Weekly Gardening Thread
Posted on 06/04/2010 5:00:06 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners! Wow June is here already. I hope all of your gardens are flourishing. Can you believe that last year at this time there were freeze and frost warnings for the North, Northeast and some of the higher elevations? This year the freeze warnings seem to be contained within a certain household in Tennessee. I just had to say that, couldn’t help myself!
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Weekly Gardening Thread
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Good morning.
All the summer crops are in and I have tomatoes already. Squash is blooming in mine, but harvesting in the other beds for those that did not do Spring crops. Onions are almost done, tomatillos are forming and peppers are coming on strong.
Downside is the flea beetles attacking everyone’s eggplants and the rainy weather we have had is only encouraging funguses.
Headed there in a bit to prune the tomatoes into the cages.
I have -more than I know what to do with- lettuce and spinach in my garden. Does anyone out there freeze spinach and what is the process?
I plan on getting my tomatoes staked today if it does not rain.
I just put in a second round of spinich this morning. I’m considering growing some in pots over the winter.
I had a bit of a problem with some blackberry stock I got from Burpee this spring. I ordered 25 bare root plants to go in two raised beds I built earlier in the spring. I had also ordered 25 red raspberry plants from Johnny's Seeds. Most of the Burpee stock must have been shipped dead because out of the 25 plants I put in only five survived. These plants were bone dry when I got them and it was clear that they had been in the packaging for some time, perhaps since last year. I'm surprised that 5 lived. Of the 25 red raspberries all of them survived and are thriving. The difference in the stock I received from Burpee vs. Johnny's was really striking. The beds they were planted in were identical in terms of construction, soil and drip irrigation. I would highly recommend Johnny's. It has been very typical of both seed and plant stock I've ordered from Johnny's to be very high quality. Those folks are great to deal with. Burpee used to be a top notch company. It took me the better part of 2 weeks just to get Burpee to respond to my email and phone inquiries. They cited a "high number of customer service contacts" (read complaints) as their reason for taking so long to respond. After some arguing they reluctantly agreed to refund my money on 20 of the plants and included a rather terse note essentially saying that it was all my fault. Not sure what has happened to Burpee, but I don't think I'll be going back. I've always found their prices to be high, but the quality of their stock has always been top notch up until now. Buyer beware.
Did you write all that just to depress the Northern gardeners who just have lettuce to harvest and nothing else yet?
I still have 2 beds to build. Corn and squash not planted yet — awaiting the new beds. Hope to have that completed this weekend.
Tomatoes 8-10 in. high. Lettuce producing well. Why did God arrange that lettuce and tomatoes do not produce at the same time in this climate? If past seasons are a guide, we won’t see a ripe tomato until August.
Automatic sprinkler worked fine last night, but it also rained. So, too wet to get into garden. I’ve got the car today, so I intend to hit a few garden shops for supplies. Sent away to Park Seed for a bean ring and purchased nice poles at a local shop after work last night. Hope to plant 3 more varieties of beans this weekend.
I had issues with germination from Burpee this year.
George Ball, their new owner, is a raving moonbat. Not sure if those are connected or not LOL.
Thanks for the tip.
FWIW, I’ve had good dealings with Jung Seed (Diana’s company) and Park Seed this year. Also Smart Pots. Even the Arbor Day Foundation sent nicely packaged LIVE trees that are all growing beautifully. I’d just about given up on ADF because the trees took so long to arrive. But, one day they just showed up — 22 trees in a plastic sleeve like a throw-away newsflier. I pulled them in from the mailbox late at night. I almost dropped them into the garbage with the rest of the junk mail. LOL.
The week before last I was going to turn over the beds with a shovel and got about 1/3 done when I realized that it was going to take too much work to properly work in some manure and fertilizer. Went out and rented a little gas powered cultivator $15 for 4 hours and it was more than enough to till out the rows, do some bare spots on the front lawn and some areas around my garage. Woo hooo - power tools!
Last year’s mistake was not enough green (and read and yellow) peppers.
Had some lettuce and spinach on grilled burgers last night. Tons of oregano and thyme ready for cooking. Next year - the Rosemary will be full grown!
Nah, not my intent. I too had more lettuce than we could eat this Spring. The summer crops just went in a few weeks ago. We can’t grow lettuce and tomatoes here either except maybe black simpson lettuce. Still doubtful.
Oh well. I call it our salsa and curry garden. Herbs are here at the house and we have tons already. But, what was labeled thai basil was clearly not. Not sure what the heck it is but has no scent or taste.
Picked more bell peppers and waiting for the Jalapenos to get ripe for fresh salsa.
I may pull most of the onions this weekend, but will save some for later.
Getting lots of salad and radishes, some kohlrabi will be done soon.
Like a dumbarse I didn’t check the weather earlier this week for rain and didn’t get out to garden on a dry day before the big storm. Now trying to do it today when it’s much wetter.
Thanks for that info!
Keep us posted on the bean ring thingie. I saw those on the Parks site this year too.
Most of my tomatoes have blooms, especially the volunteers who weren’t shocked by transplanting. And they’re all covered with pollinators. We don’t spray with anything so my whole garden just hums. We’ve been getting cucumbers and zucchinis for about a month now. Corn is about 2-3 weeks out. Tasseling and silking up just fine now.
I planted winter squash this past week (or week before) and it’s just gone nuts. Completely insane. Already has leaves bigger than my husbands hand.
This weekend we’ll plant the rest of our okra, a second planting of corn and some more winter squash and melons. We’re goign to try to trellis the winter squashes (c. mixta and c. pepo) to enable easier spraying for squash vine borers. Hopefully these will be a trap crop if nothing else to keep them off my butternut squashes (c. moschata) which are supposedly less likely to get hit with SVB’s.
My strawberries are making a gazillion runners now. I’m letting them for a while because we’ve got a list of people who want runners now. As of end of June though I’m getting brutal with the scissors so we actually get a lot of strawberries again.
Got a quart and a half of blueberries yesterday. Made my kids blueberry muffins for bfast this morning when they wake up. Suckers galore on the blueberry bushes as well. Yay.
Got a small bowlful of blackberries too. Apache (thornless). Very pleased with these so far. Only have 12 smallish plants from last year. The 2nd year canes aren’t big for now. The cane’s they’re putting out this year will be ginormous. We’ll be tip layering those to generate more plants.
Picked over a quart of sour bush cherries (Hansens) too. I’m saving all the pits from these as they’re supposedly started from ‘seed’ or sucker. They’ve made a goodly number of suckers too. I need to get a real bona fide cherry pitter now. Have to add that to my list of things I Must Have!.
Planted about 200ft of pole beans/butterbeans/asparagus beans. Those are all coming up nicely as well. Have a 4x4ft section of one of my raised beds planted in bush beans to replenish the nitrogen the lettuce I was growing there this spring too out. Planted another 6-8 cucumber and melon plants that my helpful hubby already built a trellis for. He loves melons and my oldest loves cucumbers.
The asparagus beans I planted in the ‘divots’ about 6w ago are already climbing over my head on the screen arch hubby built. Waiting for them to bloom now. And the cherry tomato plants (tumbling tom, both colors) I planted in the divots are all blooming like crazy. My eggplants (also in divots) aren’t doing OK at all. Something is eating them up!
I invested in a bunch of organza gift bags this week to save pepper and tomato seeds. We’ll see next year if I had a clue with that LOL.
AND, the cowpeas I had given up on (deer love cowpeas) might just get started again. Two deer got hit by cars just in front of our house the other morning. I hate it for them. The population is just too great down here even with hunters. And WHERE, I’d like to know, were these deer last witner when my hubby waited for them with his deer rifle? Nowhere to be found. So instead all that lovely deer meat was wasted and eaten by buzzards. Bummers.
Oh well, I’ve bored y’all enough. It’s nearly 7:30 here and time for me to weed! before it gets too hot!
Oh well. I call it our salsa and curry garden. Herbs are here at the house and we have tons already. But, what was labeled thai basil was clearly not. Not sure what the heck it is but has no scent or taste.>>>>>>>
What herbs and spices are you growing for salsa and curry, may I ask?
Anyone who is growing fava beans please let me know
Wednesday evening we had some severe thunderstorms rumble thru our area — mostly strong winds & lightning. After all was said & done with, we had 0.4” in the gauge.
The wind gusts twisted my squash plants all up and knocked off some of my tomatoes & stems. Despite having my tomatoes in cages, I guess them being about 5 ft tall caused some of them to tip over.
All in all, we came out okay.
The yellow & zucchini have probably peaked out since temps are hot now.
Our bush beans are peaking too.
Bell peppers & cukes are keeping us well supplied.
Tomatoes are just now starting to ripen.
I dug up one potato plant and it looks like they are ready to harvest, too.
Okra is the only thing we’re waiting on.
Yeah we got those storms Wed night. Lot of wind some heavy rain.
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