Forums >Off the Beaten Path>2011 Gardening Thread
Feeling the growl again
I was a bit heartbroken tonight. I went to check on my 2 fruiting peach trees, which 4 days ago were loaded when I strung them with dripper hoses to make sure they had enough water to fill out the fruit in this bad drought. Last year I got 1 tree of good peaches, and the other failed mid-ripening due to lack of water and dropped its leaves months early so I didn't want to risk damaging the trees.
Well, the trees are just fine. However, they could not keep up water delivery to the peaches with the heat -- we are now 2 days over the prior record for 90+deg days set during the Dust Bowl -- and over half of them had turned to raisins on the trees since Tuesday. I only got enough to cover the bottom of a crisper drawer in the fridge 1 layer deep. I had thought I'd be canning peaches half of tomorrow afternoon.
On the plus side, my vineyard is doing wonderfully. I estimate a week or so until the Marachel Foch is ready to go into wine, and another week or so on the Cayuga White. I've been eating the table grapes in large amounts all week now.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
Prince of Fatness
That sucks about those peaches. It's been hot here too, but we've had quite a bit of rain lately. I am back to mowing the lawn once a week again.
I dug up all of my russet potatoes over the weekend. The yield was not nearly as good as the yukons. Weird. I still have some red pontiacs that I need to dig up. This weekend or next.
The tomatoes are going nuts. It's hard to keep up with them once they get going.
Still no zucchini. Hopefully soon. Pumpkins plants are starting to spread. I started some more zucchini and yellow squash seeds. Hopefully I'll get some out of them before we get frost.
Potato beer will be bottled tomorrow. It should be ready to sample in a couple of weeks.
Not at it at all.
Ditto on the tomatoes. I pick about 8 a day now. Some go to work, some the neighbors. But, the family is starting to tire of salsa and bruschetta. However, DW is going to a party on Thursday night, so she can take some of both.
I made some rockin' sauce, including about 5 tomatoes, but I also used canned crushed, diced, and paste. Also onions, garlic, carrots, and red wine. Simmered for over 2 hours. Stuck that into the freezer. I'll probably do more. It's not going to go bad.
Oh, and used the toms and basil from the garden for a nice flat bread pizza on the grill. Had to make two of them. After the first one, they wanted more. :-)
As for the peppers...there are two. I have 4 plants, and all I have is 2 peppers so far, and their not even ready yet. Very annoyed.
The jalapenos though, I made some hot sauce with them.
The cukes finally started to produce. Price-wise, if that's anything to go by, I've broken even. But, there are a lot more there. The leaves on the plants though are brown and yellow now. Guess they don't live long. I've watered them plenty, and they have good drainage.
Lettuce...one harvest, the variety was too bitter. Bleah. Beans, useless. Broccoli, eaten by someone. Although I'll try another broccoli planting, and maybe lettuce (a less bitter variety), early September.
Jeff
I'm resurrecting this thread!
Mostly because of questions, but I also have to brag a little.
Cukes...they've run their course. The last one I tried tasted metallic. It was left on the vine too long. They've been pretty much dead for a month. I'll do them again next year, but, overall, they ended up odd. Weird shapes, odd colors.
Beans...worthless. Waste of garden space.
Lettuce...I chose a variety that was very bitter. Didn't pay too much attention to it, it went to seed. Tasted crappy anyway.
Broccoli. Don't know what happened there. Someone ate it, I think.
Sweet Peppers...out of the 4 plants I had, I got 5 peppers. One green, two purple, and two white. That's it. Failure. I don't understand this, because other years I have had LOTS.
Habaneros. Got *ONE* habanero. One. What the hell? Same deal. One year I got lots from a plant.
Jalapenos. Did rather well with these. Still producing.
Beefsteak Tomatoes. Got 3 nice ones. 3. That's it. Pathetic. And one of them fell off the vine during Hurricane Irene.
Early Girl Tomatoes. Got 3 so far. Pretty pathetic. Just like above. 3. Are you kidding me?
Romas. Ah, the Romas....they produced, and produced, and produced, and are still producing. I am giving them away. Making sauce. Making salsa. Making bruschetta. I'm picking 3 or 4 a day. If we have frost free nights and nice sunny days, I'll have them plenty into October. I'm very happy with the plum tomatoes.
OK....here's my question(s):
Should I take the spent plants and turn them into my garden? Will they have seeds that will be my nemesis next year? Or should I put the plants in my compost? Or should I just throw them out? I have read that the heat in compost will kill seeds, but, that's only valid if your compost is working correctly. I'm not sure mine is generating heat.
Also, I'm in South Jersey...what are my chances on planting another crop of lettuce right now...like, today? We probably won't have frost for another month (although it got down into the 40s last night). Any ideas? Not sure it's really a big deal, it's just a pack of seeds.
Also, thinking about expanding a little. But, not sure what to plant. I mean, almost half of my garden was a waste this year (lettuce, broc, peppers, beans). there is a limit to how many tomatoes you can have. Maybe I should learn to can, but it scares me a little. Definitely want to do potatoes next year. How much space does that take for a decent yield?
John
Up here in MA with a somewhat shaded garden space, the only tomatoes I ever have luck with a the tiny grape tomatoes. Happily the taste great. Too bad I planted them too late to get a decent yield.
Other stuff did better after I fenced out the groundhogs.
Lettuce did OK. Green leave style not well at all. Red leave lettuce did fine.
I planted seeds from a packet that said cucumbers and most of them ended up being delacata squash and butternut squash. Got some of all 3 but cucumbers are what oi wanted.
Kale did great. It always does well. I often think I could get in a 2nd crop since it is a cold weather plant, it will even withstand a frost.
Peas - disaster. Groundhogs got them early and a 2nd crop did not do much.
Green beans did great. One of my best yield ever and my wife likes them!
Yellow beets are doing OK. We have eaten some and there are more in the ground. I like yellow beets more than red because there is less staining and I think they are a bit sweeter.
I don't do broccoli anymore. If anything comes up, the aphids get to it before I do. Not worth the effort.
I always put spent plants in my compost. It does not heat up enough to kill the seeds so I always get odd tomato plans growing where I did not plant them. Just pull them up like any other weed.
South Jersey is warmer than up here but I still think you pushing your luck to put lettuce seeds in the ground now. On he other hand you don't have anything to lose. Put them in the ground and hope. Another option is to build a cold frame and plant lettuce in there. You can almost always find left over windows when someone replaces their old ones with better inserts. You can even have lettuce growing after it snows as long as you cover the cold frame with a blanket on cold, frosty nights. I am a terrible carpenter though, so I have not attempted this yet.
If I was expanding my garden, I would look into putting in carrots, especially red, purple, or white ones. They look great and taster good.
You did not list beets. I highly recommend them. Same for kale, a highly underrated veggie. Kale has a strong taste though. I am happy to just steam it. My wife likes it better cooked in something else - maybe tomatoes. She would probably like it stir fried too.
Then there are radishes, not the little dinky red ones, the big, long, hulky ones. They are great. I like to cut them up small and add them to bean salads - especially chickpea salads. They are also good shredded into long thin slices (spiral cut is great but I don't know how to do that). Add a bit of salt and eat them while drinking a beer. Yummy! My soil is too shallow and rocky for these, maybe you have a deeper garden.
If you want to do potatoes, give them a shot. If they don't meet your expectations, don't do them again.
Where do you get your seeds? I have been using Seeds of Change. Works well ordering them on line and I like them better than the Burpee things. There are probably other good online options too.
Let us know what you do with your lettuce seeds!
John www.wickedrunningclub.com
In the beginning, the universe was created.This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
--- Douglas Adams, in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
Up here in MA with a somewhat shaded garden space, the only tomatoes I ever have luck with a the tiny grape tomatoes. Happily the taste great. Too bad I planted them too late to get a decent yield. <snip> Let us know what you do with your lettuce seeds!
Yeah, MA would suck for the growing season. I really enjoy the tomatoes. This is the first time I've had a garden in years.
Carrots...maybe. I've done them before, and they've done OK. We actually used to have a "family tradition". We would plant carrots in May, and just ignore them. Being a root vegetable, they lasted forever. We would actually dig them up on Christmas Eve and spread them on the deck for the reindeer to eat (you know Santa and all)...but, my youngest is 13 now, so, that ship has sailed. It was fun, though, while it was going on.
Beets...well, I'd probably like them, but, I'm the only one. Kale. Not a fan. Too bitter. Radish. I don't like them either. Maybe the milder ones like daikon. Hmmm. That might be an idea.
Broccoli, this is the second time I've tried. The first time, I had some awesome stalks, I was about two days from harvesting, then something (some green worm) ate them all up. Damn! This time...as soon as they came up something ate them. Grrr.
My seeds? I just bought them at the local hardware store. They were all Burpees. However, my cukes and the jalapenos, I bought as plants from bonnie. http://Bonnieplants.com/ The plants were like 2 or 3 dollars a piece. I can handle that.
I think I'm most disappointed in the sweet peppers. Maybe I'll start from plant next year. The Bonnies again. Dunno.
Aww - you gotta give yellow beets a try. They re sweeter than the red ones, they fry up really well with a bit of oil and a touch of salt. Be sure to include the greens. I think your family would like them if they just give them a try. There are some varieties than can grow to 3 lbs per plant.
Beets...well, I'd probably like them, but, I'm the only one.
Yoda the 4-eared cat
I'm resurrecting this thread! Mostly because of questions, but I also have to brag a little. Cukes...they've run their course. The last one I tried tasted metallic. It was left on the vine too long. They've been pretty much dead for a month. I'll do them again next year, but, overall, they ended up odd. Weird shapes, odd colors. Beans...worthless. Waste of garden space. Lettuce...I chose a variety that was very bitter. Didn't pay too much attention to it, it went to seed. Tasted crappy anyway. Broccoli. Don't know what happened there. Someone ate it, I think. Sweet Peppers...out of the 4 plants I had, I got 5 peppers. One green, two purple, and two white. That's it. Failure. I don't understand this, because other years I have had LOTS. Habaneros. Got *ONE* habanero. One. What the hell? Same deal. One year I got lots from a plant. Jalapenos. Did rather well with these. Still producing. Beefsteak Tomatoes. Got 3 nice ones. 3. That's it. Pathetic. And one of them fell off the vine during Hurricane Irene. Early Girl Tomatoes. Got 3 so far. Pretty pathetic. Just like above. 3. Are you kidding me? Romas. Ah, the Romas....they produced, and produced, and produced, and are still producing. I am giving them away. Making sauce. Making salsa. Making bruschetta. I'm picking 3 or 4 a day. If we have frost free nights and nice sunny days, I'll have them plenty into October. I'm very happy with the plum tomatoes. OK....here's my question(s): Should I take the spent plants and turn them into my garden? Will they have seeds that will be my nemesis next year? Or should I put the plants in my compost? Or should I just throw them out? I have read that the heat in compost will kill seeds, but, that's only valid if your compost is working correctly. I'm not sure mine is generating heat. Also, I'm in South Jersey...what are my chances on planting another crop of lettuce right now...like, today? We probably won't have frost for another month (although it got down into the 40s last night). Any ideas? Not sure it's really a big deal, it's just a pack of seeds. Also, thinking about expanding a little. But, not sure what to plant. I mean, almost half of my garden was a waste this year (lettuce, broc, peppers, beans). there is a limit to how many tomatoes you can have. Maybe I should learn to can, but it scares me a little. Definitely want to do potatoes next year. How much space does that take for a decent yield?
My two cents:
1. For spent plants, do what you want, compost or dig into the ground. A few feral plants growing out of the ground next season is no big deal and, depending on the plant, can always be transplanted to a useful place.
2. I'm guessing that your climate is about the same as mine (Dijon in France), maybe a bit shorter growing season. Either way, there are very cold-resistant varieties of lettuce that can stand frosts. I tried one last year. Plant them now and you might have young leaves that you can harvest before winter, or young plants that will survive the winter and take off in spring for a very early harvest (that's what I did by planting in October). Cover them with a plastic tunnel to keep off the snow, but they will stay alive over winter, although they won't grow very much at all from November to February. PS. Bitter leaves is a sign they might have been affected by a hot summer. Lettuces don't really light very hot weather.
3. Potatoes take up a lot of space depending on how many you plant, I tend to underestimate and get annoyed with myself halfway through the season. I wouldn't give up on stuff that has failed once (I'm prepared to try three times before calling it quits). Not knowing your experience level, try buying a 'how to garden' type book to see if there are any obvious mistakes you are making or give more detail about what went wrong and ask on any gardening forums (or here). There are lots of things that can go wrong but most problems have surprisingly simple solutions.
With all of the wet weather we had my garden went to pot. When I had time to pick vegetables, or weed, it was raining. I had plenty of tomatoes but didn't pick many of them. This past weekend I harvested the pumpkins and pulled everything out. Surprisingly the pumpkins did really well, although they did not have enough time to ripen since I planted a little too late. So I have nice big green pumpkins.
All that is left is top dress the garden with some finished compost, and wait for spring.
Definitely want to do potatoes next year. How much space does that take for a decent yield?
Well, they don't vine so where you plant them is basically where they will be. I plant them in rows a little more than a foot apart. Yield is hit or miss. Depends on the variety as well as the weather conditions. I'd buy a couple of pounds of seed potatoes and give it a try. A variety that I have had success with over the years are red pontiacs. They are a late variety and the yield is always pretty good. Agway should have them. I suspect that you should be able to get seed potatoes where you live in mid March. Check with Agway early March.
Red Pontiacs, I plant them one long stride apart. Years when we don't get a bad drought and I don't let the weeds take over too soon, I get loads of them. This year, eh. Both of the above conditions applied.
The worse problem I have is time to keep the weeds out. My open garden, despite tilling it well I never had time to get in and hoe/pick close to the plants and the weeds I missed inside the corn rows ended up taller than the corn. Combined with the drought ruining germination, by the time I got the weeds cut out the yield was almost nothing.
None of my squash even germinated. The pumpkins all seem to have given up due to the drought, what few I had setting died 6-8 weeks ago.
The peas did ok, what few we planted. The jalapeno plant is still going great. The cukes did great. My grapes knocked it out.
My tomatoes were a failed experiment. We wanted them in our new kitchen garden right by the house. Since space was a premium I planted them too close together, and also where they got shade part of the day. Apparently the combination was bad, not only did they only produce tomatoes on the periphery of the patch but not many for the volume of plant. I've planted 3 plants with no cages/staking, allowed to sprawl, in our regular garden and gotten 1-2 grocery bags/week of tomatoes; this year, I only got 8-10 tomatoes/week.
Orchard was a joke. One apple. One Asian pear. Tons of peaches, but most of them shriveled up in the heat days before reaching ripeness.
Sigh. Second rough year for the gardening in a row.
With all of the wet weather we had my garden went to pot. When I had time to pick vegetables, or weed, it was raining. I had plenty of tomatoes but didn't pick many of them. This past weekend I harvested the pumpkins and pulled everything out. Surprisingly the pumpkins did really well, although they did not have enough time to ripen since I planted a little too late. So I have nice big green pumpkins. All that is left is top dress the garden with some finished compost, and wait for spring.
Same here, sort of, The tomatoes have survived the hurricane, the tropical storm, and all the additional rain. There are LOTS of green tomatoes on my plants. However, they're not turning because there has been no sun. I probably have 50 more tomatoes at this point.
I'm thinking of pulling out everything but the tomatoes on the weekend.
OK, one stride apart. That's a lot for my little 5 x 9 garden. I'll have to expand.
Oh, a few more things my gardening friends.
How many (assuming no bumper crop and no drought) would you get for one plant? And, also, once you dig up a plant, it's gone, right? I mean, it's not like an above ground plant that keeps on producing...
Or am I wrong?
We tried closer, like 18 inches, but we got a lower yield overall because the plants competed too much with each other.
As for yield, maybe half a doze good-sized potatoes per plant, a couple additional smaller ones in a good year? Yield is really going to depend on soil and growing conditions. This year was hard on them, I'm only getting 4-5 small ones per plant, less than half the yield by volume as in an average year.