2022 Garden Thread

[EatenByLimestone]

Cosmic crisp is grown locally here too.

My favorite is Northern Spy.

 

[begreen]

Cosmic crisp is grown locally here too.

My favorite is Northern Spy.

I have several favorites, but for different reasons. For cider, I like the king and gravenstein. For eating, the shay, cosmic crisp, and liberty. For pies, the king, shay, liberty, enterprise, and macoun are all good.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Interesting! WA and NY are the largest apple producers. Yet tge Cosmic Crisp and Macon are the only varieties I recall seeing in stores and orchards! It never occurred to me that our areas would be growing so many different varieties! I’ll have to go apple picking this October and keep a list of the varieties to see what is familiar to you!

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Here’s a list off Google of upstate ny apples. It’s fairly close to what I see. There’s a couple in there I know I don’t see but can’t recall at the moment and I’ve never seen Asmeds kernel. A lot of old varieties are still in the orchards here.

en.wikipedia.org
Cortland

en.wikipedia.org
Honeycrisp

en.wikipedia.org
Empire

en.wikipedia.org
McIntosh red

waapple.org
Red Delicious

en.wikipedia.org
Mutsu

en.wikipedia.org
Gala

en.wikipedia.org
Golden Delicious

en.wikipedia.org
Macoun

www.walmart.ca
Fuji

en.wikipedia.org
Jonagold

en.wikipedia.org
Ginger Gold

en.wikipedia.org
Northern Spy

en.wikipedia.org
Granny Smith

en.wikipedia.org
Idared

en.wikipedia.org
Braeburn

en.wikipedia.org
Rome

en.wikipedia.org
Ashmead's Kernel

en.wikipedia.org
Cameo

en.wikipedia.org
Zestar

www.yummyfruit.co.nz
SweeTango
(broken image removed)

modernistpantry.com
EverCrisp

en.wikipedia.org
Pink Lady

en.wikipedia.org
Cox's Orange Pippin

 

[begreen]

Interesting! WA and NY are the largest apple producers. Yet tge Cosmic Crisp and Macon are the only varieties I recall seeing in stores and orchards! It never occurred to me that our areas would be growing so many different varieties! I’ll have to go apple picking this October and keep a list of the varieties to see what is familiar to you!

That's not all so different from out here. There are a so many apple varieties. My sister back in NY likes the Macoun and HoneyCrisp. The Cosmic Crisp is a cross between Enterprise and Honey Crisp I think. Out here, Melrose and Winter Banana are the best keeping apples for storage.

 

[clancey]

I found a interesting article about Tomato's and decided to share and maybe you will pick up one or two tidbits here to help your knowledge "spread further"...clancey

How to Grow Better Boy Tomatoes

Better Boy tomatoes, Solanum lycopersicum ‘Better Boy’, are a hybrid tomato with juicy fruit. A disease-resistant variety, they're easy to care for.

www.thespruce.com

 

[woodey]

I found a interesting article about Tomato's and decided to share and maybe you will pick up one or two tidbits here to help your knowledge "spread further"...clancey

How to Grow Better Boy Tomatoes

Better Boy tomatoes, Solanum lycopersicum ‘Better Boy’, are a hybrid tomato with juicy fruit. A disease-resistant variety, they're easy to care for.

www.thespruce.com

Love fresh tomatoes. My plants are loaded this year and a few are six feet in height.

 

[clancey]

Woody they are beautiful tomato's and mine is still like a wide bush or something with about three flowers and nothing going on just growth and its called a "Big Boy" so we will see how it goes. It's a slow learner-lol---"I want some tomato's"---lol--yours look great...clancey

 

[begreen]

The tomato plant may be bushing out and not producing flowers because it is getting too much nitrogen fertilizer. If this is the case, stop feeding it with that fertilizer and consider some pruning and switch to a 0-10-10 fertilizer like this:

Alaska Morbloom Fertilizer 0-10-10 | Pennington

Liquid concentrate promotes vigorous root growth and yields abundant, colorful flowers.

www.pennington.com

Next year try using Tomato-Tone fertilizer instead. It is balanced for tomatoes.

 

[begreen]

Love fresh tomatoes. My plants are loaded this year and a few are six feet in height.

View attachment 297559 View attachment 297560

Looking good. How do you keep the soil so weed free?

 

[Dan Freeman]

I'm picking about 10lbs. of tomatoes every other day from 26 plants. Many are small cherry tomatoes we use for salads and the chickens; lots of slicing tomatoes, especially good to use in tomato sandwiches and on other sandwiches which we eat almost every day; and a good amount them are San Marzano tomatoes which we freeze until the end of the season. Usually, we have bags of them by the end of the season. We defrost them. Once defrosted, there is no need to blanche them to get the skins off; they come right off once defrosted. We make sauce and freeze it in those small 1lb coleslaw containers you buy in the store (we have dozens of them), along with about 200 meatballs made from hamburger meat and sausages. The sauce and meatballs last us all winter into spring.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Woody they are beautiful tomato's and mine is still like a wide bush or something with about three flowers and nothing going on just growth and its called a "Big Boy" so we will see how it goes. It's a slow learner-lol---"I want some tomato's"---lol--yours look great...clancey

Mrs. Clancy,

Your tomato plant may have too much nitrogen. Sometimes it can cause the plant to grow a lot and not fruit.

Trimming the ends a bit may scare it into flowering and fruiting. But it may not too. Trimming off the axioms plays with the chemical balances in the plant and makes them think they are being browsed on. Some plants start thinking about reproduction then.

 

[clancey]

Yea I think you are all right about nitrogen and read about it too. I have stopped feeding the plant and now I am watering it from the bottom so as not to get the leaves wet but I will not be clipping it since I want to see what it will do without clipping and I do not know how anyway.. Buts its still alive and I plan to check out about the Alaska Morbloom fertilizer and if I choose which plants I like to grow at this time it is tomato"s so I will learn about this unruly and three flowered plant. I shook it some to " scare it " maybe it will give me more flowers--lol. I now am figuring out a way to stake it better and I am enjoying "fooling" with it.. Thanks everyone..clancey

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Fooling with it and learning is half the fun!

With trimming, there are always best practices but you’re mimicking browsing. Deer, rabbits, woodchucks, cows, goats and such aren’t very picky about where they bite on the plant. Within reason, the plant will survive. The end bud is the only thing that needs to come off to shock the plant.

 

[Dan Freeman]

We haven't done much pond work in the past two weeks because of the heat. So, the last few days we've been out by 7am in the morning digging more of the pond because the weather has been so hot by late morning/afternoon. I think we are just about finished with digging. I wanted to get down to 36" in the deepest part, but it looks like it will be about 32", which is deep enough. More rocks the deeper we go and more effort to get the clay/rocks lifted up and out of the pond! The shallow part will be 24 inches, and the 12-18" shelf that surrounds the two deeper areas will vary in depth anywhere from 3 +/- inches to about 12 +/- inches. This way I can plant a lot of plants according to the water depth they do best in.

I still have to put in 3-4 concrete blocks on the southern side. After that, we'll start at the shelf level removing any sharp rocks, then shave down the sides to the deeper levels to make them smoother. Finally, we'll remove any sharp rocks from the bottom and add in about 2-3" inches of sifted clay as an extra cushion before we put down the underlayment and liner. We have a ton of rocks we've been collecting from "the pit" and around the property that need to be power washed to remove the dirt and any lichens.

 

[begreen]

Fooling with it and learning is half the fun!

With trimming, there are always best practices but you’re mimicking browsing. Deer, rabbits, woodchucks, cows, goats and such aren’t very picky about where they bite on the plant. Within reason, the plant will survive. The end bud is the only thing that needs to come off to shock the plant.

Taking off the terminal bud may cause it to produce excessive branching shoots. I wouldn't do that. Instead, I would establish the central vine and trim off some of the lateral side shoots and most of the suckers.

 

[clancey]

Yea I need to make this plant more manageable and have two thick branches tied up "somewhat" because I cannot get to the store for my truck is in repair getting some bodywork done but I dragged over a large lattice "trying" to give it shade and separating the branches to let some air go through and blocking it off from the west sun which is the hottest in the afternoon time. I put a fan on this thing for awhile to blow off some of the bottom leaves to make them have more air. My weed white planter "seems" to have some type of corn growing in it so I took a picture of it. My mint plant is wonderful and I used some of it in my ice tea. Pictures coming clancey

 

[clancey]

Free that is so interesting and I might have "missed" it but what are those concrete blocks for in the front of it is that the support you were talking about and are you going to plant anything in them-just curious here..I wish you had a cat or something to help you dig. What a project you started this time and please stay hydrated and pace yourself. bg I could cut off some of these shoots but for now I am leaving that go just to see how this wild thing does out of curiosity here--lol.. When I get to the store I will buy some supplies to do something on the bottom dirt to keep it more dry. Stones, mulch or something so that I can see these leaves somewhat better. It's been really hot here so I cannot stay outside too long but I am having fun fooling with it and its about 4 and 1/2 foot tall and growing taller. I like my last years celebrity tomato plant better but we will see "if I get any tomato's and so far I have one tiny little green one near the bottom of the plant. I have something eating my "wild corn looking plant" and I am thinking grasshoppers. Thanks lime and I will keep that in mind but the "plant" (with my imagination) is now talking to me so I will keep the cutting and plucking off the table. Everybody"s gardens look just great but this is hard hot work..thanks clancey

 

[woodey]

Looking good. How do you keep the soil so weed free?

A few years back I tilled up the site for my current garden and it's about 1/4 the size of the former, which makes it easy to go out once a week with a hoe and stay ahead of the weeds. I also have some nice looking Walla-Walla sweets on the menu. Rather than watering the plants from my well, this year I'm drawing water up from the river and it seems like it's making a huge difference.

 

[begreen]

I just trimmed and brought in our onions. This is not a Walla Walla, it's more like a Texas Sweet. The top dog Ringmaster weighed in at 1 1/2 lbs.!

 

[woodey]

I just trimmed and brought in our onions. This is not a Walla Walla, it's more like a Texas Sweet. The top dog Ringmaster weighed in at 1 1/2 lbs.!

View attachment 297630

Impressive!!

 

[Dan Freeman]

Free that is so interesting and I might have "missed" it but what are those concrete blocks for in the front of it is that the support you were talking about and are you going to plant anything in them-just curious here.

Since the pond is on uneven ground, I had to raise one side. Those blocks are for added stability. They will be covered with the edge of the pond liner and have rocks on them to hide the pond liner.

 

[Dan Freeman]

I just trimmed and brought in our onions. This is not a Walla Walla, it's more like a Texas Sweet. The top dog Ringmaster weighed in at 1 1/2 lbs.!

View attachment 297630

Beautiful onion! Do you start your onions from seed or sets? I usually buy sets locally, but the selection is poor.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Beautiful pictures of plants, tomatoes, and onions, folks. Thanks for sharing.

We hit a milestone down here yesterday. I ran out of water in the rain tank by the garden. That’s not unusual as it only holds 500 gallons. We then usually pump water from one of the two larger tanks in front of our house. The problem is that we’ve already emptied those. We have two smaller tanks in the back of the house that I use to water plants in the backyard. One still has perhaps 150 gallons if that much. It would be hard to get that to the garden, but we also need it in the back.

Yesterday I got almost the whole garden watered before I ran out. I had only the asparagus bed left to do, and I was able to finish that by dipping a watering can into a rain barrel where we collect air conditioner condensation from the A/C unit that cools our upstairs. That’s nearly empty now, but I was able to water both the asparagus and the potted blueberries with it because it collects water every day.

We have one other rain barrel that was sitting near our garden acting as an overflow barrel for the 500 gallon tank. I moved it yesterday to what we call the “way back” of our property. Our whole property is sloped with different levels almost on terraces, so the “way back” drops downhill from our back yard. I put together two garden hoses and ran them down into the barrel to try to collect air conditioner condensation from a second drain for the A/C in our living room and two bedrooms downstairs. Usually I have a hose that directly waters the orange tree in the backyard (or I move it from time to time to other trees). I’m hoping to find that my setup has collected a bit more water in the barrel this morning. If it does collect water, we’ll see what we can do about pumping it back up the hill to where we can use it, but it will take a while to collect any usable amount. I need to go check to see if my setup worked overnight.

 

[begreen]

Beautiful onion! Do you start your onions from seed or sets? I usually buy sets locally, but the selection is poor.

Sets from Dixondale Farms in Texas which I heartily recommend. He really knows onions!

Long Day Onion Plants - Dixondale Farms

dixondalefarms.com