How does your garden grow?

[DFB]

Need some pics of all this wonderful planting

But its all so tiny right now

 

[ssandersjr]

But its all so tiny right now

Lol, mine is tiny this year. Elbow injury confined me to a 25'x30' plot this year. It's normally 40'x75'

 

[MossRoad]

I finally got my tomatoes and peppers in yesterday and set out the drip irrigation. Late start for us. Beans and peas are coming up.

 

[lakngulf]

Unreal weather for us with rain showers almost every day. Not complaining but things can get TOO wet. Forecast says hay cutting weather so i know what that means. Dont have recent picture but at my moms house we have many many cherokee purple tomatoes that are producing in bunches like big grapes. Beautiful sight!

 

[robbyr]

Okay flower marketing work took precedent for the last 3 days. Set up on Fri, and sales all day Saturday and Sunday. But finally got to do a whole lot of transplanting today!

Planted 75 tomatoes, 3 dz. Celebrity, 2 dz. La Roma, some heirlooms, Brandywine and Pineapple along with a couple of Sweet 100 cherry and a Grape tomato. Plus 3 of the great new TomatoBerry...so cool to look at with it strawberry shape and tastes great too!.

About 100 peppers altogether 3 dz. green bell peppers in 3 varieties Better Bell, Lady Belle, and Red Beauty. Plus 2 dz. of the sweet Italian Cubanelle pepper. Had Anahiem chili peppers this year a dozen of them. Always used to always grow them years ago when we started all our own but hard to get the plants otherwise at least it is for me. My usual Jalapeno, Hungarian Wax and Italian Hot Cherry peppers for canning but only planted 9 of each type as I most often end up with more than I can handle. Plus 3 of the Hot Portugal's for drying...again a very productive pepper.

Went with 18 brussel sprouts for this year a few more than last year I ran out of them way too soon at the end of last season only lasted until Thanksgiving or so

And also put in all the summer squash and zucchini plants, four of the ribbed Italian Costata Romaesco, three each of yellow zuke and two types of green zuke, three Cousa and three of the Mexican Grey.

Still need to pop in 48 Swiss Chard transplants too, but that wont take long at all. Should had done it earlier but hey I'm only one guy

They had said 100% chance of rain both today and tomorrow but the was only a shower overnight and I was able to get in most everything I needed to between 9am and 2 pm today. Ha raining some now.


Either Wednesday or Thursday after the rain passes and depending how wet things are I will put in the seeds for bush string beans, I chose Provider from Harris this year, had Tendergreen from Burpee last year and they were good but Harris has the best prices.

Sunflower transplants will go in too. Infared, Sunrise Orange, Sunrise Yellow, Ring of Fire and Soraya all came up good from seed in the greenhouse but the Frilly sunflower seed that Harris sent with them in the pkg bundle had problems




After that I can set up my pole bean poles for the Romano and Rattle Snake beans and then the cukes I started can go in too. The picklers look great Sumters I think they were, but the Straight 8 most are all yellowing and some are rotting away at the stem even in the greenhouse with the lack of sun and heat. Just too wet I guess. Oh well I can get some Raiders from work they are much better cucumber anyways and wicked productive.

Then if there's is any room left we can see what else. Maybe get some lettuce transplants from work and plant some of the sugar pumpkins I started from seeds I had saved last year.

But that'll be about it!

Still cool only 60's and rain most all week but the forecast is for high 80's next week.

Just in time for motorcycle week!

That looks like A 24/7 job with all of that. The small amount of tomatoes, peppers, squash, okra, and purple hills I have keeps me busy late into the night several times thru the season.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Just about finished up gathering my plums. One 6 year old tree has produce more plums than me and 3 of my neighbors could use and many gallons of them rotted on the tree. I have never seen so many plums on a tree. They were in a round ball all the way around the limbs more like grapes than plums. I picked a 5 gallon bucket off one limb.

Wife just came in from our small garden with a sack full of cucumbers from our 4 vines, several ripe tomatoes. One tomato plant is over 5 feet tall and still growing. Our 5 tomato plants, 4 cucumber and 4 squash (2 yellow and 2 zucchini ) will supple us and our neighbors. My 20 or so okra plants got a late start and are only about 6" tall but they will really start to grow with the summer heat. My beets are growing like a weed also.

Sorry to hear about the late frost up north. I was glad to see the cooler weather here. It was a bit cool this morning but is up to 85F now.

 

[Thomas]

Garden struggling do to gloom and damp weather last couple of weeks.

 

[Sysop]

One of the nickel sized blueberries:

 

[DFB]

Shoot it been raining heavy for a solid 24 hrs. We must have at least an inch of rain I would think by now. Them little plants I put in yesterday are swimming in mud and water right now for sure.

Speaking of cold temps It was 38 Friday night and about the same on Saturday night. I had to cover all my market plants with polyester spun row fabric both nights as they are out there all weekend without any other protection. Man was I nervous. First weekend the 20th and 21st we had cold damages on a lot of plants, probably a good $500 worth of retail sales.

Seems like its going to be a good year for tree crops and other fruit. The orchard had great pollination set. Last year we had no peaches, no plums, very few pears and the apples were sparse. Everything looks really good now. Even my own blueberry bushes are full of flowers. I can hardly believe some of you have ripe blueberries and other fruit already. Earliest around here would be mid July to late July for first plums and blueberries and most are much later than that.

The way its going I'll be fortunate to get 100 good growing days this year. It's already a week into June and first frost can sometime be by 3rd week of September.

 

[ssandersjr]

One of the nickel sized blueberries:

Lol, these make me embarrassed to show mine, first ones ripened today.

 

[Sysop]

Don't be embarrassed, that is a beautiful berry off an apparently healthy bush. Not all breeds are the same. Some of my bushes produce the smaller berries like you have and they are MUCH better for pancakes and muffins whereas the fat ones are better in cereal and fruit salads and the sorts. Some bushes grow over 10 feet tall, and some stay just a couple feet. The bushes that produce smaller/firmer berries also stay fresher longer. It also seems on my bushes, the ones that produce the smaller berries produce a much higher number of berries relative to the size of the bush. I have 15 bushes, and if any two are the same breed, you couldn't tell by what they produce. I've found the key to good production each year is good pruning practices.

 

[thepumpguysc]

There are 148 PAGES on this thread & I don't really have time to read them all, so I'll just ask..
Anyone grow LEMON Cukes?? They are about the size of baseballs or softball, turn yellow & are delicious..
How about Arminain Cukes?? They grow about 2-3 ft long & are delicious.. BUT you gotta give the Yellows ALOT of room & the Arminians grow on a trellis.. Check'em out..
The wife bought 2 "climbing" tomato plants from a catalogue that says they grows 25 FEET.??!!! We'll see.. I installed a trellis just incase..

 

[ssandersjr]

There are 148 PAGES on this thread & I don't really have time to read them all, so I'll just ask..
Anyone grow LEMON Cukes?? They are about the size of baseballs or softball, turn yellow & are delicious..
How about Arminain Cukes?? They grow about 2-3 ft long & are delicious.. BUT you gotta give the Yellows ALOT of room & the Arminians grow on a trellis.. Check'em out..
The wife bought 2 "climbing" tomato plants from a catalogue that says they grows 25 FEET.??!!! We'll see.. I installed a trellis just incase..

I k ow I have seen lemon cukes mentioned in this thread somewhere

 

[Sysop]

A search for the word Lemon in this thread only turned up a handful of results, none were lemon cucumbers.

 

[DFB]

Love Armenian cukes!

Some of best I ever have had

Used to grow them for my farmers market along with other stuff like cousa squash. cubanelle peppers and eggplant. Many Americans are clueless to those varieties and don't really know them.


Thought Darro was the one that did those lemon cukes before?

 

[Sigarms]

Things are finally starting to grow! Added we have the soaker hose in place now.



Any ideas for killing grass without pesticides? We only have 4 raised beds up now, but that will grow next year. We have plenty of room in the fence area to add more, but dealing with grass right now. Don't want to clear it completely at this point as with the heavy rains, it becomes a mad bath with just clay, yet even with adding mulch, we'll get grass growing.

Using a torch right now to keep the weeds at bay, but I'm finding it's a never ending process. Trying to stay away from hard labor and just pulling everything out by the roots if possible LOL

 

[DFB]

Things are finally starting to grow! Added we have the soaker hose in place now.

View attachment 512133

Any ideas for killing grass without pesticides? We only have 4 raised beds up now, but that will grow next year. We have plenty of room in the fence area to add more, but dealing with grass right now. Don't want to clear it completely at this point as with the heavy rains, it becomes a mad bath with just clay, yet even with adding mulch, we'll get grass growing.

Using a torch right now to keep the weeds at bay, but I'm finding it's a never ending process. Trying to stay away from hard labor and just pulling everything out by the roots if possible LOL

Those weeds the ones on the ground are those the ones your dealing with? I would use a landscape fabric on the ground. That's what we use to line all the greenhouse floors and under all the benches and pathways for the outdoor display areas. We have a heavy commercial grade but at home I have two rolls of a more lightweight grade maybe from HD I used in my own greenhouse. Decent stuff worth the investment IMO and then you can mulch over it with any material of your choice

 

[robbyr]

Things are finally starting to grow! Added we have the soaker hose in place now.

View attachment 512133

Any ideas for killing grass without pesticides? We only have 4 raised beds up now, but that will grow next year. We have plenty of room in the fence area to add more, but dealing with grass right now. Don't want to clear it completely at this point as with the heavy rains, it becomes a mad bath with just clay, yet even with adding mulch, we'll get grass growing.

Using a torch right now to keep the weeds at bay, but I'm finding it's a never ending process. Trying to stay away from hard labor and just pulling everything out by the roots if possible LOL

I have raised beds also. Was thinking about mulching with hay after plants got tall enough but never did. Ended up watering with a shower nozzle at least every other day. Would hoe them with one of those four pronged hoes/rakes then pull weeds by hand. After doing this a couple times it was easy and quick to keep it under control.

On another note I saw a mix you can make that supposedly works good on grass/weeds. It was water, Epsom salts, and vinegar I believe. Was gonna try it but haven't. Google that and you should find it. If not let me know and I will.

 

[MossRoad]

Any ideas for killing grass without pesticides? ...

Stop growing vegetables and the rabbits will eat the grass..... at least, that's how its going at our place right now... bumper crop of rabbits.

 

[thepumpguysc]

Rabbits?? do what I did.. talk your neighbor into growing green beans.. he's closest to the woods.. lol.. the rabbits got ALL HIS & left mine alone.. JUST ALITTLE on the dirty side, I know.. BUT HEY> we're talkin GREEN BEANS!!! Lol