Derald wrote:
songbird wrote:

we have almost a full acre of gardens of various kinds.

Oh, I just have nine raised beds that are nominally 3'X8' along with a
variable number of containers that range from three gallons to thirty. The
garden is "just enough, plus": It allows us to have some kind of fresh vegetable
year-'round and some in the freezer. The only neighbor to whom I'd offer food
doesn't cook and by the time the kinfolk received any garden produce, they
definitely wouldn't want it! Back in the day, DW&I did the whole canning and
dehydrating thing but, nowadays, I'm content to pay the power company to keep
the stuff edible....

that's plenty enough space to feed
two people quite a bit of produce.


actually it is probably better to ease off
watering them if you are only giving them a
little. instead the next time you get some
rain would be the better time to water them
(and to do so deeply).

Well, to my certain knowledge, these two vines are at least twenty-five
years old and may be as old as thirty-three; there is some confusion on the
issue. For virtually all save the first five (maybe) and the last three of those
years, the vines quite literally have been on their own. They are in a small
island in the "yard" that has been allowed to naturalize. A few years back, the
nearest neighbor expressed an interest in the vines along with a desire to prune
them in an effort to restore vigor and increase yield. I provided him with a
couple of texts on the subject that had been in my possession since the early
'70's and gave him carte blanche. I've not noticed any profound improvement and
would as lief leave the water in the well so, perhaps, I'll return them to
Nature's ministrations.

how have they done fruitwise? every other
year is good? do you use the fruit for wine
or jam making or eat it fresh?

has the neighbor given up?



all the greens that have bolted i'll let flower and go to seed so i can see what the blooms look like.
Think, "yellow", LOL! Heirloom greens seeds are so plentiful and
inexpensive that I usually just go ahead and consign plants to compost shortly
after they bolt -- when they get bitter. I do still have a few broadleaf mustard
but they're soon to go: I just realized they're competing with the tomatoes for
what few pollinators are active now; DUH!

oh good, we like yellow.

we keep as many flowers going as we
can as there are many species of bees
around. in a large patch of cosmos
in mid-summer i can usually count over
ten species.



huh, we have tomatoes growing all summer. they
don't set as much fruit when it gets really hot
but they don't wilt either.

Well, here the vines continue to do well, although, they do often develop
the leaf curl associated with excessive bottom heat when grown in raised beds
and/or containers as mine are. I insulate with wheat straw or pine straw,
whichever is ready-to-hand. However, tomato biology and the pollinators'
seasonal hiatus combine to virtually stop fruiting as summer progresses
(so-called "blossom drop"), although, I manage to extend the season somewhat
with shade cloth and hand pollination.Typically, a few canes of the
indeterminates (usually "big boy") may be layered in order to have vigorous
daughter plants that are productive until low temperatures take them out for
real, which usually occurs sometime between mid-October and early November.

if we could get to that late we'd have
bushels more to put up.



we have heavy clay soil. when we water them we have buckets with
tiny holes in the bottom set down in the ground that we fill up.
Here, it's sand and more sand over limestone. It eats organic amendments
and compost for breakfast. I water with those soaker hoses that are made from
recycled tires but they're a constant maintenance headache and I'm converting to
pressure-compensated drip lines (as beds are re-planted), for which I should
have sprung in the first place.

do you add clay? here we have to add sand
and organic materials to grow root crops.
tomatoes do fine in clay as do the beans
and peppers. should help hold more of that
organic material and nutrients in the soil
too.


we don't do much with cucumbers or eggplant
and we grow the peppers for inlaws more than
for us.
DW dices and freezes the peppers for use year-'round as an ingredient. We
pre-cook eggplant and freeze it. Tried dehydration but the eggplant does not
rehydrate well.

ew, i'd imagine... if it were up to me
i'd dice and freeze the green peppers too for
use in chili and a few other dishes, but Ma
can't stand them in the freezer.


i don't even know what a pickle worm looks like.
Click , learn, and count your blessings:
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/veg/pickleworm.htm. Down here, the best
defense against pickle worms and squash vine borers is to get the seeds in the
ground as early as possible. I don't even try to grow hard shelled "winter"
squash or pumpkins because I tire of dealing with those two pests.

read. glad to know they don't usually get this
far north. fire ants as a control, hoho. ouch.

haven't grown squash here for quite some time.
will have a few plants this year by accident
so we'll see how it turns out.



i like okra, but haven't tried it here
yet. i keep thinking it needs more heat
than we get. does it do ok in soil with
a lot of clay? i should put it on the
list for trying sometime.
Can't address the clay issue. The only clay with which I'm familiar comes
in bags.

meow?


Okra does love the heat, although, down here it can be planted in March
because the ground never freezes. You might be able to find a "early"
short-season variety that'll make for you, although, I can't personally
recommend any. However, if you occasionally have trouble getting tomatoes you
may as well forget okra.

we don't have trouble getting tomatoes.
every year we've planted we've done well
so far (knock on wood!). no troubles that
many others seem to have (with BER and other
various wilts and rots). we probably have
between 5-7 bushels. sometimes we have
single tomatoes that can almost fill a quart
jar.

i thought when we first planted this year
we would have our first difficult season.
the plants were still in their containers
and had gotten rained on for two weeks. i
thought for sure that they'd croak from
fungus troubles. yet as soon as they got
planted and the sun came out they greened
up and took off. cages go on this weekend
before they get too big.


are there any cover crops you plant in the bare spots?
Not regularly. I garden intensively and interplant aggressively so there
rarely are bare spots and I believe the notion of leaving an area "fallow" to be
fallacious.

i'm getting that way. it help so much in
keeping the weeds down too.


For example, when I pull the defunct "Little marvel" peas (today or
tomorrow), the bed still will be fully occupied with peppers, eggplant and
marigolds ,which will last until October. Likewise, when the very last planting
(4-30-2011) of "Little marvel" peas is done -- another week, maybe -- the
interplanted "provider" green beans will remain. Having said that, though, I'll
give a provisional "yes": When the early snap beans play out, I'll replant even
though I know that come August and September they'll suffer from insufficient
pollination. When I need bed space for late season squash, onions, garlic, or
whatever, those beans will be among the first things to go.

*nods*


For a time I would underplant peanuts as a green mulch until I realized
that, if the peanuts were getting enough sunlight to thrive, my main crops
simply weren't planted closely enough, LOL!.

makes sense.


Nowadays, I don't put down any kind
of mulch at all because, in my old dead daddy's words, "Mulch ain't nothin' but
a place for cutworms to hide"! Plus, it retains too much moisture in this humid
climate and encourages all manner of nasty stuff that I don't even know what is.

here mulch is used in the strawberry patch to
keep the berries out of the dirt. no troubles
so far from cutworms that i can tell.

i haven't mulched the tomatoes or peppers
ever and they've done well with that. by the
time it gets really hot the plants are big
enough to shade the soil.


any spots i can leave go for a few years i plant with alfalfa or birdsfoot trefoil.

I get my alfalfa in a bag from the feed 'n seed or from a horse's patoot.
Fortunately, I have both forms on hand. I don't know that I've ever seen either
plant.

i'll snap some pics and post 'em. they
are both flowering now.


this pic is just the trefoil. you can see
the signature "birdsfoot" near the center of the
picture.

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/100_5477_Trefoil.jpg


this one is of both, with the alfalfa being
the taller plant with the small purple flowers
behind the trefoil (you can tell which parts
i've gotten weeded and those that i didn't get
to).

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/100_5...ot_Alfalfa.jpg


and then there's this one, a surprise tulip
bloom. i thought it wasn't going to do anything
this year and then there it was.

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/100_5...p_Surprise.jpg


and a flower from earlier

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/100_4808_Orange.jpg


[the last two are not OT because tulips are edible
for some folks... ]

ok, 'nuff said.


songbird