Weekly Gardening Thread
Posted on 07/16/2010 5:04:02 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. It is mid July and the heat has settled in for a long stay here in the South. My tomatoes are finally showing some pink. The eggplants, okra, peppers and watermelon plants are thriving in the heat and the water bill will take a beating this month. I hope all of your gardens are thriving and doing well. Chime in and let your fellow Freepers know how your garden grows!
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
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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IN! Top Five today, LOL! Back later with photos. The garden is coming on fast and furious these days!
Hot and humid here... Gonna pick and put up a batch of tomatoes this weekend. AND put up our display at the county fair....also need to pick beans and blackberries.
Great! See you soon.
Hope everyone is getting some rain - we are (finally) here in Ga. Sure makes everything look better... the hose is no substitute!!
I got an extreeeeeemly late start...We planted some vinca and mint last week, hopefully the flowers don’t croak in this hot weather.
So far so good this summer in southern Michigan. Lots of heat, humidity, and rain. It makes lots of skeeters but everything is growing great.
I really enjoy this thread. Thanks for posting.
I have a question about those little “bulbs” that appear at the top of the flower stem on lilies. I figure they serve a purpose since God doesn’t waste energy in his creations. But I’m wondering at what point can I cut the stems back or do I wait for the plant to go into dormancy, then cut it back.
What’s the purpose of that bulb? Does it make anything for next season’s blooms? Is it a food source for the tuber?
— Jane Reinheimer
Heck they have been forecasting 30% - 40% - 60% chances for rain here for the last few weeks but my garden and yard seem to always be in the other percentage.
I’m in a lousy mood, chief.
After several days of temps above 100 degrees, my fig tree, my roses, etc....are waving the white flag. Today will be the third day we are at about 112 in St. George, UT. I passed a time and temp sign today, suggesting the temp was 122. That meant they left the thermometer in the sun, instead of measuring in the shade.
Can’t water every day to cool off the plants, or you essentially dissolve the root systems. (We do water every day to cool off the human beings, however!)
Note to FReeper gardeners:
Do NOT overwater your plants. How will you know? You’ll know by them looking like they are dying of thirst. Stay with me on this, gang. I must have killed off 400 lavenders this way.
Plants don’t need as much water as WE think they do. A gallon of water per week per foot of plant height is enough in the hottest locations. Roses are the exception; if they can get one full inch of rain per week, they are happy.
You’ll know, with ease, when your plants are being overwatered: They will begin to droop, then exhibit drying characteristics. You might water them even more because they look thirsty. Then you are giving them the death knell.
Water has killed more plants than Roundup, trust me.
Forgot to include this...
Once the temps here go to around the 100 mark, we have NO BUGS. Methinks they all head up to SLC. lol Aphids, hornworms, etc...all gone.
Once things cool down in September, they return.
Proof that you don’t have to be big in order to be smart.
:)
I moved and got my garden built 3 weeks ago, and have my first adorable little romas, jalapenos, eggplant flowers.
And my first scorpion in the house last night. It was only a matter of time :(
Bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers this year. Making the first round of salsa today.
The top ‘bulbs’ are seeds but lilies grow by division: the bulb you planted will grow little bulbettes that you have to separate every two years by digging them up.
Still picking & putting up cow peas, okra is about to burst into bloom and I re-staked the tomato plants which are now about 5’ tall and loaded with plum and beef steak varieties. The afternoon rains are coming back along with the cooler east winds here in Florida so it’s not such a hell hole!
Good luck with your garden RD!
Best thing I ever did was to bring in a dumptruck load of topsoil from a cowfarm.....OMG those tomato, pepper and eggplant plants leaped out of the ground. The tomato plants have arms like mine and loaded with great looking tomatoes.
My tomatoes are doing GREAT!! My peaches are just starting to ripen. The squirrels are getting them before they are ready for us.
I have tons of tomatoes, but all are still green. The cucumbers are starting to pile up, but oh my dear Lord, the zucchinis...the zucchinis...I’m ready to start dropping them on neighbors’ doorsteps, ringing the bell, and running away.
I have ***no*** peppers as of yet. They usually come late to NH, but I’m starting to despair.
Thanks for the tip about watering!
Ditto. Thanks for the info.
Get a pellet gun and take care of those squirrels, unless you live in a crowded area. A .22 with CBs also works well. My neighbor has several loaded peach trees and they don’t even eat peaches. I will be visiting him this weekend.
The tomatoes seems to be on a slight rebound due to the nice rains we had. But the heat isnt making them look too attractive.
The bell peppers are making barely enough to keep us supplied.
Guess I'm gonna start ripping out the squash & green bean plants to prep for the fall/winter garden.
On a side note, the mustang grapes on the ranch were just ripe for the picking. We got about 10 to 12 gallons worth of grapes.
You will. I have the day off and am painting my living room this morning, but before the end of the day, I promise! :)
That’s ALL you have to cram into today? Slacker, LOL! :)
We had a lot of those when we moved to Lago, but haven't had one is years. [keeping fingers crossed]
Here's my fave for at least some of the bounty (eating as fast as I can):
Green Beans and Garden Herbs Pasta (1 serv, multiply as needed)
1 serv. cooked pasta................1 /2 cup water
2 cups of fresh green beans......1 Tbs fresh parsley
1/2 cup sweet pepper, diced.....1 Tbs fresh basil
2 Tbs chopped onion .............1/2 Tbs fresh thyme
2 Tbs olive oil ......................1/4 tsp salt
1 cup diced tomatoes ............1/4 tsp pepper
Sauté onion, sweet pepper, and green beans in olive oil. Add thyme, pepper, salt. Saute for an additional minute. Add tomatoes, water, parsley, and basil. Brng to boil; simmer until most liquid boiled off and the mixture becomes thick. Serve on pasta sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and/or chopped nuts.
Repeat.
Repeat
:o)
Being buried under tomatoes esp Romas and squash. Casserole, it’s what’s for dinner.
You’ll have to make a choice, in fact.
To enrich the main plant, you need to remove those little bulbs before they form, in fact. They are drawing energy from your main plant and will weaken it, over time. One year, it just might not come back at all.
If that doesn’t bother you, you can take the baby bulbs and plant them. They will eventually grow up. It might take a number of years, btw, before they produce a bloom.
If you want your main plant to be robust, don’t let it produce these little bulbs.
I just got my picking done, before the much needed rain started.
All in all, this has been a fantastic summer. I’ve never seen a crop like this in my garden.
My tomato crop this year is going to more than make up for what I didn’t get last year because of the blight.
Oh, Gawd! I’m battling earwigs in the house this summer, and that’s gross enough. And bats. I’ve had FIVE bats in the house in the past 60 days!! I think it’s some sort of ‘sign.’ When I start hearing a ghostly voice that menacingly chants, “Get out...get out...GET OUT!” I think I’m gonna, LOL!
Respect Nature & be safe! :)
My understanding is that if the soil dries out at the top, the plants sent their roots deeper looking for it.
Overwatering can cause a shallow root system that then is more susceptible to drought later in the summer.
That’s interesting. We had a bat in the house the other night ourselves. I know they live in our attic and barn, but so far have stayed out of the house. I have no idea how it got in.
Bats are good. They eat mosquitoes. We have a small lake nearby, but NEVER have any mosquitoes. I can go outside any time from dusk on and don’t ever worry about getting bit.
It’s really nice to be able to go out and enjoy the evenings.
I have been picking quite a few of these Dragon Tongue beans for a while. I took this pic of my first crop.
Well, here’s the deal:
If plants are watered “on top” the roots will stay on top. Not good and you’ll need to check the water requirements of your plant and the rain in your area.
Overwatering, however, has nothing to do with drought. What overwatering does is destroy the way roots work, so the roots begin to die off, unable to do their job of delivering water and nutrients to the plant.
Plants that are overwatered will always die of dehydration.
100% of the time.
Well, I have a question for the group. I planted pole beans (KY Wonder and Blue Lake) up and down the fence line between my house and the neighbors. The beans have pretty much covered the chain link fence and they are flowering OK, but I have NO beans growing.
I’ve tried side-dressing with a 10-10-10 fertilizer according to the instructions on the bag, but still no beans. Anybody have a suggestion?
My mom used to kill houseplants that way. We had no idea at the time, (I was about 10)
But I learned that lesson, just not why. I thought it was because the plant absorbed too much water and caused the cell walls to rupture, at least that’s what I recall hearing.
this week we have been canning green beans. using a pressure canner for the first time ever. hubby and boy child have been very helpful. we are using my grandma’s pressure cannner and i am amazed that the rubber ring in the lid is still good. she has been gone since ‘93 and noone has used that canner since. she didn’t use it either for about 5 yrs before she went. but the canner works fine and we have about 20 quarts of beans put up and more to do today. happy gardening everyone!
Wait.
If there are flowers you should be getting beans soon enough, unless there’s something going on that I never heard of before.
I picked, cooked and ate my first summer squash of the season.
Sweet corn farmers in CNY say this season's corn is 5-6 days earlier then usual and very tasty.
That's exactly what my mom says. I should have mentioned I've been waiting for four or five weeks with no beans showing up. Maybe the birds or the bugs are getting to them.
LOL! Exactly! I’ve eaten enough summer squash and green beans already to feed an Army. Luckily, I like summer squash and green beans. I love eating ‘seasonally.’ It makes me look forward to what’s up next in the garden-year rotation. :)
No mosquito problems here, either. Bats, lots of frogs, snakes, dragonflies and swallows eat them right up.
I just don’t want ANY of them in my house!
I'm a bit south of you in Connecticut and this is proving to be a bad year for my peppers as well. I have nothing at this point and some type of bug is eating my peppers AND my basil.
Now for my question of the week. I have a ton of savoy cabbage that isn't heading up yet but has tons of big, beautiful leaves. Can the individual leaves be picked and eaten?? How about Kohlrabi leaves. I have some just ready to pick. Can't wait.
Doing good - tomato plants, cucumbers, and squash though I've only picked a few tomatoes so far. And new potatoes that I tried in the potato grow bags. At some last night with a pork garlic sausage we got from a local farm at a farmer's market. I didn't think potatoes would be that easy to grow!!
Squash and pumpkins blossoms attracting more honeybees than I have seen in several years...
Gimme five bats over 5,000 skeeters LOL
Same problem with rain in my neighborhood; downpours to the east and west; nothing over my garden excepting a couple of overnight showers several days ago...supposed to be a period of t-storms later, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Same here...I've been eating my wife's delicious salsa for several weeks now, and will be into September; at least. LOADED with tomatoes, hot peppers, and walla walla onions...
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