This is my first year with a garden since I was a kid.

Any tips on telling when acorn squash is ready to harvest.

Likewise for poblanos. I want to dry them into anchos if that makes a difference.

Thanks!

I take poblanos when they are bigger than my palm.  Sometimes they are a little lighter colored than I like, but they turn dark green within a couple days.

Well, it looks like tomato season is drawing to a close

They've been great this year, they will be missed

I think my second planting of green beans is finished, they didn't produce like the first planting

In their place I'm going to plant spinach and I'm going to find a place for Kale

Is it too early to dig sweet potatoes?

In my AO daytime temps will be in the low 90's into Sept, with warm humid nights

The vines are taking over everything, but what concerns me is the potential size of the potatoes if I wait till the leaves turn yellow

Many years ago I planted a cup of SP from Home Depot just for giggles

When I started turning over the dirt I discovered huge potatoes, I mean football sized

I'd like to get them a bit smaller

Dig or wait?

Old man at church that gave me my potato sprouts said wait till a few days before the frost. So late September mid October for North Ga.

Told me to tear all the vines up one day then dig everything the next.

Also my garden is about played out.
Okra & tomatoes barely putting out now.

But my muscadines are looking good!

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Wow, in NC our first frost is typically mid November

It maybe later, I honestly don’t keep up with it. Just what the old man said. Lol

I know I’m glad to see it come.

Isn't it about time for after action reports?

Compost added seems to help, even when it is commercial stuff with too many wood chips. Tomatoes that were dosed at planting were bigger and healthier.

Speaking of tomatoes, I don't think I will mess with San Marzano's again. It is not that they did bad, just their relatively small fruit size makes Roma a better choice. The hybrid beefsteaks I grew did great and the taste got good reviews (I'll look up the variety). Celebrity did very well, early girl has always been reliable.

Great year for squash, I am fairly certain my best ever. Bugs and disease weren't a very big factor till late in the game, I attribute this to getting them in the ground relatively early.

Peanuts will work in my clayey soil, even when neglected. Same with Milo.

Temptation sweet corn is the bomb, silver queen did great but the window to pick and use is much narrower than super sweet hybrids. Corn smut taste great.

Toppick pink eye purple hull did well, but not great. Seed quality from Gurney's was absolute garbage, 1/3 to 1/2 of seeds thrown out with obvious worm holes and other damage. Regular pink eye purple hull were more productive but ran like hell, all up into my tomatoes (My fault).

Tomatillos are worth a another run.

I like arugula and it grows like a weed, Chinese's cabbages can do great in the spring and nappa can head, if you get it in early enough.

Home grown carrots have absolutely nothing in common with those orange things that come from the store. Roasted home grown carrots were a transformative experience.

Parsley feels like it takes forever to germinate, keep watering it and eventually, they will come.

Spinach seemed to have germination issues in clay rich soils. (comments?)

I love potatoes. a lot of work to plant, hill and dig. Reds are the local favorite, it isn't even a competition but the Yukon Golds did good and the quality/flavor of the potatoes was amazing. Will do again. (This and tomatoes were the two things I had direct compost/no compost comparison. Compost wins...)

Yours?


P.S.,
My attempts at starting peppers from seed was an absolute miscarriage. I think potting soil was to blame. Everything started in the Makers Mark potting soil from Sam's Club did horrible.

Glad to see you back Billy

For now I'll just comment on the Spinach question

I read that if soil temp is above 85* seeds don't germinate well, can't confirm that yet.  I planted my Spinach just a couple of days ago

I'll do an after action shortly

Interesting on the tomatoes. We did san marzano, super saucers, and Roma vf. Super saucers make huge tomatoes, biggest I weighed was 1.75#. the San marzano are prolific probably close to 100 per plant 4-5" long, but the plants got huge we definitely needed to trim them better. The Roma vf were the worst I think most of them were only the size of an egg so cutting them is very tedious.

Work started back and it has been a crazy 3 weeks. Going to try and till the garden tomorrow before church. I have clover and a mix cover crop to try on areas that will not be in cultivation this fall. Fall garden will probably be 1/10 what the spring -summer garden covered.

San Marzano's are very productive, just the fruit size is smaller than Roma. Moisture content on San Marzano is very low, flavor is great, total pounds of tomatoes is probably equal to Roma's. More fruit just makes more work in processing.

I went all San Marzanos this year. Was 50/50 Roma.  Mine are larger and they produce more and longer as they are indeterminate.  

Nutrients wash out of starter pots fast.  Fertilize often with liquid. Huge difference in results.

Good news on the squash. Mine did great too tge deer thought they were awesome.

Peppers were crazy this year. Tomato’s did ok. Not sold on the Mr Stripey they were ok. Need a new tomato for the wife to can. She makes a lot of salsa and sauces. Squash beetles hit the zucchini hard last week pulled them. Ready to add all the compost I’ve made this summer from the rabbit pens and the chicken houses. Did potatoes in tubs and they didn’t make much this year but we just moved in so I don’t know how well the soil was. I need to get some garlic to plant this fall. Looking at starting a pretty big garden next year. And I can’t grow sweet corn to save my life

This was my fourth year trying sweet corn and finally got it. Sweet corn needs a ton of fertilizer and a lot of water. It really needs the water after silking

That's probably my problem. While I added compost to the soil, and more a couple of times later in the year, they never got to the silk stage. I did water them during our droughts, but maybe needed more. These were grown in buckets. I have yet to have successful sweet corn at home.

Tried red potatoes in buckets too. They were pretty small, about 1/2 dollar in size.

Tomatoes did OK, all roma's. Cukes were so-so, got 2 half gallon jars of pickles, wasted a lot of others.

Carrots are still going.

Onions were barely bigger than the sets.

Pumpkins and gourds didn't produce anything at all, except for one gourd that was already rotting. Got one small spaghetti squash.

The corn I hit with granular 10-10-10 twice and high nitrogen liquid fertilizer a couple times too. Ended up getting 2 ears off most plants, still could have used more water the first inch or two on some would be bad.

Cukes I finally had to just pull the plants. I must have picked 10 five gallon buckets from 7 plants.

Peppers are still producing. Jalapenos doing really good, my bells are producing but most are a little too small.

My best guess for tomatoes is close to 500#'s from 25 plants, with more coming! We way over planted them.

I processed and canned 10 qt jars of tomato sauce Monday and got them canned yesterday.    Took a while to cook down/reduce enough.   I had all four “ burners “ Going on the cooktop.  
Dug out some of my potatoes too.   Nice size to many of them, just not many per plant.
Pulled out all but a few of my onions to dry.   They didn’t get very big this year.
Second planting of sweet corn has been ready for about a week but I haven’t had a chance to cook some for myself in the evening to see how this variety is.  The ears are not as big around or girthy as the first planting.  
This coming weekend may be stuffed cabbage weekend.   Have a couple very nice heads that are ready to harvest.
Lots of nice hungarian hot peppers, not many other kinds Other than some nice looking cherry bomb hot peppers, and almost no bell peppers,   Very few blossoms all year.   Maybe started a bit too late?  My eggplants are the same way.   The plants look nicer than they have for several seasons, but no blossoms.   I did spray with need oil to keep the aphids at bay.  Also some Bt.

Had a Granny Smith apple tree fall over.   Loaded with apples.  Despite not being perfectly ripe, they made an excellent pie.   Nice tartness.  Will have to try to prune it back and see if I can get it up righted and saved once all the top heavyness is diminished.

My garden is still doing fairly well.

Butter beans are close as are sweet potatoes.  New carrots are up, Bok Choy is delicious, collards and Broccoli are growing, we're still getting a few tomatoes

and the Okra is tall.  I'm 5'7"

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Looks great, work has been killing me and now I am sick, so it looks like the fall garden is out for the year, but will still probably put in cover crops

Hope you feel better.

Hope it's not the "you know what"

Well, the sweet potato vines were taking over the world, so I trashed the vines and dug potatoes

I was afraid this was going to happen

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I got 5 mega taters, these were the two largest, and about 15 smaller potatoes

They are curing in my out building now

Awesome sweet potatoes.

I've started getting the raised beds ready for winter as the plants come to an end. Adding sphagnum moss, compost and alfalfa pellets before covering with mulch.

And a bump so this thread doesn't get archived.

I hope other folks will chime in about what they do to get their gardens ready for winter, Always good stuff to learn.

On that note, I tore apart a small raised bed that my wife planted fennel in. That stuff is invasive and will take over if given a chance.

I dug the soil out to the bottom of the blocks it's made from and then laid down 3 layers of cardboard (thanks for the boxes Amazon) then put down about a 2 inch layer of aged straw and wet it down well. Over that is going a mix of compost, sphagnum peat moss,manure and soil. Then it gets covered with a straw mulch for the winter.

One down, 5 to go.

Kitties, thanks for the offer. I would be glad to see it keep going. I am out till late winter/early spring with some English peas and potatoes.

Fall garden plans fell apart. Got bronchitis,  then covid, then bronchitis again. Finally starting to feel human again.

Yikes!  Hope you stay on the mend.

You should take some of your gardening inside... nice to pick a harvest in your slippers!

Some greens for today's lunch:


Turnips (who needs dirt for turnips?!?!) for curry later this week:


Carrots should be ready for the curry too:


These are my sweet potatoes - certainly not going to produce the tubers on the scale of yours, but I actually grow them for their leaves anyway...


New cucumber vine just starting to produce.  Usually I do these hydroponically, but I'm trying this vine in a grow bag instead...

I am doing better, still wheezy when I get too active and my stamina is junk, but better. Starting to think about next season.

I like the hydroponic set up. Are you using a reflective layer to boost the grow lights? I use to line the shelves in my seed starting shelves with mylar safety blankets and use florescent lights with good results.

Good to hear your doing better Billy

My garden is still producing.  I was getting a handful of Okra a day until it turned cooler.  We'll see

The Collards are doing great, in fact we're having a mess for dinner and a baked sweet potato from the garden

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My Bok Choy (third planting) is doing well and I planted more spinach and a short row of onions today

I'm running out of fall/winter ideas though, at some point I'll have to till it under to rest for winter I guess

I did the mylar blanket thing initially, but ultimately switched to tents.  

Here's my indoor veg garden in the temp location on the finished side of the basement... working on plumbing in the "unfinished" side and will be relocating then and expanding a bit more.  The drum is 55 gallons of premixed fertilizer with an on-demand pump.  Makes topping of containers a breeze.  Once relocated, I'll have freshwater supply too and a slop sink handy to clean containers, etc.

I believe so.

Looking at the seed companies online now, It is a disease.

Any shortages expected for next year?

Yes - the'res a whole garden tucked in them.  Those are "grow tents".  The interior is reflective, and the material is opaque, so no light spill other than through the air vents/ducting.

Two of the tents have NSF wet rated racks, giving me three shelves per tent, roughly 2' height per shelf - 24" depth and 6' or so wide.  Each shelf has an array of LED grow lights over it.  The other two tents I use for cukes, tomatoes and other plants that need the height/space, so no rack in them and just top mounted lighting.

I got 72 cloves of Inchelium Red garlic planted in a couple of small beds I'd set aside for the purpose. My wife had requested that I plant this type and I'm not going to argue with the cook.

There were a few small cloves that I didn't plant so she used one in a chicken dish and this variety has a really good flavor so I hope the crop does well.

Still working on getting raised beds prepped for winter and still have a dozen heads of cabbage finishing up. They are really enjoying the cooler weather and are looking good.

We had our first frost this morning

I didn't think it was that cold but when I looked at the back yard around 8am I saw something white on the grass

Yep frost

I went and touched it just to be sure

I'm not sure what the low was last night, but I think it was lower than forecast

It didn't seem to affect what I have left, the frost was on the lawn to the right of the garden

It's just a matter of time though

Microclimates are a thing, my garden spot runs cold compared to local forecast.

Eating butternut squash from the garden tonight, roasted. several months out they are still holding well.

Stored potatoes are getting rough, I'll try to use the last of them this week end.


Any insight into seed viability? I have a lot of seed left over and I hate to waste it.

I put seeds in baggies with a descant pack.  They are good for a year or two, but I'm not much for record keeping

Archaeologists have discovered viable seeds hundreds or thousands of years old so storage conditions are key

Moisture is a factor I think.  Dry is good, damp is rot

If you think about it, seeds propagate the species, whether it be animal or plant.  Life wants to live and reproduce

Seeds are survivors

Toss them in the salad mix.

We eat a LOT of salads - and prefer stronger mixes, so I'm always looking for something different - especially if it's easy to grow.

They aren't a remarkable flavor, but add nice texture and color.  

Some folks also use them like a cooked spinach but I haven't tried that yet.  I grow a lot of bok choi and other brassicas that fill that niche.

Do you eat leaves from kohlrabi,  broccoli or cauliflower?