Posted on 05/18/2012 5:59:55 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. JustaDumbBlonde asked me to post the thread this morning because she and her Husband are out in the fields harvesting their wheat. Looks like they will have good weather.
I hope all of your gardens are doing well. My gardening efforts have been scaled back this year to a 6x6 raised bed planted with eight of my three favorite tomato varieties. I am also continuing to pursue my Homebrewing hobby and will be brewing up a Honey Bee Ale later this afternoon and also bottling a Cranberry Mead that I started last November with a cork popping planed for this up coming Thanksgiving.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
Weekly Gardening Thread
Fun with greedy squirrels:
http://www.squirreltwirler.com/
I had this one:
http://www.birdquest.com/twirl.htm
I was favoring one, because it gets out of joint, so the other went wonky, of course.
Prayers up for your Mother and for you! A broken leg at her age can be rough.
I need to vent to no one in particular. :)
We have a tiny little garden on a tiny plot in a small town. So I need to maximize every square inch.
Now I dunno if it’s squirrels, rabbits, or that groundhog I’ve been seeing around, but we are getting massacred. Lettuce plants....gone. Strawberries...gone. Fennel...tops neatly trimmed off. Blueberries...last year I didn’t get a one, and this year’s crop is almost ready.
Beyond frustrated. I’ve been trying to let my cat out more, and putting some netting and fencing up, but I need a better solution. Plants are scattered all over to make use of space, so they will have to be fenced or whatever individually.
Totally wasn’t prepared for this war...I’d been growing raspberries for years with no trouble. I guess whatever it is can’t reach them.
And before my friends in normal states chime in with the entirely appropriate sentiment of “shoot the dang things”, please note that even BB guns in the people’s Republic of New Jersey are considered firearms and can’t be discharged in town.
Thanks. Always a little vanity there. She is used to being in charge of herself and everything around her, and she doesn’t take kindly to being at the mercy of others.
Before undergoing surgery she metioned that my aunt had had a broken hiip, or leg, (my aunt is just a bit younger) and the doctors fixed it “so that her foot doesn’t face directly forward” and she walks with a slight limp. I was supposed to tell the surgeon not to do that to her!
Geeesh!
I have tasted a Belgian Wit (wheat) beer and found it to be unbearable to my palate, nasty tasting to me! So the Barley would be good. JADB also is a bee keeper and harvester. She has copious amounts of honey but I won’t be using any of hers in my Honey Bee Ale today.
But, but, but...NJ is the GARDEN STATE!
Sounds like your groundhog to me. Fencing buried in the ground is the only thing that will stop them. My groundhhogs pull new plants out of the ground and discard them to go after grubs and bugs around the roots. They seem to just go after the newly planted plants.
I do not like belgian beer either. English and Irish ale for me.
I to like the English - Irish Ales. Reds, Browns and Dark. I am chilling down a Nut Brown Ale right now to taste and test for carbonation this afternoon. I just know it is going to be yummmy!
Yep our elderly parents are used to taking care of things themselves and do not like being fawned over. My Father (89) was getting dressed to go to church on a Sunday morning and started having chest pains and drove himself to the hospital. My Aunt called me a few hours later and told me he had a heart attack. At the time Peggy and I were living in San Antoino, Tx. I drove 12+ hours to get home. Went directly to the hospital and he was in the ICU - 10pm, and they let me in to see him and his first words to me were “what are you doing here?”. I said “Dad you have had a heart attack and are in the hospital, where do you expect me to be?”
Gardening is such a chore and a pleasure, it's "hope springs eternal" every year. One of life's joys.
Ha...too true!
Come to think of it, there have been strange pits dug around the plants, so I bet you are right. I thought it was the kids. :)
Here’s a great site to help on those tomatoes and peppers in SE Texas.
http://www.settfest.com/2009/02/se-texas-tomato-growing-calendars/
As other have said, check with your county agent. Also, and this takes some time but well worth the effort, check your growing season with the NEW zone map because climits have changed and then go to Burpee’s site and do a spread sheet of sorts for your zone’s veggies. Combine that with the Farmer’s Almanac planting by the moon dates and you’re set.
Yeah, last year was a buggerboo for Texas gardeners. We’ve already had 100 degrees in Central Texas so it looks like we might be in for a second year of HOT. You would probably have better luck not doing containers here since they dry out too fast.
Update - hubby just refilled the hummingbird feeder that he had refilled last night about 8pm. He had them flying around as he was trying to hang it. Geez, that’s 18 hours. Told y’all they’re lined up like it was McDonald’s.
I’ve been having trouble with something eating the leaves of my small tomatoe, beans, ginger, cukes,in the molasses pots so I spritzed some anti bug stuff, hubby got, didn’t help. Today I went out and loaded the area around these plants with black pepper. If the bugs like black pepper, I may add a little garlic. Let them eat gourmet.
I don’t know if this will help or not. What Mother used to do is buy a pkg. of 8oz. paper cups. Cut the bottoms out and stick them upside down over all new transplant seedlings. She used to say it blocks the “cut worms” from getting to the plants.
Finally!
Got the last of the veggie gardens planted today.
The loooooong 18” wide strip of dirt between the chain link fencing and the driveway now hosts 24 Cucumber plants and 6 Cantaloupe plants set to grow on the fence for support.
The 8 4’x4’ raised beds are done too. After amending the soil with sulfur, mushroom compost, and “water crystals”, I dug it all in then tilled them before planting. The beds contain:
Kohlrabi
Swiss Chard
Sweet Peppers
Yellow Beets
Summer Squash
TIP:
For those of you that have raised beds might like this. I purchased a Ryobi string trimmer a few years ago. It is made so you can use different attachments on it. One available attachment is a small tiller. It has 4 discs that have 6” tines on them. Very easy to maneuver in the confined area of a raised bed. It only takes a few minutes to buzz thru each bed.
Now for my favorite combination . . . a hot bath & a cold beer.
You don't do tomatoes?
I love hummingbirds. Saw my first one up close many years ago while attending Northern Arizona Univ. Flagstaff, Az (Geology Field camp). I was resting on a rock on the side of a steep hill that overlooked a small meadow. I heard this buzzing sound and looked around for a bee or other insect. It was a beautiful Hummer checking me out. He flitted around me coming very close and a couple of his friends showed up and hovered all around me. I was amazed and spent to much time resting on that rock. That encounter made my day!
Sorry, not a fan of tomatoes. Something about the texture makes me gag . . .
As a sauce or paste, fine. Ketchup, no problem. Fresh? forget it. Much easier to buy in cans.
I planted stuff that is hard to find locally, or too damn expensive to buy locally. When I can go to Sam’s and get a 5 lb bag of frozen veggies for 6 to 8 bucks, it is crazy to grow & process them here. But - When sweet peppers are $1 each in the store, I grow lots of ‘em to freeze.
I hear you, especially on the Bell Peppers!
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