There are 5 bakers, 12 boilers and about 15 sized for creamed peas and new tators...
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.
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Its a raised bed that started with 6 inches of soil. Soil was added as the plants grew. They are now in 20 inches of soil.
There are 5 bakers, 12 boilers and about 15 sized for creamed peas and new tators...
Breaking news!!! I finished the fenced enclosure for the Blueberries today along with 2 dozen other little projects. Painting resumes tomorrow on the post and rail fence between us and the neighbor’s big ole cow plus I have to go over to the Church in the morning and help Dennis the Menace bring the lawn sprinklers on line for the first time this year...
Noting tubebender’s comments to Tatze on potatoes. My Red La Soda potatoes have been blooming heavily for the last couple of weeks, but my Yukon Golds have not bloomed at all. Normal? Or, problem? They are in Smart Pots.
Next question: My tomatoes — 6 in one bed, 7 in another, each plant 12 in. apart — are so thick that they are like a hedge. Do I need to prune them as in Red’s directions? The first set (the 6) are setting fruit, but not that much. The set of 7 are just beginning to bloom, and I see no fruit yet. The plants look healthy, but they are bushy and dense. I’d follow Red’s directions a prune, but I really don’t know where to start.
Third question: How do you know when compost is ready to use?
You are thinking too much! LOL
When I lived in WA State, our land was hilly. I had a little pasture where my neighbor kept his big ‘ol cow. It was surrounded by a rail fence which I painted white. Trouble is that his cattle would knock the rails off when they wanted to go somewhere else, and he would replace the broken rail it an unpainted one.
Then, one day, his cow had a calf. The calf could go right under the rails where they crossed the swales, and mama cow didn’t like that. So, she would just crash THROUGH the rail to follow her calf. The day that they came up on my deck and were staring at me through the glass door was the day that I evicted them from my pasture and invited my other neighbor to turn his horse out into my pasture.
All that from ONE volunteer plant? Those are beautiful.
I have five varieties of potatoes planted; my Yukon Golds were the last to come up. I have blooms on several, but none on Yukon Golds as of yet...I don’t think it is you...
Thanks. I shared my potato starts with a friend, and I don’t remember what the bag said. One variety was supposed to mature earlier than the other, and I’ve forgotton which was which.
Looking good!
FWIW, in this raised bed, I have 4 russet and 6 purple majesty potato plants. I’m hopefully going to try purple and orange (sweet potatoes) potato chips in the fall.
Patience Grasshopper. Yukon Gold are late to come up, late to bloom and late to the dinner table. The variety I dug yesterday is Red Gold and is a early spud. I never mound up volunteer potatoes because chances are they are growing in the wrong place at the right time or in the right place at the wrong time or.........
Potatoes are ok. If I remember correctly, yukon gold days to maturity are more.
Follow what Red says. Don’t do too much at once. We have about 30 tomato plants. Just start with one, do a little and move on to the next one. At least that’s what we are doing.
Your compost will look like nice rich dirt when it is ready.
Yep. I got them from an internet company in Oregon I think.
I was looking for a place to buy Hawaiian/Okinawan Sweet Potato slips (they are purple too). I couldn’t find any, so settled for the purple majesty. Maybe I can find a Hawaiian Freeper who will ship me a few potatoes and I’ll grow the slips myself for next year.
I’m growing some Georgia Jet slips from the remnants of last years harvest. I should have done that in March rather than buying more from an online site. Most of them died. Replacements from Home Depot (Beauregard’s) were cheaper and are doing better. So worst case, Home Depot, but growing my own slips is far easier than I thought it would be, so that’s the plan for next year.
That potato looks scary! (I’ve led a sheltered life.)
I found a bag of potatoes in the basement frig that had turned to sprouts. I’d already planted my chosen varieties, so I threw them in the compost pile — whole. Do I need to dig them out and cut them in pieces, or will they eventually decompose?
I planted a lot of sunflowers (mixed variety) because Diana told me to. They are up about 4 inches. I think that ALL of those seeds sprouted. They were in a medium that just looked like bran — very few seeds. The seeds did not even look like sunflower seeds, just shriveled kernals. There must have been more seeds than I thought in the mix because they are really coming up thick.
The box said nothing about thinning them, or what the final distance should be for the seedlings. I’m going to have a sunflower jungle to go with my tomato jungle.
An article I read at lunch today on sunflowers said “plant 5 seeds and thin to three” — again no spacing suggested. I probably have 50-60 healthy seedlings. I can transplant some, but these little plants are barely an inch apart. The are predicted to be 3 - 10 feet tall (mixed varieties). They are in one of the perimeter beds around my veggie garden.
Any suggestions?
Another question: (Have I used up my limit for the week yet?)
I also planted one of those “roll out butterfly gardens” where the seeds are embedded in a matt. Again, everything sprouted. Should I try to thin out those plants. I have no idea what they are, except a lot of them are seeds that Diana recommends for her “Beneficial Bug Mix”. They are very close together, and I cannot imagine that they will grow well that way. And I see Oxalis in there. You all know how I feel about Oxalis (false shamrock).
I don’t have any experience with sunflowers or roll out gardens, so I am not sure what you should do, but one of the others will know.
If no one responds, there’s always google. LOL.
I guess you never heard of the "RETURN OF THE KILLER POTATOES" a saga set in the wilds of Wisconsin? Actually they could produce a bumper crop of I-De-Hos best so relax and enjoy the ride. It was a grueling day here on the Vast Bender Estate as we are 3 or 4 weeks behind and while my live-in gardener keeps going like the Energizer Wabbit and I got stuck with a defective battery pack and the warranty has expired according to the French talking Tech guy in New Dehli. Spent a hour at the Church checking out the lawn sprinkler system which consists of 3 electronic controllers operating 24 valves needed due to the extremely low water pressure over there...
You all know how I feel about Oxalis (false shamrock).
I SPENT A HOUR ON MY HANDS AND KNEES DIGGING OXALIS corms in a flower bed this afternoon! What a waste of time and talent...
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