2025 gardens

[DJ54]

Pulled my plants out of the heated shop to get some real sunshine yesterday. Temps here have bounced from 50 at day, low to mid 20's at night. Got a little leggy reaching for light but should come out of it. Will put them back in Wed afternoon as they are calling for a low of 34º. Only take 10 minutes to do it so no problem. Don't want to lose them this late in the game.

I have plowed the garden this early before, but this year it's been raining every few days, and not dry enough. Not in a big hurry, as I usually don't plant anything until the last week of May anyway. It will lay fallow until then in the past. When I do, it's nice many weeds will germinate, and I will run a disk over it to kill them. Just that many I won't have to deal with cultivating/hoeing them out.

 

[workinonit]

My tomatoes are already bearing, some of them. I got a huge stand of Watts and Heirloom peas. Corn came up spotty. Potatoes are actually still coming up a month later. Most of them are knee high.

 

[masseyrider]

Couple weeks ago I bought 2 packs of everbearing strawberry plants.
I put them in small pots to grow them on before planting in 3rd week of May.
The one variety came out 100% and most already had blossoms that I removed.
The other variety only about 60% grew and only aboot half look vigorous.
Same company supplier.
Today or tomorrow I'll pot up watermelon, squash and some heirloom tomato seeds.
I wasn't going to garden this year but old habits die hard.

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

Finished turkey hunting early Saturday (see hunting thread).

Planted about 75 pepper plants. Some non hot habanero, marconi, cayene, poblano's .

Planted about 15 each broccoli, cabbage, and romaine plants, and summer squash.

Taters are coming up, corn is about 5" tall, gonna throw some nitrogen on em this week.

Wife planted some melon seeds for transplants.

Have some jalepeno and various companion plants (flowers) for the garden to go out in a couple of weeks.

Also kinda excited to plant our first attempt at turmeric. I just got the roots in from Hoss tool. We may experiment making out own mustard this year.

Gonna can large batch of fire roasted salsa and freeze dry some tomatoes if the harvest allows.

Maters survived the cold snap we had last Wed.

 

[Oaktree]

I'm by myself and the extended family is too far away to make it worth coming for/taking to my produce.
Nobody around here wants to help grow or pick and then they're fussy about what you give them.
6 tomatoes for myself, few cukes, zucchini and egg plant.
Other stuff I can buy as I need. There are a couple excellent produce stands near me.

I wish we did around here. There are a couple so-called "farmers markets" that are one-day-a-week operations, mostly catering to tourists with prices to match.
As I get older, I'm being more selective about what I plant too. Just me and the wife, don't need a huge garden. I'll do several plum tomato plants (for canning), one or two cherry tomato plants, potatoes (which haven't done very well past few years), pole beans, cukes, carrots, beets, onions, peas, and salad greens (lettuce, spinach). Doesn't get hot enough here for peppers to grow.
Doesn't make any sense to me to plant more than we need and end up having to give it away.

Garden was terrible last year...really dry until about mid-July then rain and lots of it. Garden sits in kind of a low spot, and the soil got really soggy. One lesson learned was not to get manure from our neighbor...man, that stuff was nothing but weed seeds.

 

[DJ54]

Not my garden, but rather our tractor clubs garden so to speak, getting ready to plant potatoes, popcorn, pumpkins etc. at the County's historical farm park. A week ago a couple of us plowed up the front small patches to at least to get the potatoes in, and yesterday we planted them.

Happy to see several guys come with tractors & tillers to work the ground down, and get fertilizer spread. I took my Farmall 140 and my horse drawn converted to Fast Hitch Champion brand potato planter. For anyone who plants a lot of potatoes on a limited budget this is the unit to use if in working condition. I pretty much will drop a seed potato every 10 inches and doesn't miss many. Helps to have someone ride the planter to keep potatoes in the well for the cupped chain to pick up and ride the hillers.

We planted a few more this year, since the drought pretty much wiped us out last year, so put in 325 lbs. hoping for a good year this year. We did our part the rest is up to Mother Nature now.

The popcorn, ornamental corn, field corn and pumpkins will planted at a later date weather permitting, once we get past the frost date. We sure have a lot of fun with our toys..!!

 

[workinonit]

Nice 140. I have 3 of them I use for the garden.

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

Not my garden, but rather our tractor clubs garden so to speak, getting ready to plant potatoes, popcorn, pumpkins etc. at the County's historical farm park. A week ago a couple of us plowed up the front small patches to at least to get the potatoes in, and yesterday we planted them.

Happy to see several guys come with tractors & tillers to work the ground down, and get fertilizer spread. I took my Farmall 140 and my horse drawn converted to Fast Hitch Champion brand potato planter. For anyone who plants a lot of potatoes on a limited budget this is the unit to use if in working condition. I pretty much will drop a seed potato every 10 inches and doesn't miss many. Helps to have someone ride the planter to keep potatoes in the well for the cupped chain to pick up and ride the hillers.

We planted a few more this year, since the drought pretty much wiped us out last year, so put in 325 lbs. hoping for a good year this year. We did our part the rest is up to Mother Nature now.

The popcorn, ornamental corn, field corn and pumpkins will planted at a later date weather permitting, once we get past the frost date. We sure have a lot of fun with our toys..!!

Didn't know there was such a thing, thanks for sharing that picture and all.

Does that tater planter put them eyes up? Or have you found that doesn't really matter?

Also with the tater planter do the cut up taters have to be a uniform size?

 

[DJ54]

There are several different styles out there that were made by different companies. I really like this one because of the cups on the chain, it seems to do a good job of picking them up out of the hopper, as long as you keep potato pieces where it can pick them up. They do make new planters with the same style cups on a chain. I looked up the patent date on mine and it's in the late 1800's.

When I was a kid, we were told to hand drop cut pieces eyes up. Don't know that it makes any difference as we get a great stand of potatoes when using this planter. Didn't get a close up video this year of how it works but here's one from 2 years ago:

 

[walhondingMF]

Built an arbor to try my hand and growing gourds this year. The wife really likes decorative pumpkins and gourds so will see how it goes. Not very hard from what I understand so using up some space.

 

[sixdogs]

Built an arbor to try my hand and growing gourds this year. The wife really likes decorative pumpkins and gourds so will see how it goes. Not very hard from what I understand so using up some space.

Get some 5' or 6' cattle fence and plant "snake gourds" at the base. They will grow up the fence and when the fruit forms, gravity will pull the gourd down and you'll wind up with a 3' or 4' straight tubular gourd. I still have one in the barn and everyone wants to know what it is and how I grew it. They dry out and the seeds rattle like other gourds.

 

[walhondingMF]

Get some 5' or 6' cattle fence and plant "snake gourds" at the base. They will grow up the fence and when the fruit forms, gravity will pull the gourd down and you'll wind up with a 3' or 4' straight tubular gourd. I still have one in the barn and everyone wants to know what it is and how I grew it. They dry out and the seeds rattle like other gourds.

That's my plan at this point. I'm going to give them something to grab and grow across the top. A friends father passed away last year and he grew all kinds. He gave me a snake, pitcher and bird house with the seeds in them. Going to try a little of each. Ill throw extra seeds along the edge of the woods and just see what pops up free also.

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

Do you chit your taters first? I don't and can't say if it matters. I have only cut them same time I am planting.

 

[MossRoad]

Opened the greenhouse sides yesterday. Was supposed to be the last freeze for the year. Planted kale, collards, beets, carrots, potatoes and some more strawberry plants. Clearing out the bean arch. Have to put in some groundhog deterrence before planting.

Planted a couple hundred canna lily bulbs along the fence.

Transplanted some raspberries.

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

Planted some jalapeno peppers, brandywine maters, crimson sweet, sweety pie, charleston grey melons and hales best catalopes. Gonna plant some Kajari (I forget the exact name/spelling) cantaloupe type melons seeds.

Got my sweet taters making slips for me. Probably be able to put them out in Late May or so.

Saw a video Hoss tools put out this week, I like them folks. Anyway he mentioned that a good deal of seeds come from over seas. Some are bought from the Netherlands but the country of origin was China as implied by the 125% tariff on it. Additionally other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Taiwan, I forget all who sell us their seeds.

I had no idea that we imported seed from other countries. We mainly plant heirloom varieties but do find some hybrids every so often we may plant.

My point in bringing this up is you better: 1. Know your seeds, who grows em & 2. Have some in storage you can plant for this/next year as there may be a shortage or overpriced.

 

[sixdogs]

That's my plan at this point. I'm going to give them something to grab and grow across the top. A friends father passed away last year and he grew all kinds. He gave me a snake, pitcher and bird house with the seeds in them. Going to try a little of each. Ill throw extra seeds along the edge of the woods and just see what pops up free also.

What geographic area and climate are you in? That affects what to plant.

 

[DJ54]

Do you chit your taters first? I don't and can't say if it matters. I have only cut them same time I am planting.

Yes, but really not intentionally. Bought them about 6 weeks ago to plant at the County Park, stored them on a cool back porch facing North. Finally got them in last week, really not sprouted as bad as I thought they would be. We got some rain a couple days later, but don't think enough to do them any good. Rain the rest of this week though, so hopefully will be up in the next 10-14 days.

 

[DJ54]

Garden was dry enough today I got into the toy box and played with my new to me 5' FH disk. It did OK for what it is, but tough to beat the old drag type disk and cultipacker for a nice finish.

Best of both worlds all in one picture, disking down the garden on a picture perfect day, and the kids in the background munching away on some lush Spring pasture.

 

[jyoutz]

I buy all my seeds from Gurneys. They are all produced in Ohio.

 

[jyoutz]

I tilled and prepped my garden this weekend, laying out the drip lines. This week I’ll plant the potatoes, onions, and cold weather greens. Also the tomatoes in the freeze protective “walls of water.” The warm weather stuff will need to wait another month.