How are the gardens?

I mix in some tomato tone when thing go in the ground and a lttle more just at the begining on August.

I also send a soil sample to umass amherst every couple years to see how much lime or other things to add in more specific volumes.
 
Lots of green tomatoes that are slowly starting to turn ripe. Had the first batch earlier this week and they were very sweet. A variety called "Black Cherry". Indeterminate vines, I've had to pinch them back pretty severely during our hot spell. "Black Cherry" have always given us a decent crop, even in bad years.

Cubanelle peppers and jalapenos are producing like crazy! Cubanelles are light, sweet, and tasty - perfect for dipping or on a salad. Can also be sauteed or grilled, but lightly as they don't have the thickness of bell peppers. My jalapenos this year are wicked hot for jalapenos. I can barely eat them, even with seeds and pith removed. The Mr compares them to supermarket habaneros.

I've got one lone cucumber plant given to me by someone at work. It has really started taking off in the past two weeks, but no fruit yet. Is there some magic method or fertilizer for cukes? There are flowers, just no fruit.
 
My garden had mixed results. My hydroponic was a fail as the plug got pulled while we were on vacation and we lost 5 huge tomato plants and 3 pepper plants. My carrots and turnips are doing well along with my grapes. MY summer squash was a bust as was my cucs. They look like they got too much water but they are in a raised bay and they did great last year. My acorn squash is goign well. I am at kind of a loss and we mixed in the aged chicken poop and I thought the garden would have taken off this year as the squash next to the coop last year was out of control and we were eating butternut Squash well into the winter. Anyone else have an issue with squash this year?
 
Had a good harvest this past weekend (at least more than normal)

IMG_3622_zpseaf320e0.jpg


This is year 2 of our garden using the square foot method.

About 3-4 lbs of potatoes in total - next year going to build a potato tower I think...very happy with the results here.
Carrots (1/2 length) took a while but nice to finally be able to pull some.
1/2 dozen jalepeno's and a few cubanelles

Green beans (pole) just starting to come in and waiting on most of my tomatoes which are growing crazy.
Have been picking some purple beans (bush) for a few weeks - yum

It's been a learning year mostly - will plant a lot more of certain things next year (peppers, beans) and not grow some things (chard)

Cucumbers did not grow this year (think not enough calcium, phosphorus in my compost mix (using a fully organic garden) although they did great last year.

Have not been able to get beets to grow again this year (no success last year) - not sure why?
 
Stryker said:
Had a good harvest this past weekend (at least more than normal)

IMG_3622_zpseaf320e0.jpg


This is year 2 of our garden using the square foot method.

About 3-4 lbs of potatoes in total - next year going to build a potato tower I think...very happy with the results here.
Carrots (1/2 length) took a while but nice to finally be able to pull some.
1/2 dozen jalepeno's and a few cubanelles

Green beans (pole) just starting to come in and waiting on most of my tomatoes which are growing crazy.
Have been picking some purple beans (bush) for a few weeks - yum

It's been a learning year mostly - will plant a lot more of certain things next year (peppers, beans) and not grow some things (chard)

Cucumbers did not grow this year (think not enough calcium, phosphorus in my compost mix (using a fully organic garden) although they did great last year.

Have not been able to get beets to grow again this year (no success last year) - not sure why?
Click to expand...

Did you grow your spuds in a bucket (i.e., a trash barrel) or in the ground? We got about the same pounds but you got a nice big one.
 
xcom said:
Did you grow your spuds in a bucket (i.e., a trash barrel) or in the ground? We got about the same pounds but you got a nice big one.
Click to expand...

Grew them in 3 separate 1 ft x 1 ft spaces in my raised bed - Put five cut pieces w/ an eye into each 1x1 section; just placed them at the bottom of 6" soil and just covered them up, no mounding, etc.

I am using the SFG method for soil which is 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost - works well.

How about yourself?
 
Stryker said:
Grew them in 3 separate 1 ft x 1 ft spaces in my raised bed - Put five cut pieces w/ an eye into each 1x1 section; just placed them at the bottom of 6" soil and just covered them up, no mounding, etc.

I am using the SFG method for soil which is 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost - works well.

How about yourself?
Click to expand...

I grown my spuds in trash barrels next to my beds. My mix is about 1/2 peat and the rest is compost and aged chicken manure that is mixed with some top soil and sand from the coop. We mounded them going from about 6 inches to about 2 feet of soil in the barrels. We tried a good deal of "alternative" urban gardening this year with the planters all filled with foot crops and the barrels growing spuds in addition to moving the hydro out side into a green house. I'm starting to think that my soil is way too nitrate rich due to my manure. I have 16 birds now whereas last year I only had 8 when I treated my soil. The other problem I was having is that the manure was filled with straw seeds (apparently) from the girls picking at their bedding and I had tons of straw sprouting up in my beds.
 
Stryker said:
Had a good harvest this past weekend (at least more than normal)

IMG_3622_zpseaf320e0.jpg


This is year 2 of our garden using the square foot method.

About 3-4 lbs of potatoes in total - next year going to build a potato tower I think...very happy with the results here.
Carrots (1/2 length) took a while but nice to finally be able to pull some.
1/2 dozen jalepeno's and a few cubanelles

Green beans (pole) just starting to come in and waiting on most of my tomatoes which are growing crazy.
Have been picking some purple beans (bush) for a few weeks - yum

It's been a learning year mostly - will plant a lot more of certain things next year (peppers, beans) and not grow some things (chard)

Cucumbers did not grow this year (think not enough calcium, phosphorus in my compost mix (using a fully organic garden) although they did great last year.

Have not been able to get beets to grow again this year (no success last year) - not sure why?
Click to expand...

I'm a bit jealous of the carrots, I tried 3 years and never had much luck with them. Same with cukes, they just need too much sun I think for my shaded yard.
 
Bill Katt said:
What would cause a cucumber to go from turning green to change to a pale yellow while still on the vine? [thinking]
Click to expand...

Happened to me this year as well

Pretty sure it is a calcium/phosphorus in the soil thing

This guy has a really good blog - and some things on cucumbers are there:
The Rusted Vegetable Garden
The Rusted Vegetable Garden

Check through his blog - I think he has a few more things about cukes - tons of info on tomatoes.

I'm a bit jealous of the carrots, I tried 3 years and never had much luck with them. Same with cukes, they just need too much sun I think for my shaded yard.
Click to expand...

This is the first year that I have had some luck - switched to using half-length carrots as my raised beds are only 8" tall (Danvers half long, little fingers and parisian market) and they grew much better.
I have only about 6 hours of full sun on garden so they grow very slowly - probably take about double the time to grow to a harvestable size. One thing I learned is to thin them as early as possible and look multiple times to make sure only a single plant is there - the kiss of death to carrots is having two plants (that you think is one) right on top of each other - lots of leaf growth but no carrot
 
Bill Katt said:
What would cause a cucumber to go from turning green to change to a pale yellow while still on the vine? [thinking]
Click to expand...



One cause is over watering. More likely, they were ripe and you didn't harvest them. Over ripe cukes will turn yellow, and become bitter tasting. Usually they only take 50-70 days to fully mature.
 
I just picked about 50 tomatoes, a couple hand fulls of fresh oregano, same of basil, and some scallions from my herb garden. All were run through a food processor, as well as a store bought large onion and some garlic cloves. All are simmering in the crock pot, along with sea salt and fresh ground pepper medley, some thyme, marjoram, coriander, a little adobo seasoning, teaspoon of sugar, and a pinch of my home made chili powder, from the cayenne peppers I grew last year. I'll add some chopped mushrooms later. It's thickening nicely. I can smell it as I type.
 
Stryker said:
Happened to me this year as well

Pretty sure it is a calcium/phosphorus in the soil thing

This guy has a really good blog - and some things on cucumbers are there:
The Rusted Vegetable Garden
The Rusted Vegetable Garden

Check through his blog - I think he has a few more things about cukes - tons of info on tomatoes.



This is the first year that I have had some luck - switched to using half-length carrots as my raised beds are only 8" tall (Danvers half long, little fingers and parisian market) and they grew much better.
I have only about 6 hours of full sun on garden so they grow very slowly - probably take about double the time to grow to a harvestable size. One thing I learned is to thin them as early as possible and look multiple times to make sure only a single plant is there - the kiss of death to carrots is having two plants (that you think is one) right on top of each other - lots of leaf growth but no carrot
Click to expand...

fbirdquik6 said:
I had the same thing
Click to expand...

Billsail said:
One cause is over watering. More likely, they were ripe and you didn't harvest them. Over ripe cukes will turn yellow, and become bitter tasting. Usually they only take 50-70 days to fully mature.
Click to expand...

Thanks all.
It appears that some sort of bug ate it's way into the cuke and caused it to rot on the vine. [sad]
 
Squash bugs and powdery mildew are hitting my pumpkins pretty hard, and my zucchini, but not as much. I had given up on the pumpkins when I finally got a single female flower about two weeks ago, now a 3" diameter pumpkin I'm doing my best to keep the vine alive.

We had a bad storm last night knock over some of my peppers and damage one of my German tomato plants.

August yield was:
9 lbs Beefsteak Tomatoes
1 sweet pepper (and only now a few more setting) @5.3 oz
5 Zucchini totaling 3 1/4 lbs
3 Eggplant totaling 3 1/2 lbs
1/2 lb of Roma Tomatoes
1/2 lb of Misc. Hot peppers (red chilli's, red hot cherries, jalepenos & fajita bell's)
Several hundred romaine lettuce seeds
 
Pretty much done at this point. I tore up all but 1 pepper, 2 eggplant, and 1 zucchini that still had some fruit on them that could use a couple more days.

My tomatoes got hit with late blight. I lost at least twenty pounds of produce, and now I have worries for next years garden. I can do some crop rotation to keep it controlled, but my garden is pretty small.
 
This season's garden was surprisingly successful, considering that it was my first year as a homeowner and the first year with a garden. I planted everything from seed. Everything was a success. I will switch things up for next year. I think I will not plant carrots, instead plant eggplant. Also, instead of 1/2 row of peas and 1/2 row of beans, I will do full rows. I hope to produce enough next season to be able to can and store some of everything I grow.

I'll be able to get an earlier start on planting next season, since I acquired a rototiller. The beginning of this season I had to wait to borrow one.
 
Manure is spread, and garden is rototilled. Need to rake it out, add some compost, and get going. Maybe this afternoon after away soccer game if it isn't pouring. I also plan to put in some herbs near the back step. Oh, and my neighbor gave me 5 peach trees to plant. I only have room for 2, so if anybody nearby wants one, reply here.
 
Got the tiller running today, got everything tilled up and the broccoli is in the ground. 2 and 1/2 weeks later than last year, I also found a present from the frost, a boulder 24+" has come up to 3" below the soil. It wasn't there last year and now it is, goody!
 
For those interested in saving your own seed for next years crop - here is a good reference document.
Not all of these crops are grown in the U.S. but gives you a good idea what to do with your own plants:
http://203.64.245.61/web_docs/manuals/save-your-own-veg-seed.pdf

My goal is to start trying some of this for next year - particularly beans which are easy since the self pollinate

Also for those that are interested in growing non-hybrids (Heirlooms) - Seed Savers is a great source for these
http://www.seedsavers.org/
 
Been having fresh, juicy asparagus from my garden this week. Getting raised beds ready for tomatoes and other veggies. I've yet to decide which/how many herbs to grow this year. Part of that depends on how many of my squash seeds germinate.
 
The ups and down of gardening here in SC. The up, I already have little tomatoes on my plants and the plants grow 4-6 in a day! The down, I had to remove 2 cu/yds of clay and replace it w/ peat and topsoil to make my bed. There is nothing but clay in my yard. What a PITA to dig out. No rock anywhere, which is nice, but to get the clay out I have to hose the ground down first or do it after a rain. This shit is sooooo hard when dry that if you hit the ground with a hammer it would barely dent it.The smallest tiller I could find that might be able to touch it was $700 [sad]. So I did it by hand. BTW I recently realized I'm not quite as young as as once was...

So basically I made a 20ft long 3ft wide and 1ft deep clay pot. The downhill long side was dug down an extra 6in. Then I threw in a 6in diameter plastic tube w/ holes in it for drainage and covered it w/ crushed stone. The tube is 3 ft longer than the bed and terminates in a 3x3 hole I dug then filled w/ large stone, crushed stone, sand, and then covered w/the clay. The beds are graded toward the tube and the entire bed is graded toward the drainage pit.

So far the tomato plants are 3ft above ground w/ 1 ft buried, and growing like a mother****er. Cucumbers are 4 in tall and getting transplanted today. Green bells and banana peppers going in the ground tomorrow. Watermelon seedlings should be good for transplant in a day or two. Then it is on to clearing the back for the fruit trees. Pear, peach and nectarines should be going in the ground next week.

It is amazing how things grow down here. I have never sen anything like it. We got 2 in of rain a few days ago. I came out the next morning and my indeterminate plant had grown all of 6 in! The sun down here is crazy. If I get darker Obama will be calling me his son... [puke2]
 

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