Posted on 06/19/2021 5:39:24 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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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Happy ‘Fry Day’ to the Rosenbergs!
The garden is doing great.
I got my pumpkin plants hopefully protected from squash vine borers.
Been picking off Colorado potato beetle eggs and adults, usually in pairs, all week.
Tomatoes are flowering, which is early, but welcome.
Weeds are growing like, well weeds.
Ticks are still looking for a meal. We have to do tick checks every time we work outside. I ***HATE*** them.
A note on seed longevity ... have some beans (Burpee “Gold Mine”, if it makes a difference) that I bought a lot of in 2019.
Just left them on the shelf (rather than the freezer), planted more last year, and more this year.
They’re still germinating.
Hi all, Garden growing great here, solved a minor rabbit problem with chicken wire cages over the broccoli and almost had enough of the 2 rolls of chicken wire to cover all the lettuce. It deters the rabbit who we think has given up, one large male and now we have a huge female groundhog. Could not get at the broccoli because the cages were nailed down with tent stakes, but the lettuce cages were not staked and that pig pulled them right out. Did not lose all our lettuce and we have been taking turns with the .22 in the late afternoon. It looks to be our best garden ever and we see a big difference using the Chicken Soup for the Soil and also their tomato fertilizer. Eating delicious lettuce and radishes so far rest is yet to come.
Very warm temps today in the Missouri Ozarks but cooler weather forecast for next week. Wife claims hot and sunny is just what the peppers need.
I hope so.
Tomatoes are green, looking very good. Real home grown by the 4th of July ?
I hope so.
After finally deciding on a location for them, I planted two Zebrina mallows (Malva sylvestris) the other day. I think that was Wednesday. The very next morning one of them had turned into a stick, courtesy of a rabbit that I’ve seen around here. Then yesterday the other one had been chewed so it’s a stick now too. I’m so mad. They had such beautiful blossoms starting to bud and then open. So aggravating!
Peppers definitely want hot and sunny. When I was a kid, we had to raise peppers as a fourth source of income to keep food on the table. It took me 50 years to want to ever eat a green bell pepper again. Those were some lean days, I tell you.
We have a lot of coyotes here and the rabbit population is kept in check at a certain point. I know how frustrated you must feel. I used a deer/rabbit repellent spray that worked well, unless rain took it all off and the rabbit was nearby. I just got tired of spraying and the stuff is like 13.00 a bottle so I went with the fencing.
Good to hear the garden is doing good. What difference to you find btwn NY and NH?
I’m using 2019 bean seed this season, too. Good germination on all, with the exception of ‘Saychelles’ green pole bean, which needs to be re-seeded in 4 spots around my bean pole.
Larger seeds such as pumpkin, beans and such don’t last as long as smaller seed, but sometimes you get lucky. ;)
Mushrooms in grass on the other side of bldg. keep popping up: Roots from old trees are underground. Anyone know what kind of mushrooms these are and if edible?
We got a much-needed inch of rain Thursday overnight - with accompanying wind and T&L, but no damage that I can find other than a few branches down.
No Colorado Potato Beetles on my taters - yet!
Beau is back from his far-north fishing trip (Canadian Border @ MN) but they didn’t have as much success as was hoped, due to really high winds to deal with, so they ate what they caught every day. Fine with me! I found a mess of fish still in the freezer. I have about 12 ‘chores’ for him to do for me today...if he ever wakes up, LOL! He was home for about 15 minutes last night, then went to a coon hunt, so he’s still sacked out. Slacker.
Mom was here for 2 days this week, so she helped me prune tomato plants and get the peppers staked and tied and we added a bunch of sunflowers and zinnia to The Big Garden - where we could dig - the soil is so dry and compacted with this drought. Grrrr! I cut up two of my favorite, ratty old t-shirts to make soft ties for the pepper plants. Waste Not, Want Not! ;)
Pretty much now it’s Weed, Water & Wait - the calm before the Canning Storm, but my tomatoes are due for a shot of fertilizer this week, and I’ll probably do the peppers, too.
The potatoes can fend for themselves as they are growing in ‘Ithaca Grow.’ :)
Are you the one who loves fresh rosemary? I’d be interested in growing tips for herbs. I have planted French tarragon, chervil, chives (overwintered from last season), sweet basil, sweet mint, cilantro, and oregano in pots. I have to do it that way because my HOA says “no gardens”. So part of this is my lack of sun problem, and part is due to the stupid HOA where we live. I hate them, but I do love my house and my beautiful property. You would never know that I live in a neighborhood when you see my backyard. Truly a slice of Heaven.
Oh, and any special ways you like to use rosemary would be nice, too.
I had some Top Crop bush beans from 2015 that I tried. About half germinated. (Ferry Morse)
I now realize I got packets mixed up and planted Kentucky Wonder pole beans in the raised bed gardens (where I wanted bush beans) and bush beans where I wanted the other.
Oh, well ... we’ll figure something out.
It is so named because it can produce ripe fruit by July 4 (Independence Day in the USA) in the typical climate. Even in regions with the shortest growing seasons, the plant has been known to yield red tomatoes by early July.
Fourth of July was bred by Burpee, which maintains exclusive distribution rights. As with other hybrids, the variety’s parentage remains a well-guarded industry secret.
Greetings from southern New Hampshire, where the renovation of the garden beds continues apace. I now have three raised beds using pallet slats, and the fourth will be completed and filled, today.
I have a road map for completion of this project this spring, even though filling some of them will have to wait until after harvest. I scored 30 pallets with a request from the source that I return for more. I have an assembly table now set up to make the standard sizes (10’ , 12’ and 54’ with screws to register the stringers. The time consuming operation is disassembling the pallets, but even that operation is becoming easier.
Household Six is planting away and putting in the drip watering as she goes. We got a new controller for the watering system this year, which is WIFI capable and can be used with Alexa. We are figuring out the zones that have been plumbed.
One fly in the ointment is that we have two cotton-tails and a family of ground hogs that are pruning the unprotected plants. I have determined that all of them are not well...they have cardiac conditions and may well be prone to heart attack, say, if a loud crack noise were to occur.
I am thinking about uses for pallet wood after this operation. One is to cover the walls of my wood shop expansion. We’ll see!
“Those were some lean days, I tell you.”
My Mom (83) still will NOT eat stewed tomatoes - in any form. They had a winter on the farm where all that was left in the pantry was canned tomatoes, so they ate them on homemade bread/toast. Three meals a day, with some breaks, but not many!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eat Spaghetti, either. We never had Spaghetti & Meatballs with tomato sauce when I was a kid, LOL!
The Mystery that is my Mother, continues...
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