Posted on 09/23/2011 7:28:24 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. I am getting a late start posting the thread this morning. Cleaned up my garden plot and will be tilling in some of my compost and wheat straw when the soil dries out a little more. I put a bail of straw around the base of my Fig trees in the hopes the straw will help them through the winter.
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I hope all your gardens did well this year.
Oh, missed that. You are very creative!! My hat’s off to you. :-)
LOVE IT!!! The Whimsey Garden by Grubby Knuckles...
As an experiment, I cut off all those branches, stripped the bottom layer of leaves, and stuck them in a couple of pots of Mels Mix.
All the tomatoes matured. Some of the vines died. I flipped the branches with flowers, and some of those also made tomatoes. The surviving vines made new flowers, and tomatoes under the grow lights for the rest of the winter.
Then I cut them off again, and restarted them outdoors in pots for summer tomatoes. It worked better than I thought it would.
I have also wrapped green tomatoes in newspaper, and let them mature that way.
I don’t think I have ever seen a yellow skinned watermelon. The seeds are black so that means it was ready to pick...
Benderville (aka eureka ca) is now into our Summer Season with highs near... 68 degrees! We used the shredder in spite of the bearing problem and ground up 2/3 of the corn stalks and 3/4 of the Marigolds and I started this falls compost pile. We had gone over to the public stables for a pickup load of bedding earlier in the week. Life is as good as it can get considering the hardwood floors received their final coat of Vararthane this morning and the our temp kitchen is just 3 notches below no kitchen at all. Lady Bender just got back from the neighborhood market with a great little Deli. Chicken wings and potato salad plus some red wine...
What is it?
You’ll have to tell me how to preserve these tempting bites. Personally, I cannot stand them, but hubby absolutely loves okra. He misses them during the non producing months. I would appreciate your help. How large can the okra be for preserving, can they be frozen. I’m not a canner...I can freeze anything that can be frozen.
Thank you for any and all HELP. Thanx.
I haven’t actually done it yet, but have heard from many people that they wash them, cut them into slices as if preparing to fry and then spread them 1 layer deep on a cookie sheet and freeze. Once frozen, put them in a vacuum seal freezer bag, seal and freeze. Alot of people go ahead and put the coating or breading on beforehand, but I don’t plan to do that, as I just sprinkle it with Morrison’s cornbread mix before I cook it.
A couple of years ago I froze some whole and they were kind of rubbery when thawed.
If you haven’t tried it, fry okra with cubed red potatoes sprinkled with cornbread mix for your husband. Also good cooked with strips of sweet onion.
My teenage daughter likes okra raw and pickled. Haven’t been able to try the pickled yet, but raw is actually tasty.
Happy Birthday! (I had my 56th this past July.)
You know the Charlie Brown Halloween story? The one where the kids go round in a group trick or treating and Charlie Brown only gets a rock at every house?
Sort of illustrates my garden experience this year.
Sigh.
The seeds are black, but the skin still had green splotches, the first tendril next to the melon was still alive, and the melon did not slip from the vine.
In order to be at it’s sweetest, it should slip from the vine, and the closest tendril should dry up. For this variety, the skin should also be completely yellow. (That’s partly why I chose it, it has that built-in ripness indicator.)
But, the seeds at least look viable, and since it’s a rather expensive heirloom, I’ll be saving those for next year.
Holy moly... nice harvest. And in New Jersey. Good job!
Actually I live with a half days drive of Red. Moved from NJ a while back. I’m still there locale wise because they’re message board is far more interesting and I’ve actually met some of those involved.
Preliminary surveillance reveals about 50lbs lost to the bambi brigade last night. Hubby’s buying a game cam today to see when they’re coming through. We’re going to put tomato cages around the squash that have set but aren’t ripe yet this afternoon to ‘dissuade’ of possible. Bow season opens in these parts in a couple weeks, he’s looking at that right now. Hence the ‘when are they doing this’ project. If they’re going to eat my kids food. They’re gonna pay a price for that. My kids Luuuurrrrve them some venison. Hopefully we’ll come out ahead financially on this little squash—>venison transaction.
The varieties we grew this year were Long of Naples and Seminole Pumpkin (Baker Creek), Argonaut (Shumway), and Rumbo (Jungs) (my hubby calls these Rambo, they’re very energetic wrt setting females) and Tetsukabuto (Pinetree).
The Long of Naples are running between 25-40+lbs. The Seminole Pumpkins are 4-6lbs, Argonaut somewhere in the 15-25lb range and the Rumbos are 6-12lbs. What the Rumbos lack in overall size they’re making up for in quantity. 10 average so far, per vine (we planted 5 vines, 2 in one hill, 3 hills of one each). The Tetsukabuto got started late (first of July) so they’re not done just yet. So far one vine has set 6 with what looks like 3 or 4 more females that will set this week.
All these varieties are ‘c. moschata’. Those are resistant (but not ‘proof’) for squash vine borers. We have not trellised any of these as I’ve found that affects yield and susceptibility to borers and other insects. These vines, unlike cucumbers and small melons (which I DO trellis!) set down roots at every or every other leaf node. This has helped with our drought this summer as they have a much larger root system. This helps with both number of squash/vine and weight of squash/vine. I trellised some of the smaller squash varieties last summer (the ‘regular’ butternut variety, Waltham, IIRC) and the difference was profound in yield and size of squash.
Of course, if space is a factor it doesn’t really matter then.
The squash that have done the ‘best’ (and this might just be because it’s a hybrid) has been the Rumbo. That we planted in a plot that was mulched almost entirely with newspapers/hay. Hubby cut the grass as close as he possibly could, we covered that with 1-2 sheets of newspaper only and then with 3-4” of hay. Less paper and hay than we normally use in the regular garden. By the time the vines started running pretty good the paper had broken down enough for the leaf nodes to root. This way I didn’t have to weed or weedeat around the vines, it was all way less ‘snakey’ and the vines didn’t have to compete with grass or weeds. It also helped them hold more moisture. It wasn’t as bad as TX here but it was close for 2-3 months. Daily highs over 97 for several weeks in a row (night lows in the upper 70’s and low 80’s) and no rain for 10 weeks.
Two things hampered yields. High temps which caused females to abort right and left and no rain which meant I had to water. We can’t afford to water as much as we’d like to so our squashes were probably smaller than they might have been with completely adequate moisture and temps < 100.
The variety that seemed to be more tolerant of the high temps wrt aborting females was the Rumbo. This may have also had something to do with the mulch keeping their ‘feet’ cooler too.
As always, YMMV.
—ba, the opinionated
Oh, forgot to add we’ve gotten several hundred pounds of ‘squashkin’ volunteers from the compost pile. Didn’t do anything to those except weedeat around them periodically and water when they looked really bad.
I let my okra get a bit bigger than all the recommendations I read, five to six inches. If (when) I let them go too long, to the point that they start getting tough, well the dogs love okra and chewing/tearing, too.
I boil them for five minutes (four for smaller ones, IIRC), then dunk them in ice water to cool. Dry, freeze on a rack, and then vacuum seal. I think they are fine after a year in the deep freeze.
BTW, even though you don’t like okra, you might want to try an okra, corn, and tomato stew if you haven’t already. Not much if any okra taste or texture, but yummy.
This thing works for me to deter raccoons... http://www.motionsensorsprinkler.org/
French Copper Marans?
That looks neat. Problem for us right now is $$$.
We’re hoping to keep them away from the squash with the cages until bow season opens.
Then open season on my squashes becomes open season on bambis!
[Hubby cut the grass as close as he possibly could, we covered that with 1-2 sheets of newspaper only and then with 3-4” of hay. Less paper and hay than we normally use in the regular garden. By the time the vines started running pretty good the paper had broken down enough for the leaf nodes to root.]
Nice. I’m gonna try that next year. And also some of those Rumbo’s. Thanks FRiend.
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