My miniature pineapple lilies, plumeria and mandavilla are all blooming nicely -- until the hot winds kick up in the next few weeks!
I am still fighting gophers, though and can't seem to get rid of them.
Posted on 07/18/2014 12:31:17 PM PDT by greeneyes
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Today is a nice 73 degrees with sun peaking in and out of the clouds. Monday we had rain! Four inches of rain, so all the barrels are full, and the pool has been replenished, but not quite full.
The storm lodged over the few Country Gentleman corn plants that I had managed to sprout. Broke half the roots, so I am just going to leave them be and see what goes, it should have been ready to harvest in a couple of weeks. Darn.
On the other hand, Hubby's corn is ready now. He just harvested a bunch, so that'll be my evening chore along with a batch of blackberries and cukes. Harvest sometimes comes faster than a person can handle it, but he'll probably help me with the cukes.
Tomatoes! We have about 10 harvested in various sizes and colors. Eating one for lunch on a salad. Will be having BLTs tomorrow. Loving it all.
Hope ya'll are doing great and having some successfull produce so that you have great eats. Have a good weekend. God Bless.
BLT BLT BLT.. MY tiny tomaters are yummy, the big ones are still growing,, should get a nice little crop off of five plants.. Some Asian pears are almost ripe too .. Fujis are a couple more weeks at least.. Squirrels have been kind and feasted on neighbors nectarines so far.
Nothing like a BLT.. Or I like a cheese and bacon samwich too.. Salad on the side
Bon appetite!
Pinging the List.
Garden talk here in Red England indicates that this is a ‘tomato year’...does that seem to be the case around the country? My plants this year are stunning, BUT that may have something to do with the Texas Tomato Food that I am using...
Pinging to the list.
Our tomatoes are doing well, but no better than usual, since we learned not to plant them within 50 feet of the drip line of a walnut or butternut tree.
Bush and pole beans doing well along with tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and the corn is looking fine here in the southern reaches of Puget Sound.
I like those triple deckers called Club Sandwich. In the old days, when I was a girl, it was ham, cheese, and BLT with mayo on toast. Cut into quarters with a toothpick stuck in each quarter.
Then the quarters were turned to sit with the point straight up and chips on the side. Nowadays you get Turkey club etc. on all sorts of bread and arrangements.
Up here just to the southwest of Overland Park, Kansas I’m usually eating my first BLT at this time of the year. Yesterday, my wife and I canned 7 quarts of tomatoes from our 15 plants. This is the first year we’ve canned tomatoes and I can’t wait to use heirlooms in Chili this fall. I may go for canned salsa if we get another bumper crop.
My miniature pineapple lilies, plumeria and mandavilla are all blooming nicely -- until the hot winds kick up in the next few weeks!
I am still fighting gophers, though and can't seem to get rid of them.
Sounds like some good stuff to eat coming in for you.
Here’s an astounding article posted on another thread, regarding Government insanity related to the food supply. Leftover apparently from the new deal.
No wonder I can never find tart cherries anywhere. The stores are full of sweet cherries, but nary a tart one to be found.
Thanks to Black Agnes for the heads up.
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/20276
Wow. That’s really a great crop!
Thanks for sharing those beautiful pictures. That first one looks a lot like the flowers on my Rosa Rugosa.
In the last 3 days, something has been getting into my tomatoes!! I’ve lost 4 green ones and two almost-ripe ones. I’m fairly sure it’s the crow family that hangs around - I find the tomatoes lying on the ground with the pulp stabbed out of them in a couple of places. I did catch a squirrel yesterday stealing a tomato out of a separate, small kitchen garden - the tomato was about 1/3 as big as he was & he dropped it a couple of times, trying to make it to the apple tree. Although Mr. Squirrel is no longer with us, I found 3 “stabbed” tomatoes again this a.m. I’ve put up a ladder on each 4’ side of the raised bed with a long board down the 8’ length & that is supporting bird netting that we used on a fig bush last year. I had to use ladders because the tomatoes are pretty tall & I needed to get the netting up fairly high. Bricks are holding down the edges. This is temporary until I can get some pvc pipe and make hoops to support the netting. This should happen over the weekend ...... can’t wait (the ladder situation looks terrible, but it works!).
Meanwhile, some “trivia” .... been using a pole tree trimmer & my rope came loose. I couldn’t figure out how to tie it again so I looked it up .... if you ever need to retie a trimmer, here’s a link:
http://www.cnwes.com/cpgl/productimg/200631015544181-1%20.jpg
I know! I'm trying to figure out why. We got a greenhouse last year which allowed us to get an early start this year before putting them in the garden. The weather has been abnormally cool and we have gotten decent rains. I have been doing heirlooms for about 15 years and they are probably 25% larger and much more prolific this year.
I usually separate my seeds according to type and save them. This year when I was finished with cutting then up for the canner I had plenty of seeds and juice left on the cutting board. I decided to let them all ferment together and will try a random planting next year.
Hello from Massachusetts! It was a lovely day here as well. Since our recent heavy rains, the bug population has exploded, particularly the deer fly population. Walking up to the mailbox is challenging.
Our lettuce is bolting, as are our radishes.
Beautiful!
Gophers can be such a pest! One of the better investments I made for one of my current gardens was to bury 1/2” hardware cloth 18” down around the whole perimeter. I still have to deal with the occasional gopher in different areas though. Bill Murray had it right in the movie Caddy Shack going all out war on the darn rodents with C-4!
My standard process in dealing with them at the first sign of a new mound is to first excavate the new tunnel they made evidenced by the new mound. I do such using a soup spoon, prodding to ‘feel’ the loose soil to determine their back-filled tunnel. I then will place a trap in the excavated tunnel and use a piece if fruit, such as a slice of apple or pear, behind the trap so that the gopher has to push through the trap (and get caught) to get to the fruit. I have a couple dozen of this type trap: http://www.victorpest.com/store/mole-and-gopher-control/0615
The second method I use if the gopher is too smart to get caught in the trap is to once again excavate the tunnel, and then place about a spoonful of gopher bait in the tunnel, covering up the entrance with a rock or something so that the gopher doesn’t just sense that it’s tunnel has been opened up and immediately back-fill, bypassing the bait. I use this brand bait with good results. http://www.solutionsstores.com/mobile/Product.aspx?id=41092
If neither of those two methods work, I then have to go out as soon as it is light enough to see, look for the recent activity, see if it’s hole is still open, which usually means it is not done yet and will shortly be back to back-fill the entrance, and wait patiently with a firearm pre-aimed at the hole. That ALWAYS works but requires patience.
I’m not sure what type snakes you have in your area, but by me there are bull snakes and gopher snakes. I keep a grain bag in the truck and if I see one crawled up on the highway in the evening (soaking up the days residual heat) I’ll stop, catch it, put it in the grain bag, and let it go down a gopher hole near my garden.
I know some people who will only kill the gophers that are actually in their garden. I go further out in the surrounding area since they seem to eventually make their way into the garden. One other method I’ve heard of with good results is to gas the gophers with CO2. I had on friend who was a bit of a pyro who had a blast using Oxy/acetylene pumped into the tunnels and then igniting it....
I let everyone down. Last year I planted 2 4by4’s in the hope I would be able to grow veggies. I planted tomatoes, cukes, beans, zucchini and beets. From 5 bush bean plants I got a total of 12 beans. I grew 2 beets. At some point I threw potato peels in the compost heap which explains why the only crop I grew was potatoes.
Tilled the soil for this years crop. Had grubs the size of my thumb. Killed them. More compost, some perlite and I was ready to go again this year. Zucchini plants were huge. No zucchini. 1 tomato plant outright died in the pot and the one I planted grew 1 green tomato. Again the beans were sparse. Cukes are in now and big plants, no cukes. Lettuce never bothered coming up.
So, my question is, being in San Antonio, what should I be preparing for the fall season and if I rip everything up now can I start growing anything?
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