Annual gardening thread

Jack · July 04, 2012, 04:45:38 PM

Quote from: Andrew on July 04, 2012, 03:41:38 PM
Jack, we picked a green pepper this morning and cut it up to have with lunch. Delicious and really crisp.

Sounds nice, I'm looking forward to chopping a few up for some chili.

Newt · July 22, 2012, 04:32:00 PM

Photos from yesterday:

(I am in this one): corn with watermelon and musk melon vines in front.

The corn and tomatoes:

Here you can see broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, celery, peppers, beans and corn:

Corn and tomatoes again, with the apple trees on the left. Oh: and there I am again!

Tomatoes and corn with the cucumbers and squash in the foreground and the apple trees behind:

Andrew · July 22, 2012, 06:00:31 PM

Newt, that is an awesome looking garden. I am envious. There is so much that you could get lost in it all.

Newt · July 22, 2012, 09:12:27 PM

Thanks, Andrew! It is a real luxury to have the space for it. This year has been so dry, we are pleased that it has come along so well.

You were right: the gooseberry pie was a real treat.

I would have sent one if I could! I couldn't resist making some jelly as well; that came out a surprisingly pale pink and captured the gooseberry flavour nicely.

Jack · July 23, 2012, 06:52:54 AM

Awesome garden Newt! I see you in there

I'm especially jealous of all that sweetcorn - yum!

Took a few pic's of my pint-sized little plot yesterday:

Tomatoes have grown a bit. We've only gotten half a dozen tomatoes so far, but they should start producing in the next few weeks.

Despite being almost completely destroyed by the great beetle invasion early in the year, the beans have made a nice comeback. We picked them a couple times - haven't got much yet. But soon.

Peppers keep growing. And I keep waiting for them to turn red or yellow or something. Could probably pick some jalapenos but I'm kind of waiting for them to get that "corked" appearance so I know they're ready.

A few onions and beets. Not too many of my onions came up, but the ones that made it look healthy. We've picked some beets already, they must be good because there's never any left for me

The peas in the back are pretty much done - we picked them a couple times and got a few nice meals.

That's all that's left of my Bok Choi. There used to be a whole row of it but something ate it. I'm blaming the pair of doves that seem to have taken up residence there. There's a bit of fennel behind it. Hardly any of it came up, but those are the ones that did.

I ripped out the lettuce and spinach, it was all overgrown. I may plant some more, but Gwen has to remind me a few more times first

Andrew · July 23, 2012, 03:46:52 PM

Quote from: Newt on July 22, 2012, 09:12:27 PM
Thanks, Andrew! It is a real luxury to have the space for it. This year has been so dry, we are pleased that it has come along so well.

You were right: the gooseberry pie was a real treat. I would have sent one if I could! I couldn't resist making some jelly as well; that came out a surprisingly pale pink and captured the gooseberry flavour nicely.

I haven't had gooseberry pie in a long, long time (21+ years). Never seen one for sale, not even at an Amish market. You've got me wondering very hard if I could get them to grow in our climate zone. What I found says that they should, but when I've seen them it's always been in places like Colorado or the mountains of Pennsylvania.

Jack, your garden is looking good. The beans look really nice. We've picked quite a few from our pole bean plants, but they look terrible due to the recent attack by Japanese beetles. If those are the same beetles you had a problem with, we also had a massive plague of them this year that just tapered off a week ago. I put out traps for them and the traps were filling daily.

Jack · July 23, 2012, 04:34:32 PM

Yeah they were probably Japanese beetles, I looked at some pictures of the damage they do to plants and it was identical to the way my beans looked early in the year.

Traps eh? I'll definitely have to get some of those next year.

Andrew · July 26, 2012, 08:53:56 AM

We picked a bucket of green beans (bush and pole varieties) yesterday. Last night I blanched and then froze three freezer bags of them. We still have enough in the fridge for multiple meals.

The tomatoes are starting to come in faster than we can eat them. Planning on taking some by for the Marines to take home. That and I can give quarts of them to the neighbors. A number of the peppers (yellow, orange, and red) are starting to turn now. Next week we are going to make red peppers stuffed with sweet Italian sausage and mozzarella and also fajitas with them. Pretty soon we will be drowning in peppers.

The cucumbers have tapered off, but I'm still picking about one a day and that is more than enough. Especially since the marketmore variety is averaging about 14 inches long. I removed the squash and zucchini, it was taking too much damage from downy mildew and we are finally finishing off the last of those in the fridge (we picked about 60-70) anyway. Planted carrots there for the fall.

We're picking carrots as we need them. Still looking like we have enough to last us until September.

Leah · July 26, 2012, 11:52:35 AM

Well our Rosemary bush died because we neglected to put it somewhere. Also, my dad hates rosemary bushes, killed the last one.

Mr. DS · July 27, 2012, 07:41:55 AM

Newt, thats a nice hand.

I'm a bit slow over here due to getting my stuff in late. Although the tomato plants at the house are well over my head.

Newt · August 04, 2012, 08:19:35 AM

Quote from: Mr. DS on July 27, 2012, 07:41:55 AM
Newt, thats a nice hand.

Thank you.

Just picked over six dozen ears of sweet corn. What was I thinking and where the heck is Jack?

Jack · August 04, 2012, 09:13:23 AM

I'd be very happy to help you out with the sweet corn Newt

I picked a peck of (unpickled) peppers the other day. Those things are doing great. Got one red jalapeno but all the rest are still green. Tomatoes are starting to produce, we get a couple of larger tomatoes each day and a handful of grape tomatoes. Beans still haven't hit their stride - we picked them again but most are still rather small small. Since the peas, lettuce and spinach was all done I tore that all out and planted a bunch more stuff - pretty much emptied out all the half-empty seed packets we had sitting around. Carrots, onions, eggplant, fennel, bak choi, lettuce, parsley, and probably some more stuff I'm forgetting. It's probably a bit late in the season to be planting some of that stuff, but oh well...we'll see what comes up

It's been raining every day since I did that planting, so Mr. Lazy over here doesn't have to water anything.

Andrew · August 05, 2012, 02:34:16 PM

Picked tomatoes today, which I hadn't done since about Thursday and this was the result:

Also picked about half a dozen cucumbers in the last two days. Those seem to be dying off now, probably a combination of how much they have produced and the downy mildew which is still a problem.

We're having stuffed peppers tonight, because the pepper plants are full of red, yellow, orange, and green peppers. Katie makes an awesome version of stuffed peppers with sweet Italian sausage and mozzarella cheese.

Jack · August 20, 2012, 04:27:46 PM

If anybody wants Jalapenos, please stop by and just pick all you want. I'll even give you a couple of bags of them out of the refrigerator

Tomatoes are doing good. They've got tons of tomatoes on them but they're taking their sweet time getting ripe.

Beans are really producing well too now

Andrew · September 19, 2012, 07:51:56 PM

Only raised bed still left from the summer garden is the small tomatoes, which are still making so many that about half fall off.

Besides that we have raised beds of daikon, carrots, beets, turnips, lettuce, and spinach growing. There are also four cauliflower plants, but I think we got them planted too late. At least they were an experiment anyway.

The everbearing strawberry patch we planted in June is so full I'm going to thin the plants before covering them with straw for the winter, but they are currently blooming and setting fruit.