On The Farm/In The Garden

[nota bene]

I do. They come up rather quick. Let them soak overnight. It speeds up the process.

When did you begin your garden this year? And do you have a winter garden?

 

[nota bene]

Here's a close up of one of my lemon cucumber plants and you can see some flowers.


View attachment 67283335

For some reason I can't see the attachment.

 

[Lovebug]

When did you begin your garden this year? And do you have a winter garden?

We closed on the property in mid april, so shortly after that. We had a few frosts, but everything came through. I would love to have a green house, but we still have so much to do, not sure if it will happen this year.

 

[Lursa]

For some reason I can't see the attachment.

Thanks. Let me try again.



You can see a pepper plant in the right front and the lemon cucumber starting to engulf just about everything else around it...and you can see some of its yellow flowers.

 

[Drawdown]

Did a couple jars of picked peppers today just to get back into the swing of canning. I do hot pack water bath canning. Anyone who says you have to have a pressure canner can kiss my butt.

 

[Lovebug]

We had our first zucchinis today, grilled them. Yum.

 

[Drawdown]

Dug about a bushel of potatoes today. Will do rest over course of the week/holiday weekend.

 

[Drawdown]

If you haven't planted your pumpkins tomorrow is the last day---4th of july gets you punkins for Halloween.

 

[Drawdown]

Anybody ever grow saltwort? Ordered a bunch of the seeds. Going to try to grow as a test plant. apparently I need to use saltwater with it.

 

[danielpalos]

I am practicing with easier plants, like zinnias.

 

[Lovebug]

Anybody ever grow saltwort? Ordered a bunch of the seeds. Going to try to grow as a test plant. apparently I need to use saltwater with it.

Never heard of it, sounds interesting. I got to look that up.

We have a huge issue with Japanese beetles. Any suggestions are appreciated. We tried insecticidal soap, Neem oil, picking them off, setting up traps (far enough from the garden). Nothing works, they just keep coming. We have a lot of different birds, so insecticides are not an option.

 

[Drawdown]

Never heard of it, sounds interesting. I got to look that up.

We have a huge issue with Japanese beetles. Any suggestions are appreciated. We tried insecticidal soap, Neem oil, picking them off, setting up traps (far enough from the garden). Nothing works, they just keep coming. We have a lot of different birds, so insecticides are not an option.

The only semi-effective way to deal with them is to kill them when they are still in the ground IMO with granular insecticides, but that is only marginally effective depending on what your neighbors may or may not be doing. I don't use any insecticides unless I have to and then I try to use as limited as possible, so that is more a do as I say thing. I worked somewhere that had them real bad and that was how they eventually got them knocked back.

Personally I find in my situation planting a bunch of sacrificial sunflowers for them to feast on is about the best way to deal with them. Sunflowers will survive the damage and the beetles seem to prefer them over other things when given the choice. We only get them a few weeks out of the year though and I have too much land to be covering with granular insecticides.

 

[hado117]

Planted 25 pounds of potatoes today. Not sure why since it is cheaper to buy them than grow them, but I did it nonetheless anyway. It is an homage to my late great uncle who would let me help dig taters in my diapers. Really the first person to treat me like a person I guess that I recall. No babying anybody at his house. You worked even if you got in the way and didn't play til the gettin in the way was done.

what were potatoes doing in you diaper? drum hit thing

 

[Drawdown]

All the fall winter greens broadcast. First turnips I planted less than a week ago already up. Planted rest today along with phase 1 of the fall scallions. Will set more out tomorrow morning. Gotta get ahead of the hurricane rains. Hopefully it softens things up enough for me to dig a bunch of blackberry vines that set up in an ornamental bed up and move them to a field where I want to get a good row going. They normally grow around the woodlines, but I want to try a row in the open. Not a huge fan of them but they are good for the wildlife. Been trying to systematically add in more critter food/habitat among my food/habitat. #FurryAndFeatheredLivesMatter

 

[Drawdown]

First frost days away here. Will do my last harvesting in next couple until it comes time to get in some greens and such.

 

[ModerationNow!]

southern delaware is famous for growing watermelons . i wonder what the farmers are doing ,that gardeners arent.

Wish I knew..... The local produce markets get their watermelons from lower Delaware, NJ, Pa and Md, all of which are 10-15 miles from here.

 

[ModerationNow!]

They're awesome, much sweeter, less acidic. I've never been able to find them in store, not even a farmer's market. I"ve never heard of the ones you have.

I use them in my Greek salad. I dont like black olives so mine is tomatoes, red onion, lemon cukes, feta, and boutique sweet peppers (replace the olives) with a Greek/olive oil dressing.

I grow everything but the feta and dressing! This yr I didnt put in any red onions tho.

Yeah, and lemon cukes don't really even look like cucumbers from the outside. If you didn't know what they were, you probably wouldn't guess that they were cucumbers! They are yellow, fat, round, and not elongated.

 

[ModerationNow!]

That polymer pulls water out of the soil if it starts to dry out. That is why you shouldn't really use it.

Anyway, I live in red clay country. Somethings you have to do pots on or give up any realistic hope of getting a crop of because the soil is too hard---like carrots. The oddity of red clay is that it bonds super tight when damp and is hard as a brick when dry which is why they make bricks out of it. Carrots just don't do well in it.

We have God-awful soil here in the tri-state area of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. It's not bright red clay, as seen in North Carolina, but it's still mostly clay(brown), it's always compacted and the PH is ALWAYS low(acidic), between 5 - 6, regardless of where you test it, and even if they occasionally lime it! I worked for a lawn service company in the 90s, and therefore I've tested the soil at several thousand properties owned by as many different clients in southern New Castle county Delaware, Chester county Pennsylvania, and in Cecil county Maryland.

Anytime I grow plants outdoors, I buy bagged soils, or combo soil made of mushroom soil and topsoil. Whenever I seed a lawn, I apply new soil. The native soil dries out quickly as soon as temps get over 70°.

 

[Drawdown]

We have God-awful soil here in the tri-state area of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. It's not bright red clay, as seen in North Carolina, but it's still mostly clay(brown), it's always compacted and the PH is ALWAYS low(acidic), between 5 - 6, regardless of where you test it, and even if they occasionally lime it! I worked for a lawn service company in the 90s, and therefore I've tested the soil at several thousand properties owned by as many different clients in southern New Castle county Delaware, Chester county Pennsylvania, and in Cecil county Maryland.

Anytime I grow plants outdoors, I buy bagged soils, or combo soil made of mushroom soil and topsoil. Whenever I seed a lawn, I apply new soil. The native soil dries out quickly as soon as temps get over 70°.

See if you can get you hands on some of that fine mushroom compost. Isn't chester county the mushroom capitol of the planet still?

 

[ModerationNow!]

See if you can get you hands on some of that fine mushroom compost. Isn't chester county the mushroom capitol of the planet still?

Yep, Kennett Square is considered "the mushroom capital of the world", but there's also a lot of mushroom agriculture in the nearby towns of Toughkenamon, Avondale and West Grove Pa. On cold mornings in fall and winter, you'll see(and smell) large piles of fresh, super-steamy mushroom soil near mushroom houses as you drive by. It is processed, aged, limed, and eventually transported to the mushroom houses, where they may add more gypsum and nutrients. Then it's run through a machine that chops it up and fluffs it up, aerates it, and then it's left outside to compost. This naturally causes it to get really hot, even sitting outside in mid winter, causing huge quantities of steam to rise up.

After a while, it's carried into the mushroom houses, and dropped into the beds within the dark mushroom houses. Once a crop of mushrooms has grown and is harvested, ALL the mushroom soil is removed, because new mushroom crops need new soil.

But the used mushroom soil is actually optimal for growing pretty much everything else. It's "too strong" for growing most regular sun-lit crops until AFTER it's been used it mushroom houses to grow 1 crop of white mushrooms. Its only used in the mushroom houses for a matter of several weeks, then it's all removed and sold for use as nutrient rich mushroom compost for higher plants.

But even then, it sometimes needs to be mixed(diluted) with inorganic topsoil, or other organic matter. Good quality mushroom soil can make a VERY noticeable difference in plant health, productivity and growth. I once ran out of mushroom combo soil when putting in flower beds around my house, so some of the new plants I bought where planted in the mushroom/combo soil, and other plants in regular bagged soil. By summer, the plants grown in mushroom soil were OBVIOUSLY doing better than the same plants right beside them that weren't grown in mushroom soil! It was night and day!

But the quality varies, and most bagged mushroom soils are weak. If you can't easily smell it, it's not very good!