Weekly Gardening Thread
Posted on 09/03/2010 5:27:36 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. We are having beautiful weather here in Central Mississippi. My tomato plants are looking a little scraggly but are thriving and still producing new green tomatoes. I removed my okra plants earlier this week because they were just too huge and some of my pepper plants were craving more sunlight. The pepper plants that have been getting full sun are just loaded with plump peppers.
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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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Looking at dehydrator plans this morning. I’ve been playing with a little store bought number but its pretty inefficient and I think I can do better.
Thank you for your years of service, loved the pics.
The tomatoes and zucchini have finally come in in Los Angeles. And the sun. Just reporting in.
Same with my peppers. Squash and tomatillos had beat them out, but now they are producing gangbusters. My fall crops are coming up and look healthy. For some reason though, none of my spinach came up. Bad seed I guess.
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That’s kind of the direction I was thinking about going in. I was also thinking about making one out of a 55 gallon drum.
Dehydration is a super efficient means of preserving with minimal work. I might even be able to save some money by making my own doggie treats.
Hi gardening freepers,
The mosquitos here (Maryland) are horrible. You have to spray yourself to walk to the mail box. However, I am finding a lot of Fall planting bulbs online with great savings. Many are over 60% off and some are buy one get one free. I plan on ordering a ton of items that I wanted.
Hi gardening freepers,
The mosquitos here (Maryland) are horrible. You have to spray yourself to walk to the mail box. However, I am finding a lot of Fall planting bulbs online with great savings. Many are over 60% off and some are buy one get one free. I plan on ordering a ton of items that I wanted.
I am interested in their Mini dryer. I don’t have room for anything larger. There are quite a few ideas out there on making your own including plans for building solar dryers. Let me know what direction you take.
Great to hear y’all are finally getting some sun and a little warmer weather.
I live in WNY..and planted a garden for the first time this year.
( I have had unsuccessful pot tomatoes in the past)
This year the pot tomato did great ...but the ones in my raised garden have produced lots of green tomatoes and they are not riping as well..what is my problem there?
My cucumbers were doing pretty well but I notice what looks like rust spots on some of the leaves..for next year how do I prevent that?
The Japanese beetles decimated my cauliflower ...what do I do next year?
Thanks for any info
!!
I wonder if Earl will help or hinder those mosquitos?
please add me to your ping list..thanks
The dehydrator I’m using is one that’s been buried in the garage for the past 30 years. Its a RONCO dehydrator and its pretty inefficient but it does give me an idea of how they work.
One of the problems I see is that I need to rotate the racks from top to bottom and the fruit from the outside edges to the inside edges.
I’ll probably go with something large and use a couple of 100 watt bulbs for heat and incorporating a small fan for air circulation might be a good idea.
Over the last few days I’ve dried a few hundred cherry tomato quarters. I vacuum seal them in baggies and put them in the freezer so they should be fine indefinately.
Well, so far this season has been a bit of a flop (We have had really cold, wet weather, almost nonstop through the summer and had snow this past week, yikes!).
But I have gotten about a dozen jalepen~os, and a dozen more on the way, and some banana peppers. I’ve had several dozen cherry tomatoes, and about 3-4 dozen roma’s are on the plants. I’ve had 3 bell peppers, and several on the way, as well as a couple cucumbers. All the squash is doing poorly.
All in all, I spent about 65 dollars this year, and I don’t think I’ll get my money’s worth out of it, but the flavor has been great. The onions will be great, and I’m thinking of bringing in some of the tomatoes and growing them indoors, they are in pots.
If anyone has any ideas about how to light them with cfl/shop/incandescent lighting, I’d appreciate the help. I’m thinking if I can keep the potted tomatoes alive until next spring, I might get a bit of a head start. If anyone has any ideas on how best to do that, I’m all ears. Thanks so much.
Those beetles can be controlled with various insecticide products. Be sure to check labels because those sprays can be harmful to beneficial insects.
The spots on your cucumber sounds like it could be a fungal disease. There are commercial fungicides you can buy. If you still have a growing season left you might want to spray your cucumbers as soon as possible. Watering from above and getting the leaves wet can be a cause and also help spread the fungus.
I have lots of pole beans to pick. The weather is turning cold. Frost on the back deck right now. Low last night was 33F.
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Good morning to all the gardeners all across the Fruited Plain. We have sunshine early this morning and yesterday was a scorcher with 77 degrees at the weather station on Woodly Island andt it was in the low 80s here on the Vast Bender Estate. Still hoping for some corn but have our doubts.
I did have to set up my impulse sprinkler with the motion detector as a Raccoon has been sampling a few ears. Wife unit found a few store bought potatoes that had sprouted so I spaded up a row and planted 12 hills to see what I will get. Our early crop is done and needs to be dug and stored...
Good morning to all the gardeners all across the Fruited Plain. We have sunshine early this morning and yesterday was a scorcher with 77 degrees at the weather station on Woodly Island andt it was in the low 80s here on the Vast Bender Estate. Still hoping for some corn but have our doubts.
I did have to set up my impulse sprinkler with the motion detector as a Raccoon has been sampling a few ears. Wife unit found a few store bought potatoes that had sprouted so I spaded up a row and planted 12 hills to see what I will get. Our early crop is done and needs to be dug and stored...
4 o’clock flowers help with Japanese beetles. The beetles love the taste so much they ignore other nearby plants. But, because 4 o’clocks are poisonous, they wind up eating themselves to death.
Or you can use chickens :p I know someone who keeps a JB scent lure in his chicken coop, he says it cuts down drastically on his feed bill during the summer.
I hope this posts .... geees
We have had 3 days of nice rain this week. Raised bed #2 planted in mid summer has grown like gangbusters as a result. I had given everything a drink of Miracle grow all purpose water soluble last weekend.
The day before the rain, I gave each sq. foot the appropriate dose of slow release all purpose plant food. It is probably too late to really help the corn, but I think everything else will benefit. This bed is I suspect pretty deficient in phosphorus and/or potassium. I plan to bury banana peels, egg shells, and fish meal, in each square after the current crops are harvested.
Vine peaches continue to produce enough for about 2 pies weekly. Most of which I am freezing for use this winter. Cuke processing is finished except for occasional refrigerator pickles.
I put up 55 jars of pickles and relish. Tomatoes are winding down, but I still get Tomato Juice for breakfast, deluxe(tomato added) sandwich for lunch, and sliced tomato for supper.
Hubby's beans are done and the ones I planted after the corn in bed #1 have not bloomed yet. Peas are not doing well in bed #2. I am hoping for a little longer growing season to allow the mid season plantings to finish.
Have been doing a little brainstorming about how I could attach a homemade green house to my lower patio door, so I could continue to have fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce and spinach during the winter. Hubby is not enthusiastic yet. LOL.
However, I have a breakthrough with corn! After years of adversity to planting corn, he has stated that he may plant corn in his garden. This breakthrough came a few days after I told him that corn will grow around a walnut tree.LOL.
Everyone have a great holiday weekend. God Bless.
Sounds like your garden has been a success!
Well, here I am again. My access went down shortly after I posted. Are you having trouble too?
Yes, I am very happy with our garden results. We have learned a lot. This thread has been especially helpful. I am hoping to take what I have learned this year, and get even better results next year.(Lord willing and the “crick” don’t rise).LOL.
I want to be able to produce enough eventually that we have enough to last all winter.
We are having a warm end to what has been a very mild summer in California. The tomatoes are wonderful!
That is good ! Glad it has warmed up for y’all.
I seem to recall a post by Jim or John explaining that they had something like 8 servers (more??) and FR has been only running on 6. When you run a database driven website like FR you need some really good servers. Dedicated servers are expensive something in the range of $800 - $1000 per month each, leased. I don't know what they cost if you pay cash up front.
Well, I sure missed our Friday garden thread. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow.
Still haven't found a local produce market here, still having to buy from the grocery stores, and boy are they expensive after being used to having a really great market back in the old country.
I have two dehydrator's I use. One is the old standard, the other is a new version with the heat blown in from the top. The one with the air from the top needs no rotating of the food item.
If anyone is considering purchasing a new Dehydrator I suggest you purchase the one with the heat from the top of the machine.
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Thanks for the link. Wife wants to go there NOW!
Their watermelons look delicious!
Yes. I had trouble all day yesterday. I could get FR, but I could not get to the page of pings to me. Every time I went to a second level on FR, I’d get an error message. I figured that everyone was having trouble because the number of replies on most of the threads was very low.
I turned cold overnight Thursday night and daytime temps dropped from the mid 80s to 60. It was only 50 degrees when I got up this AM. I think that is a signal to clear out the beds and get them ready for snow.
I still plan to plant peas in the bed where the corn was. Even if I don’t get a crop, it’ll be good for the soil, I think.
If y’all go please let us know what it was like.
Ohhhh I l I used to have 4 oclocks where I used to live.. I will remember this ..I hope :)
Right now i am out of town, I have no idea what the cucumbers will look like when I get home..
Are they a member of the Holly Hock family? The leaves are somewhat similar ???
I hope there is enough left to treat..:)
I have been pulling up all the plants in the donated gardening space. Not a single edible cucumber was to be had! I still have the gardening planters by my apartment door. Not enough sun for cukes and tomatoes but herbs, lettuce, spinach, arugula and swiss chard will grow very well.
We went to the market in Hempstead. It was a big place, produce, garden center, feed store, flower shop, and BBQ, all under one roof. Prices varied, some things priced by the lb. rather than by each that we are used to. I didn’t know if .89lb. was good for cukes or not. Same with lemons by the lb. But we bought a good bit of stuff, they had the biggest yellow squash that I had ever seen, about 16-18 inches long. It was an interesting trip, and a nice drive through the Texas countryside.
Is that Fennel, also spelled Fennil?
No, that’s First Wookie, sometimes spelled Wooky
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