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Watcha Growing

Started by 21incher, June 28, 2016, 08:01:47 PM

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thecfarm

I have the old style mailbox down at my garden. The kind that is rectangle,opens at the top. Handy to keep small stuff in there.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

21incher

Quote from: Banjo picker on June 17, 2018, 03:40:19 PM
Whats the story on the mail box.  I know you can't be getting mail with those huge bees so close by. They are bound to be aggrivated with their brothren being delaminated and all.  Banjo


We use it to keep the hand tools, garden gloves, and rolls of plant tying string in. Used to always have to hunt to find the stuff laying around and having a place for it helps.  When you remove something the flag goes up to remind you to put it back. It is a real time saver. ;D
Hudson HFE-21 on a custom trailer, Deere 4100, Kubota BX 2360, Echo CS590 & CS310, home built wood splitter, home built log arch, a logrite cant hook and a bread machine. And a Kubota Sidekick with a Defective Subaru motor.

mike_belben

Boy thats a tidy operation.  

I pulled my first picklin cuke today. Hoping the tomatos hurry up.  Bush beans and cantaloupe went in this afternoon.
Praise The Lord

scgargoyle

Tomatoes were a total fail. We've had very bad results for 7 years in a row, but this is the first time we didn't get any. They got wilt and died overnight. The only successful crop so far is zucchini, and they're producing like crazy. There's a fair chance that the veggie garden will become lawn- I'm gettin' tired of the failures.
I hope my ship comes in before the dock rots!

mike_belben

Dont quit man.  Last year i put in a 40x8 garden by hand and it produced zero.. All 20 odd varieties just died mid summer and i tried everything.  I was so incredibly aggravated. 

Rip out what you got, put wet cardboard over and start laying grass and leaves ontop of that.  You need to just eliminate that dirt 100% and build compost that youll lay right over it.  Also dont use city water, its full of chlorine that kills critical fungus, bacteria and bugs.  I leave all bugs alone and have zero problems, the good ones eat the bad ones.  Bugs are a sign of deficient soil anyhow. 

What i described is what i did and its done a complete 180.  Im so glad i didnt throw in the towel.  Fresh pickles are amazing. 



I prune a box of leaves off this garden every few days, theres just too much foliage to see the fruits.  That cuke is like 4 days old. 










Dont give up.. Just fix your dirt!  If i can do it you can do it.  Next time out, buy a jar of raw molasses, epsom salt, bone meal and blood meal.  Other than that its just grass, weeds, leaves, sawdust, eggshells, food scraps, punky wood humus, muddy water and pee in a box you stir a lot.  That batch came out in 13 days


Praise The Lord

scgargoyle

I don't have much choice on the water- we go from floods to drought a lot around here. In May, we has 11.9" of rain- nearly a foot. So far in June? Zero. A well and associated equipment would be thousands.

We have a compost pile, but it's gonna be a long time to produce more than a few buckets full. The new garden is a mix of topsoil and compost that I bought- a whole dumptruck load. It's weird- some stuff grows; some doesn't. The string beans were a near-total fail as well. How can you fail at green beans? Right next to them, the zucchini are going full bore.

In the fall, I'm going to aggressively work the soil. I'll get some manure and work that in, as well as compost. I'm pretty well convinced that tomatoes just aren't worth it, though. Even the one I tried in a pot on my deck, 10' off of the ground got blight. I think it would take a really resistant variety and a lot of chemicals to keep 'em going.
I hope my ship comes in before the dock rots!

Texas Ranger

Not sure about the pee, has potassium nitrate, not good for plants.  Old story about school boys killing a tree over a period of time peeing on it.
The Ranger, home of Texas Forestry

Chuck White

Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Onions
Beans
Carrots
Radishes
Bell Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers

My little garden patch is only 6'x8'
~Chuck~  Cooks Cat Claw sharpener and single tooth setter.  2018 Chevy Silverado and 2021 Subaru Ascent.
With basic mechanical skills and the ability to read you can maintain a Woodmizer  LT40!

thecfarm

scgargoyle,that's too bad. That blight is nasty stuff,or whatever you have. :(
I would send out a soil test. But than it would cost $1000 to make it right. :o  I know of a guy that happened too. Seem like it was more than that. He did it it about 3 years. Could not afford it all at once.
I take my old tomatoes plants and when I trim the leaves off,I take all that to the burn pile. Last year I tried some calcium,this year too. Seem to help. Ther's a BUNCH of infro on the internet on what tomatoes need to grow. Drive ya almost crazy just reading it. Good luck to ya.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

mike_belben

Are you pruning the lower branches off?  Blight seems to start from soil splashing up onto bottom leaves.  I trim off the bottom 12" or so pretty early on and keep pruning upward as they get taller.  Also anything yellow or spotty.  I prune a lot of foliage once fruit appears.


Chlorinated water is gonna make everything more difficult.  soil biology is the secret ingredient and if you want a healthy, resilient garden it will probably require building a compost bin and rainwater collection.  You cant overstate the benefits of miccorhizae.


Sheet mulching over the planted beds with wet paper/cardboard and mulch or leaves, grass, woodchips.. Any sort of sun barrier.. Will work wonders in moisture retention to get you through drought periods.  Last year in native dirt i couldnt water enough, the sun would turn that clay dirt to cracked powder in half a day.  Now with sheetmulch i can have 3 days of intense sun yet still the dirt under the layer is moist and soil is cool. My root system is fully exposed just under the cardboard and there is tons of mycellium activity.

 The ground needs sunblock or itll scald just like us.  With moisture gone, the plant has no choice but to die.  Blight or insect is just natures way of finishing off the weak.
Praise The Lord

mike_belben

Quote from: Texas Ranger on June 24, 2018, 08:15:14 AM
Not sure about the pee, has potassium nitrate, not good for plants.  Old story about school boys killing a tree over a period of time peeing on it.
Missed this earlier..  Youre right, direct application will burn stuff.  Same as chicken manure.  But its magic in the compost bin.
i compost lots of chainsaw chips/dust which is very high in carbon and needs a lot of nitrogen to break down.  Urine is quite high in nitrogen and really gets the pile warmed up and decomposing rapidly.  
Praise The Lord

Just Right

I admit I didn't read this entire thread,  so if you already covered this forgive me.  I grow about 55 acres of bermuda hay for the horse people around me.  Through the years of trial and error I have found a couple of good points to consider when trying to grow things.  PH is the best place to start first.  Money spent on lime will go a lot more further than all the money in the world on fertilizer and other soil additives.  The county extension agent had a power point that explained it in a way that made perfect sense to me.  The value of 5 for my hay is too low.  So no matter how much you try to fertilize,  the PH will not allow the plant to take up the nutrients.  On the other end of the scale. . . .7 is far to high.  So you guessed it.  6 is perfect.  It allows the plant to accept the nutrients from the soil.  The other thing that helps is Aeration.  When looking across the fields,  I would see spots where the grass was taller, greener and thicker in spots.  When I went to look as to why that happened,  I found ant hills.  So that supported the aeration idea.  Now aerating my fields has made a big difference.  Garden spots . . . .sub soil it as deep as you can to really open up the soil to let that oxygen in.  Compaction is a silent killer.  Gravity, rain and foot or vehicle traffic really takes a toll on the dirt.  My first year I cut 107 square bales to the acre.  Every year after that it start producing less and less,  even though I was doing the same thing.  Started aerating and production has started to improve again.  Just my .02s worth.  Hope it helps someone.
If you are enjoying what you are doing,  is it still work?

69bronco

Hard to get enough water on in this heat, sure could use some rain. On the bright side the corn, pole beans and cantaloupe love it! Mulched with everything I had, planer shavings, sawdust and my stash of strawberry straw. Should be fine now. Pics don't want to cooperate.

There she goes, thanks bt!

scgargoyle

We finally started getting rain at the end of June. The zucchini seem to have slowed down a lot- have they reached the end, or are they just taking a break? The okra are starting to produce now, so we're cutting them every day. The sunflowers are up over 8' tall, and getting ready to flower. A few peppers, but nothing to brag about.
I hope my ship comes in before the dock rots!

mike_belben




I only grew the pickles and the dill.  I have pepper plants growing now but they were late plantings and are still tiny.  Timing seems like biggest challenge in gardening.  One thing is rotting in the fridge while ya wait for the other to ripen on the vine and you need both for the recipe. 

 came out great.. Little heavy on the vinegar but with a pretty complex flavor from all the other stuff in there.   Kinda sweet and salty with some zest.
Praise The Lord

Ianab

I generally do my recipes on that's available at the time. 

So I have:
Chilli and Tomato. 
Chilli and Feijoa.
Chilli and Pear.
Chilli and Persimmon.
Chilli and Kiwifruit. 
Chilli and more Chilli.... (Danger Sauce)  :D

Basically the same "relish" sauce recipe, just vary the fruit / vege depending on what you have at the time.
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

mike_belben

Thats a lotta chilli!


I had squash come ripe that would have been wasted if i didnt cook it now, but was out of oil, egg, milk and cornflour..  So it went into the bacon grease after breakfast with seasalt and pepper.  Oh lordy that was excellent.  I think that'll be my new routine.

I had saved the remaining juice of the first pickle jar we killed.  This morning realized that the half bag of carrots and half onion were also destined for the compost pile for lack of other uses so into the brine they went.  Also with a few discs of squash just to see what pickled squash will taste like.  Fingers crossed. 
Praise The Lord

LaneC

  I have gone through my squash plant. It was about 6' long and had elephant ears for leaves. I probably got 15 squash off of it. It was yellow straight neck I think. I just use heirloom seeds and have done well with them. I still have 3 tomato plants and they are getting their 2nd wind. I have about 1-1/2 dozen on the counter ripening. You have to pick them when they are real green or these dang Mocking birds will destroy them. I have harvested the green onions a couple of times and have over a gallon cut up. I have 2 cucumber plants (heirloom from around the 1840's I think) and have harvested probably 60-70. This is in a 4x8 raised bed garden (that is all I can manage) I have given away bu-ku to my neighbors. My superhot pepper plants are coming on strong. If anyone needs any, let me know. The Carolina Reapers should be good for making a spray to keep out deer and coons. 
Man makes plans and God smiles

mike_belben

Bout had my fill of cucumber sandwiches but they keep on a comin anyhow

Praise The Lord

Chuck White

I'm getting a few, but Dang few!

Maybe pick one about every 4 days, but it's something, and the weather we've had ain't helping!
~Chuck~  Cooks Cat Claw sharpener and single tooth setter.  2018 Chevy Silverado and 2021 Subaru Ascent.
With basic mechanical skills and the ability to read you can maintain a Woodmizer  LT40!

21incher

 


I have sunflower trees this year. They have 4 inch dbh stems and are the size of a tree. There are only 6 plants but hundreds of flowers.


First couple eggplants headed for the freezer. 

 

 
Here is a video about how we freeze eggplants.
Growing And Freezing Eggplant - YouTube  :)
Hudson HFE-21 on a custom trailer, Deere 4100, Kubota BX 2360, Echo CS590 & CS310, home built wood splitter, home built log arch, a logrite cant hook and a bread machine. And a Kubota Sidekick with a Defective Subaru motor.

Al_Smith

I plant a hybrid variety of beef steak tomato--or so I thought .Planted in a raised bed with a south facing brick wall they usually grow up a trellis about 8 feet tall with fruit that can get as large as a softball .So this year ,4 little midget vines that looked like a bunch of grapes,danged cherry tomatoes got mixed up when I bought them .I'm not a bit happy about that .I do have another 4 plants that appear to be beef steak so all is not lost .It won't be until the end of August before they ripen.

Raider Bill

I picked these 2 beauties today!


 
The First 70 years of childhood is always the hardest.

21incher

Well it turned out to be the biggest harvest we have ever had.
Final Garden Update 9 /10 /18 The Best Season Ever - YouTube
What a busy last 8 weeks we had trying to put everything up, now the clean up starts
Hudson HFE-21 on a custom trailer, Deere 4100, Kubota BX 2360, Echo CS590 & CS310, home built wood splitter, home built log arch, a logrite cant hook and a bread machine. And a Kubota Sidekick with a Defective Subaru motor.

scgargoyle

What's up with my lima beans? We are growing a variety called 'Christmas'. The plants are huge, and have flowers, but no beans.

Meanwhile, the okra is still going full bore. I planted some collards for the fall, and they're looking good, although rain has been scarce. Fixin' to get a bunch of rain soon (Florence), though.
I hope my ship comes in before the dock rots!

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