2016 Spring/Summer Gardens Pt 2

ive always heard that squash is good at any size so long as it has the proper color, but if the skin starts getting tough its getting past its prime (you can tell if its gone too far if you have a hard time breaking through the skin with your finger nail)

Yellow squash are best when less than 6" long.
Slice them up cross ways about ¼" thick. Saute in a little olive oil. Them & zucchini mixed are very good. Don't forget a little onion, too.

Seems everyone's garden is really getting going despite all the wet - looks GREAT! I'm almost tasting the good veggies & blackberries is the pictures shared here.

My blackberries are still really green, but looking to be a good harvest one of these days.

I recently finished picking the last of the strawberries - 30 qts total. That was a treat to have my own berries again.

Looks like one of our 2 Bing Cherry Trees is dying - not sure what the problem is.

The wild geese ate my okra and beets (of all things). I may have 8 little okra plants left.

My cux's are finally doing great and I should have plenty of dill. The parships are fixing to seed. I hoed the sweet potatoes today. The irish potatoes have bloomed. I fixing to pull my crowded garlic and place in the blender with water - then apply the blended result to my hibiscus and try and detour the Japanese Beetle.

Glad I was able to cultivate the gardens yesterday and the day before as the grass was getting a little out of hand and (as you have said), more rain is on the way.

Stephanietx - Your post of May 22 - with the black planter of tomatoes - I was curious what type of black round planter you have used? Looks like a good way to have a raised bed?

im thinking i may have to pick my beets tomorrow, even though they are still on the small side, they just didnt like this rain, rain and more rain, and i think it stunted them, and now the summer is here and its too hot for them, a lot of them havent even made any bulb yet so i will only be able to use the greens from those. Im not really sure if it was all this ridiculous amount of rain or not but even though they have exceeded the days to maturity on the seed package they just dont look like much.

My harvest yesterday.
Those RATTLESNAKE BEANS are amazing .. millions form just one package.

well, they arent much to look at, but i decided to go ahead and pull out the beets today, this freakishly wet spring was starting to make them totally miserable.

on a brighter note, i found a lobelia plant in town today that i simply HAD to have, im a sucker for those shades of blue

Tomatoes in my hoop house.
Variety is First Prize.

first eggplant bloom of the year

My garden is pretty soggy and the weeds are coming out like crazy. I hate weeds! Doesn't matter how much mulch I put down, they show up like unwanted party guests. We've gotten 3.75" of rain in the past couple of days, but thankfully we've not had the rain that they've had in Southeast Texas and down around Houston.

The rain has brought:
My first tomato
My first jalapeno (on a nitrogen deprived plant, apparently)
Lots of growth on my cucumbers
The first grape myrtle tree in history
Lots of growth on the yard long beans

I thought we had a Straw Bale Gardening forum, but I can't find it now, so I will post my 2016 photos here of my continuing new method of gardening. I really, really love it. The photos here were taken a couple of weeks ago and the cabbages are beginning to head up now. Ate the lettuce. This planting was planted in last years bales which melted down to about 1/2 the original size. I have new bales that are planted to tomatoes,peppers,eggplant,squash,cucumbers and beans.
This is the earliest by far that I have had tomatoes set on and growing fast. Part, I am sure is that it is much warmer here this summer.

I was out looking for straw today . . . had seen how to make potato towers with it, and I had potatoes all cut up and ready to go, but there was none I saw at the tractor supply store. Where does one get straw, anyway?

I get mine at the feed store.

Look on Craig's List under Farm & Garden. Some farmer might have some for sale.

They don't sell straw around here only hay. Straw is at least 50 miles away. Strange but true, lol

I once did a potato tower but I used garden soil and grass clippings. It worked great and we had lots of potatoes. Then my husband decided to let the grass clippings fall back into the lawn. That's when I started thinking about straw. Those grass clippings were a great source of nitrogen and mulch for my plants.
Seems like Texas would have lots of straw. I hope it won't be scarce here too. I think they import it now to the Orient.

eggplant is getting pretty big. fresno chili peppers are really starting to produce. and starting to see some cherry tomatoes forming

It's not scarce in Tx in my area they just sell Hay which still has the seed heads on so not great for the garden. I've seen straw for sale but it's always been miles from here. I enjoy seeing others grow in straw bales tho.

Hi everyone! I just read through this section of veggie gardening posts & love hearing about everyone's gardening adventures from around the country. I'm over here in W. Houston. No water damage, doing well! I am surprised that my tomatoes haven't split. They're doing quite well. I go out almost every day to check for tomato hornworms & anything else that might be devouring my garden. In addition to toms, I have cantaloupe, cucs, eggplant & one mild jalapeño with a leaf disease. Think I might pull it & start over. It's sunny so far so I might be able to post pics later.
I had no idea what the difference was between straw & hay! Straw bale gardening looks interesting. Do you put soil in the middle? Guess I can look it up! Have a great day & stay dry💖 Janet

well i had a look over my garden this morning to find that the top of my eggplant had been snapped off. no bite marks from what i can see, just a clean break with the wilted up top of the plant hanging on by just a thread or two. we have been getting winds here recently but never thought they could possibly do that, and i even have this thing in a tomato cage!

drthor those tomatoes look so yummy. I picked my first this season today. I do have lots of green ones on the vines.

Thanks weeding
This year has been great. I wish you the same. Post pictures when you will have some !

No set time to pick/cut the yellow summer squash - just pick it when it is the size that suits you. But best before seeds start maturing inside squash.

Weeds can cause you to have to never ending work weeding or giving up. A lot of the gardens I see here are really heavily mulched - a real add-a-boy to control the undesirable vegetation.

I harvested my first raspberries yesterday (just enough to eat out of hand) and I plan to dig potatoes sometime today. Will be interesting to see how the potatoes did as they were planted in leaf/straw mulch. Should be easy to harvest.
My telephone peas haven't done the greatest. Not sure I'll try those again. They have only gotten about waist high and look like they have about had it.

Yesterday harvest.
I never grown so many thick red peppers ! These are from the pepper plants that didn't dye this winter !
I am always in the kitchen now ... sight ...

im watching those tomatoes and chili peppers every day, lol. And im going to be having a heck of a lot of parsley seed soon!

and the yarrow blooms combined with the parsley are attracting all manner of tiny garden defenders and pollinators

although i have been having problems with pear slugs on my 5-in-1 stone fruit tree, they are going after the peach graft part of it. I smush all of them that i can find when i see them, but there always seem to be more that appear later

well, here is my tiny potato harvest, lol. i was actually expecting 3 times as much as this, but still it beats the tiny marbles that i usually get every other time ive tried to grow them, lol. At least i have a few seed potatoes of each color so i can try again soon. mom says that where i might be going wrong is planting the potato eyes in the dead bottom of the container, she says maybe plant the eye in a container already half filled with potting mix and see how it turns out.

You might contact the people at The Potato Garden, https://www.potatogarden.com/ , and see what varieties they recommend for your area. Also, check your planting date. I'm in zone 8a and we plant on Valentine's Day and they are just now ready for harvest, or we harvest end May/beginning of June. Maybe you just didn't leave them in long enough. Did they flower and then start dying back? You harvest after they flower, then the stalks start dying.

i do remember planting these early enough where i had to protect them from a couple of the years last spring frosts. the vines certainly did look like they were going downhill. the purple potatoes were the only ones that ever produced a flower bud at the tips though, but those flower buds stayed tiny and never opened before the vine started keeling over

This message was edited Jun 10, 2016 11:57 PM

i wonder if the extreme excess of rain we had this year so far had anything to do with it

That's a possibility. Sometimes too much rain isn't so great for the garden. We're finally drying out and now it's humid and hot!

Here are some pics from my morning garden stroll today.
Jalapenos, baby!
Bell pepper bloom
Maters!
Female cucumber bloom. No males yet, which is weird because the boys usually show up before the females.
One of my cucumber plants.

Great garden year so far.
Lots of huge red peppers, the biggest are the RED MARCONI.
I think my cucumbers are done for the season, and I am very happy with the production. I never gad so many.
Rattlesnake beans are still producing tons of beans. Okra is starting too.
A few eggplants and one zucchini !!
Great Swiss Chard too!
On June 20th I will direct seed CHINESE LONG BEANS under the tomatoes.

I went out to check the garden, do some weeding, etc. & just as I finished, downpour! Looks like it'll rain more tomorrow then have a string of hot days. The only bug problem I'm having right now is on the leaves of my cantaloupe. Some little sucking bugs. I hit 'em with the hose but need to do a nice soapy bath for those dirty little buggies. I get a tomato every couple of days, got one cuc so far & more maturing & we just put in 4 eggplant so they'll take a while before we're eating them. It's just my hubby & I so we have a small backyard garden.

The hardest part of straw bale gardening is digging out the hole for a transplant or making a trench for seeds. It really does take some effort. Then, I use artificial soil for both the transplant (around the roots and over the top) and for filling in the trench for the seeds to sit in. After that it gets easy.
My first tom. of the year is beginning to show color. I have never, ever, had a ripe tomato this early in Oregon.

Thanks Beebonnet! It sounds like a great way to garden, although I have no idea how much a bale of straw would cost or even where to get one. I'm a city girl. I have 2 small raised beds behind my garage. My hubby lined them with cinder blocks recently to raise them higher for me= easier to garden!
On another topic, my blackberry bush is making lots of berries for the first time but the birds are eating them. Other than hanging a net over it, is there any other way to keep birds out?

Rubber snake?

I usually plant my eggplants in containers and I will put them in the sunny spot against my garage,but this year I put two container in my flower garden bed and I noticed these are already having blooms . I was experimenting that pollination will play a big part being close to the flowers ,because the container that away from the flower are not showing blooms yet.

Eggplant are self pollinating, like tomatoes and peppers. They can be pollinated by insects but they don't have to be. Some say the flowers are already pollinated by the time they open.

Eggplant are self pollinating, like tomatoes and peppers. They can be pollinated by insects but they don't have to be. Some say the flowers are already pollinated by the time they open.