2021 Garden Thread

[EatenByLimestone]

Trap right against the shed. Leave a spot open in the trench work to install the trap.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

3ftx50ft 1/2" hardware cloth rolls are $60 at our supplier.

 

[clancey]

That"s expensive wire I admit and I did my whole "loft and fly pen" with that wire. And beside that I used strips of scrap wood so that when you put it up --the bad side might scratch you so I put wood over it in strips to be safe...But it keeps out garden eaters and you can make little gates to where you can open up your area easy,,,Just need to figure out the top portion so that it is easy to put on when you need it maybe for small baby plants where you could put a cloth on top to make it more shady for the young ones--maybe then you would not have to bring them in the house and have them get used to the sun out there..Also dig a strip around and pour some concrete in it so they won't dig into the area.. That's the best I can think of for I am no gardener but enjoy other peoples experiences with it...I like tomatoes..clancey

 

[clancey]

The Love of Gardening

A well-tended garden is a draw to many

www.jacquielawson.com

 

[EatenByLimestone]

We go through a lot of hardware cloth. I now have six 3x50 rolls of 1/2" and two 3x50 rolls of quarter in in my inventory.


I prepared 4 more beds today. Yesterday I planted 4 containers with okra. I decided to try something new and soaked a bunch of okra seeds yesterday and all of today. Today they went into the ground. Maybe they'll germinate faster.

Tomatoes are hinting at getting closer to plant. The bed is prepared for them. They are frustratingly slow at maturing.

My cukes, zuchs, and squash are ready to go in the ground, but the evenings are still in the 40s. I think it'll be warm enough by next week. Everything is all hardened off, just waiting for the weather to catch up!

I saw an asparagus that had popped up. Finally! They seem late for this year! The rhubarb is getting big.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

We go through a lot of hardware cloth. I now have six 3x50 rolls of 1/2" and two 3x50 rolls of quarter in in my inventory.


I prepared 4 more beds today. Yesterday I planted 4 containers with okra. I decided to try something new and soaked a bunch of okra seeds yesterday and all of today. Today they went into the ground. Maybe they'll germinate faster.

Tomatoes are hinting at getting closer to plant. The bed is prepared for them. They are frustratingly slow at maturing.

My cukes, zuchs, and squash are ready to go in the ground, but the evenings are still in the 40s. I think it'll be warm enough by next week. Everything is all hardened off, just waiting for the weather to catch up!

I saw an asparagus that had popped up. Finally! They seem late for this year! The rhubarb is getting big.

I just had to replant one okra seed after part of that bed got dug up. After @begreen talked about sprouting corn seeds last year, I started employing that method on some of my bigger seeds, most particularly corn and okra. I soak for about twenty four hours, then keep them in a damp paper towel in a glass jar in a warm place until I see the roots starting. It really helps me have better germination. I think I had 29 of 30 corn seeds come up this year, and they’re four years old, which is pretty old for corn. That one okra seed took over a week to sprout in the paper towel, though, and it was a fresh seed.

We harvested our first zucchini on Monday night. I have several more on the various plants. I’m looking forward to having a meal with them.

I wish I could send you tomato suckers, @EatenByLimestone. I pruned my tomatoes again on Monday. (We were expecting storms, and I wanted to eliminate more lower foliage. I had mulched earlier, but the armadillos basically tilled all that mulch back into my soil unfortunately. I hope it won’t tie up too much nitrogen.) I pulled some beautiful suckers off my plants, and I actually set them aside in water because my neighbors are in danger of losing all their plants, so these can be replacements if they need them. I sank the jars of water into an old pot to keep them stable and put it under a table on our deck because the forecast Monday was for thunderstorms with high winds and hail. In light of the hail forecast, I put up my shade cloth early. Thankfully we didn’t have hail.



Back to the topic of hardware cloth, why 1/2 inch versus 1/4 inch? I actually have some extra 1 inch fencer wire and was thinking of getting more of that. Would that be a mistake? What do you use for fasteners?

So far the armadillos have stayed out of the garden, but we haven’t managed to trap any yet. We still see evidence of their presence. We had a lot of rain last night, and I haven’t been out this morning. I wonder what they’ll have dug up in softer soil.

 

[clancey]

I like the smaller 1/4 hole size because it keeps out more things like mice and some snakes because of me having birdies--you know your area so it would be up to you on what size you would want...My handyman just made a wood frame out of two x4"s and tacked the wire on to it --metal sort of staples for wire..Then he nailed the frame to the posting that is set in concrete..You would need to figure out your doors and your top part to keep the critters out and hope that it works...Just an idea but it secures it better and looks pretty too..especially if you make some kind of lower sun area with that criss cross wood..Glad you have your garden and I bet you are a real expert at this with you food tasting really good and fresh--good for you and yours good job...clancey

 

[begreen]

Looking good, your garden is at least a month ahead of ours. All the plants look very happy. That dark green color shows good health. I just put in the zucchini last week. The plants are still 4" pot-sized. The cukes went in yesterday afternoon. I started them from seed and some were about 30" tall already. Today is starting out cloudy which will be good for the transplants. Our corn sprouts are about 1" tall now. Green bean seeds are in the ground, but nothing showing yet. Kale, lettuce, and chard are the only crops we're harvesting. Lettuce is coming out of our ears.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Clancy is right. You pick the size mesh for what you want to keep out. We use the 1/4" for bats and mice. The 1/2" is for raccoons, skunks, woodchucks, etc.

We use screws with a rubber backed washer to hold them on. You can easily use a drywall screw with a fender washer though.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

1" should be fine.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Thanks, all.

Here’s my amusing picture from yesterday. My five year old helped me harvest Swiss Chard.

The wheelbarrow is really only about five gallons, so that’s about a pound and a quarter of chard. Thankfully I found that if I bake the chard with a cheese sauce that my children are pretty happy to eat it.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Zuchs, squashes and cukes will go in today!

 

[begreen]

Yay, progress. I put the corn in the ground yesterday. Beans are starting to sprout. Cukes and Zukes are in the ground developing roots. The only thing waiting now is canteloupe. And I need to find a Waltham butternut squash plant or two.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Has anybody grown cukes out of pots? I usually grow cukes under my peach tree and use it as a trellis. I get a kick out of the cucumbers hanging down off the limbs.

This year I have a 5 monthold golden retriever who I haven't been able to get to stop digging yet. He likes to dig under the peach tree.

I was figuring itd be too much trouble to plant that bed this year, but maybe I'd be able to plant in the pots, then set them under the tree.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Zucchini and squash are in!

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Congratulations!

I’ve grown cucumbers in pots before, and it worked just fine. You’d have to have a pretty reliable way to water, though. I used self-watering pots or planters when I did it, and they have a nice reservoir in the bottom. There are ways to turn standard pots into self-watering containers, I believe, though I’ve not done it.

The cucumber that I was sure the armadillos had killed is coming back! I’ve been giving it lots of water, and I think the shade cloth and unusually cloudy and humid weather have helped. I’m so pleased. It’s way behind the others, but it’s alive and has time.



My Rattlesnake pole beans showed their first blooms yesterday. They’re growing nicely on the trellis. Some need to start coming back down.



I decided this year to try my hand at growing ginger once again. (It’s been over fifteen years since I’ve tried, I think.) I bought some organic ginger a good while back and let it sprout in the kitchen. After I ate the last of the Romaine lettuce that I had growing in a big pot, I planted the largest sprouts in a circle around the olla. This one just started to unfurl its leaves.

 

[clancey]

What a beautiful garden and ginger in the store is very very expensive. Hope your little sprout makes it okay..clancey

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I tried ginger a few years ago. It didn't work, but I'm sure it was me, not the plant, lol.

 

[begreen]

Has anybody grown cukes out of pots? I usually grow cukes under my peach tree and use it as a trellis. I get a kick out of the cucumbers hanging down off the limbs.

This year I have a 5 monthold golden retriever who I haven't been able to get to stop digging yet. He likes to dig under the peach tree.

I was figuring itd be too much trouble to plant that bed this year, but maybe I'd be able to plant in the pots, then set them under the tree.

Should work fine if the dog stays out of the pots. Should be at least a 2 gallon pot.

 

[SidecarFlip]

Garden is 'all in' now, just planted my Ambrosia Hybrid sweet corn.

2 rows of various varieties of potatoes, Kennebec, Red Norland, Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold and good old Idaho. Onions, red and white. I have no luck storing yellow onions in the root cellar, reds store best followed by whites.

Also planted 5 hills of Cantaloupes.

Bought myself a hiller-furrower attachment for the rear tine tiller do develop trenches necessary for potato planting and I use my 'Garden Way' seeder to sow my sweet corn. Great little tool. Used it for carrots and beets in the past.

Too the point now where I only plant what we can store over winter.

Garden is about 3/4 acre in size.

 

[begreen]

We have baby cukes! The greenhouse Pointiente is growing fast! It's 3 times the size of the same plants in the outdoor beds. Our garden is about 90% planted now. Just a few more heat lovers waiting for the current cool spell to pass. The new bed is mostly planted and doing well so far.

 

[SidecarFlip]

No cukes this year. I planted 4 hills last year and we had them coming out our ears, literally. Amy picked about 20 jars of them, we ate cukes every night and I gave away buckets loads.

Same way with Zucchini. Guy I know has a produce stand and his wife bakes Zucchini bread so he got a load of them. They like them big, he calls them 'wife beaters'. I had a bumper crop of them. None this year (cukes or wife beaters). Just taters, corn, Cantaloupes and onions.

Got myself one if those hiller-furrower attachments for the tiller. That should save me from hand hilling the taters.

WE strip all the corn kernels from the ears and freeze them. I love Ambrosia sweet corn, hard to find sometimes but when I do, I buy enough for a couple years and put the seeds in the freezer. Got everything from Jung's this year except some potatoes, got seed potatoes from them and locally.

I'll be getting cabbage down the road and making Kraut. No point in growing cabbage, it's very plentiful here. All I have to do is ask and I can have it by the hamper load.

Once the corn gets up to a couple inches, I'll side dress it with 46 Urea. Corn loves Nitrogen. So do onions

 

[DuaeGuttae]

We’re having a cool spell, too, but cool for us is pretty great for the garden. We had a hard storm yesterday, and we could get more rain in the coming days, but I think the hail chances are lower, so I took the shade cloth off. We’re having so much cloudy weather, I wanted the plants to get sun when they could.

We had a mini harvest today of some of the cooler weather crops: a head of Napa, one daikon radish that I thought would be longer, a couple of onions, and a jalapeño that was grown inside during the fall and winter. I added some store bought ginger, garlic, and carrots to make a batch of kimchi to ferment.



@begreen, your new bed is looking great.

@SidecarFlip, that’s one big garden area. I’d love to see some pictures when things get growing.

 

[SidecarFlip]

When everything peeps, I'll post some.

 

[SidecarFlip]

Last year I tried the potatoes in straw bales and they did pretty good (never did that before) but it's kind of a PITA. You have to 'season' the bales ahead of time by fertilizing them with high N fertilizer and wet them down and keep them wet until the start growing 'shrooms' and then you plant the sets in holes on the bales (made them with a bulb planter). Easy to harvest versus digging, just cut the strings and part the bales and the spuds fall out.

This year I'm trying another method. I cut a 6" deep trench in the beds and put the sets in the bottom of the trench and as they grow, I'll use the hiller-furrower attachment on the rear tine tiller to hill the plants. Will see what method is best. In previous years, I always built up hills, set the sets in the hills and then raked in the soil to keep them covered. Problem is as always, digging them out in the fall. It can be hard work extracting the tubers. Once I get them out of the ground, I lay them out on tables in the barn and let the skins 'toughen up' and then off to the root cellar for the winter.

First year for Cantaloupes. I love them so I thought I'd try growing them. No point in growing tomatoes or peppers or cabbage. I can drive down the road and get all I want, anytime I want. Next year I'll do beets again. Last year I grew them and my wife made pickled beets and we still have numerous jars in the cellar.

I sure do like the 'Garden Way' seeder. Makes planting long rows easy and I get them straight too. Wish I could do onions with it but they don't make seed plates for onions.

Have 3 tillers, a Troy Bilt Horse, a Cub Cadet with counter rotating tines (my favorite) and a small Troy Bilt Bronco I use for cultivating.