Garden thread.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Our garden produce is crowding us out of house and home...
Earlier in the week I harvested 15 melons in one evening.  Yesterday I got another 20.  Hot pepper out the wazoo, more butternut squash than I've eaten in my entire life off of one or two plants, cucumbers like crazy and seven watermelons and counting out there getting ripe.  I've been shelling blackeye peas every night before going to bed and still having trouble keeping up.   Have canned pickles and more pickles.
The only thing that isn't doing so well is the tomatoes.  They're doing OK, just not as heavy as usual.  However, from talking to others around, nobody's tomatoes are doing very well.  Seems a lot of people are having trouble with late blight, but in our case, it is hornworms and darkling beetles.  We've been picking them off by hand and feeding them to the chickens, which the chickens love, but they're hard to keep up with.

[Windpower]

You're way ahead of us up here homey

I just got our first 6 ripe tomatoes this morning

the only pest is japanese beetles -- and I am trapping them in bag-a-bug traps -- working very well

2  three  inch eggplants and about 7 or 8 more blooms

the squash and zuchini is crowding out the beans and eggplant so I am off to the store to get more fence so they can expand into the lawn 

so far this is a banner year for the micro garden

[Windpower]

The Micro garden is growing like crazy





Here's the first eggplant -- it grows noticably every day

There are 8 more blooms



Here is the last of the first 6 ripe tomatoes -- we ate the others already

[Windpower]

Going to grill some eggplant tonight




and some Zuchini




almost ripe





just finished some BELTS with a ripe 'mater from the other plant

[Curtis]

Going to redesign our garden.

The past caretaker of it left, leaving me to take care of it aswell as the Orchard, all the animals, irrigating, paperwork, etc, etc so I let the garden go...

As I mentioned there were 20 16X4ft garden beds in there, with about two feet wide of walking space inbetween each bed...

I'm going to in there with a weed eater, cut everything down (I just let it go, stopped watering it, stopped weeding it) and then with a sludge hammer and some liquid encouragement go in there and knock out all the buried boxes and rip up the posts for them.

THEN

Rototill (sp?) the entire garden, this will increase growing space dramatically as there was a lot of unused room. Also while doing this I will be bringing in heaps of organic compost to mend our desert sandy alkaline crap soil...

Design it to be watered by irrigation, and overhead. We used drips before and overhead, the caretaker ran up a $350+ a month water bill... So it will get watered by irrigation and minimal overhead spraying. No more drip system.

Then in the spring, intensively plant 4-5 crops over the entire area and have a great harvest of each crop. Lot of work, but it will be worth it once we get it set up right.

[Windpower]

brought in 11 pounds of tomatoes, 1 egg plant and about 2 pounds of beans today

cooked some tomatoes and egg plant into a beautiful ratatouilli al la Julia Child

the steaks are onthe grill right now -- summer is good !

[Phssthpok]

Just put the lids on my first two quarts of dill pickle spears. I just hope the roommate keeps on to p of the cucumbers while I'm away for three weeks unlike last time.

He was good about watering them, but didn't know that once they start to turn color they're bitter and no good... he thogh they were a 'special' kind of cuke that needed to 'ripen' and just let them go. This is what I came home to (green one for proper size comparison):



They were crisp and juicy.. but BITTER!

[Jens]

pick the male flowers of the squash plants, stuff em with cream or regular cheese, batter and fry em, it's awesome.  Italians call it fiorelli.  You can tell the male flowers because they produce no fruit.  

I didn't get any photos of our garden taken in full swing, but we had a good year.  We got about 75 ears of peaches n cream corn, a good month or two of zucchini in practically every meal, about 100 pounds of tomatoes, enough basil for 3 pounds of pesto, and we still have green beans about twice a week with supper.  Next year, we are going to try to increase our gardening enough so that we can have 3 CSA accounts.  

here is a video showing what one family has been able to do with their home garden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPEBM5ol0Q

[Redoverfarm]

Phssthpok I have heard that you can take the yellow cukes before they really get big , slice and flour and fry them like you do squash.  Haven't tried them this way but maybe one day.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

My MIL makes the fried cukes like that...they taste OK, but it just seems wrong to fry cucumbers somehow.

Never before have I been so looking forward to fall/winter!  The garden is getting totally out of hand these days... and we weren't settled in enough to really do much with the produce... haven't had the time to do anything to the house since we moved and am hoping that next year's garden will be a lot more organized!!!

[Daddymem]

Jealous.  Our garden was mostly a disaster this year.  Figures I get time to work on it and mother nature decides to be a bitch. 

Rain, rain, rain, rain, and rain at the beginning of the year so that meant slugs, slugs, slugs, slugs.  Destroyed so many of my plants.  No cabbage at all.  Beans took a hit.  Kale was holey, got my pumpkins. 

Then there was the tomato/potato blight thanks to the big box stores.  They recalled their product it was so bad.  Well, too late, they infected the rest of us.  The rain and winds helped to spread it too.

Squash plants exploded then withered and died.  I haven't figured out what got them.

We got 22 quarts of green beans.  9 pints of pickles.  1 quart dilly beans.  9 quarts of winter squash.  Lots of kale soup.  Turnips and carrots to come.  Potatoes hopefully.  A few more squash out there, mostly summer varieties.  Lots of cherry tomatoes.  Some plum tomatoes coming still.  1/2 ounce of hops dried.  Plenty of lettuce.

Started a new blog:
http://armpithomestead.blogspot.com/

[PEG688]

  Here's where I'm at garden wise, what remains of the lettuce still pick -able I've given away at least 50 bags this summer along with what we've used. We had a oddly warm summer for the PNW. Kind a nice this global warming thing

 

You can see my next crop sprouting up along the fence line , spinach , more lettuce and way down on the end some radishes, I hope to squeeze one more crop in before winter. I will cover the plants with a plastic tent , thats why I planted along the fence , I guess it will be a lean to or shed roof plastic tent design really.

A new trellis to hopefully convince this clematis to climb up and not run sideways along the garden fence, we'll see if it works next summer.

   Busy year , lots of work , hardly time to really enjoy the garden, but I did keep it plugging along all season and may have a slight extension of said season if all goes well.

   

[Redoverfarm]

A different story in the East.  Most gardens have had it.  Weeds have won and just waiting for the annual turn under to occur. Looks like you still have plenty for "wilted lettuce". 

[PEG688]

A different story in the East.  Most gardens have had it.  Weeds have won and just waiting for the annual turn under to occur. Looks like you still have plenty for "wilted lettuce".

 

Yes plenty,  we should cook some up tonight. I'll ask my bride. 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

With the exception of tomatoes, our garden was more productive than we knew what to do with...  All that is left now are peppers and eggplants, and sweet potatoes.  I have potatoes in a container on the front porch as well as greens and a few bell peppers and jalapenos.  I finally gave up trying to put all of the produce up and let the chickens have a lot, which they appreciated.  I'm ready to turn it all under and  get it ready for next year.  I think we got about 7-8 little pumpkins, all of which are already in the freezer for making pumpkin bread and pies.  I was able to do a little canning, but not as much as I hoped.

[glenn kangiser]

Hmm -- the global warming thing, eh?, PEG.  Looks like us Californians may have to move up there with you....

Good garden for just getting there this year, Homey.

Ours is still doing pretty good considering I didn't have much time for it this ear.  Sassy picked about 27 ears of corn yesterday.  We would have had over a hundred in about a 6x6 space but Spike decided to roll in the corn patch about three times.  Grrrrrr.

This is on the lower terrace where we put in about 15 fruit trees this year.  It follows the contour of the mountain and is about 150 feet long.  My plan is for it to capture the mountain water and store it in the clay to help with watering over the summer.  The trees are on a raised berm at the down hill edge of the terrace so all uphill water will be captured.  I plan to add anoher terrace below that one.  We can garden the area between the trees.  I planted squash at the tree drippers also.  They were an afterthought but are doing pretty well.

[Windpower]

End of the year here

I picked the last 3 pounds of 'maters yesterday

The only problem was with the Hubbard squash

lots of blooms but no squash

It just occured to me this instant what the problem was --- hybrid seeds

I had salvaged these seeds from a squash we bought at a roadside stand last fall

I'll bet the squash was a hybrid -- many times the seeds from hybrids are 'sterile'

Glad I didn't make a mistake like that if I were counting on it to get me through the winter.

Everything else was excellent

from the 3' X 8' microgarden we got

about 30 pounds of tomatoes

5 really excellent egg plants

about 20 zucchini

4 dinners worth of green beans (the Japanese beetles really chewed the heck out of the beans)

A very good year !

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Sounds like an excellent harvest from a small garden!  We're still digging sweet potatoes.  I have to admit that I was a little disappointed in them.  Last year, after throwing them in a flower bed and ignoring them until frost, we had a bunch of huge ones, over 2 lbs each.  This year, so far, they're mostly little.  They taste good, though.  I wait until I know it is going to be cool enough for a fire, and then dig a few and wrap them in foil and throw in the coals to bake.  Yum!  Like candy.  We're still getting hot peppers daily... I am about hot-peppered out.  I've pickled and frozen and even dried them, and I know there is no way we'll use them all before next year's crop.  My thought on this is that if they're still in the freezer and pantry when next year's are ready, I can always feed them to the chickens.   I wish I'd taken the time to make some hot pepper/cranberry sauce as it is great for basting chicken or turkey.  We've had unseasonably cool weather lately, but no frost yet.  At least the chickens are laying well (we got a dozen eggs yesterday.)

[glenn kangiser]

Our garden is still doing fair considering that we have not had a lot of time for it this year.  Tomatoes - squash - chard -celery - a few peppers- lots of volunteer stuff - carrots - and finally I have one good and another not as good rhubarb.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Glenn, I hear you on that.... I had just gotten our rhubarb going good when we moved from Wisconsin.  I had to leave it under a couple of feet of snow.  Oh well, at least we don't plan on moving anytime soon, so if I get it started again, it'll be nice to have rhubarb pie.

[glenn kangiser]

Friends gave us some rhubarb to get started with the pies, Homey.

this is the third time I have tried to start it.  ONce the plants had bugs - died - ponce they just rotted and died but this time the plants looked good and one took of well and the other is a bit small but still seems to be OK.  Maybe our own rhubarb to eat next season.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Guess what?  I went out back the other day and saw an orb spider in the garden, and went to look closer and realized that there are tomatillos growing in with the tomatoes!  They aren't ripe yet, and I don't know if they will be before it freezes, but I was surprised they were even there.  I planted them indoors when I started the tomatoes, but thought the seeds were bad because they didn't come up.  So I replanted the cups with tomatoes.  Now there are three tomatillos growing up inside the tomato cages!  I never even noticed them until yesterday!

[glenn kangiser]

A little short on patience there, Homey? hmm 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Well, gosh, what'd it take 'em?  3 months to germinate???

[glenn kangiser]

Hmm hmm You wouldn't expect that of a Mexican plant, now that you mention it, would you?


............ ahem.... *

BTW, I just got back from the feed store and noticed winter vegetables there this year.  I had asked before and now they carry some so I had to buy 18 cabbage plants, a pack of iceberg lettuce - cauliflower- some flowers and maybe another thing or two.



*(Note - not prejudiced - I would say that to my friends and relatives too...