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Nice looking harvests. I like Early Girls for my main tomato production also. Craig's Grande is a nice heirloom jalapeno if you like to spice things up a bit.
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Playing catch up. Beautiful produce! Love seeing your successes and learning of your "less than perfect" results. No failures if we learn from them. Will watch for your tomato results from the Early Girl seeds. Guessing you'll get a parent, but I don't know the genealogy for that variety. View Quote Thanks! Yeah,I often learn more from the "less than perfect" than the perfect. One thing that surprised me when I started growing thing was the difficulty I had telling sometimes if something was ripe, particularly if I hadn't had it before. Even if I had gotten it from the grocery it can still be problematic. Do you wait until the stem turns brown and the plant dies? Does it start to have a certain scent? How about skin texture changes and color? This is particularly problematic with winter squashes and melons where each item is a substantial part of the harvest from that plant and they sometimes sit on the plant for a long time looking "done" before they are actually ripe. (Honeydews were a real problem with that for me). |
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Nice looking harvests. I like Early Girls for my main tomato production also. Craig's Grande is a nice heirloom jalapeno if you like to spice things up a bit. View Quote Thanks C_C! I will keep the jalapeno in mind - I like to use the tomatillas for salsa verde, and jalapenos are needed for the recipe. The thing I love about the salsa verde other than the fresh taste is that its all done in the food processor so I don't spend forever chopping everything. Dump it all in, hit the button, heat it to boiling in a pan on the stove, jar, and process. Done. |
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The taste test on the immature trombocino's is in! They cook up somewhere between the taste of zucchini and summer squash, and the flesh is dense and consistent, with thin soft skin that does not need peeling. Now if they just survive the FSVB's then I have a summer squash to eat when I want during the garden season, and whatever I don't eat gets automatically turned into a long-keeping winter squash. Wow. I wonder why I haven't heard of these before? View Quote Okay I really want to try those up here! SVBs combined with Downy last year on my cucumbers, and whatever is making my tomatoes less than rave worthy has me discouraged. I didn't even try for a garden this year other than the thyme and mint that returned all on its own. I still have some good cherry tomato seeds from the seed swap last winter, and hopefully I'll get germination on them next year and letting the garden go to weeds for one year will actually be good for it. I really miss my garden though. I need to make a list of what has worked as substitutes for you. Will you do a final summary this time like you've done in the past? |
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Okay I really want to try those up here! SVBs combined with Downy last year on my cucumbers, and whatever is making my tomatoes less than rave worthy has me discouraged. I didn't even try for a garden this year other than the thyme and mint that returned all on its own. I still have some good cherry tomato seeds from the seed swap last winter, and hopefully I'll get germination on them next year and letting the garden go to weeds for one year will actually be good for it. I really miss my garden though. I need to make a list of what has worked as substitutes for you. Will you do a final summary this time like you've done in the past? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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The taste test on the immature trombocino's is in! They cook up somewhere between the taste of zucchini and summer squash, and the flesh is dense and consistent, with thin soft skin that does not need peeling. Now if they just survive the FSVB's then I have a summer squash to eat when I want during the garden season, and whatever I don't eat gets automatically turned into a long-keeping winter squash. Wow. I wonder why I haven't heard of these before? Okay I really want to try those up here! SVBs combined with Downy last year on my cucumbers, and whatever is making my tomatoes less than rave worthy has me discouraged. I didn't even try for a garden this year other than the thyme and mint that returned all on its own. I still have some good cherry tomato seeds from the seed swap last winter, and hopefully I'll get germination on them next year and letting the garden go to weeds for one year will actually be good for it. I really miss my garden though. I need to make a list of what has worked as substitutes for you. Will you do a final summary this time like you've done in the past? Hey all, Sorry at the lack of response; it's been crazy here. Work has spiked up to 60 hour weeks with a 1 hour commute each way, and my energy levels haven't been great. I do plan on doing a final summary in a month or so after the sweet potatoes come in. |
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Much belated, but here is the review for last season:
chinese vining okra - this gets pretty large, and as a zucchini substitute it's not bad, but not great. The taste is nothing to write home about, and the skin is tough enough to need peeling. Add that to the ribbed surface and it's mediocre but workable. On the positive side nothing tried to eat it. trombocino - this has excellent flavor and texture as a zuch substitute, but the extra long narrow shape when immature makes it a bit more of a pain to cook then a regular zuke. The mature fruit keeps okay, but the cut stems leaked a sticky substance everywhere, and the mature flavor was bland with none of the butternut sweetness and richness I was hoping for. On the plus side, nothing tried to eat this either, it looks like it would keep, and the harvest was massive. suyo long cucumber - this was wildly productive, and did not get bitter. Unfortunately, something liked to burrow into each one and you couldn't tell until you peeled it. I ended up pulling these and tossing them. The peppers I tried took a while to get going but produced through first frost, which isn't until October/November-ish around here. The sweet potatoes from last year's slips produced like mad - I got the equivalent of 2 huge tubs from the handful of slips I put into the dirt. |
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How do you store your sweet potatoes? I'm on the Gulf coast and should be able to grow lots of sweet potatoes which I love. I have a commercial size deep freeze.
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How do you store your sweet potatoes? I'm on the Gulf coast and should be able to grow lots of sweet potatoes which I love. I have a commercial size deep freeze. View Quote They keep fairly well in the garage in a box most of the winter. By spring what is left has sprouted and becomes that year's plantings. |
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Ratling, has your job settled down a little?
Will you be able to garden this year? |
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The job has settled a bit - I can no longer work from home so I will be doing a things that take less babysitting. I will, however, be gardening. View Quote Aw, shucks. Hate that you lost the telecommuting, but sometimes I think that works out better for people. I love working from a home office, but it's SO easy to blow off stuff until it becomes a dead run to the end. |
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Well the seedlings are coming along and the beds have been amended with Black Kow. I also picked up and planted sweet onions. It is always nice to see them go into the garden as that always feel like the true start of gardening season to me. Everything else will have to wait - by the calendar here you are almost guaranteed to get a frost at some point up to March 11th, and fairly safe after April 15th. Everything in between is pretty much a crap shoot. I have gambled several times in the past and lost so I am getting a bit more cautious. It is frustrating because starting around mid-February we have frequent 70-80 degree days that are sooo tempting.
Current plan: Mid-March - potatoes. I had good success last year on the second attempt at covering them during a frost, and they need to have enough time to finish by mid-May when it gets too hot for them to form tubers. I will also try the broccoli and gui lan as they should be fairly frost tolerant in case we do get hit. Early April - less tender spring veggies like bush beans. Mid-April - tender summer veggies like tomato and sweet potatoes. |
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It's April 1st and the extended forecast shows the lowest expected temp between now and the 15th is 43 degrees! Time to plant!
I did a bit of adjustment on the planting plan - I realized I don't eat that many peppers so growing more than one in the main bed might be a bit much. On the other hand I always get to a point mid-summer when a lot of other things are dead - I may try growing one in a pot to transfer mid-summer to see what happens. Also every time I have tried a replacement planting of any kind of summer squash the svb's got it before I even got any fruit, so I nixed that as well. 1. bush beans -> --------> carrots--> 2. onions ---------> potatoes---------> 3. onions ---------> Brsl Sprouts-----> 4. -->zucchini --> corn -> broccoli--> 5-8. ----->tomatoes*------------------> 9. ------herbs----------------------------> 10. potatoes ----> butternut sq.-----> 11-12. cucumber -> butternut sq.---> 13. ------peppers**---------------------> 14. -summer squash-->Collards------> 15. broccoli -> sweet potato----------> 16. gai lun -> sweet potato-----------> |
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Gonna follow along. Do you mind elaborating a bit on the way you did your carrots last fall? You said you planted them in a pot and poured boiling water on them or something?
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Is that one row of corn? It's generally recommended to plant corn in a block vs. a single row to get better wind pollination.
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Good to see this thread starting up for the year.
Hope the other long-running threads will be back too. |
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Gonna follow along. Do you mind elaborating a bit on the way you did your carrots last fall? You said you planted them in a pot and poured boiling water on them or something? View Quote |
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I do all my corn plantings in blocks. Usually I only have space for either 4x8 or 4x4 but it seems to do the trick. View Quote or do you plant it closer to the ground? I can't remember from last year. I was thinking that you'd have maybe less chance of wind damage if you planted it lower. |
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Well, the garden was coming along decently and I set out this weekend to put out some straw to cut down on water consumption and cool the plant roots a bit through our summer. I'd been having trouble with my back and after getting the first of the beds done my back started twinging badly enough I was having trouble standing upright. So now each bed has an end-cap decoration of a straw bale and I am due to travel for work the rest of the week. Hopefully I can get it put out this weekend and the cords keep the bales together until then. I won't completely bemoan getting older - I have worked hard and advanced in my career, which I enjoy. I am more laid-back then I was which is also nice. The physical aging part I could do without though.
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Well, the garden was coming along decently and I set out this weekend to put out some straw to cut down on water consumption and cool the plant roots a bit through our summer. I'd been having trouble with my back and after getting the first of the beds done my back started twinging badly enough I was having trouble standing upright. So now each bed has an end-cap decoration of a straw bale and I am due to travel for work the rest of the week. Hopefully I can get it put out this weekend and the cords keep the bales together until then. I won't completely bemoan getting older - I have worked hard and advanced in my career, which I enjoy. I am more laid-back then I was which is also nice. The physical aging part I could do without though. View Quote That part of getting older is the worst...oh and that my mind isn't as quick as it once was. Hope your back eases up. |
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Wow, your garden is already looking GREAT!
We are cold and wet here. Nothing is doing anything. Not that I have stuff planted. I don't. And this year, that's a good thing. The Gai Lun.. how did you fix it? Is that parm grated on it? Would love to try it. That looks really good as a wilted salad. |
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Good to see things are plowing along. My brassicas are already finished for the year. I just harvested the last of my cabbage on Sunday. All in all, it was a really good winter and spring here for broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. Do you leave your broccoli in the ground after you harvest the heads? I do and I usually get 3-4x as much broccoli from the side shoots as I do from the main head. FYI, the leaves and stems (flowers too if you miss the head) of broccoli are edible. Broccoli stems are one of my favorite stir fry ingredients. The thick ones are tough so it's better to peel them first. One of the advantages of leaving the plants in after the main head is harvested is that you get a lot of side shoots with 4-5" long stems that are a half inch or less in diameter. They are nice and tender at that point and don't need to be peeled. Case in point: http://i65.tinypic.com/t98h3s.jpg View Quote |
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Wow, your garden is already looking GREAT! We are cold and wet here. Nothing is doing anything. Not that I have stuff planted. I don't. And this year, that's a good thing. The Gai Lun.. how did you fix it? Is that parm grated on it? Would love to try it. That looks really good as a wilted salad. View Quote |
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Well, operation eat fresh out of the garden is on day 3 and I pulled a bunch more of the gai lun. I know there will be lulls, I just want to see how many days in a row I can get a veggie side for 2 out of the garden.
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