SUMMER GARDENS

Sorry y'all I wasn't the one asking about lettuce, but I'll take note nonetheless ;)

No webbing on the leaves, actually they look great aside from the slight curling. I first noticed it, then found the bugs. Now after picking off fifty or so bugs, the plants seem to be thriving again. And more importantly, the bugs are gone with no chemicals!

I did lose two plants at the get go, that's what you see in the pic above, 2 milk jug "sun bonnets" for new transplants. I clipped off two large cuttings from my Matts wild cherry tomato plants (since they are doing great) and stuck them straight into the holes from the recently deceased plants. So far so good, really hope my MIL is watering in my absence...

Most of the plants are flowering, I pinched off all the blooms about 10 days ago, but I can't bear to pinch them off again!

Becky, you can spray weekly with a mixture of Murphy's Oil Soap (or Dr. Bronner's, but Murphy's works better), liquid seaweed or fish emulsion, compost tea, and liquid molasses to control most bugs and to fertilize your soil and plants. It works great! However, you have to spray either very, very, very early in the AM or late in the evening.

Tomatoes are ripening daily.
I have start to harvest them every other day now.
The plants are loaded. I will have the largest tomatoes ever this year.
On picture #1, is Cherokee Purple = 12 1/4 oz.

Very large tomatoes this year.
The largest are the ones that survived the 15F weather.

Harvested tons of Kiowa blackberries today! I made a cobbler with some of them, but there's still tons more out on the plants ripening up and some in the fridge waiting to be prepared into something. Also harvested more peas today. Peas are almost finished.

Ohhhh....Stephanie...I'm so jealous..I love Blackberries, can't imagine having enough to make cobbler.

Great year for blackberries !

Here's my cobbler! First time I've ever made blackberry cobbler. I have enough blackberries to make at least 3 more. LOL

The sign reads ; UNFAIR TO TASTEBUDS WITHOUT !!!
Still at lettuce, Kale. and Herbs here ...

The recipe only used 4 C of blackberries, so I have plenty left. On my way home from work tomorrow, I think I'm going to stop at the dollar store and see if I can pick up some jelly jars to make jam.

Looks fantastic!

Got a few pictures.
Our new garden area at the neighbors.
#1 Peas in front, Green beans behind the peas.
#2 Onions. Tunnels in back are Summer Squash & Cucumbers.
#3 Early planted Cabbage.
#4 Eggplant.
#5 Sweet Peppers.

Continuing,
#1 Later planting of Cabbage.
#2 Second planting of Peas.

Thanks Steph! For the bug spray recipe AND for making me crave blackberry cobbler in the worst way! It looks goooooood :))

CountryGardens, all I have to say is WOW! Can't wait to see them grow..

Bernie, I'm really jealous! I've got nothing in the ground this year.

When I was an early teenager, there was a HUGE Mulberry TREE in a lot next door. We would climb that tree all summer long, and harvest dark purple berries that stained your hands.

My mom would wash the berries, snap the little green stems off, and put them into a huge pot with water to cover them (she held about half of the berries in reserve). Then, she'd add sugar to the pot, and boil it all down until it made a medium thick syrup. At this point, she added the reserved berries, and dropped spoons full of Bisquick Dumpling dough into the slurry.

We'd have our bowls ready, and she'd drop a dumpling into the center, and spoon berries and juice over it. The dumpling was gooey on the outside, but fluffy like cake on the inside! We'd eat til we almost turned purple, LOL!

So, so, so good!

I guess you could do this with blackberries, too, yah think?

LMK, LOL, and I'll rush right over.

Mmm that sounds good too, Linda! I bake my cobblers with homemade pie crust on the top and bottom! And I serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.. Yummy!! 😋

Blackberries are still green here. Blueberries are coming on, I have peppers and baby tomatoes, and there will be zukes soon.

Radishes and peas are going to seed and I am keeping an eye on my garlic for harvest time.

A few more pics.

Love the pics Nicole, the birds are great! And the peppers are gorgeous! What type are they?

Nicole your garden beds are beautiful and I love the duckies.

Those peppers are Islander F1. Purple when "green" :)
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6831-islander-f1.aspx

Thanks for the compliments!

Well, my tomatoes outside made it through their accidental first night uncovered; they looked just fine this morning. Oh and some of the basil with them. The Sugar Ann peas are blooming -- yay! -- the Little Marvels not yet. Everything else, I think, is either still inside in small pots or. Not yet direct planted.

Here's a strange thing: in this region, I was advised to plant my onions and garlic in the fall, to be harvested about July I think. One of those onions has a stalk as big around as my wrist! I don't know if I should have pulled it even with green growth, but I'm leaving it to see if it became the onion that ate my back garden!

Harvested all the onions and garlic.
Here what I have learn this year:
ONIONS – it was worth to plant in December this year (2 months earlier than normal). Onions did seat there for months … until the weather changed and they started to bulb up really fast.
I have also learn to remove the dirt around the onion as soon as it starts to bulb up. I never had so large onions.
I will order again my onions from Dixondale on their first available date (normally December 9th)
GARLIC - I must respect my zone planting dates = mid-September to mid-October.
I did plant on the first week of September (because I was going on a trip) …. Then I got home and did another planting on the 17th of October (2 days after the suggested date).
The garlic planted in September made very small bulbs, while the one planted later is 3 times larger !! Lesson learn!

I am harvesting tomatoes every other day now.
As soon as their bottom turns color I harvest them.
I let the tomatoes ripen in the kitchen. And on picture #2 you can see how I organize them.
On the left I have the most ripe, and these are the ones we eat first. If they will ripe too quick, I will just put them on a zip lock bag and freeze them.

This is the first year that I am able to grow zucchini. The plants are still under the Agribon cover. I do harvest the male flowers daily and hand-pollinate the female ones. So far so good !

This is also the best year for blackberries. They hardly make it to the kitchen for picture. I ate 99% right from the vine. The plants did enjoy the cooler winter and the later rain made them so sweet. Yummy !

Just a few cucumbers and eggplants for now. Okra is making the first pods too.

I haven't posted for a while - been really busy tending the garden & making jam for the farmers market. But I got a breather today & thought I'd share some pics.
1. Corn is coming along beautifully. I'm starting to get tassels on most of them. I planted 2 4x8 boxes of Mirai bicolor.
2. Blackberries are starting to come on strong. I planted Arapaho & Ouachita. This is only my 2nd summer with them. So for, I've picked about 2 gallons. Those are going to be a great cobbler & some jam.
3. Peppers. These are the jalapenos. The habaneros are also doing great, but they're slower. I use both a lot in my pepper jelly making.
4. Strawberries. This is my first time trying strawberries, They're starting to finish up since the heat is getting to them. From 1 bed that's 4x8, I got about 2-flats worth. Here in south Louisiana, we don't keep strawberries as a perennial, but rather replant every year, The heat, humidity, disease & bugs kind of prevent that,
5. Onions. I'm kind of ashamed of my onions this year. I just let the weeds take over. Still, I got a pretty good crop & the desperately need to be picked this week.

jomoncon,
your garden is amazing. Thanks for taking the time to post these amazing pictures.
Happy gardening !

Yep, all my garlic (hardneck, softneck, and Creole) was planted mid-October. Did you only plant one variety? Your onions and garlic look great!

I have twelve varieties. The three varieties of hardneck was dug up three weeks ago, and is now all bagged, and the Creole (five varieties) was dug up last week-end. The four varieties of softneck has not been dug up. I had planned on doing this yesterday, but we have had off-and-on rain for two days and I would like for the garden to dry out before digging it up. I cure my garlic for two weeks before bagging.

Ken, NE Mississippi

yes, I normally spend $4 at Costco.
In August they will have garlic from California and not from China.
I had the best luck with this kind of garlic.
I will also cure my garlic and onions for two weeks.

Klkkr, what do you mean "before bagging" ?
Do you store your garlic in a bag?

Nicole, did you get yours at Johnny's too?

Drthor, WOW! What does your garlic/ onion bed grow for the rest of the year? Think I could get away with planting the garlic in December as well? I ask this since I already used up all my growing space.. But after last fall harvests, I should have tons of room! Do you have good luck companion planting anything with them, the onions and garlic? I have a few different types of garlics and would love to grow them on a larger scale like you, so I could support our "habit" all on my own :)

I'm also doing zucchini, and the bees are scarce, been reading on hand pollinating and this I can do! Lol I already have a few babies out there but the first one seems to have BER.. I figure it's probably due to all this rain. I did hear that if you remove the fading flower after the fruit starts to form, it can help prevent the blossom end rot. I'm sure some mulch wouldnt hurt either..

Drthor,
Your onions and garlic are beautiful. Congratulations! I only managed to get large onions my very first time growing them. I think I'll be moving them from the Earthboxes to the raised beds in the future.

Jo,
I'm coming to your house next time I'm home. You are looking great, girl!

Regarding the strawberries, have you tried growing them in the fall/winter? I grew my first ones in an eBucket I made, and had a wonderful harvest. They do fine in our mild winters.

I'll be stopping by for some jelly next time I'm home.

Linda

Jo,
I misread your post. If your strawberries are finishing up now, that means you DID plant them in the cool weather, LOL!

Linda

Becky, start garlic in late September or early October. There's a guy in Brownwood that grows and sells garlic to eat and to plant.

http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/index.htm

One of these years, I'm going to order some of his garlic and grow it. He's got a lot of good info on planting and harvesting garlic on his site. You're close enough you might be able to take a day trip out to his farm.

Yesterday, I got off work early and it was cloudy so I snapped a few garden pics. I love how the garden looks this time of year. I know I won't feel the same way in about a month. LOL

Hubby's gray striped zucchini. I'm not sure if I should thin these out or not. I'm trying to train them UP the ladder. So far, it's not working.

From the front looking to the back. Onions, tomatoes (lots of tomatoes), peas on their last leg, and pole beans to the left. Not sure what I"m going to plant when the onions come out. Hmmmm....

Fortex beans. These have taken off with the recent rains we've had.

More tomatoes and bell peppers. We need to mulch, but barely got the peppers in before the rains came. That's on my agenda this weekend. The neighbor's cat's made a bed out of one of the bags of leaves I want to use. Not sure what I'm going to do about that.

The blackberry patch. Very overgrown and very loaded with berries. We're going to clean this out after harvest. We'll leave the really tall canes as those are the ones that will produce berries next year. We'll cut out the ones that produced this year. We can't even get back to the canes next to the shed. Who knows what's living back there.

SPWD-it sounds like your zucchini isn't getting pollinated, the female flowers have a small squash behind the flower, if they don't get pollinated they rot. It can look like BER. Hand pollinating is easy and will solve that problem. The lack of bees could also be due to the rain, but it sure has brought out the Mosquitos.

I finally got around to harvesting all my onions. At least DH did! There were a lot more than I thought. A few had started to rot in the ground, but the vast majority were great. Quite a few were softball sized. Some were from seed I started last September, but most were from Dixondale. Now that I know how easy it is to start from seed, I think I'll try seeding all my onions next season.

Yes Linda, I planted the strawberries last fall, I think October. They made it through all of the freezes here with a frost blanket cover.

Plus I did a test run on mayhaw jelly. I've never made it before; never tasted it before, never even heard of it before. But I have a lot of customers asking for it. I found a place in north Louisiana who sells & ships the pure juice. It did come out pretty good, so it'll be at the farmers market this weekend.
Jo-Ann

drthor, all my garlic go into sandwich bags, those ordinary brown paper ones. That's it. Garlic should not be subjected to light, heat, or moisture for proper storage, so the brown paper bags are perfect. I bag them up in 1/4lb., 1/2lb., and 1lb. bags. We just finished up eating the last of our Creole, just when I bagged up the first of the hardneck. That Creole was just about as flavorful as when it was bagged up last June. There is a pecking order when using the garlics.

Stephanie, is this guy selling garlic(s) for eating and then another garlic(s) for planting?

The picture is one side of my greenhouse. The opposite side looks the same.

Ken

fantastic pictures everybody.
keep posting
StillPlaysWDirt,
I always plant my garlic along the sides of my beds, just one clove after the other (I don't do anything to them ... just let them grow)
The onions this year had their own bed, but in one bed I did plant peppers and in the other I did plant okra. Now peppers and okra don't have anything around and they are growing on their own. No problem with companion.
I told you ... I am a squeezer gardener.

klrkkr
do you cut the stem of the garlic before you store them in a paper bag.
where do you buy your bags?