Posted on 07/29/2011 5:22:39 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. This past week here in East Central Mississippi has been great, weather wise. There have been numerous and very beneficial pop-up T-storms almost every day, which have helped keep the temperatures down and my garden watered.
I hope TS Don will give some relief to those of you in drought stricken Texas. Forecasts are for it to dissipate in about 36 to 48 hours after landfall.
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.
I hope all your gardens are flourishing.
Yeah! My spring garden is a big bust except for my pepper plants.
GREAT presentation; looks as good as you make it sound! Thanks for the update.
(SS)
An old, squishy squash stuffer
P.S. Still waiting to hear from Red about his big Zuke...or did he chicken out on stuffing it? *<];-’)
Well, the ball is in our court now. It is up to us to call him to have the piano brought up to its final tone. We are supposed to let it sit for a couple of weeks and then call him.
All I know is that he worked on this instrument 7 hours for less than $190, so I can’t complain about the price. As a bonus, he took some of my zucchini and thanked me! The piano looks and sounds great. I wish that my daughter were around to tell me what she thinks.
I have saved the seeds from yesterday’s Flying Saucer squash. I’ve washed, cleaned, and dried them. Now what? How should I keep them? Should they be kept in paper, or plastic?
Does anybody want to try this veggie? If you send me your address (and real name) via FReep mail, I’ll send you some to try.
Neighbor lady gave us a butternut squash and a eggplant that is long and kinda thin. I thought it was a zuke when I first looked into the bag. Wife fried it last night and it really had a sweeter flavor than the fatter eggplants that we buy from the stores.
Our squash did nothing, three squash from six plants.
Ok, now you’ve done it! I’m starving. Off to dig in my freezer & find some Italian sausage. That looks just yummy. JADB must be a good cook. Not sure how she stays so thin, she must be a farm girl or something *wink*.
We picked our first compost volunteer winter squash. It’s obviously a cross between a musquee de provence and a long of naples. (the only ones that were blooming when we picked the squash its seeds came from) It’s a long long pumpkin colored thing. That’s ribbed. It weighed 16.5lbs. Not too shabby considering our extreme heat and drought. I have kept them watered but didn’t mulch them as they’re in my yard yard so their moisture retention wasn’t great and they had to compete with my lawn.
Waiting 2-3 weeks for it to cure will be difficult. My family loves ‘squash pancakes’ and ‘squash poundcake’. It’s a little hard to hide a 16.5lb pumpkinsquashthingie.
There’s another 50+lb squash on another compost vine that’s not *quite* ready just yet. And, we counted unofficially another 150-175lbs of others ripening. I came really close to pulling them when they sprouted in my compost pile back in late April. Glad I didn’t!
Looks like we’ll swelter here this week, yet again. And RD232 will get all my rain. Again.
Stinker. Now I’ll have to make something like that too this afternoon.
Sadly, I’m not a farm girl. So thin is more problematic. *chuckle*.
Then I punch holes in another plate, and turn it over to cover the seeds. I secure the edges with clothespins or a bit of tape.
Place it on top of the refrigerator for 2 or 3 weeks. Then put the seeds in leftover medicine containers or envelopes and label with seed and year. I keep a diary of what I planted and how, so I didn't need to include those directions.
Put the containers in a glass canning jar. Put on the lid and ring tighten it, and store in the back of the Refrigerator till Spring.
I want one!! Do you ship?
I do watch the food channel off and on. Last year I watched it almost all day every day. Now, not so much.
He told me I was getting the last one he had ;)
Well, I dried them overnight on paper towels spread out on a dinner plate (single layer). Then I removed any remainng flesh so that only seeds are left.
Now, I have them in a 5 x 7 mailing envelope (paper so it breathes). I think I’ll put them on top of the refrigerater just like that. Maybe I’ll take an extra precaution and shake them every few days to make sure that they dry evenly. Do you think that’s enough?
BTW, did your beans sprout and grow?
I looked for squash in my local supermarket yesterday when I bought the sausage and found NONE. Maybe I was looking the the wrong places, but I dould not find any squash! was trying to compare sizes.
Yep! Another pop up T-storm ruined my lawn mowing chores yesterday. It is supposed to get to 101 today and tomorrow.
Probably will work. They just need to get dry enough that they don’t mold.
Yes, thanks the beans did sprout just fine. I don’t know if I am going to get much crop due to the heat. We had lots of flowers and lots of little beans, but with the heat wave and lack of rain they are really not growing. I am watering, but the afternoon heat is really getting to them.
I had a few left over that I planted near a walnut tree. They get afternoon shade, and look better, so I hope when the heat wave is over both patches will be great producers.
So I have learned that I need to plant early stuff in beds 1 & 2, and the succession plantings where they get afternoon shade.
I picked 8 Pimento Peppers, they are a beautiful red, and a bunch more Jalapeno Peppers this morning. Also picked one green Bell Pepper.
How is the flavor on the zipper creams? I planted a few this year but they were killed in a hail storm.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.