Posted on 07/19/2013 12:45:12 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.
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“...it’s always a big floppy hat...”
Hmm, I haven’t worn a hat out there. I have one upstairs with a fairly wide brim I think if I didn’t get rid of it, I’ll bring it downstairs if I still have it. I should be wearing a hat - never thought of it. My life has been don’t go out, period, so didn’t need a hat.
What about my experiment with the Sunflower seeds? Did the roasting make these hulls double hard to get off?
Hi all, we were hit in west Michigan with a big heat wave 90 degrees plus all week. Today was the last day, at 3pm it was 95 with a heat index of 105. It was all I could do to keep the garden watered I’d go out at 8 or 9pm. Hubby doing better, in home nurse 3X a week and the same with PT. Doing well on meds for the infection and blood clot. SO glad I got him in to the ER when I did. Picking some cukes, lots of banana peppers, jalapenos, zucchini, and broccoli secondary growth. Lots of green tomatoes. My 6 varieties of russian tomatoes are all doing great. Hubby can’t get down to the garden to pee for the deer but hey - in the hospital they gave him a portable urinal so guess what I take out to the garden in the evening. Life all works out eventually. Lots of green tomatoes. My 6 varieties of russian tomatoes are all doing great. Still haven’t taken the pictures out of my garden, maybe this weekend.
I have that trom... squash seed already on the way to me. When they get here, I’m planting a few of those seeds in a tomato barrel with a stand in the middle of the barrel for the squash to hang on if I manage to get a squash. I really hope those work for me. That’s squash available most of the year.
You are a fine gardener.
I don't know if roasting the sunflower seeds helped or hurt. I can't imagine that it would hurt, as the heat should denature the proteins holding the seed together.
/johnny
Planting rocks red like strawberries - good idea.
/johnny
What do you mean by through? Keep them watered and they'll start producing again once the temps get back down in the fall.
PS - I appreciated learning about the male/female zucchini flowers on one of these threads and I am having a good harvest this year. Also I have not seen a tomato worm yet this year and I have over 20 plants. Of course now that I said that I’ll go down there tonight and find a bunch. Hate those things. Also wanted to share my 2 favorite smells from the garden #1 is the smell of a fresh picked banana pepper. I mean a good long hit. :)) #2 is the smell of a tomato plant’s foliage. Many thanks again for those who wrote and prayed for my hubby.
My friends live on a high hill just outside of Bandera and I think it’s Medina Lake that is near them and she is always saying that lake is so low. She always wants/needs more rain. She has three gardens and about three weeks ago had a knee replacement so husband is taking care of the garden.
Last week she slipped in the tub and pulled a muscle below the knee of her other leg so she is tired of this restriction on her movement.
I was there a year or so ago, and almost had a heart attack when I saw the grasshoppers there - they were monsters, I mean about 6 inches long or more and were huge. It totally shocked me - looked like something out of a Stephen King movie. I would have never believed they could get that large and they were all over the front porch/entire side of house.
Indeterminates will do that. Determinates like Roma won't (or don't for me) which is why I have new Roma seedlings getting ready for the fall planting.
/johnny
My 6 varieties of russian tomatoes are all doing great.Where do you purchase seed for these?
Well, if the seeds cross, then you have just created your own hybrid, and some of the seeds will breed true. I will probably just plant a doubler batch and rotate every year.
For example, I’ll grow the type good for oil one year and hope to get enough to last 2 years. The next year I’ll grow the ones that are good for seeds, and so forth.
Attire?? Whatever old rag happens to be handy.LOL Usually old light weight t shirts and shorts or light weight long pants, sometimes even old PJ sets that look like regular pants.
Shoes that I wear during the summer are OKABASHI. Sandal style and clogs. These are the greatest. They are an American company, and cost me less than 15 dollars a pair, and are practically indestructible.
I bought my first pair at the Dollar Store for 4 dollars on sale, and they lastest 10 years. The name was worn off, but I finally deciphered a few letters after looking in all the stores for something similar, and was able to find them on the internet.
When you are finished with them you can send them back and they will recycle them. I wear the sandals if I am going to be watering, cause water won’t hurt them and they dry really quickly.
I wear the clogs, if I am going to be using garden tools. I wear tennis shoes if I am going to be walking the perimeter. All these shoes have one thing in common, they are slip ons. No need to tie, buckle or velcro.LOL
Don’t lose hope. I had to work with winter squash for several years before I found a variety and technique that works for me. I’d tried pumpkins for several years and thought they didn’t like the heat. LOL. Little did I know that I was a breeding ground for SVB’s for the whole neighborhood LOL. *sigh*
Here’s what I do to help mine along as much as I can.
I get the biggest peat pots I can find, usually the 6” ones. Fill them with seed starter or potting soil. Plant my winter squash seeds, usually 4 per pot, spread in a circle around the outer diameter of the pot. Those I place in a plastic tray and fill it with water.
Meanwhile, I save all my newspapers, cardboard cereal boxes, grocery store and walmart ad papers and what not throughout the year. MIL saves them, hubby gets old newspapers from the breakroom at work, etc. I decide where I’m going to let my squash run (we live in the country so HOA isn’t a factor). I cover that area with the paper/cardboard and then lay 4”-6” of mulch on top of that covering the edges carefully (if the wind blows and you have exposed newspaper or boxes it can ‘catch’ under the edge of those and blow it around) and then water that down to make it ‘stick’. If you don’t have rain in the next 10d or 2w after that you might want to rewater it again. This helps the cardboard/paper and mulch (I use hay from a local farmer) to meld.
About 10d-2w later when my squash seeds have sprouted and have the 2 seedling leaves and maybe a teeny true leaf my hubby takes a sharp shooter shovel and digs however many holes I have pots, about 8” or so deep. I put a scoop of osmocote or compost in the bottom, fill it part way with soil, tear off the side/top of the peat pot (if it sticks out of the soil it will ‘wick’ moisture away from your plants and they’ll suffer and/or die) and then put it in. I usually take a big bag of some organic potting soil or garden soil with me and fill in/around the pot with that. I water in thoroughly.
We put those holes in the mulch about 5ft square from each other. I usually mulch a section 12-15ft wide and about 50-60ft long. I try to keep the squash vines on that early. This lets them put down roots somewhere that will stay moister during dry spells. The mulch helps with that a whole lot btw. And if you train them you can lay a soaker hose on the mulch and they’ll looooove that if it gets dry. Once they’ve kind of filled in the mulched sections I let them take the yard, nicely. If you ‘train’ them in straight lines you can keep them convenient to use a push mower in between and/or weedeater.
As I said, we grow a whole lot of these. We probably use 300-400lbs of them (unprocessed) every year. They go in my kids pancakes, stews, and a breakfast cake I make during the winter. We rely on these calories to make ends meet.
The mulching takes a little time up front but if you do that they get a running head start and I’ve found will make more. And no weeding or tilling or whatever. Once or twice during the season I’ll water the ‘mother’ site and a few selected other sites with ‘algoflash’ regular. Just because.
The sun has cooked the plants - my fault because I didn’t move them out of the blasting sun and put them in shade part of the day. We have already had 105 days a few weeks ago. I found out from Johnny, I screwed up, that full sun in Texas does not mean full sun like in places farther north. These new tomato plants are in a large container and it has wheels so I can move in into shade for the hottest part of the day.
Part of my learning problem has been, I remember my father planting everything and it just grew and produced. That was farther north east Texas. Corn grew, beans, green peas, onions, tomatoes from seed, black eyed peas, beets, turnips, potatoes, figs trees, peaches, plums, hogs, - he put the stuff there and it grew in the ground or in the pig pen. It’s only now I found out there must have been more to it than sticking seeds in the ground.
He didn’t move anything out of the sun to shade but maybe that east Texas being farther north, the Longview area, was not as bad as it is here.
Oh yeh, If the sun is shining bright like at noon, I wear a big floppy straw hat and plenty of sun screen. It only takes about 20 minutes in that sort of sun for me to burn and swell up like a sausage.
I have avoided that kind of sunshine since I was about 19. I sat outside for 3 hrs under the shade tree of a riverbank with spf 8 sunscreen, long sleeves, long pants, and a hat.
I contiued to get red during the night, and my feet, legs, arms and face were all swollen the next day, and I was sick for several days. That was it. I go out in the very early morning and the very late afternoon for about 15 minutes at a time.
If I go out at noon, it’s a quick 5 minutes, and then I beat it back to the house.
“we just moved in (it’s a rental) in Dec. (2012) and in January, our landlord told us to leave”
You were there only one month and she told you to leave? Did you have a signed lease? This is awful.
What is your garden attire?If grass needs to be dug up, I wear my 5-year-old-very-worn New Balance shoes. Otherwise, I wear Crocband Flips, which probably isn't too wise if I drop something upon my toe! I like the bigger t-shirt thing too, and I just wear some beat-up shorts or pants. Nothing fancy that's for sure.
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