Posted on 06/14/2013 12:44:34 PM PDT by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.
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“Always with the harshness... ;)”
Perhaps you don’t understand - If I, a beginner, managed to get okra growing and someone mowed it down, I would kill him. I am serious about my growing food.
The first zucchini and the first crookneck came out of the garden last night. They didn’t last long - in a frying pan with olive oil/butter, salt, pepper and onions. I ate the whole pan.
Anyway, soon we will have way too many zucchini .... probably will be ok on the crooknecks. I have a good zucchini bread recipe, but that gets tiresome after a while. My SIL will have extra zucchini, too so I was looking for ways to preserve them. I didn’t think they would freeze due to the high water content, but evidently they do (yay!). I have a dehydrator somewhere that I need to find. Also, I found some good looking zucchini chip recipes ... oven-fried, for-real fried, and dehydrator .... you can also make zucchini fries in the oven. The there is zucchini relish and bread and butter pickles. Now comes the hard part - do I have enough energy to actually DO all of this and stay ahead of the zucchini? I guess I’ll find out! :-)
The big dog learned about electric fences on the first try. Maybe it’s time to move it to the garden to keep out all shapes and sizes of varmits.
Hey, NSA, we’re kidding!
Your climate is always ahead of us, so our best time is still in the future more than likely. We don’t even have green tomatoes yet.LOL
You are a master grower. I admire people like you.
Tobacco flower. The white powder is diatomatious earth that I use to control aphids.
This is the button mushroom mycelium spreading over prepared horse poop, and almost ready to 'case' with an inch of soil so that it can produce mushrooms.
/johnny
“Tonight, I’ll be having stuffed zucchini and fried green tomatoes and asparagus...”
Is there a chance I could grow asparagus this far south? I love that stuff.
I had a house around a lake and deer were everywhere. I had an electric fence to keep them out. Numerous times at night, they ran straight through it. I would hear a loud noise of the wire being ripped through the holders around the house. Repairing was frequent. So, if you have big animals like deer, it's a problem.
Beautiful tobacco flowers - didn’t know they had flowers.
The hornworms flock to the tobacco. So twice a day, I go out and hand kill every little hornworm that I can find. At this point, the ones I'm killing are ittsy bittsy little critters that have just hatched out, and no bigger around than a .5mm pencil lead.
/johnny
/johnny
As for the squash, if the flowers are male flowers, no, that's not where the squash will be. If the flowers are female, there will be a tiny, tiny squash at the bottom of the bloom, and yes, every single one will be a squash. You planted way too much, and should harvest them small. Around here, people start locking their cars, so they don't wind up with an anonymous bag of squash and zucchini in the back seat. ;)
On the peppers, I can't tell one from the other until it fruits. So good luck with that.
/johnny
“You planted way too much,”
I only planted two plants but each one is a monster.
/johnny
With respect to veggies in general. First come the flowers, then comes the fruit at the place where the flower was. Of course the flower has to be fertilized usually by bees and other insects or there will be no fruit.
If your soil has too much nitrogen, you can get too much green and not enough produce. Other nutrients such as potassium and phosporous are great for getting flowers/produce in combination with sufficient nitrogen.
The specifics vary a little depending on which veggie you are growing.
Once you get several squash growing, you can pick some of those flowers and make some delicious treats to eat.
I have no experience growing Jalepeno peppers. The bells I have grown had white flowers, but that doesn’t mean all bells have white flowers.
You can plant saved hybrid seeds. They don’t always breed true, but you will get either the hybrid, one or both of the parents(not going any further back in ancestory) or some combo of all three.
Nothing wrong with saving hybrid seeds and planting them, you will get some sort of plant that will no doubt be tasty.
With tomatoes, I have even used cuttings to start new hybrid plants, but this year I’m just doing heirlooms.
Fungus
Give them a good spraying with a fungicide.
I use Daconil.
I grew Cherokee Purple last year- they were really good. Thanks for the info and the link. Always glad to learn about or be reminded of such useful methods.
Hubby got his first crook neck squash today and fixed it about the same way you did. Topped it off with a bunch of Parmesan cheese and ate it with pizza for lunch.LOL
“If your soil has too much nitrogen, you can get too much green and not enough produce. Other nutrients such as potassium and phosporous are great for getting flowers/produce in combination with sufficient nitrogen.”
OK, the Kentucky Wonders and the squash are in ground. Everything else is in potting soil mix. So, what about potting soil mix? Does it have in it what every food plant needs - the right amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosporous? This is getting more complicated.
Those tobacco flowers sure are pretty. I had some unknown mushrooms come up this year, but failed to get a picture before they disappeared.
We just don’t know enough about which ones are edible to take a chance, which is why I have thought about getting one of those kits that they advertise you can grow in the basement.LOL
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