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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.
I’ve bought pickled Okra in the grocery, but if you pickle them yourself, let me know how they turn out.
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And it did. But now it seems shot, and we still have 80 days until the first expected frost!
My sister lives in Austin, and I have a niece that lives near Madrone, where the wild fires burned over 600 acres. She even is close enough to take pictures from her home. I pray for you Texans. We have been dry here in MD but when I hear this I am thankful that some of our grass is still green and our ponds are still full.
My vote is heat then? Are they in containers? I have some ananas noir that are taking over my trellising system. They are just now making fruit (nothing set due to heat). I water them every 2 weeks with algoflash water. Maybe they’re resting, hopefully not pining for the fjords. Or seaweed stuff. I think RD232 doses his with seaweed somethingorother. Maybe he’ll have an idea?
Tomato forensics is mysterious. To me anyways.
I have rooted suckers from mine though. With our heatwaves and general disease and insect problems it never hurts down here to have backup plans B, C, D and possibly E.
Were you closer I’d give you all the plants you desired. I’ve probably got 30 orphans of one variety or another on my driveway in drink cups waiting for homes. This means you too, RD232.
I’ve pretty much given up on the Spring garden. I’ll nurse my Bell and Thai peppers through the Fall. At least long enough to see if they revive and start producing peppers. Everything gets pulled up.
My seed trays have sprouted. This weekend I’ll put them in 4inch peat pots and pray for a break from this ghastly drought.
Tomatoes:
Virginia Sweets 80 days
Jetsetter hybrid 64 days
Katana hybrid 60 days
Peppers:
Biker Billy Jalapeno
Big Early Hybrid
Chinese Giant Hybrid
Cucumbers:
Baby Cocina
Yamato Sanjaku
Soyu Long
Georgia Collards
Shoya Long Eggplant
Waltham Butternut Squash
Assorted bunching onions and radishes
Hope the heat doesn’t kill em!
It’s been miserably hot here in Central Missouri this past week. Is also starting to get dry at my place.
The sweet corn is starting to fill out the ears and I’m trying hard to get enough water on it to make a good crop. The summer squash is dead, cucumbers not far behind, green beans suffering and the bugs have turned my brassicas to lace.
On the bright side, the tomatoes are flourishing. Picked close to five gallons of whopping big Purple Cherokee and Better Boy this week. The Brandywines are loaded and just starting to ripen. The Ambrosia cantelopes love the hot weather and are loaded with fruit. The late-planted okra is knee-high and starting to take off.
We’re getting a little break in the heat this weekend - highs are only supposed to reach the low 90°s. ugh...
So says superstitious that way BA. I've got some 'Maskotka' tomatoes to put in a couple of urns by my back door. And some paste tomatoes to set out as well.
My winter squash have done well for some reason.
We're growing 'Rumbo' (Jungs) and hubby calls them 'Rambo'. 4 vines, each in its own hill, have taken over my yard. At least 12 almost ripe pumpkins on them and they're still setting little ones. Also some Long of Naples, Seminole Pumpkin, Violina Gioia, Black Futsu and Argonaut. Along with 6 or so compost volunteers radiating out from my compost pile. Maybe your squash hate all the rain? We also spray with sevin (dilute) mixed with DE once a week to keep borers down. I've already lost 3 of 12 zukes to the little stinkers. Squash are the only things we spray with any pesticides. Otherwise, down here, we just wouldn't get any.
If only SVB's and fire ants were natural enemies! Although, I have a new respect for my mole problem. I'll tolerate the mole if he'll eat SVB grubs.
Two days of tremendous T storms have turned my grass from brown to green and soaked my poor flower beds so thoroughly that I’m planning to take the day off of work today and work in the garden to try to get some of the stubborn weeds OUT. And the temps have cooled down.
I haven’t been out to check the veggie garden yet, but I’ll do so right after breakfast. So far we’ve harvested only 3 small zucchini, 2 cherry tomatoes, herbs, and green onions. We’ll see what we have behind the fence. It’s been almost a week since I’ve been out there. I’m hoping for some GOOD surprises.
Then I will transplant today!
I gave away all my lovingly grown-from-seed "starter plants" many weeks ago.
One of my overgrown, harvested-out, played-out and tattered-looking plants developed an excellent sucker that started near the bottom of the main stem, so I cut away all the fading, yellowing, browning branches and kept the sucker, hoping to take advantage of a still-good, big developed root system. We'll see how that sucker does!
I do think I'll try rooting some cuttings as well. (Sigh.) Hope springs eternal!
When the kids were little, we grew enough okra to pickle and they’d eat them by the jar full. Literally by the jar so didn’t have any left for the freezer. Wierd afterschool snack but at least it wasn’t junk food, lol.
Today’s a good day to root cuttings. I had the best luck just putting the cuttings in a glass jar full of water. YMMV, of course. Definitely spray for the blight, that will tax the plants and they won’t do anything. We use copper. We got some from Jungs (big mongo sized container of it) to use this year. Last year we got a smallish container from the local ACE hardware store. Definitely try that too. Else blight will get them all. Which reminds me, hubby needs to spray with copper again tomorrow. It’s *time*.
I lost all my maters to blight last year. It got too bad before we realized it wasn’t just ‘too much water’ or ‘too much heat’. All 75 tomato plants, started from seed. Gone.
Encourage the joints to root. That makes the whole plant stronger and more resistant to disease and insects. You might keep the grass away as best you can. When you water (if you need to), water along the whole rooted vine. I had some giant squash vines last year that had SVB’s in them. The SVB infected part died, of course, but the rest of the rooted vine survived and produced just fine. The vines we allowed to root and grow along the ground out produced the trellised ones by a factor of about 2:1. This is only with vining things that will root along the vine. IIRC, cucumbers and melons don’t do this. We trellis those.
Your little pumpkin looks great! Give it time, allow it to root where it wants (I direct the unrooted tips where I want them to go) and when you fertilize (I use compost tea), sprinkle some along the vine also. You’ll get female blooms eventually. They’ll look like teeny little pumpkins with a flower on the end.
Good luck!
San Saba, a couple hours NW of Austin, had another grass fire a few days ago. Between the firefighters on the ground and the water dumper planes, I think all the houses were saved.
Also this week, some people just outside Austin donated their father’s estate to help victims of the fires there.
It’s the dry pastures that’s the problem. One lit cigarette thrown out a car window or a spark from a train is all that is needed to set off a fire. The cattle tanks are dry so ranchers are selling off their stock. Beef prices will be dropping so get ready to stock up the freezer soon.
Paste Tomato Plants I will transplant today and a few Jalapenos, green Bell peppers, Red pimentos and a zuke I picked this morning.
You NEED to see this. Some say the way he speaks or his mannerisms may drive you a bit nuts (didn't bother me, so I don't get it), but you have to stick with him until the 3-minute mark or so...trust me.
Holy cow!!! Has anyone else ever seen this guy's videos before? This was posted in 2009, and he has over 470 other videos posted on his YouTube channel. I have watched a few, and they are packed with loads of interesting information for the raised bed/high-impact gardening crowd. Gardening tips and ideas galore...
Amazing. This is what everyone's front yard should look like. :-)
Tomatoes have finally been ripening for me. And the cucumbers continue to slow down, but are still producing fairly well. Here is the harvest for this week, minus a few tomatoes that have already been sacrificed to our meals. And about a half dozen tangerine beefsteak tomatoes that are in the freezer.
And my first attempt at barrel pickles.
Isn’t the ‘ping’ list getting up toward 500?
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