everything coming along great. although i am actually beginning to wonder if my beets will even bulb up in time before the winter gets here. Im starting to see tiny little pea sized balls starting to form up on the golden beets, but so far the bulls blood beets only have fat stems, about like a pencil.
Jmc1987,
If you bend some pvc pipe over that bed, and cover it with some old sheets and a sheet of contractor's plastic, those beets should be fine.
How low do your temps drop? As long as you don't have sustained freezes (like more than 3-4 days and nights in a row), they should be ok. Long as it warms up some during the daytime.
Get yourself a small space heater. You can shove that under in extreme cases.
They sure look good. Mine are nowhere near your size. Think I'm gonna start over...
This message was edited Oct 21, 2014 12:55 PM
well right now we are having high 60's - low 70's during the days, and 40's at night. although on sunday we did have a dip down to 39 that night.
This message was edited Oct 21, 2014 3:45 PM
If it's only spotty dips, you should be ok.
My temps are like yours jmc. I too have beet envy now! I do have four plantings of kale going, and carrots still fattening up. I lost hundreds of tomatoes to the arrival of the wet season, but I'm still pulling in summer harvests:
coincidentally, i lost my tomato plants too. one plant i had to harvest all the fruit due to cracking from a really rainy week. and the second one i lost to wind, it blew the plant right over, cage and all, and snapped the main stem. so all of these tomatoes are now in a paper bag in my attempts to ripen them up
Yoiks!
First official harvest of my Parisian carrots (pretty much the same thing as "paris market" ). Now steamed, buttered, peppered, and in my tummy, lol! NOTHING tastes better than home grown!
Yum! And they look so sweet.
where are all the rest of you guys? lol! They are saying a freeze warning tonight (havent even had the first frost yet before old man winter decides to go all gung-ho on my crops, lol!). Harvested a few of the radishes, and one head of lettuce before the big chill moves through tonight. and covered the remaining lettuce, and covered the beets. The Kale and radishes should come though it unscathed pretty much.
It was below 32F night before last, but too windy for frost. We got hammered this morning. 28F at the airport, but probably a few degrees colder at my house. And probably below 32F tonight.
I picked all my peppers Thursday. Boy, do I have a heap of them. Now, time to harvest sweet potatoes now that the jungle is killed back. :)
jmc1987,
We had that same freeze warning but up here we didn't even get into the mid 30's that night. We still have not had a frost yet. Though most tree's are in full color(maples, oaks, fruit trees, dogwoods) or have lost their leaves I have a Bradford pear that is green. Still harvesting tomatoes and mowing the lawn. Our average frost date is October 15th. I imagine in the next week or so we will get a killing frost...though it is not forecast for several more days.
John
After all the rain Wednesday, and the dip into the 50s last night, my seedlings look like they're on steroids, LOL!
It's finally a jungle out there!
I have MUCH transplanting to do this weekend.
Rubbing it in Linda? Lol. We plummeted into sleet, the day after harvesting tomatoes. I'm guessing they're gone now, but you're not going to catch me out there checking right now!
Nicole, I would guess that those 28-32 F morning lows look pretty good this morning. I cannot believe that over the next seven days Mississippi will have temperatures close to 20 F for four mornings! What happened to fall? Oh, I know. Global Warming gobbled it right up.
Ken
13Ts,
Rub it in? "May it never be!!!"
I put all the seed trays in the garage last night, and covered up some other tender vegetation in a corner under the patio cover. I've been buying up those cheapie mover's blankets at Harbor Freight for such a time as this, so that worked really well. I left the cabbages and the broccoli uncovered, and they did just fine. Part of the weekend plan is to put the hoops up and get the covers out and ready, so next time it's just a matter of attaching clips. Although, once I put the perforated plastic sheeting on, it's gonna stay up until the springtime, so, the most I'll have to do is throw a blanket on top if it goes way down.
We'll have a slight dip tonight, and highs to 50° tomorrow, with a bit of sunshine. My plan is to set out as many transplants as my body will allow tomorrow. 70% chance of rain Sunday, and another freeze Monday night.
The timing is right for the transplants. Just having a dilemma of "where to put what!" At this point, I believe it's gonna end up looking like a patchwork quilt, with some 'a everything, everywhere, LOL!
I just wanna see something growing in every available growing space!
Hugs!
I hear you on the growing in every space. I just kept plugging seedlings of kale whenever a spot showed itself. I'm going to need more onions! And some small-seed fava.
Take it a little easy on your body - we heal more slowly when it's cold. And did you know 78% of statistics are made up on the spot?
LOL, I hear yah!!
I transplanted 30 collards into a raised bed before dark tonight. Not bad...
Wowee. Not bad a-tall.
I haven't been around for a while (health issues have limited my outdoor activities a bit), and thought I'd drop in to post a report. I decided if I didn't do anything else this winter, I would at least try growing some Brokali (sold in grocery stores here as "Broccolini®") just to see how it would do. I only had a couple of planter boxes at my disposal and wanted to reserve one for some Lacinato kale, so the entire mini-trial took place in one planter (a tomato planter from Gardener's Supply, using their organic media).
I was only able to identify two seed varieties sold for Brokali production. These were Apollo F1 (purchased from Territorial Seed) and Aspabroc Baby (from Scheepers). Both were seeded in trays in a sterile media (sold for seeding) on 9/11/14 and placed under an EnviroGro FLT48 light on a 13 hour light/11 hour dark cycle. Temperature was not controlled but remained in the 65-75F range. Seedlings were thinned to a single plant per cell as soon as the first true leaves appeared. The seedlings were large enough to transplant out on 10/3. Two of each variety were placed in a single planter. The planter was placed outside on my screened pool deck and has been kept watered as needed to maintain water in the built-in reservoir. The plants have not received any other special care. We have had several nights of frost, including one in the mid-20's.
As of 12/5/14, both of the Apollo plants are growing very strongly and have harvestable 2" heads on the central stalks. The Aspabroc plants are far behind; one is showing a small head (about dime-sized) beginning to form. The other has no head yet. All plants are showing signs of secondary shoot formation.
The first image is Apollo F1; the second is Aspabroc Baby.
Very nice! Those are beautiful plants, even without the full brokali heads. Nice for an edible landscape garden, too!
Looks like broccoli to me. Someone trying to make fortune by renaming a vegetable.
We plant Gypsy broccoli & after the main head is harvested, we pick small side shoots all summer.
Our customers always remark how much better they taste.
Is this what they call "Brokali" ?
Went to Territorial Seed & looked up Applo broccoli.
The description says exactly the same thing I said about how we have been growing broccoli for last 20 tears.
Nothing new in this "Brokli"
Another gimmick. Getting tired of people trying to hoodwink people all the time.
I also just got back from Europe.
Lots of going on in the garden.
Before I left, I harvested eggplants and peppers.
Now I have lots of greens (kale, Swiss chard and lettuce).
Radishes are starting to get big and I am harvesting the first broccoli heads of the season.
Tomorrow I will be planting my onions.
Happy gardening
My husband has gone mulch crazy. He keeps leaving the house with my truck and coming back with bags and bags of pine straw and leaves, and he's pretty darn picky about the purity in the bags. He even found 6 bales of straw by the side of the road.
It's lots more than we can use. Is there a 12 step program for overactive mulchers?
Funny, Nicole. I am not quite as bad. I did ask my next door neighbor to NOT put his bags of leaves out at the curb for trash pickup. I asked him to just pile them up at the end of his driveway and I would take them off his hands. He and I have lots of nice oaks. I use all of mine in my raised garden, landscapes, and compost pile but he just trashes all of his. I hate to see good mulch material go to waste!
Ken
drdawg43 & NicoleC,
Are ya'll running the leaves through a chipper or running over them with the mower to break them down first?
pansies are still going strong through mid December, they have shaken off so many brutally freezing nights like it was nothing.
a few garden fall/winter 2014 pics, as of 12/10/14...
#1 & #2 Arcadia Brocoli
#3 Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
#4 EJW Cabbage, Bull's Blood Beets & buttercrunch lettuce tucked into spaces...
#5 Georgia Collards
This message was edited Dec 11, 2014 12:21 PM
This message was edited Dec 12, 2014 2:36 PM
and,
#1 Onions started from seeds, Red Grano & Red Creole. Will start transplanting into empty spaces starting this weekend, 12/13/1/4.
#2 Buttercrunch lettuce. Have been tucking into available spaces.
#3 Georgia Blue Stem collards (background) Georgia Collards (foreground)
#4 Onions from seeds, Texas 1015Y.
This message was edited Dec 12, 2014 2:37 PM
Linda, I just blow whole leaves into my landscape planting. That's perhaps 1/4 of the leaves. The rest I will run over with my mulching mower (it has a bag), and will empty those mulched leaves in my raised garden and the compost pile.
The bagged leaves from my neighbor's yard will just be dumped out and mulched/bagged with the mower.
Ken
Leaves I use just the way they are in my compost pile and landscaping. Pine straw I use in my landscaping and garden walkways.
In my garden beds I top dress with compost and arborist chips and let the worms and friends do the work.
But between pulling out rocks and harvesting, I am always in need of actual dirt for my beds, too. Any time a hole gets dug, into a garden bed it goes. I may have to break down and buy a few yards of top soil in the spring.
My weekend harvests.
2 baskets of mixed kale and chard.
Lots of radishes and broccoli are ripening everyday.
These first ones are from the TX Super Star variety called : GREEN MAGIC.
Nice harvest, drthor. Welcome home! You were missed!
I harvested four huge cabbages this weekend, and delivered them to relatives, LOL!
Made the squirrels mad by covering up every available patch of bare earth. Now, they're digging holes in the lawn...sheesh...
Greetings from a wayward child. So good to see Linda and drthor and so stephanietx and other regulars! I feel bad that I have been away so long but hope to fix that!
I pretty much got disgusted with Texas heat this past summer -- seemed like a billion degrees and I could not keep up with watering, especially when we went on vacation -- so I have mostly ignored gardening for a little while.
Now, I feel the need to get back to it! I did put out a few seeds this fall. Some got washed away right away, but I have some lettuce, spinach and radishes that are doing well, and some very late broccoli that may or may not do anything.
I think that's about it, except for some Swiss chard (I think! possibly kale) that I trimmed all the way down to the root this summer, thinking I would eventually chop away at the roots and remove them (they are huge!), but lo and behold, now they have a bunch of new leaves growing. I have not tried eating them, but I'm guessing they would be fine (???).
Anyway, now I'm going to sit back and read awhile and get my head back into gardening, and figure out what seeds to order, and so forth, but I just wanted to say HELLO, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Happy New Year, LiseP!! Welcome back!
And, yes, you have been missed! So glad you're back in the garden. I DO understand about disgust with the Texas heat. I decided last summer was my last outdoors in 100° heat hand watering ANYthing.
If I don't get on the stick and install the two drip irrigation systems I have, I won't have a summer garden -- and, I definitely want eggplants, okra, and cukes.
Harvesting lots of broccoli and radishes.
I am addicted to "sweet pickled radishes"... so good !
you know i bet sweet pickled broccoli would be good too (the stems anyways, not sure about the florets). they say you can pickle pretty much any fruit / veggie, after all :)
ohhh those broccoli are just so good just steamed a few minutes ...
