Posted on 08/19/2016 3:34:11 PM PDT by greeneyes
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. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no telling where it will go and... that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!
NOTE: This is a once a week ping list. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest are welcomed, so feel free to post them at any time.
Several small plum size volunteers are orange, and I picked them to let them ripen indoors. Found some wilted cuke leaves on my pot of cukes, and some bugs, which I picked off and squashed.
Had already sprinkled DE on them, but may make up some pepper/garlic spray too. Best luck with cukes for several years, so maybe next year I'll plant 2 or 3 pots of those.
Hate to just post and run, but have to go now. Will catch up later.
Prayers up for all. Have a great weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the list.
Ping
I have a “Black Willow” tree doing great here as a year old sapling up here in Maine....along with a certain type of flowering thistle that is showing the soft blue circular flower....been dry But I am at the rivers edge....all water runs to me....
Is it Friday again - already?
I’m still wading through tomatoes - plan on freezing some for soups and chili this winter and making salsa, of course! The ‘Juliet’ tomatoes have been used for drying. They’re a small Roma-type tomato. Highly recommended!
I’m so sick of cucumbers I could barf. Two plants are PLENTY for us, though I planted four. I need to just knock it off!
I haven’t been down to the other garden this week; it’s been rainy and that slope is slippery for the 4-wheeler, but thanks to said rain, I’m not worried. Watermelon, cantaloupe, butternut and spaghetti squash down there. I’m sure they’re fine, though Beau tells me the raccoons got ALL of the Sweet Corn. Our fault - we didn’t put up an electric fence, or put a dog and a house down there this season.
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!
I have peas started and lettuces and spinach and beets to go in next week for Fall crops; the Weatherman assures me we will FINALLY cool off. This has been one hot and humid and rainy growing season. Good for veggies and weeds; not so much fun for gardeners!
Still have plenty of basil for more pesto and I’m also in the process of cleaning out the big freezer as Beau is determined to have bear and elk and wild boar for us this fall into winter. We’re getting a second chest freezer from a friend! Wheeee!
I’m pretty sure we’ll make it through Winter. ;)
Lots of tomatoes of all sizes here. FANG gathers them before
they get too ripe; so we have some coming along all the
time. - Funny. FANG brought in a pretty little hinged
shell that a raccoon had cracked open & ate the meat from
it. The raccoon left the shell in the garden; evidently was
trying to pay us something for what ever bit of food he
ate from the garden. - We had another raccoon to get caught
in a trap and died from the heat because FANG hadn’t been
out to the garden for a few days. Poor little raccoon. It
had to be a terrible death and I shamed FANG for not seeing
to his trap. I didn’t know he had set the trap. The little
raccoon that left the pretty shell for us had evidently
come up after FANG found the dead one in the trap. - I
hated that so bad! He is going to have to take a different
sort of attitude to things or he and I are going to just
operate in separate lives. (After over 52 yrs.; we do
anyway. I don’t put up with foolishness much any more.)
IF FANG had just told me that the trap was there and set &
asked me to check it - I would have!! I’m just not able to
navigate much in the heat any more like I used to. I’m
old. :o(
Thanks for the ping. I’ll see what I have to post after dinner and after checking on some Mole traps I have set for a friend about a mile away...
The four o’clocks finally bloomed! Pretty fuschia(?) color. All four plants seem to be the same color. Tomato plants are now so big the pot keeps falling over and now looking for a way to tie them to something. Not many places to do that but will try. All the tomato plants are loaded with green ones in varying sizes Gonna have a very large crop all at once!
So, for next year I plan on making her a small 10 X 12 greenhouse.
So, do any of you have a greenhouse for winter growing? I would like to be able to put in small wood stove at on end to keep it warm all winter (I have TONS of wood available year round).
From what I read the best glazing to use is double walled polycarbonate sheets. I don't think a hoop style would work up here due to the snow load and so I would like to make a wooden frame house.
Any good plans or even kits you know of or have experience with?
Thanks in advance.
Might be some ideas in those books. The author gardens in Maine.
My sauce tomatoes are coming in nicely. I’m collecting them until I have enough for a big batch for processing.
I planted pumpkins and out of six vines have ONE pumpkin. What a waste of garden space.
I’m fighting a losing battle with squash bugs, squash vine borers, and cucumber beetles. Much as I’d like to grow zucchini again next year, I’m thinking of trying to sterilize the soil where there squash plants were and taking a year off next year. Maybe they’ll move on.
After I pull up the plants, I’m going to pour boiling water around where the roots were to try to take care of any bugs that might have it in mind to overwinter in the soil.
Here in TX we seem to be drying out. Two weeks of baking, then a week of rain. My poor garden doesn’t know what to think. Pulled up most of my tomatoes. I have some cukes, a lemon boy, and some peppers that are doing okay. Of my six cucuzza plants, of which I thought I would be drowning in cucuzza, I have had a grand total of two. My pollinators are few and far between this year. Hope the fall garden will do better.
Our tomatoes seem to be burning up. The longest lines are still alive so I expect we”ll be into garden fresh,
We’re getting ready to put in our fall and winter veggies.
Tomorrow we’ll be pulling the plants that have quit producing fluffing up the soil, adding rabbit pellets, some grass clippings and put in some seeds, like cukes, snow peas, beans, collards, kale, mustard greens, etc.
Like your garden, some of ours got a little confused too. It was hotter’n blue blazes, then gully washing rain. We got over 7 inches in just a couple of days.
We still have Armenian cukes, have over run every on in town with them. Tomorrow they’ll become part of the compost hill.
We’re getting ready to put in our fall and winter veggies.
Tomorrow we’ll be pulling the plants that have quit producing fluffing up the soil, adding rabbit pellets, some grass clippings and put in some seeds, like cukes, snow peas, beans, collards, kale, mustard greens, etc.
Like your garden, some of ours got a little confused too. It was hotter’n blue blazes, then gully washing rain. We got over 7 inches in just a couple of days.
We still have Armenian cukes, have over run every on in town with them. Tomorrow they’ll become part of the compost hill.
We actually got some decent rain for about a week. Going into a dry spell coming up though. I am feeling better about bailing on our garden this year, as the few things that the groundhogs didn’t eat are failing - it would have been tons of work for nothing.
But we do have luxuriant weeds - as high as I am tall. I have never seen them like this before!
Archie, some of the articles I’ve read suggest using less fertilizers especially nitrogen to allow the tomatoes to grow slower allowing more time for them to absorb the calcium.
I had BER my first year of gardening, saved that harvest by picking off all the lower tomatoes and top dressing my plants with a ring of crab shells around each base (look up Neptune crab shells) and sprayed the plants with Miracle Gro every two weeks or so for the remainder of the season.
Since then I have planted mostly smaller or medium sized varieties with a few larger ones instead of mostly larger ones - less demand for nutrients. My beds are mainly leaf compost, sterile cow manure, crab shells, no more Miracle Gro the last two years. I keep the bottom foot of my plants completely trimmed of branches and above that just trim the sucker branches off - same with my peppers. Again allowing the nutrients to be more available to the fruit.
Another thing to consider, try to choose varieties that yield at different times of the season if possible, spreading out the demand for available nutrients time wise.
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