The remaining 75% of this years Garlic crop...
Posted on 06/25/2010 5:13:58 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. Here in East Central Mississippi the weather has been typical for the middle of June and the official start of summer. Temperatures have been in the mid nineties in the afternoons and high sixties to low seventies overnight with afternoon showers every other day or so. My garden is thriving in this weather and doing very well. I have not had to do any extensive additional watering which is good.
Also this past week I noticed quite a few honey bees up in the garden. I hope they decide to visit often. In the past years my main pollinators have been bumblebees and they are all over the garden also. Things are a buzzing!
I hope all of your gardens are doing well.
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.
If you have a question about gardening or just an observation to share please feel free to stop by and participate. There are no stupid questions, just honest ones.
Don’t feel bad! It took them 3 weeks just to thin this years 700 trees for quality fruit and that’s after it took them 3 months to prune them this past winter...
I can’t stand that smelly, greasy stuff to keep the mosquitos away...I just wear a long sleeve shirt and do my work in small bits of time here and there....in the middle of the day when the sun is strong, they’re not so abundant, but then that’s when I hate being outside....
The trick is to keep the birds from eating them. We have some netting that we'll try.
The remaining 75% of this years Garlic crop...
Look into Avon Skin So Soft with a repellent that my wife says gets high marks on some forums...
You do have to handle the vines carefully because, as you know, the stems of the leaves are hollow and break easily. The vines are tough enough and hard to damage and the squash themselves have such strong stems that you don't have to worry about them at all.
I also grow canteloupes on a trellis and I'd be willing to bet that those small watermelons would work as well. My yellow squash is more of a bush, so they are not on a trellis. Same with the zucchini.
When it is necessary to tie a vine to the trellis, I use a green velcro on a roll that you can cut to the length you need. Made for plants, it is very strong and re-useable too. I use it to tie my tomatoes and their peppers to their stakes.
Thanks for the ping, will post on our thread.
Thanks!
Several weeks ago, I mentioned that I was looking for a way to 'contain' the potato plants which had already outgrown the buckets that I had planted them in. The 5-gallon buckets were 18 inches high, and I had planted the seed potato at the six-inch level, allowing for twelve inches of growth (and then some, above the lip of the bucket). They grew like a rocket, and were above the top of the bucket in no time. How could I continue to hill my plants, as the mix would just slop over the side onto the ground? JDB suggested a material called polypipe...you could slip a sleeve of this over the top of the bucket and duct tape it in place...as the plant continued to grow; you could fill the polypipe with growing medium, which; although flexible, was sturdy enough to contain the dirt. She posted a picture on an earlier gardening thread. I did some investigating locally, but no one had ever heard of 'polypipe'. (Of course; they have never heard of 'heirloom tomatoes around here either, but I digress...)
JDB graciously offered to send me some to try out...yay! About a week later; my package of polypipe arrived. We didn't quite follow the same directive as JDB's picture, though...we were concerned that attaching the sleeve to the top of the bucket might deny the plant access to the sun that seemed to be doing such a great job up to that point. We slipped the sleeve over the bucket right down to the ground. We had cut thirty-inch sections of polypipe, so with the PP 'sleeve' in place; we had a bucket eighteen inches in height, plus an 'extension' of PP measuring an additional twelve inches. Since the potato plants were all ABOVE the rim of the buckets; they would be able to get all the sun they need. As the plants continued to grow; we would just slide the polypipe sleeve upward; filling it with medium as we go...we felt the pressure from the dirt would maintain the pipe in place, which has worked like a charm. When the bottom of the PP sleeve comes level with the top of the bucket; THEN we will duct tape the sleeve in place. This would result in a bucket/polypipe container of roughly 48 inches in height.
Some of the plants are approaching this four-foot 'ceiling', and we are beginning to wonder if they are going to slow down at some point. If nothing else; we are going to have the TALLEST potato plants in New England...maybe we need to quit feeding them. :-)
They look like four-foot tall cigarettes, and they get some strange looks from the people that pass by...I'll update when the plants start to blossom, and I hope it is soon!!!
Ditto...I used ‘Skin So Soft’ in mosquito-infested bogs on the Appalachian Trail (hi, Mark Sanford!), and it kept these blood-crazed monsters at bay...the only Avon product this male will ever endorse.
I’m looking forward to a report when you harvest them Tator Topper Tubes. I’ll be digging a couple of volunteer plants soon. They were knocked down twice by frost because they came up so early...
One of our tomato plants is off by itself and I noticed a bunch of the blooms were missing. I spied a bright green grasshopper on that plant. Probably the culprit.
The best cure for Japanese beetles is a dish washing glove. Put the glove on and squish the pests. Of course, you can do it without the glove, though it feels creepy and they'll squish brown stuff on you.
Try to get them in the early part of the day or towards dusk, during the mid-day sun, they're quicker to fly away.
A long term solution for Japanese beetles is to use Milky Spore.
Great report! Wish you had some pictures. Looks like Blonde may have spawned another side business - selling polypipe to FReepers! LOL
If this works; that is a distinct possibility! LOL! The plants are certainly growing in the polypipe sleeve with no trouble whatsoever...
I’ve ‘potted up’ nearly thirty volunteer tomato plants that make it thru the New England winter months past...no idea what they are; but since they are from last year’s plants; they must be something we liked...
Tip for tomato lovers: you MUST grow ‘Sungold Select’ tomatoes from Baker Creek Seeds...these are awesome; I could eat them like blueberries. ...and my wife? She likes them so much she said she would defend them with firearms. They are HERS, and woe be to them that would try to sneak a couple behind her back...I believe that includes me. (gulp!)
You could try some insecticidal soap.
I have flowers coming on my beans. :-)
I don't think it was the pictures that were loaded. ;-)
The first ripening tomato of the season is showing some red!!!
Zone 6 OH
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