I LOVE licorice - but not in my salad.
"...fond memory of hiking..."
A Maryland stretch of the Appalachian that runs along side
of the old C&O canal has wild strawberries along it.
They are small berries, but oh so sweet!
Posted on 07/30/2022 6:48:25 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.
If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located.
This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.
It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to our New & Improved Ping List.
NOTE: This is a once a week Ping List. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time!
Blight is a soil-born disease and there’s not much you can do about it other than to use the copper treatment, remove the bottom blighted leaves (toss or burn; don’t compost) and mulch well - but leave a gap around the plant base for easy watering.
Also - do NOT crowd tomatoes having good space between them for air circulation helps - A LOT.
I have blight, too, and I’m supposed to know what I’m doing!
I have never head of ‘bleaching seeds.’ And, FWIW, the SEEDS are not the problem when it comes to blight. I’m not even sure if bleaching your cages will do a thing, as the spores are in the soil and don’t live above ground or attach themselves to anything...other than tomato leaves.
Next season, be vigilant about pruning lower leaves early in the season and the best spray I’ve found for any diseases is Copper. You an find it mixed up or can buy a concentrate. ‘Bonide’ is the brand I use. Also be vigilant about buying tomato varieties that are more blight resistant. I grew ‘Ten Fingers of Napoli’ this season and it is more blighted than any of the other varieties I planted! Ugh!
Blight resistant tomato varieties:
https://greenupside.com/top-10-blight-resistant-tomatoes-and-how-to-prevent-blight/
https://tomatogeek.com/disease-resistant-tomatoes/
I’m confused on your canning question. Are you concerned that because your tomato plants had blight you can’t use them? Nonsense. If no one used the tomatoes from blighted plants, none of us would have canned tomatoes, LOL!
Just follow the canning guidelines you’ve always used.
Anyone have any other suggestions/comments?
Thanks, Diana!
I thought seeds and cages/stakes could be affected if the fungal spores overwinter. I saw a few discussions online, including this one: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2220227/saving-seed-from-plants-hit-by-blight
Anyway, I set some tomatoes out this year that are about a quarter mile from my garden, in soil that has never been gardened, and did everything by book except reused stakes from last year without bleaching them.
I have good spacing, good mulch, plants not touching, rotation, and pruned the lower leaves. And I sprayed copper (I use bonide too) every week and pulled plants starting to get overtaken. I even switch out gloves plant to plant as to not transfer it. It’s a very frustrating thing! My county agricultural office is no help. They just say it is affecting everyone.
Are you using heirlooms? I have seen some hybrid varieties that are resistant. Are their heirlooms that are as well? I do know my Cherokee purples have less problems than other varieties.
I read about not canning with blighted tomatoes here: https://extension.psu.edu/canning-tomatoes-dos-and-donts
“Tomatoes with blight and those from dead or frost-killed vines may be lower in acidity and are more likely to carry bacteria.”
I even clear the vines and leaves at the end of each season and burn them!
“Tomatoes with blight and those from dead or frost-killed vines may be lower in acidity and are more likely to carry bacteria.”
Never have read that before. I’m not worried about it. I don’t think you should be, either.
Blight does vary from year to year; it’s weather-dependent, so in a cool, wet season in the spring, you can get more blight in the late summer into fall.
I always have it. I prepare for it, and live with it. And I’ve always eaten/canned tomatoes from blighted plants.
I guess you have to make your own choice on this one.
On those links I gave you, there were some heirlooms that are more blight resistant. A regular Roma (’Amish Paste’ would be good) and Cherokee Purple was listed there, as well as Brandywine.
I think you have to be a fan of licorice and anise flavors to love eating fennel raw. I like it as one of many flavors sliced onto salads to add a sweet note to mixed flavors (bitter greens, salty olives, earthy mushrooms, tangy tomatoes, astringent radishes, etc). It's also good as a warm side dish, sliced and sautéed in butter.
I have a fond memory of hiking on Rocca Gloriosa, a small mountain in Southern Italy, during a hot summer day. Near the top, we had to take a break for awhile and stand under a shade tree, where it was a good ten degrees cooler; we were at that point rationing what water we had left. Then we looked to one side of the footpath and saw a large outcropping of wild fennel. We tore off stalks and crunched away—it was moist and cool from its taproots having sucked up that morning's dew, and such a refreshment when we needed one!
I have a question about my onions.
It looks like some critter plowed through part of my onion patch. A lot of stems are bent over and the plants did not look close to ready to do it on their own. The leaves were still very green and lush looking.
I know that once the leaves are bent over, the stem is broken basically, the onion stops growing. What is the best thing to do with them at this point?
The ones that are not bent over will stay until they fall over on their own. I never was a big fan of hurrying the process along. I want as much growth as I can get out of them.
But I want to salvage what I can out of the ones I have no choice about.
The forecast is very warm, 80’s to 90 through Thursday, so drying conditions will be very good.
Let the undamaged onion stems keep doing their thing, but you may as well harvest the ones that are completely broken. Once the stem is broken, the plant no longer delivers the sugars needed to the bulb for continued growth.
No reason you can dig up and use the damaged ones. I would treat them like any other onion; harvest them with the stems on, lay them somewhere shady and dry to cure a bit, then use those onions up first for cooking or chop them up and freeze on a cookie sheet, then pop into a ziplock and return to the freezer. Freezing them that way keeps them loose so you can take out what you need when you need them. (You probably already know that trick; I just added that for those who may not.)
I just finished cleaning up my garlic that was drying/curing for the past two weeks. I ended up with 24 nice fat bulbs which is plenty for us to eat and more for planting in another few weeks. I grew Northern White and German something...
Some gardeners ‘fold over’ the leaves of their onions on purpose - Old Wives Tale that that gives you fatter bulbs - but it’s not true. When you leaves start dying back some, you CAN fold them down if you want because at THAT point, it tricks the onion into the ripening process before they’re pulled.
I’ve never done either when growing onions in the past. There are a few things I don’t normally bother growing - carrots and onions being two because they’re ‘dirt cheap’ where I live. Wisconsin produces TONS of each. The whole middle section of Wisconsin is Ag with potatoes, onions and carrots loving the sandy soil we have there.
Awesome, thanks for the link too.
I won’t worry so much about blight and canning. Sounds like most people do it.
In NY I never bothered with onions, potatoes, or carrots either for the same reason. LOTS of agriculture in Central NY and potatoes and onions were big crops and cheap.
Not so much here in NH.
I’ll let the bent over ones cure for a while in the ground, and harvest those later, and try to figure out how to protect the rest. I know there are different opinions on whether to let them cure outside while it’s dry or not.
The onions in question are Stuttgarter. Good storage onions..
I LOVE licorice - but not in my salad.
"...fond memory of hiking..."
A Maryland stretch of the Appalachian that runs along side
of the old C&O canal has wild strawberries along it.
They are small berries, but oh so sweet!
‘Stuttgarter’ is a terrific keeping onion. Jung’s sells them as bulbs in the spring if you don’t want to do seeds.
Remember when it was so hard to get Vadalia onions? My Step-Dad used to LIVE for the day they were available at his grocery store and he’d buy whatever the limit was that day...and go back every day that week to buy them, and send the rest of us in to buy some, too!
I miss that goofball. ;)
I saved seeds from one batch of Stuttgarters one year. They came up fine.
You can never have too many onions.
I am already considering my seed order for next year. I want to try some red cabbage, heirloom, of course, and see if I can find Stuttgarter seeds. I’ll have to let some of my onions stay in the ground and go to seed next year.
Mmm! We have those wild strawberries and also wild raspberries along the edges of the woods out here in the Baltimore exurbs. If you don’t pick the raspberries promptly, or even if you do, the birds like to eat them, then poop out the seeds, so you get “volunteer” raspberry briars popping up in your cultivated gardens. I have mixed results transplanting them back to the briar patch at the edge of the woods. Darn those tiny little thorns!
10pm & raining with more on the way when I checked radar. We’ve had showers, some trending toward ‘heavy’, off & on all day & it’s been rather gloomy looking. Since last Monday, I think we’re going to be getting close to 4” of rain by tomorrow.
During a break between showers this evening, I checked the garden. The ground is so soggy & soft, one of my bell peppers was falling over & needed staking up. The Sungolds had not been picked since Friday, so there were many ripe ones - about 3 quarts, maybe more. With all the rain, some of the ripest were splitting open. To avoid more splitting, I picked tomatoes that normally I would have left on the vine at least another day.
Perhaps all the rain will be good for the zinnia & wildflower seeds I planted Thursday. I chased a couple of goldfinches out of my blooming zinnia patch - they are really going after the seeds.
The doe deer is visiting our old apple tree out in the field which does have some small green apples on it. She’s cleaning up anything that falls, then she heads for my mom’s flowers. She’s currently eating all the sedums after going through the day lily blooms, rose bush leaves & baby sunflowers along the fence. Mom is really upset & is covering her hostas along the front of the house & in pots with row cover every night.
I bought a small watermelon today & threw some rinds near the hole under the barn where I saw the ground hog run the other day so it should find them. Hopefully, it will like the rinds so much that when I bait the live trap with watermelon, it will be inclined to go on in for more. From past experience, they’re not the easiest to trap.
Ready for some sunshine - wish the heat would stay away, but that should build back in as the week progresses. Almost August - fall, my favorite time of year, is around the corner.
Isn’t some (Chinese?) pallet wood treated with some fairly nasty chemicals?
So, some of our tomatoes are ripening, Cherry and Roma's best, but other varieties not - might be our avg. temps have been enough hotter to make a difference.
When 70 deg. - 75 deg. F is cited as a good tomato ripening range, is that the average temperature over a week or so, and, can one or two days with highs in the mid 90's completely disrupt ripening?
I think it’s like a on/off switch. Today is day 1 of 3 for 97 degrees again so I’ll find out soon enough. Back down to 90ish after that.
I can tell you that blueberry bushes and mockingbirds do not mix well either.
They would sit there on the neighbor's fence just waiting for them to get ripe.
I would go out to pick the blueberries -
.
"Hey - yesterday there were over three dozen ripe berries
on these plants! Now they're GONE! Dang-it!!!" ...
.
So... kale... Mrs. Augie loves the stuff, so I plant it for her. She likes it raw. I prefer it cooked. Eating that raw bagged kale salad from the store is like chewing on a bale of hay to me. Not a fan. Cooked, though, is good for me. I prefer the black magic and red russion over the curly vates for cooking.
I've been staying busy putting up produce for later use. I've got six pints of basil packed in olive oil stashed in the freezer now, and enough left to make at least that much more. Made a canner load of spicy hamburger slices on Saturday. That makes 21 quarts of pickles for me so far this summer. Mrs. Augie is still making her lacto-fermented pickles on the kitchen counter, but I'm finished with the hot-pack work on cukes.
.jpg?width=960&height=720&fit=bounds)
We started on the tomatoes yesterday. Picked all of the romas that were ready, and a few rain-split slicers to work up. Wound up with 25lbs. First run we did pasta sauce. That yielded 4 quarts of thick sauce and 7 quarts of juice to use for soup base or V8 or whatever. I was using brand spanking new Ball jars and had one of them explode as I was lifting it from the canner. That made a huge mess on the barn floor and reminded everyone involved why we do our canning anywhere other than Mrs. Augie's kitchen. lol
.jpg?width=960&height=720&fit=bounds)
We'll pick more rain-split slicers this evening to throw in with what we didn't cook yesterday. Think we'll do a batch of salsa with those.
One pass down the pole bean row should produce enough to finish out a canner load of those. I've got close to a gallon in the fridge already popped and ready, and half that many that need to be popped so it won't take a ton of them to finish a load.
And then just like that it's August and time to start thinking about fall plantings. I suppose I should get off my biscuits and install the shade cloth I bought for the greenhouse.
As per advice from someone here, I just went out and grabbed any tomato that was showing any sign of ripening and will let them ripen indoors.
My two types of yellow cherries have done best ripening in the heat. The lighter of the two yellow cherries ripened better than the darker yellow. Pinkish red cherry next best and near purple last of the cherries to ripen. Pretty much lightest to darkest but all before slicers.
Just got my first red slicer, partially ripened and will finish indoors.
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.