Milk and Tomato Growing
http://www.harvesttotable.com/2009/05/milk_and_tomato_growing/
I'm coming to your house! Here in TX, it's hot,dry, and more hot. I have no volition for the fall garden stuff at all.
I really think I am about through gardening for this year. I don’t know why my tomatoes preformed so poorly this year. I had my soil tested by our State University and followed their recommendations. I think one thing was I was very late in planting because of the cool weather and the fact that I have used wheat straw in the past to cover my normal landscaping fabric and could not find any this year. I used a red dyed commercially produced wood chip product to cover my fabric. I will never go that route again. I have never had this kind of failure before. I did get some beautiful San Marzano tomatoes to can and roasted quite a few and froze the roasted maters. At least the ones I did not scarf down! Their roasting aroma is amazing and hard to resist.
I am disappointed to say the least.
At first I thought we had deer, but when we tried to cover things with floating row covers, this critter got in by going underneath.
We've had woodchucks on our property in Vermont, but I never thought I'd have them here in Connecticut. Hubby finally saw him munching on the snow pea plants I'd just pulled and put into our compost heap. Found two openings to his burrow and rodent bombed both. That was two days ago and I haven't seen any new damage since then.
Lost a lot veggies to Mr Chuck :-(
Thanks - sounds like you’ll be ready for winter! My flower garden is over run with weeds. Going to get out this weekend and remove them all. Also planted two rose bushes that I bought from Heirloom Roses - they are having a big sale and I bought two more for delivery for next spring. Transplanted a big hydrangea last evening. I don’t know if it will make it — hope to see if it will take root in the next week or so. Need to get some more top soil and compost.
I have really enjoyed learning new things this year about flowers, soil, bugs and weeds. It’s certainly challenging. Lately when I drive by a house with a nice cottage garden, I’m feeling tempted to knock on the person’s door and asking questions about their garden. Would that be too creepy? I haven’t succumbed to the desire yet, but it crosses my mind now and again.
Weather here is glorious. I hear we might have rain next week. Bummer! Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Earth Boxes + Planting by the Signs + Texas Tomato Food = BEST CROP EVER. Shame I’m in soviet Red Hampshire.
We’ve gotten a bit of rain this afternoon here in Central Missouri.
Nanner and I spent some time in the pond this week and I managed to run over something really hard and sharp and cut a big gash in the right front tire. Fortunately the tire shop was able to install a boot and we’re back up and running.
BLT’s for supper tonight. The Brandywines are so big you could make two sandwiches with one slice of tomato.
Fishing on the Osage in the morning if it’s not pouring down rain.
Mrs. Augie says it’s time to harvest some of the herb garden to save for winter. We already put up a mountain of oregano so I’m guessing that she means the thyme and basil. I was hoping to avoid all forms of work this weekend but it doesn’t look like she’ll let me get away with it.
‘Mater question: I have all heirlooms, they are loaded with green fruit, but the fruit had yet to ripen! Any suggestions? I’ve always grown heirlooms and have staked and not staked. I didn’t stake them this year.
On the cucumber side, I got a cuke from one of my plants. You would expect it, normally, but in this case, I was quite surprised. The plant was a test, in a smaller container/pot. The plant itself hasn't grown much - it has several very small leaves, but in total, the plant might be about 2 - 3 inches tall, and that's it - anyhow, it started blooming like crazy and all of a sudden, there's a big cuke on it, quite bigger than the plant itself. I found it interesting.
The leaves are curling inward and appear to be getting chewed on from the outside in.
Hi greeneyes and everyone!
POTATOES
Since you started with potatoes, greeneyes, so will I. I’m glad that you have a lovely harvest happening. I had not realized it WAS harvest time! Maybe I may learn from this that my bad news may actually be good news!
For most of the time, my white store boughten potato plants which I cut up and planted had lovely green foliage. Now it looks like the Irish Potato Famine hit us! Very little green is left, and I had surrendered the idea that I have no harvest. But if you are harvesting, well, maybe I should just go with it, dig, and investigate!
Sweet potatoes continue to vine all over everywhere.
That’s the good news. Bad news is I’ve surrendered to the grasshoppers. I’ll get what I get! They have apparently left enough for the plant to still be thriving, so I do still have expectations of some kind of a harvest!
Amaranth:
Good news: GORGEOUS red seed heads!
Bad news: Darn grasshoppers have punched holes in every leaf!
Tomatoes:
Mostly good news here. The Atkins is very abundantly producing. The other varieties are producing well also. I guess the bad news would be that due to my skittishness about possible overuse of fertilizer, I did not feed them adequately, so they are probably smaller than they should be. But how would I know? I’m still a novice at tomato growing! They have all put out lots of vines and branches which escaped the cage. I’ve lifted them, heavy with fruits, to get them off the ground, and tied them to the cage with string, being careful that they have adequate support.
The Atkins are just a little bit larger than cherry tomatoes. Can anyone tell me, is this the usual size or are the poor things stunted from inadequate groceries?
Legumes:
Good news: All have produced very well, and some are even continuing to bloom and form. The Asian Trellis beans are my “goodest” news! They are AWESOME! Long trailing pods, and DEFINITELY require a trellis. As I mentioned previously, While I could have picked them green, I chose to let them all go to seed.
Bad news: The darn grasshoppers! LOL!
Cucumbers:
I had one tiny cuc to harvest yesterday.
Good news: several others are starting, but bad news, others have shriveled.
SQUASH
Bad news: Have had troubles with low production. While my zucchini plant produced one baby, it was trailing low to the ground and succumbed to poor conditions there and rotted. In fact the entire plant died. Since I added it as an afterthought to the pot, it just could not compete with its T Squash neighbor.
Good news: I even HAVE squash! The white bush squash produced 2 babies, which I harvested. The T Squash produced two, but bad news, one shriveled, and the other is still on the vine and growing. All surviving squash continue to bloom.
Peppers:
Several other peppers are reddening up. Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to assess the heat factor!
Okra:
Good news all around. I love the 3 varieties I planted: Orange Jing, Eagle Pass, and Clemson Spineless.
Sunflowers:
Forming their seeds! They all appear to be good news, but but there may be bad news in the end, as early one, they were invaded by boring beasties. I tried to treat them, but we’ll see.
Those are the high points!
Darlin ran across this link on Yahoo this morning and suggested I should share it with all of you! There is a garden use!
Surprising uses for ASPIRIN
https://www.yahoo.com/health/5-surprising-uses-for-aspirin-94741099878.html
Well, as I mentioned before, the big tractor is back from the shop so bush hogging could commence. We have a “back corner” on our farthest field that gets very wet in the spring. We usually can’t bush hog it without getting stuck so we wait until July or later, after it’s all dried out. By that time, the weeds are waist deep - very clumpy & rough, tough job to bush hog.
I had to go to a picnic yesterday afternoon, so I asked my brother to come over and bush hog that corner - it’s a little more than I want to tangle with. He got it done, but in the process, he ran over a ground bee (yellow jacket) nest and got stung 10 times! The bees chased him about 75 yards all the way up to the front pasture fence. Fortunately, he didn’t have a bad reaction, took a Benadryl to help, and had a pretty good attitude about ‘taking the hit’ from the bees instead of me. After dark, we got some gasoline and went down to the approximate spot of the attack and despite some clumpy grass, we found the hole. The bee nest is no more. I hate to kill them, but this nest had a lot of bees in/around it & the dogs run through there, too - don’t want any more stings, human or dogs.
The sad thing about bush hogging that corner - it had a lot of Ironweed - beautiful purple blooms and the butterflies are all over it. I would take the camera and go down to get pictures and just watch them - very peaceful & I could feel stress falling off like scales. This year, we needed to get the grass cut - a couple of does that hang around the farm have fawns and we were afraid the fawns would hide in the grass and the dogs would find them - this happened year before last with a tragic result and we didn’t want a repeat.
I am trying to find a nice dark red beet that is sweet.
I am on a limited diet, not by choice, and beets are something I can eat. However, beets run the gambit from nice and sweet, to really nasty. I’ve tried Detroit dark red and they’re OK. They vary a bit.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a good, dark red beet that is on the sweeter side?