Since Hubby's tomatoes failed, I went to Walmart, and picked up some plants on sale. I got 2 Cherry tomatoes, and a beef steak tomato, dill, cucumber, basil. One of the Cherry tomatoes, I planted in a container to bring in for the winter.
The other two I put in 5 gallon buckets. Used the exact same soil in those. Planted a basil plant in the Cherry tomato bucket. Cherry has almost doubled in height. Can't tell that beefsteak has grown any.
Started a couple of San Marzano seeds, and some unknown cantaloupe seeds, and they have sprouted. The cantaloupe was a volunteer last year, and the first successful melon since 2010. It is too big to be the Minnesota Midget, and too small to be the Irquois, and I don't remember growing any other kind of melon successfully, although I did plant some seeds of others.
Anyway, I'm hoping that it has adapted to our environment, and will grow another successful melon to eat. The black berries will be ripe any time now, I think. They had some in the store, and I bought a pack.
Now I'm going to make yogurt in my crockpot to eat them with. Here's a link:
http://www.ayearofslowcooking.com/2008/10/you-can-make-yogurt-in-your-crockpot.html
Got the garlic all pulled, and let it dry a bit. Dug about 5 lbs of taters, and left the others for later. Picked some green beans, steamed and froze them, as it was a small batch.
Hope all is well with you. Prayers up for all. Have a great Independence Day Weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the List.
Oh my miserable tomatoes.
All are straggly and half don’t even have fruit and those that do aren’t ripening. They just sit there green.
Been a water problem: too much and not enough.
Intrawebs tell me tomatoes ripening slowly because of the high temps.
I picked some of the oldest green tomatoes and put them in a paper bag hoping they’ll ripen by the Fourth.
Very disappointing year so far.
Thought I’d never get the pickle plants to grow; but this week they’ve grown to the top of my fencing. Have to get support poles for them next week. Green plants are flowering but only a few green beans.
Pulled about a dozen garlic - the rest need another week or so (different variety).
Summer squash is magnificent - best we've ever had. Cukes are up, too.
No tomatoes yet, lots of flowers, though. Peppers are laggards also.
Green beans and snap peas are up - lettuce is stagger-planted so we always have fresh.
Strawberries have come and gone, (so has the kale and asparagus), but raspberries are starting to come off.
We've had lots of luxurious sun here in Konnecticut, (that's a change from the last few years) but nary a drop of rain.
We so appreciate you keeping the gardening thread going - thank you so much!
What do other gardeners plant around their Oriental poppies? They look horrible by this time of year. My delphiniums did not come back this year that usually hide the ugly poppy foliage. It’s a challenge in zone 4. Rudbeckia or Echinacea would overwhelm the poppies, in fact they are getting too close. I know I could put more annuals there, but I don’t want to. My gardens are quite large and it gets expensive. :(
With the 4th coming up, I need to start watching my figs daily. The first batch should be rippening this week. Usually I just toss them in the freezer and use in smoothies, but this year I’m thinking preserves. Maybe mixed with the blackberries that have been rippening the last few weeks.
Almost lost the fig tree to the tropical storm a couple weeks ago. Fortunately my neighbors’ fence was there to keep it from falling completely over.
Learned a new lesson this spring, all marigolds are not created equal. I planted some companion plants in between my peppers. Turns out one of the varieties of marigold I’m trying for the first time grows a lot bigger than I expected, and grows faster than the peppers. Poor peppers never had a chance.
BTW, looking at the yogurt link I would advise that what works well in her crockpot may not work the same in yours. You want to heat the milk to 180-185, and then when you add the starter yogurt you want the resulting mix to be 110-115 and you want to hold it in that range for several hours (I’ve used my oven with the light on and the door propped slightly open in the past, but recently I noticed my dehydrator has a yogurt setting so I’m going to try that next).
Pops came over Friday afternoon and bush-hogged the back pasture. Good timing on that. The sunflowers in the wildlife plot started to bloom a few days ago. This rain sure came at a good time for them. The turnips that I planted back there are doing well. The bigger ones are already the size of a baseball.
Did a bit of cleaning in the barn yesterday, and started re-assembling Mom's antique roll-top secretary that Dad gave to me. Finished that up today, pulled out my old computer desk and set up shop on the secretary this afternoon. I cut four big heads of cabbage this morning and chopped them up to make sauerkraut. It was enough to fill a five gallon bucket about 2/3 full. Hopefully it will turn out good.
I got started digging garlic last week. It looks pretty good so far. Need to finish that and get the potatoes out this week so I can put something in behind them. Another 75 row-feet of sweet corn and something else, probably a couple hills of zucchini squash.
I need to mow the yard but it needs to settle up for a day or two first. There's plenty of other stuff I could work on tomorrow, but instead I'm going to take the day off from chores and go trout fishing at Bennett Spring.
