Well deweeded the garden and tilled. Finally getting it back in shape from 2 weeks of not being able to with all the moisture that was falling. I'm really happy how well my onions are doing this year.
All my vine squash and melons are still recovering from the cold that persisted so long even just at night. I'll have zucchini any day now and surprisingly tomatoes weren't too much affected by the cold at all. Cold advantage: I have peas - almost 8 feet tall. Usually I have peas, then strawberries to pick. This year both at the same time. I gave up on onions and corn a long time ago. I was going to try some potatoes this year but I had two dozen extra peppers given to me and they took that space. They're not doing too much either, I hope they are stretching their legs and will take off any day now. Usually the day lilies that grow wild here bloom on or a day or two before Summer solstice. The buds are just starting to show color. I've never seen them and the peonies so late. Lost all of the butterfly bushes and figs above ground, too. Some sprouts coming up though. zucchini almost greens, some cukes and more peppers and some white eggplant
Here's a quick sunset shot of our garden. We have about 4000' tilled up. Lots of vegetable varieties. We are currently eating peas (we pickled some! They are amazing), spinach, lettuce, onions, lots of herbs, hot peppers, zucchini and yellow squash. There are lots of others getting really close. This is our first year at this house. We stripped 2.5" of sod and then spread ~15 tons of worm castings and tilled. Everything is doing great! This thread has been veggie porn for me!
Wow Beet. I see you're 25 and putting in big gardens... prepping 3 years of firewood... man, when I think what I was doing at that age... Good for you. Very cool... really glad you found this forum...
That's a very nice garden Beet! Keep them pictures coming, it's fun watching what areas of the US are just getting into certain plants and others are going out. Love your chickens too.
I somehow became unsubscribed from this thread. We've got some pretty big tomatoes (season starters) but they haven't started ripening yet. All the peppers I started from seed have caught up to the store bought ones, and for the most part the garden is doing good. Oh, and my tomatillos look great! (The tomatillos and peppers are MY plants).
Lost a couple tomatoes but that isn't a big deal. All of the plants I bought from a local greenhouse aren't doing squat. Won't go there again. Otherwise, all that rain is now working it's magic.
Hit them with some fish emulsion fertilizer or compost tea. I do that once a month. Things appreciate it. Especially if they are lacking nutrients.
I used bone meal this year for the first time. Some plants are doing well, others no. My container plants are doing the best.
Most people are concerned with rabbits, deer, etc. cleaning out their gardens. My biggest nemesis this year is the GD bugs!! The Japanese beetles are bad right now, along with the earwigs. Stinkbugs not too bad yet.
There is the easy way out with something like Sevin. however, that is toxic to good insects, birds, and bees etc. Best I have seen is Captain Jacks bug brew. Use at the end of the day to avoid killing bees. Not harmful to bees after 3 hrs. of application. it is a little slow, but the next day you will see most of your bug issue gone. Other options are BT for those Japanese beetles. don't use beetle traps near your garden as it attracts them by the hundreds. another option is insecticidal soap. All the high potent commercial pesticides and herbicides are catching up with us. Friendly bugs and bees etc are also being destroyed and the result is poor crop pollination and loss of natural predatory insects.
Pretty brave, or stupid moose... to be eating vegs out of a garden owned by a guy who goes into bear country to kill & eat... moose... How'd they like your freezer?
I was out of town last week and nearly everything in my garden doubled in size. No exaggeration. Picking green beans...cherry tomatoes...squash and zucs now. Corn is tasseled...cucs coming on strong.
I may have had some luck with the pheromone traps as the last two or three years I haven't had any Japanese beetles but more of the oriental/asian beetle (brown) and much less of them. Took quite a few years of hanging lots of traps, likely culling the population not just in my yard but the neighbors as well. I had so many to begin with the buggers found the previous years' traps put away in a box in the shed. We've only had 2/10 rain in the last two+ weeks and lawns are turning brown/plants yellowing leaves, so I'm spending the weekend setting up drip tubes as trying to get an inch or two of water down with a wand is too time consuming. With 30-35 PSI water the usual impact sprayers and drip tubes don't work. Hopefully I can split some pine while the timer waters ......
I'm glad I didn't bother planting anything. This odd weather we have had has even caused my lawn to barely grow. Usually it grows darn near a foot a week. I cut it today after 1.5 weeks of growth and i chopped off maybe 2-3" of growth. Even all the spruce trees I planted last year are barely hanging on.
