The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

[fantasia]

Very cool DiGs, I will be sure to check it out shortly!

The current to-do list on the farm....
Plant the slicing cucumbers
Plant the remaining tomatoes and bell peppers (was going to do this but due to a sudden crazy cold snap, we decided to hold off)
Plant the last two rows of corn
Plant pumpkins and watermelons
Plant the next round of radishes
Weed and water
Plant okra in June

Slicing cucumbers ... check
Tomatoes and bell peppers ... check
Corn ... check
Pumpkins and watermelons ... check
Radishes ... check
Weed and water ... ongoing, but did some this weekend so check
Okra ... Not June yet

HOORAY!!!!! Except for the okra, I have FINALLY gotten everything in the ground.

From left to right, back to front:
Future Okra, Peppers, Eggplant, Radishes, and Turnips.
Corn, Squash, Slicing Cucumbers, Lettuce and Spinach
Potatoes, Green Beans, Celery, Brussel Sprouts, and Swiss Chard
Herbs, Onions, Carrots, Peas

I don't have any updated pictures of the other two garden locations, but one of them contains the Concord Grapes and Watermelons, and the other location has the tomatoes, tomatillos, pickling cucumbers, and pie pumpkins.

[Aravanna]

Ha! I have no idea. I'll have to ask my sister.

The rose in the back yard is a shrub rose called a "knockout." They're most often seen growing around businesses in a neglected, weedy state but blooming happily.

Digs and 'gazer, both those roses are gorgeous! I wish I had a huge yard to try loads and loads of roses in.

My list of to-dos aren't nearly as long as my sister's. They consist of keeping the sweet potatoes I planted alive (which my coworker assures me isn't hard to do) and convincing the pineapple to needs to bloom.

For the pineapple, I've already tried the apple core trick, maybe I really do need to use a bag. (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, rip apples are supposed to release ethylene gas which makes pineapples and other bromeliads bloom.)

[fantasia]

I've been spending so much time and energy on the farm garden, that I've barely posted any pictures of my own backyard garden so here are a couple of them....



Strawberries and rhubarb in the back. Onions, the potted tomatoes and peppers, one watermelon by its lonesome, Aravanna's sweet potato plants (they have the red tag markers), and then two more peppers.
Oh, and you can see Ara's pineapple plant sitting in the greenhouse.



My herb garden. Funny how everything looks a million times better after it rains.

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

Pineapples? I didn't think you could grow them here. There was an entire Jeopardy category on pineapple growth on Friday . I thought that they took several years to grow .

FK, your herb garden is making me jealous! I bet it smells heavenly!

I was looking forward to getting my garden in tip-top shape with this long weekend, but really didn't get to. Apparently it rained back home every day this past week. The garden had puddles of standing water throughout, and I hope that it doesn't result in any of my plants drowning.

Weeds are EVERYWHERE, but we cant get the tiller or the hoe into the ground/mud/sludge.

On the bright side, the beans have sprouted (amidst the carpet of weeds), and are about two inches tall. Our spinach is being given one more week before we pronounce the seeds waterlogged/rotten, and plant again. Our peas are starting to sprout, and everything was nice and green.

Today and tomorrow are supposed to be in the 90's, and it's supposed to be a dry week. Hopefully that'll allow me to get out there next weekend.

[starkat]

I lost two tomatoes to birds yesterday. I went and bought some bird netting to go over my tomato plants today. My roma tomato plants have about a dozen tomatoes a piece on them. My heirloom plants have begun to bud! One of them has a small green bulb. My cherry tomato plants haven't started to bud quite yet, but it looks like they are very close.

[Aravanna]

Digs, it's ironic that you're having the exact opposite problem we are. We're in a drought and you're waterlogged. I wish we could exchange some of that weather.

Considering the lack of rain, the garden does look good! Except my sister's poor Juliet tomato is doomed. The second half of it broke off today. The first half that broke off we been rooted in water and replanted a few days ago. Unfortunately, it was dug up by the dog who likes to dig in moist soil. So it looks like no Juliets this year.

And to answer your question about pineapples, I WISH they took two years to grow. I've had my plant going on four years and it
s never set a bloom.

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

So it looks like no Juliets this year.

What will the Romeo tomatoes do

I can't wait to get home! This weekend, I expect to see peas starting to climb, and flowers on my peppers!

[fantasia]

So it looks like no Juliets this year.

They may be down but they're not out. You don't know these tomatoes like I do.

But lesson learned from this point on. I potted them and I was just going to let them run on the ground. Apparently that's not an option (or I was really unlucky). They need to be staked or given some sort of support. Now I'm babying my Cherokee Purple tomato plant as it has two lovely tomatoes coming on. I do NOT want it snapping off as well.

Meanwhile, in my own backyard, my cucumbers are blooming!! *squeee* And Ara's sweet potato plants look sooo good as well. The only thing I'm kind of hoping will start growing soon are my new pepper plants. I had Ara pull the peppers off of them a few days ago so they could start concentrating on growing instead of producing fruit. So we shall see.

We got some rain last night so that makes me happy!

I can't wait to get home!

Me too! Well, get out to the farm anyways. Though I'm pretty nervous about what I'm going to find as it was soooo hot this week. Hopefully nothing has fried. But I'm hoping to maybe plant my okra? We'll see what my mother-in-law says. She's the okra growing queen.

[fantasia]

I successfully forgot to bring my camera YET AGAIN this weekend, but to be honest, it stormed so much at the end of the weekend, I'm not sure I would have had a chance to take pictures even if I had remembered it.

My weekend was full of weeding. I got all of the green beans weeded and that was no easy feat. It didn't help that several of them had had the tops nipped off by rabbits and I couldn't even see them. Thankfully I didn't pull too many along with the weeds.

I also weeded the celery, brussel sprouts, and a little bit around the swiss chard.

I'm so excited about the celery and it's the one thing I really wish I had remembered my camera for. It's only about 4-6" tall, but they look like little mini-celerys. They're so cute.

I also found the first three ripe Honeybunch cherry tomatoes. A fourth Sun Gold Cherry was almost ripe, but not quite. I was rather disappointed because I've never tried those before and I want to know whether or not they're any good.

I have a haircut appointment up there with my sister-in-law tomorrow so I hope to remember a camera to take pictures of everything. And get that Sun Gold tomato before the rabbits do!

So the next few things to do on my list...
~Get the okra planted.
~Pick all of the radishes, turnips, and beets that are ready to be picked. The turnips need to be frozen and the beets pickled and canned.
~Prune the tomatoes.
~The ongoing task of weeding.

In the meantime, my backyard garden is doing ok. The cucumbers and sweet potatoes are still recovering from the hail storm last week.

[Aslanisthebest]

Fantasia, you're such the ideal gardener! The pictures and descriptions of your gardens are making me drool. 'specially the okra!

Well... I haven't really done much in gardening. I tried planting the perennials but with no potting soil, just the soil in the backyard which is more clay-like than ever. (It seriously dries into clay! >.< ) BUT! We got a giant blueberry plant from Aldi, and now I'm trying to wonder how to plant it. The instructions are there, but a little generic. (It's the kind that is dry at the bottom and with branches at the top.) Tips on planting it would be wonderful, wonderful!

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

I'm pretty sure that blueberry plants need moist well drained soils. If you have clay rich soils, then I would go to your local gardening store, and buy a bag of potting soil (or peat moss). Dig your hole in the ground, and water the snot out of it so that the hard clay soils are workable. Then dump in your potting soil, and mix it in. You'll have to let the soil dry up a bit so that it's workable, but after it's dry, you should be able to plant that blueberry bush.

That's my advice.

At any rate, I went out and did some major hoeing today. Got half of the garden hoed by hand before developing a major blister (which subsequently popped ). Either way, the beans are still being nibbled by bugs, but not as much as they were before. Some of the bean replants are starting to come up. The onions are being taken over by weeds, but I obviously can't take a hoe to them, so I'm going to have to do them by hand (maybe tomorrow, it depends on how I'm feeling). The peppers aren't looking the best, but are starting to get flowers (I'm thinking it's all the rain we've had). The peas are climbing, and are about 5 inches tall right now. One of my cucumber hills is doing great, the other isn't. I'm going to replant the one hill this evening. Tomorrow I want to get the other two hills started. The tomatoes are doing well! My romas have a few tomatoes on them (about the size of two quarters), and my early girls have flowers on them (and they're growing really well!)

I probably won't do another video blog this weekend, because nothing's really changed since last weekend, but next weekend, I should have another video for y'all.

[fantasia]

So I did make it to the Farm Garden today like I had hoped. But I forgot my camera YET AGAIN!!! *grumblegrumblegrumble*

Anyways, today was a harvesting day. I picked pretty much all of the remaining turnips and watermelon radishes (it's a radish that's white on the outside and red on the inside). In addition to that, I picked my sun gold tomato which was tasty, and a couple more tomatoes that had ripened.
And last but not least, I picked a whole lotta beets. I had planted them in abundance this year with canning in mind. I'm wondering if I might have overdone it a bit? Particularly since the only two people that like them are my husband and my mother-in-law. Ah well. Canning is on the to-do list for this week. I also picked the first of the summer squash and zucchini today.

Phat lootz from the farm.... (everything under the non-beet items are, um, beets. )


One of the highlights of my day though was finding a garder snake hiding under the radishes. A fantastic garden protector. I moved him to the potatoes though since I had destroyed his shelter.

Oh, and I also pruned the living daylights out of my tomatoes. Every year I don't bother to trim the sucker branches and I always regret it because the tomato turns into a massive bush with not as many tomatoes as it could have had. So I took a pruners to the tomato plants and really knocked them back. Hopefully that will mean bigger, better, and more prolific fruit.

[fantasia]

I forgot about this thread in the past few weeks. But I can at least claim the excuse of bad weather and being really, really busy. A few items of note...

~This year's potato crop was insane. Even though we're in a really bad drought with incredible heat, the potatoes were happy. We had a bumper crop. Including the biggest red potatoes I've ever seen.
~The "fall/autumn" gourds apparently decided to produce during the summer? I have a lot of butternut squash and small sugar pumpkins I need to find something to do with.
~Tomatoes and peppers are just now kicking into gear.
~My huge gigantic watermelons of doom are also looking remarkably good.

Today we started our fall garden. I've never done a fall garden, but we planted three rows of corn to start with, and my mother-in-law will probably be planting a lot more in the next week or two.

[Valiant]

My mom planted some vegetables and is very excited now that some of them have grown. I have to say, the cherry tomatoes she grew were delicious. We also grew chilies, squash and a few other vegetables. Its very exciting to eat food that was grown in my own backyard.

[johobbit]

*drools over the photo of fk's harvest*

I planted a few rows of corn the last couple of years (I call it my 'corn field' at the back of our yard, even though that particular planting area is only 20' x 20' or so ), but before we could nab a cob, the squirrels found it, and you know what that means. In fact, we got to the point where it was so entertaining watching them work at getting the cob off the stalk, then, usually ending up with a bunch of silk trailing behind them, they'd run along the fences with their prize. So cute!!! So, I wish you better: good success with your fall corn, fk. Keep us posted!

You are fortunate you have cherry tomatoes, Valiant. I've had wonderful plants over the years, but tried one kind—a new one to me—in a container this year (because our garden are is under construction), and whilst it began looking very healthy, with many tiny tomatoes growing on it, one morning I woke up to them rotting from the bottom up. So disappointing. I'm thinking with the very humid, dry long heat spell we had throughout July, I compensated by over-watering. Grrrr! Lesson learned, I hope!

[fantasia]

More gardening updates. I've gotten loads of pumpkin puree and two pies thus far off of our sugar pumpkins this year. Those plants are done now but boy did they produce. I'm definitely planting them again next year.

The watermelon I plan to enter in the state fair in a couple weeks is up to approximately 50lbs.

Earlier today, I finished up planting my fall garden. I planted Turnips, Radishes, and Beets. Anything else someone wants to try to plant can do it themselves.

Since we're getting "cooler" weather (As in, not a solid streak of 100F+ days) I'm thinking my peppers and tomatoes will finally kick it into gear. Salsa time!

ETA 24 hours later:
I discovered I do have a picture of my watermelon patch, though it is a few weeks old.


The white arrow is pointing to the melon I've picked out for the fair. However, it is about four times that now and a whole lot easier to see. I'll try to get an updated picture soon.