Weekly Gardening Thread
FIREWORKS FLOWER WORKS
Posted on 07/02/2010 5:03:50 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. I hope all FReepers have a safe and Happy 4th of July weekend!
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
Weekly Gardening Thread
FIREWORKS FLOWER WORKS
I hope all of you will stop by.
This is typically a low volume ping list. Once a week for the thread and every once in a while for other FR threads posted that might be of interest.
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Our community garden is in a state of chaos with early blight striking almost all the tomatoes. I am one of the lucky ones with a combination of resistant types, late planting and good airflow in my spacing. We have some slackers this year that have overplanted, not pruned and not practiced good garden culture.
The manager sprayed copper fungicide this week to combat the problem and we are probably going to have to solarize the soil this Winter/Spring which means no over winter planting that I wanted.
The upside is that in order to strenthen the plants we are now allowed to use inorganic fertilizers and my plants are taking off! I harvested a salsa batch yesterday and have a bumper crop of squash about ready.
I don’t have much change to report since the last time. Plenty of tomatoes to harvest, and pulled some huge onions last weekend.
My cucumbers are almost ready, I got 3 this week. And a few cherry tomatoes.
Summer has arrived!
We’ve been deluged with tomatoes the last week or so. Only in the last 2 days have they started to slow down.
Okra continues to pick.
Jalapenos & bell peppers are maintaining.
Everything else is going into the dormant stage due to the high temps.
However, over the past 4 days we’ve accumulated 1.4” of rain, mostly due to Alex. We were long overdue for some nice showers.
Garden is flourishing. Picking lots of peas. I think I’ll pick my broccoli today because I don’t think it’s going to get any bigger, and I don’t want it to “loosen”. My broccoli and my cauliflower were a disappointment. The heads were small on both. Perhaps (as tubebender suggested) the good microbes haven’t had an aopportunity to develop in my soil. Scarlet Runner beans are starting to bloom although they are only as tall as my shoulder, so far. Where’s this 8-9 foot bower that I had envisioned to cover my arbor?
I’m going to break down and apply inorganic fertilizer today. I have a choice of 10-10-10 or liquid Miracle-Gro. Suggestions as the best to use?
I’m still looking for an answer to my question about final spacing for my sunflowers. I planted a sunflower seed mix that was a collection of different varieties. THese are in one of the perimeter beds that surround my fenced, Square Foot Garden. I just planted part of the box, and it was hard to find the seed in the fluffy mix in the package. Well, there was more seed than I thought and I have a THICK patch of sunflowers coming up that will grow in a range of 3-10 ft. tall. The seedlings are growing fast and are about 5 inches tall and need THINNING quickly. What is the optimum spacing for sunflowers?
I can still transplant a few with my new “weeder tool”, so the ones I eliminate from this bed won’t all be lost.
So nice to read how people are actually harvesting crops.
As you may remember, had to replant tomatoes as all were killed by early hail storm. New plants are now protected somewhat by the house, and are blooming. Six plants 30 blooms no tomatoes.
Last week we had another hailstorm that would have again taken out the tomatoes, but due to their protected location under the eave and on the good side of the two story part of the house, we were spared.
Pepper plants also replanted after hail, and they are out in full sun, but were small enough that they didn’t get hit with the fifty cent size hail this time around. Lots of blooms, no peppers yet.
Both the plum tree (European) and apple tree have been netted which we didn’t do last year. Squirrels took all the fruit last year when they weren’t netted.
That’s about it, my baby oak tree, grown from acorn is still in the house and growing fine. Oh, and my neighbor who has two chestnut trees that lose most of their nuts to squirrels, have actually regenerated themselves as we have found six small Chestnut trees sprouting up from squirrel buried nuts. In the past, I have buried them and come up with nothing to show for it. Who would have guessed, squirrels with green thumbs?
I should add that I have lots of green tomatoes on the plants that were the earliest in the ground, and my 2nd batch of tomato plants are blooming now.
I have a yellow plum tree that has produced one good crop.
This year it was covered with plums but they have almost all fallen off before ripening.
What is the matter with it? HELP!
I still see enough green tomatoes on our vines, as well.
Only in the last 2 or 3 days have we seen a marked decline in ripened tomatoes. I guess we were picking at least 8, sometimes as many as 10 tomatoes in the recent past. Now, we are picking on an average of 3, maybe 4 tomatoes.
I have a feeling this current rainfall event is gonna trigger another round of tomatoes. :)
Where are you gardening, wita? Your hail storms sound pretty bad.
I am so frustrated that our home page flags have been deactivated ever since FR went down a couple of weeks ago. People are harvesting and people are planting; people are in droughts; people are in floods. It would be so nice if everyone could at least allude to what part of the country they are from.
I’m going to put my state (not my mental state) in my Tagline until FR re-activates the state flags FORMERLY accessed by clicking on the poster’s name.
Wisconsin.
Now I’ll go fix it at My Preferences (I think).
Well, it seems that I cannot remember how to do a tagline. Somebody help me?
Love the pictures.
My garden is doing better than I’ve ever seen. Everything is coming in early and we’ve had perfect growing weather.
Question about tomatoes, though. I’ve heard that you’re supposed to pinch off the sucker shoots. How do you identify them and why pinch them off?
Hola!
We are in Cozumel on vacation - I can only pray that my daughter is watering my plants while I’m gone :)
We are surrounded by jungle here and the gardens on the grounds are absolutely beautiful. Lots of hibiscus and bromeliads and all the varieties of palms you can imagine.
We are staying at the Iberostar and just loving it. Jim is diving almost every day and I’m relaxing and reading.
When you Reply, the tag line box is just below the Reply box.
PS I’m in SD but I’ll be in WI at the end of the month. Can you spell O S H K O S H.
Happy Fourth of July!
My tomatoes have really taken off. I have small tomatoes now forming. Heirloom (Brandywine), Roma, Sweeties (cherry tomatoes) and a beefsteak or two. I’m keeping an eye on them for the blight. So far so good. I’ve harvested Romaine lettuce, onions, strawberries and some beets. My garbage can potatoes look good too. I can’t wait to dump them over in the fall and hope to find (Yukon) Gold! and red potatoes! We’ll be harvesting green beans soon.
When you post, there is a line just below your reply box that is your tag line. It remains until you change it.
Mmmmmm......... fried green tomatos ! !
Are you moving here, or just visiting?
And why did that tagline box pop up in plain sight now and was invisible to me before? LOL
Thank you for the information to dum dum me about the tagline. If it were a snake it would have...
When are you moving?
Ooops — I missed the opportunity to reply B’Gosh! Welcome!
We close on July 19. Then move whenever the company is ready, which depends on the completion of the building there. It is supposed to be about the middle of Aug. Target date to reopen the company is Monday, Aug 30. We are ready!
Thanks for the great pictures. I wish everybody has a safe and happy Fourth of July! I will be happily munching on cherry tomatoes, Jericho lettuce, and enough basil to make my first batch of pesto! The cucumbers continue to be tiny and non flowering. Several gardeners in the neighborhood said they are having similar problems. Must be something going around inhibiting cucumbers
In my garden I use the MG exclusively after I have planted and plants and they look like they need a drink of fert. I apply the 10-10-10 or 13-13-13 and till it in when I first prepare the garden in early spirng.
Remember also that my garden is covered with landscape fabric so the MG, applied by hand, is the best method to feed the plants for me.
Did you get rain from Alex?
My summer squash did beautifully and we’ve had plenty, but with the rise in temps they plants began drooping then the production is now almost nill. Zuccinis did fine, but now none. Radishes flourished, will plant more when the weather cools.
My weeping rose is putting out blooms, but the branches are still straight out, they’ll begin growing though. I’ve picked many suckers growing from the root. How do I stop that, if there’s a way.
During the times that we have been out there, I have been looking at possible garden sites. The property is very shady, but I think that I see an area at the very rear of the property that may get enough sun for a veggie garden. The rest of the yard, ....well, we are going to have to learn about shade plants, a new experiance for us. But, my wife gets a beautiful, mature, magnolia tree that she has always wanted.
OK! I have my marching orders for the day.
I have a wild peach tree in the back yard. The peaches are small with white flesh. The tree is FULL of peaches. We had a terrific rain and wind. Peaches all over the ground. Today we’re raking them up. But the peaches are just as sweet as can be. This is the first year it has produced more than the squirrels could eat.
It is good to here that your tomatoes have not been infected.
Nice to hear you finally got some rain. I was expecting some rain from Alex but it just turned into popcorn showers here and there and I have had to water.
Now it is time to go out and take care of all this...there is only one of me; my wife will probably find me dead amongst the plants some day.
But I will have a smile on my face. :-)
Why do my Fireworks photos never look that good?
I was informed early this morning that I have single handedly killed or stunted 80% of my life mate’s flowers on the deck. She has accused me of overdoing the Slug Bait in the pots and it looks like I could be on bread and wine for the rest of the year...
Where is your community garden located?
“...and not practiced good garden culture.”
If *I* ran the world, that would be a criminal offense, punishable by shoveling out the chicken coop on a 90-degree, 90% humidity Wisconsin summer day! :)
“This year it was covered with plums but they have almost all fallen off before ripening. What is the matter with it? HELP!”
This is usually a pollination problem. When the tree isn’t pollinated completely, it will still start to produce fruit but then will ‘abort’ the fruit becuse the tree knows it isn’t going to be any good.
Did you have a late frost? I did. After 90-degree days in April! Everything bloomed early, then we got a frost, so I have NO FRUIT this season. Nothing! No peaches, apples, plums or cherries. Grrrrr!
Luckily, I can still find my grocery store, LOL!
...finally learned how to pronounce the ‘Stupice’ variety of tomato the other day. Man, I wasn’t even CLOSE.
WI is beautiful but I’m afraid I would not be able to stand the politics.
Oshkosh at the end of July, hosts the largest airshow in the world. It is a week long fiesta of flight, patriotism, WWII memories, and aircraft by the thousands. We come camp with other thousands and enjoy. If you haven’t driven by the airport on US 41 in Oshkosh around that time of year, and aren’t an aviation nut, you may not know about it, but it is big, really big, huge, colossal, gigantic, one of a kind, and they aren’t making any more of them like it.
Yeah we shall see. It is a pay for the privilege setup with a long waiting list. We have enough rules as it is and I hate to see more, but one person can infect a whole garden. We had several people drop out last year so we shall see.
That's my problem with New England, although I don't think the countryside is that nice anymore... :-(
Shade plants are great. I have a wooded lot as well and have my woodland garden going and mature now. I have something blooming at all times now even in the shade.
Where are you located?
Interesting. Peaches (store bought) are an interesting story as well. We know good peaches, and rarely if ever except for a very narrow window of time, do you get good ones in a store.
We usually by in the late summer from the Seventh Day Adventists who truck them in from Colorado or Utah. Haven’t seen a South Dakota peach although there may be some. Amazing that you have sweet ones so soon in the year.
Not so fast there RD! I have lost more taglines to the Tag Line Virus than I can count and there is apparently no cure for it...
And a video
“Introduced here in the U.S. from Czechoslovakia in about 1976. Pronounced ‘stu-peek-a.’ Produces very well in northern climates.”
I wasn’t up on my ‘conversational Czechosolvakian’ until I started working for Seed Savers, LOL!
Regarding your question about the Sunflower transplanting>
It sounds like your seed may have been multi-blossomed varieties as you said the seed was very small? A few of those plants can grow quite large so I wouldn’t be to concerned about transplanting them but I would thin them to several inches apart. Perhaps DiW can better answer this...
Yes, and more expected today. The rain bands have been coming in every few hours. We’ve had close to three inches already.
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