Posted on 06/05/2015 12:57:35 PM PDT by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks.
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Did not get much gardening done except to go out and look at the prolific growth. Ground is just too wet and soggy to get ready for anything. So I have been organizing and cleaning and researching recipes.
Only harvest has been the winter greens, but at least the stores have some decent produce. A great time to go to lower carb eating - lots of fresh veggies available. Have to leave shortly to do some errands, but will be back later.
Have a great weekend. God Bless.
GE, please add me to your ping list. Thank you in advance! ;-)
Pinging the list.
Will do. I only ping once a week on Friday afternoon. Some of us do continue to post and converse during the week though, so chime in any time.
Beautiful!
Beautiful. Thanks for posting the picture.
But my big excitement is my tomatoes. I grow Roma for sauces but have also been growing my heritage Marian for about five years now and have 40 of those which produce fantastic. This year I thought I would try to really baby one plant to see what I could actually get out of it. I planted it the first day of February and grew it in the house by a window until it was about 4 ft tall with only one vine. Then I transplanted it into a 5 gallon bucket of only compost in the green house and allowed it to get two more vines. I keep all other branches trimmed off up to about two feet from the top of each of the three branches. Get this! It now has 38 tomatoes on it (three I will pick tommorow) and over 20 flowers. I'm going to see if I can get 100 tomatoes from it this year.
Beautiful! Thanks so much for posting the pics. All such are welcome and appreciated.
My pleasure. Thank you for hosting the thread!
Wow. That’s great. We are far from harvest, but at least Hubby managed to get most of his stuff done before the rains started daily showers off and on all day.
If you get a chance, please post a pic of that prolific Tomato. I’m sure that everyone would love to see it.
You are welcome.
I’m planting more than ever this year. Going to have tons of potatoes, and tomatoes, and peppers, and sweetcorn, and melons, and various kinds of squash, and cucumbers, and beans, and onions, and other stuff.
Just finished a fencing project around the front yard, and left some gardening space on the outside of the fence. One spot is perfect for a big strawberry bed. So today, while I was helping on the local mass garden project, I asked the lady who runs it if she knew anybody with strawberry plants. Sure enough, she did. I went over and talked to the gal who has them, and she’s giving me the whole bed. Her health is such that she just can’t bend over to harvest them any more. Went and looked at them, and they’re June bearers, and they’re just starting to produce, so I told her I’d pick them for her, and then transplant them later in the season. That should give them time to get established yet this year, and maybe we’ll get to enjoy a good harvest next year.
That’s great news for you. Hubby really let his strawberry bed go last year after in produced. He’s going to need to work on it to bring it back.
Either that or start all over with some new plants. We got a 1 lb. container this year is all so far and they were pretty scraggly, but with good flavor.
I have 9 tomato plants - 3 I planted the middle of April & nursed through a couple of cold spells. They have grown to the top of the tomato cages & then some. About 2 weeks ago, I planted 6 more and they are doing well. It’s rained almost all day, every day starting Tuesday, so I haven’t been out to the garden. When I checked today, two of the three original tomatoes have been severely chomped on and my red bell pepper plant has had almost all the leaves eaten off. Deer, I’m sure. Grrrrrrr.
I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about it - will throw some netting over it all tonight, but that isn’t a long-term solution unless I do a little construction work. I’ve researched home made deer repellent & might try some of that - here’s a link of what I’ve been looking at: http://www.deer-departed.com/deer-repellent-recipes.html Evidently, the smell of eggs (sulphur) has tested as the most effective in detering deer. We have company coming Sunday through Tuesday morning ... house cleaning & mowing will take up my time tonight/tomorrow and I won’t be able to really do much until they leave, so I hope I can keep the deer off of everything until I can really do something about protecting the plants. Grrrrrrrr (again!).
Keep us posted on your progress towards prevention of damage from deer. Many of the gardeners here have issues with deer.
We don’t have those here. Just the squirrels and rabbits. Speaking of which reminds me - we had a dead squirrel splayed out on the side walk.
It was like he was flying through the air and hit the ground with a belly flop, that did no observable damage. Hubby said he has seen them fall out of trees, hit the ground and jump up and run off.
First time we’ve ever seen a dead squirrel, so we are a bit mystified.
All the potatoes are dug and tomatoes are coming in. It does seem like I'm not getting the production I got last year. Might be my memory. Regardless they're sure good.
Corn is developing nicely and I expect I'll be picking it within a week or two weeks at the most.
I mentioned last week about the 2nd crop of lemon blossoms and you said it wasn't unusual for your indoor plant; mine is still blooming away and even if only half set there will be as much fruit as the first batch. I couldn't be more pleased, it's a tree that produces outstanding fruit and my wife, who thinks a lemon with salt is dessert, is delighted.
I don’t think deer will eat tomatoes. Maybe the pepper leaves but not certain. As for the maters, I would think it’s vastly more likely it’s squirrels or chipmunks. I start trapping squirrels (here in Atlanta) mid-February when they’re having their late winter litter. I trap both squirrels and chipmunks (and remove) throughout the growing season, too.
Deer are something that are quite difficult to deal with. Good luck..!!
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