hows everyones plants going?

**shaner** · 07-24-2012, 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by grrlscout

Over the past couple of months, my garden has pretty much ground to a halt.

Temps have been in the 110s, and we had no rain from April to the beginning of July. Thus, the garden was thoroughly invaded by thrips, spidermites, and hornworms.

Despite being told to stay OUT OF THE GARDEN, the yard guys went in and blew away all the leaf mulch (which keeps the soil cool), and pruned the small palm tree that was providing shade for many of the plants.

With my irregular hand watering, the blackberries nearly bit it. I added some drippers, to give them longer, deeper watering, and a bit of shade. Now they are bouncing back like it's springtime.

Thankfully, the monsoon season has finally rolled in. We're getting more humidity, and even some afternoon showers sometimes. All I can do is try and keep what remains on life support until the temps cool off. Then I will prune what remains back, and hope it springs back in the Fall.

I'll also be starting my Fall seedlings in a week or two.

hang in there man ur growing season os coming soon, when i lived in tucson a lot of things grew good till it got really cool,

**farmerjane** · 07-24-2012, 03:50 PM

We have already finished out our spring garden and put everything up here in E. Texas. Spring garden did WONDERFUL, only hade to water it once. Blessed with great rain this season. Put up enough for us for winter and keep some extra to barter. Tomatoes were a bumper crop this year, plants had so many fruits even with pulling the blooms off to reduce stress on the plan. Fruit grew so big kept pulling the plant over even though it was staked up. Such a wonderful problem to have instead of no fruit at all. Planted enough corn and sunflowers to feed the chickens for the winter too. Already tilled and ready to plant for fall. Had a great little necturine tree produce for the first time this year, however my milk cow decided it was hers, clean it off before I could get her away. Gotta love a 1200 lb animal with a mind of thier own

Good thing she produces alot of milk or she would have been in the freezer. My duaghter says she wanted to video me fighting with the cow and put in on the internet. Told her I was so happy to be her source of amusement.

**LowKey** · 07-25-2012, 09:35 PM

Garden's not doing so well. No rain.
Only a couple of summer squash. Squash has been a big zilch this year. But there are about a dozen volunteer pumpkin plants out there and looks like a bumper crop of pie pumpkins (the volunteers are from compost from last fall when I bought a cheap crate of pie pumpkins after Halloween to put up.)

I did get enough cukes to do a 10jar batch of pickles. Maybe will get a second round off them if the water from the roof catchers doesn't run out. The peppers are doing great too though some of them have skins on them that you can't chew. Just the yellow bananas. The italian are fine.

Pole beans are slow. Just getting started up the poles now and they should be blooming by now.The tomatoes are slow to ripen too. Lots of greenies.

Beans are harvested and in the freezer. Second batch is coming on. Third batch went in the ground today as well as a second try on the summer squash. Supposed to get rain the next two days. Pretty much guaranteed no rain by planting.

Broccoli did well as it ripened before the heat. That's all in the freezer too. Thinking I better start the fall crop this weekend but the sulphur butterflies are vicious this year. I have to find some mesh to protect the seedlings from them.

Found a reasonable priced pick your own Raspberry place. I have about 16 quarts of those in the freezer. Found that canning jelly from the juice after they thaw works great, and I still get to use the pulp for pies. That's a plus.

Blueberries are in too. Will go get about a dozen quarts of those on Saturday. Mine are still too small to allow fruit. Maybe next year.

Gonna try rose hip jelly this year. Already did the mint jelly (peppermint and spearmint).

Cranberries, I'm not too sure on those as the small berries look exactly like the leaves right now. Seems to be a lot of them when I weed the patch. I'm hoping for a couple pounds. The plants are still spreading, but filling in nicely so maybe a couple years to go before a worthwhile harvest.

Though all this sounds great, it's nowhere near where it should be. I shouldn't have lost all those squash plants and there should have been more fruiting blossoms on the ones that did make it. As some of my gardening friends have been saying, the pioneers woulda starved this winter.

**oldtrap59** · 07-26-2012, 12:38 AM

Planted green beans and 20 mater plants today. It's been warm but we been getting regular rain here lately so hope they'll be ok for fall crop. Cabbage and broccoli plants getting fairly large now but going to wait for another rain before they go in. Oh Yeah Put in 5 hills of crookednecks too.

OT

**Chris** · 07-26-2012, 08:04 PM

Good beet harvest this year. Kale doing okay. Zucchini not so good, late start and then squash vine borers. Tomatoes doing okay, some blossom end rot. Raspberry harvest was very good. Grapes have a lot of fruit on, we'll see if the birds let me eat any. Winter squash doing well finally growing really good and putting on fruit. I added a bunch more space for them this year so hopefully it pays off. Also no sign yet anywhere of powdery mildew, which I'm excited about, though I did plant resistant varieties for the first time this year. Only things that really didn't do well I guess, other than zucchini, were lettuces/spinach/chard etc all bolted early from the heat. But I've had to water every day. I remember I think two years ago we had such regular rain I didn't water at all until August, now its daily. I dread to see my water bill.

**nell67** · 07-27-2012, 02:34 PM

CHris,if space is limited with your viney plants,squash,cucmbers etc. I use cattle panels ,and train them to climb it,my cucmber vines look great climbing this year,on an A fram made from cattle panels,however they are not producing like you expect them to because of lack of rain,my bf waters them every night,and I think maybe a little too much,because they are full of bloom,but the tiny cukes turn yellow and die

**cowgirlup** · 07-29-2012, 11:11 AM

So far it is looking like a good year here. The peas are all done, so far we've had beans ( french filet and regular green beans) zucchini, lots of cukes, tomatos, onions, lettuce, and cabbage. Looks like a good year for winter squash too, lots of spaghetti, butternut, buttercup and a few lakota squash out there. But the squash vine borrers got in to some of them. I'm hoping they all have plenty of time to ripen before the vines die. Yellow summer squash, patty pan and pumpkins all look great but no squash.

The peppers and chard are looking good too.

So far the bugs haven't been that bad. Kind of surprising due to the mild winter.

I do have a ground hog that showed up and ate all the leaves off my sweet potatos and a few of the tomato plants.
If he keeps it up he might have a really short life....

**shaner** · 07-29-2012, 06:13 PM

least someones havin so luck, peppers are comin on strong

**wholsomback** · 07-29-2012, 07:21 PM

Well with the 100+ temps and dry,dry weather .

DEAD,DEAD,DEADER

**ClayPick** · 08-29-2012, 08:08 AM

Over all my gardens did really well. It’s only because they never got rained out. This year I took a go at growing hydroponic tomatoes, the cheap low tec way. The 4 on the seat are in coconut coir and another 4 in a rockwool slab. Next year I’m putting more in a greenhouse and will automate with a pump and a flood table.
June 10th

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August 25th

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**shaner** · 08-29-2012, 08:21 AM

wow lookin great

**crashdive123** · 08-29-2012, 11:42 AM

Good looking garden plot.

**letslearntogether47** · 09-03-2012, 11:28 AM

We got a bunch of yellow pear tomatoes this year.
What you see is about a 1/3 of what we picked.Best part is I didn't even plant them.They seeded themselves from last year.
Wife made salsa with them and Juliets.

**LowKey** · 09-03-2012, 11:38 AM

I just put up a dozen of those volunteer sugar pumpkins this morning. Got more coming.
Some of the Boston Marrow squash plants actually woke back up after a week of rain so now I have six of those big boys comin along.
Peppers are done.
Still have a bed of beans, the cherry tomatoes, a second planting of cukes, and the fall broccoli out there.
Cleaned out most of the beds and put in a cover crop of field peas. They may make pods before frost. Or not.
End of the month a winter wheat goes in between the rows remaining, just gotta get roots down to hold the soil. It all gets tilled under in spring.

**grrlscout** · 10-08-2012, 01:51 PM

Now that we are FINALLY out of the triple digits, signs of life are re-appearing.

One of my pepper plants is at last, bearing fruit.

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The rest are not blooming.

Other survivors of Summer include:
Volunteer yellow pear tomatoes
Charentais melon - still not one fruit
Tomatillo - since only one remains, it will not set fruit. Since I have room for it, I keep it around for ground cover, and to attract pollinators.
Sunchokes - springing back to life

Survivors of the monsoonal planting (Late summer):

Purple string bean - sad and scrawny looking
Maya Kama winter squash - looking good, just now blooming
Tepary beans - small, but blooming
Peanuts - blooming, but I think the soil was too dense for them to put down pegs.

Recently seeded:
Carrots
Radishes
Arugula
Swiss chard
Mustard greens
Bok choy
Broccoli
Lettuce
Garlic

The garlic is actually coming up already.

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Transplants that I bought:
Tuscan kale
I'itoi onions
Another tomato
Artichoke
Holy basil
Epazote

I was also gifted some plants from a friend - bell peppers, lemon balm, yerba mansa, bitter melon, and a ton of strawberries.

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I don't remember if I posted before about the front yard bed I put in, but here's an update:

I added some of the plants gifted to me - the lemon balm, and the yerba mansa flanks a little stone walkway I added.

Holy Basil was added at the far end of the line of basils.

The only seedlings that survived the birds are fenugreek, dill, borage, and lablab hyacinth bean. The thyme and lemongrass are very happy there.

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I was going to post up about some propagation projects I'm working on, but decided I'll put that in a separate thread.

**hunter63** · 10-08-2012, 02:07 PM

Looks green to me....LOL.
Just pulled tomatoes and poeppers today, got hit by frost last two nights.....green tomatoes in a bag to see how many we canget to rippen.

End of the growing season here in SE Wisconsin.....Now it's hunting season...

**cowgirlup** · 10-08-2012, 03:14 PM

Pretty well done here too. I tried pinching off the tops of the tomato plants to get the green ones to ripen up. Didn't work.
I still have green tomatos, green beans and a few squash and pepper plants hanging on. I also need to dig up the sweet potatos and regular potatos.

Looking through the canning books to find some kind of end of the garden recipie that looks good.

**grrlscout** · 10-10-2012, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by cowgirlup

Looking through the canning books to find some kind of end of the garden recipie that looks good.

I've pickled green tomatoes before, and made green tomato relish. Honestly, I still haven't used the pickled ones.

The relish makes a good sauce base. I add chicken stock, something sweet, simmer it down and blend it. You end up with a sweet and tangy sauce. Good for pork and chicken. It's also good as is, on sandwiches.

Then today, I came across this Green Tomato Spice Cake recipe
http://www.mountclemensfarmersmarket...nt/view/52/33/

Sounds promising!