Garden Thread 2023!

[begreen]

Sorry to hear about your foot Dan. Hope it settles down soon.

Did you go fishing in the afternoon....I hear pound for pound a goldfish is right up there. 😀

Something to carp about?

 

[begreen]

Onion harvest time. These are ringmaster, walla walla, and redwings. The patterson onions look like they will be ready in a week or two.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Beautiful onions, Begreen. How large are the redwings? They look small in the picture, but I think it may just be a trick of the eye given the colossal size of the yellow and white ones.

My mom and I planted some beans and cucumbers recently. The Woods Mountain Crazy Beans are starting to pop up nicely. I’ve been watering them but a lot less frequently than I would have had to water in Texas. It’s very strange to be dealing with a naturally clay-based soil that retains water, but I’m not complaining.

 

[begreen]

Yes, the redwings are around 2-3" while some of the walla wallas are pushing 5". They had some shading issues so that may also have reduced their size. Onions like sun.

It must be a delight to not have to worry so much about watering. If clay-based soil gets enough organic matter worked in, it can be quite fertile. You have me thinking about what fall crops I want to plant.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Two to three inches is a nice size for onions, in my opinion. Those others were huge.

My mother kept animals—cows, sheep, chickens, and rabbits at various times—on this property for about forty-five years. She used their manure in compost for those many years. She also has grown a wide variety of cover crops. I never remember a time that she didn’t compost kitchen scraps, and she also uses leaves and grass clippings and other natural materials for mulch. All of that is to say that she has done a lot of natural amending to her soil over the years, and she still keeps it up at the age of eighty-six. She mowed Saturday morning and by the afternoon she had raked up the clippings from part of the old pasture and used them to mulch paths in the garden and to cover the soil where she had recently dug potatoes.

 

[begreen]

Your mom sets a great example. She is an inspiration.

 

[woodey]

I worked up a new spot this spring for cukes, squash and pumpkins. The cucumbers shown were picked yesterday. I am carefully thinning out new growth from the squash because as you can see they are getting too congested . I also planted a flag at the river last week, both gardens are on the left.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Those are beautiful photos, @woodey . Thanks for sharing them. What kind of squashes do you grow?

 

[woodey]

Those are beautiful photos, @woodey . Thanks for sharing them. What kind of squashes do you grow?

I planted zucchini and butternut squash.

 

[woodey]

My tomatoes have been hit with a blight. The foliage has been dying off for the past few weeks. It starts at the bottom and slowly moves up the plant. I have been removing infected leaves for a few weeks now and now it’s a race against time to try and get some ripe ones. The peppers are looking good.

 

[begreen]

I planted zucchini and butternut squash.

View attachment 314100

That doesn't look like either. It looks more like buttercup squash.

The peppers look great and the tomatoes look like you are doing a good job at fighting the blight. Hope they ripen soon.

 

[Dan Freeman]

I finally picked 6 Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes yesterday. The first tomatoes of the season. Usually, I start picking the end of June, but it has been the most unusual summer with one of the driest May's on record and now one of the wettest July's on record. Tomorrow may be the first 90-degree day of the summer. Also, very unusual. It has definitely affected growth rates and harvesting. I'm getting a good amount of zucchini and cucumbers. Still picking blueberries and the raspberries and blackberries are coming in now.

 

[NickW]

Looks & sounds like everyone's gardens are doing well - congrats! I haven't been watching this thread very closely as I don't get super serious about my garden and am busy with the house remodel and some other "things".

I've been averaging about 4 zucchini a day for a couple of weeks. It's looking like the neighbors will be happy with what looks to be my overabundance of melons later this summer. Jalapeno's are not doing great this year, but I should get enough to make a few batches of poppers for Packers games.

We've been very dry this year. I've seen some others have been the same, but others have been getting a lot of rain.

 

[woodey]

That doesn't look like either. It looks more like buttercup squash.

The peppers look great and the tomatoes look like you are doing a good job at fighting the blight. Hope they ripen soon.

Typo on me as I plant buttercup every year as they are my favorite, thanks.

 

[begreen]

The YuHo beans are performing great. This is our first harvest. They are sweet and tasty. We will save the seeds from them. I think they will be an annual favorite now.

 

[woodey]

The YuHo beans are performing great. This is our first harvest. They are sweet and tasty. We will save the seeds from them. I think they will be an annual favorite now.

View attachment 314126View attachment 314127

Love the trellis!

 

[EbS-P]

The YuHo beans are performing great. This is our first harvest. They are sweet and tasty. We will save the seeds from them. I think they will be an annual favorite now.

View attachment 314126View attachment 314127

We had good success with Fortex pole beans. Have not planted in a year or two. We should plant again. They grow tall.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@woodey , your tomatoes and peppers look great. You’re doing wonderfully fighting the blight. Once you get to breaker stage on those tomatoes, they’ll ripen off the vine if you lose the plants, and it looks by the size that you would be pretty close to that point.

@begreen , I, too, love the trellis. The YuHo beans are the Asian long beans you got from a friend’s mother? I can’t tell how long they are in that basket, but I think I recall that you were trying a vigna unguiculata this year. How are you preparing them?

 

[begreen]

Yes, the beans were a gift from a woman who got them from her mother's neighbor years ago. The YuHo beans are about 10" long on average. We are delighted with the flavor. For taste, they equal the Blue Lakes that we normally grow but are a bit sweeter and less raw tasting when eaten raw. We hope to make them an annual crop and will save seeds. They have trellis nicely (you were the inspiration) and that provides a cooler shade spot in the heat of the day which the Marketmore cucumber appreciates. It's sharing part of the trellis.

I haven't tried growing vigna unguiculata. That's more of a Southern pea, isn't it?

 

[EbS-P]

Salad rack is still going strong. I can’t get kale to grow in it. But lettuce and basil are doing great.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Yes, the beans were a gift from a woman who got them from her mother's neighbor years ago. The YuHo beans are about 10" long on average. We are delighted with the flavor. For taste, they equal the Blue Lakes that we normally grow but are a bit sweeter and less raw tasting when eaten raw. We hope to make them an annual crop and will save seeds. They have trellis nicely (you were the inspiration) and that provides a cooler shade spot in the heat of the day which the Marketmore cucumber appreciates. It's sharing part of the trellis.

I haven't tried growing vigna unguiculata. That's more of a Southern pea, isn't it?

I think that earlier when you got the seeds, you were saying that they were an Asian long bean, and that made me think of yardlong beans, vigna unguiculata ssp. sesquipedalis. I guess the subspecies name is important to distinguish them from the southern cowpeas, which are a close relative. Blackeyed peas and the like are really dried beans. Do you have any pictures of the flowers on the these beans? I’m curious whether they look more like the phaseolus or vigna type

https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_viuns2.pdf

That’s an article from the USDA. At first I was going to post one from Serious Eats just about the culinary qualities of yardlong beans, but it lacked enough gardening content to be worthy of this thread by itself. Here it is as a supplement.

The Yardlong Bean

During the summer, yard-long beans are sold in abundance at your Asian grocer, and if you've always assumed they're not so different from the common green bean, think again. The common green bean grows from a plant producing edible beans, whereas yardlong beans grow on climbing vines...

www.seriouseats.com

I put up some [not so beautiful] trellises today for the hills of cucumbers my mom started in the former potato patch. There are cucumber seedlings in there at the bases of the wire.. While I was putting in the rebar to hold up the trellises, I noticed that one of the “weeds” was really a volunteer potato.




With some help from other family members, I also put up some fencing wire around a row of Rattlesnake pole beans that we planted the other week. Something cut off the Woods Mountain Crazy Beans that we had planted. At first I thought It was cut worms, but then I saw a couple of bunny rabbits in the garden, and I’m wondering if the culprits are cottontails instead. There had also been tops chewed off some of the pole beans, but they were regrowing some leaves, so I wanted to protect them. I don’t know if bunnies will hop over this short fencing, but maybe it will make it harder for them.



We also harvested our first eggplant of the season tonight. This is the Aswad variety that I bought for hot Texas summers, but it’s doing just fine in Virginia.

 

[begreen]

The beans may be vigna unguiculata ssp. sesquipedalis but they definitely are not yard long. I found You Fong Wong seeds that look about right. They are called yard-long beans, but the picture is more like 12-14" long. They recommend picking at 12" long.

Yard Long Bean Seeds - You Fong Wong | Chinese Heirloom Gardening | True Leaf Market Seed Company

Kitazawa Seed Company offers You Fong Wong Yard Long Bean Seeds & other unique Chinese heirlooms. Vist our site, read our reviews, buy online.

kitazawaseed.com

 

[Ashful]

So, after weeks of work and watering, and hundreds of dollars worth of gardening supplies, how many 25-cent vegetables have you enjoyed from these gardens?

 

[EbS-P]

So, after weeks of work and watering, and hundreds of dollars worth of gardening supplies, how many 25-cent vegetables have you enjoyed from these gardens?

Im money ahead on tomatoes and chard probably 20-40$. Easily have harvested 10 pounds of organic tomatoes (6$ a pound) and 6-8 bunches of chard at 2-3$ a bunch) only because the tower was a gift. I don’t have to tell you hobbies more often than not are money pits

 

[Ashful]

I don’t have to tell you hobbies more often than not are money pits

Yeah, just giving you guys a hard time. Many years ago, my first batch of chickens took about 5 months of work and expense to lay their first egg. The kids were thrilled to show their grandparents their first egg, when they arrived the following weekend. My father in law looked at me and asked, "how much did that egg cost you?" My answer was, "about $1000".