Edibles - '08 - Part 3

Coming from here:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/878662/#new

Harvest time! Keep the edible news / pics coming.

I am afraid of spiders, but lucky for me it already was eating dinner.

Cool color on that one.

It's melon time!
Andy P

All these pics of your edibles are making me yearn for a veggie garden instead of just flowers. We DO have tommytoes though and they are great.

Nothing like growing your own food.

my 4 for a dollar watermelons are taking off now... can't wait to see if we get any

:)

I planted watermelons the same time as pumpkins. I have a 30 pound pumpkin and a watermelon the size of a golf ball. Go figure.

The onion green tea seemed to have a positive effect on the JBs! Yea! The mildew is getting worse on the pumpkin and now it is on my winter squash! Sign.

i'm curious to know how everyone's peppers, eggplant, and even basil is doing. my pepper plants are small although they do have some peppers on them. eggplant are also small with just a few with flowers right now. even the basil plants are just under 3 feet tall and not real bushy.
The fifty t-plants (roma & brandywine) are just now ripening with only 3 to 4 t's picked so far. although they will all be coming at once in the next couple weeks. which means a lot of canning, t's, basil & mozzarella, gazpacho.

No peppers this year. Basil is great. Eggplant is a bit slow. None yet.

Basil is huge, and I have green peppers coming out of my nose! I made a batch of Stuffed Green Peppers, gave away at least 6 peppers and still have around 10 left on the plants.

I can't seem to grow (bell) peppers at all! The eggplants are about 8" high but at least 2 eggplants are set. I cut my opal basil last night to dry but it isn't even 2' high. The tomato plants are starting to turn yellow already - I just hope I get enough for sauce this year - I didn't last year. :( The only thing doing really well is the collard greens and the walking stick kale. I just haven't tried either of them yet.

Jalapenos doing great. A good size roma next to jalapeno.

Bell Pepper plants and peppers small the same roma next to a bell. I had a hard time to get the seeds going this year!

My hand is small

With the fungus blight, I gave up trying to save them around 3 - 4 weeks ago. Pretty weedy and some plants have no leaves left. Time is ticking. Thats it for today.

i know the weather (rain) has been a problem this year and where my garden is can be pretty wet (have not watered once this year since after planting). even the summer squash just recently started coming after just flowering for what seemed like a month with no baby sqash. still waiting for blue hubard to show and pumpkin plants are out of control 30 ft long with just one or two (did those for fun) just starting. although they too have flowers galore.
i think i need to cut down a couple maples (not JM's) and thin some others to get more sun next year.

fortunelty a women my wife works with has what must be a commercial size garden and regularly bring in a basket on 30 summer squash and eggplants will be coming. got none of them last year as well and she saved the day. look forward to fresh eggplant lasagna and musaka. I'll have to see if she is brining in bell peppers or i'll have to go to maine for stuffed peppers:)

we were able to control the blight this year using draconil. Ortho also makes a product that comes in a concentrate that works better according to the t-plant forum. you should have 30% of the active ingredent (forget what it is) for best results. Draconil only has 10%.

make sure you get every last piece of the t-plant out of the garden (i burn them) or the spours will come back and visit next year in force. we cut off the branch when it shows and burn those as well. did the same with the rusted hollyhocks.

The garden is going to be extended bla bla feet.... The tomatoes will go where the peppers, cukes, squash is in. The peppers, squash beans etc will get moved where the tomats are . In other words completely turned around.

my advice is to take no chances with the blight. it is heart breaking after growing t-plants by seed to see them get hit. and it will find it's way to eggplant and peppers. have spoors - they will travel

Thanks to someone at the Spring RU, I have broccoli! Funny thing is I took some of the leaves to work and the women there said it was collard greens! I'm growing collards as well - so maybe I won't tell them that they were wrong. I think that the onion green tea maybe working for the JBs - or they just flew away. I ordered something for the mildew on the pumpkins today - I think it is potassium bicarbonate. Supposed to dehydrate the mildew - I hope it comes with a money back guarantee.

I notice my peaches look ready to pick (nice color), but are still quite hard. Is that normal? Only my second year with a harvest.

You sure you squeezed your peaches good?

do not get him started

I asked a simple question. Concerning his peaches.

Autumn Glow Squash

Pumpkin

Birdhouse Gourd

Nice Celeste. What do you do with the gourds?

For size comparision my shoe....size 8-8.5 and pumpkin.

Get my very artistic DD to paint them or give them to the DGC to paint.

Something like this......not asking for much am I ? LOL

Wow! Beautiful.

This is the one im in love with.....wonder if DD can come close. LOL
http://cgi.ebay.com/Handpainted-Birdhouse-Gourd-BIRDHOUSE-Hand-Painted_W0QQitemZ380056618141QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS:B:SRCH:US:102

Do they have to dry out first before they can be painted? If so, for how long?

I'm just learning all this myself...here you can learn with me! LOL

http://www.nwf.org/backyard/gourds.cfm

http://www.americangourdsociety.org/FAQ/birdhouse.html

i grew these a couple years back to make bird houses out of them. i believe you just let tem dry out on their own. that is how i did it. have a couple just sitting under my deck. never put them up, still plan too someday. it is on the list as they say. they are hollow now and have a pretty hard shell. saw them down in FL and thought they were pretty cool.

I can't remember if this was the thread I saw someone say they were going to buy pumpkins and put them near the vine for the kids to get. Hopefully it was this thread. Anyway, that thought brought back memories of taking our kids to my folks. They lived on a farm that was rented out to a man who had a huge produce market nearby. The wagons of stuff that left the farm were gorgeous. All the colors of peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, etc. were spectacular. My folks were allowed to pick whatever they wanted. They had always had their own garden so this was a wonderful blessing for them as they aged. Back to the story. Dad would put us all in the back of the truck or wagon depending on how many were there and take us out to the pumpkin patch ( about 2 acres) My 4 boys were in heaven. My dad got the biggest kick out of telling them once they had picked out one they liked, that just over there was a bigger one. He would do that several times laughing as he had my boys running all over the place. Great memories.
those gourds look great. I think DD could match that and maybe do better.

The kids always went for the biggest pumpkin - never considering the aestetics. One boy wanted to reject his pumpkin because it was dirty on the bottom. His Mom gardens and she set him straight. I put the styrofoam trays from meat under the pumpkins to keep them off the grass and "clean". This year a skunk ate the pumpkins on the ground - so I have pumpkins tied up in pantyhose on the chainlink fence - too hig for the skunk to easily eat. We have maybe 6 so far and one is huge - maybe 30 pounds so far.

pumpkin question - i planted some this year that are suppose to grow over 100 pounds. Two just started to show, one is already bigger than a bowling ball in just days. The question is they are yellow not orange. Do they start out this color or did some cross pollinating go on?