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i used a butternut squash and my pole dry beans to make 'three sisters soup' a couple of days ago. i used beef broth base and used sweet corn instead of hominy and added some left over rice. it was outstanding..one of the best things i ever had to be honest. in future i want to use the wild rice blend and hominy.


before rains arrived today i was out early and tilled and planted a patch of heirloom sweet corn 'who gets kissed'. it set in raining while i finished. i hope it tastes good and does well to get my sweet corn seed stock filled up. these seed prices are awful...seed sovereignty !
 
20x52 hoop house is finished.It's now being filled with peppers and tomatoes.
50 pounds of potatoes are going in.
1 pound of sweet corn will be rolled in this week.
We planted a thousand glads and have 600 dahlias going in.
planted 100 asparagus and a 100 strawberries.
Many more things in and going in.
Not bad for 2 retired people with no help.

what kind of potatoes and sweet corn you planting....heck maters and peppers too...?

i have several types of tomatoes...yellow brandy wine,Cherokee purple,better boy,parks whopper improved. later i will have my jerusalem tomatoes i been breeding for close to 30 years now..its an oxheart type tomato.

i have kennebec taters mostly. but fingerlings i have purple,french red fingerling and makah tribe fingerling. i need more to finish out area and just refused to pay the higher prices seed potatoes are bring here..i got a 50# bag for $23 but they all were huge so even though i cut them up with a couple of eyes they just didnt plant total foot length the bag did last year of smaller potatoes. so i needed enough to plant another row and half. i wasnt going to pay $50 for 50# at one place and $37 at another. so instead i had saved back any and all damaged potatoes from vole damage mostly last season. i had a half bushel basket and bottom of walmart bag filled with very small potatoes. only thing is these were mixed between kennebec and dakota pearl. i wasnt going to plant dakotas again they just dont get the size kennebec does but economics over ruled that thought...lol
 
It's pouring here....I can see the weeds grow in the garden all the way from the house....

About done planting, just have pumpkins left to get in the ground ( seeds)

I discovered today that my Myer lemon tree has thorns on it. I hope they sent me the right tree. DIdn't know lemons had thorns.
 
It's pouring here....I can see the weeds grow in the garden all the way from the house....

About done planting, just have pumpkins left to get in the ground ( seeds)

I discovered today that my Myer lemon tree has thorns on it. I hope they sent me the right tree. DIdn't know lemons had thorns.
Some have thorns, some are thornless.
 
Unfortunately due to the 'rona, our garden has not progressed to much further. Dad has been weeding the containers of tomatoes and peppers. I did manage to get two 12' rows of carrots, 2 rows of beets, 1/2 row of lima beans and 1/2 row of great northerns planted. Also a small raised bed planted with Provider green beans. The beds for the main crops of green beans are still waiting for their new dirt but neither of us has the strength to start doing that. We've also been having some decent amounts of rain which has certainly helped us since with tote water from the rain barrels.

We've definately turned the corner on not feeling well--Dad spent most of yesterday puttering around the backyard yesterday and I'm heading back to work today (at least for half a day).
 
what kind of potatoes and sweet corn you planting....heck maters and peppers too...?

i have several types of tomatoes...yellow brandy wine,Cherokee purple,better boy,parks whopper improved. later i will have my jerusalem tomatoes i been breeding for close to 30 years now..its an oxheart type tomato.

i have kennebec taters mostly. but fingerlings i have purple,french red fingerling and makah tribe fingerling. i need more to finish out area and just refused to pay the higher prices seed potatoes are bring here..i got a 50# bag for $23 but they all were huge so even though i cut them up with a couple of eyes they just didnt plant total foot length the bag did last year of smaller potatoes. so i needed enough to plant another row and half. i wasnt going to pay $50 for 50# at one place and $37 at another. so instead i had saved back any and all damaged potatoes from vole damage mostly last season. i had a half bushel basket and bottom of walmart bag filled with very small potatoes. only thing is these were mixed between kennebec and dakota pearl. i wasnt going to plant dakotas again they just dont get the size kennebec does but economics over ruled that thought...lol
taters are katahdin
peppers are king of the north, early jalapeno, cherry, sweet banana and carrot bomb.
corn is cappuccino from fedco. it has a big stalk and stands up to wind. grows great.
maters are Amish paste my all round fave, roma, sweet one hundred, san marzano, pozzano, big dina, super sauce, and others.
 
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Unfortunately due to the 'rona, our garden has not progressed to much further. Dad has been weeding the containers of tomatoes and peppers. I did manage to get two 12' rows of carrots, 2 rows of beets, 1/2 row of lima beans and 1/2 row of great northerns planted. Also a small raised bed planted with Provider green beans. The beds for the main crops of green beans are still waiting for their new dirt but neither of us has the strength to start doing that. We've also been having some decent amounts of rain which has certainly helped us since with tote water from the rain barrels.

We've definately turned the corner on not feeling well--Dad spent most of yesterday puttering around the backyard yesterday and I'm heading back to work today (at least for half a day).
Glad you're feeling better!!!

We had a good rain, actually a pelting rain, last evening but things look pretty good this morning. It's supposed to be warm the next 3 days so hoping some of those little plantlings stretch a little.
 
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I got out and put up all my tomato cages till the dark stopped me.
Tomorrow morning I will put up the supports for my pole beans, I'm planning on 21 supports with an extra brace every 4 feet.
I am thinking of using containers for the sweet potatoes, I have 3 containers that should be a good match and then place tomato cages in them to let the vines grow up.

I am considering trying to start some more in the fall and let them take over the inside of one of my raised beds that has a lid as a from of useful weed control. I will need to do some research on the frost tolerance of sweet potatoes before I make a commitment. After reading a bit it looks like sweet potatoes may not handle our winters here, but I might be able to get a second crop with a harvest around December (before the temperatures get really cold).
 
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I got the OK to put a smallish squash/watermelon mound in, corner of the lot near an ornamental hemlock, 30’ tall or so. I trimmed some lower branches and the spot gets almost full day sun! Luckily, it was 10’ away from where the composter is, so I dragged it over. It was chuck full from two years of stuff! Sheesh, it was heavy. Likely did not help that I watered it a few days before as it was a mite dry. Yeah, live and learn.

What a pain to get all the compost out. Dig at it with a 4-tined fork, rolled some out, dug at it a bit more, rolled some out.. There just is not a convenient way to get a shovel or anything in that small opening. Composter is functionally excellent, operationally failure I guess! 😊

Anywho… Product was absolutely beautiful. Hardly a smell to it, only because of some more recent stuff I had been adding.

I dug what I could around the hemlock roots and ended up just building up from there, so mostly a pile of compost in a slight depression. 😊 This was my solution for gardening on a slope, you can see it drops right off there. I used the 2” branches I cut to form a ‘dam’ on the lower side, to hold it all back and covered it with the smaller branches from what I cut. They will brown as they die this summer and I can cover them with some triple shredded hardwood mulch so it has curb appeal to the neighbors. They actually liked the wall thing I built, thought it looked ‘rustic’ lol! I figure it will take a few years to settle in and will end up just a nice mound type thing for planting. 3 squash and 2 watermelon in it for this year. Tons of room for the watermelon to spread out there. If they fail, we can try pumpkins next year.

First pic is a view of the corner, composter hiding spot and the new mound is the dark spot just to the left.

Second pic is the mount itself. Likely it will expand in a few years as I add more stuff to it.

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We are def into garden weather here in the tropics....coming into winter.

No garden for me...AT ALL.
Looking at your gardens is bitter sweet but I do enjoy looking and reading about your gardens.
It does give me a lot of angst knowing what is unfolding globally.
I grew and have grown and know how to grow a lot of food on a town sized block.
You can't argue with the old school Italian heritage on one side and the Dutch side giving first hand accounts of the famine in Europe during and after WWII.
The whole family on both sides are extremely focused on food production, storage, collection in various forms.

ATM.....I know God doesn't approve of gambling but I'm praying to win a lottery..or be lifted out of this current situation and some how, some way put on a farm of my own so what I grow, sow and plant can't be ripped away from me again.
 
We are def into garden weather here in the tropics....coming into winter.

No garden for me...AT ALL.
Looking at your gardens is bitter sweet but I do enjoy looking and reading about your gardens.
It does give me a lot of angst knowing what is unfolding globally.
I grew and have grown and know how to grow a lot of food on a town sized block.
You can't argue with the old school Italian heritage on one side and the Dutch side giving first hand accounts of the famine in Europe during and after WWII.
The whole family on both sides are extremely focused on food production, storage, collection in various forms.

ATM.....I know God doesn't approve of gambling but I'm praying to win a lottery..or be lifted out of this current situation and some how, some way put on a farm of my own so what I grow, sow and plant can't be ripped away from me again.
TG, I'm not sure whether to put the grumpy face, the lovey face, or the agree sign. I'm praying for you too 😊 Can't believe they did what they did 😡 Love that you are stubborn and positive and focused on food preservation 😍 and agree you should win a lottery so you can have your own place :I agree: If it's any consolation or encouragement, I buy a lotto ticket on Friday the 13th. I figure if God wants me to win, He'll let me. I might as well have a good story to go along with it. (Except I forgot last Fri. - shucks.)
 
Got my first jalpeno tonight and a few more green onions.
We pulled one garlic plant last week. It was too early which I figured, but I wanted to check and see. I had damaged it a little anyway installing the cow panel for my maters. Wife cut it up to cook something. Smell and flavor was good, but it hadn't formed the little cloves yet. Got a while to go yet.
 
Today, I pulled a red onion, it was trying to flower, it was small but it had a sweet taste. I harvested some more tomatoes today, just little salad type about the size of small plums. I did get the supports for the pole beans installed, 1 thing down. I am still fussing over the sweet potatoes, I think I am going to plant them in containers above my water barrels. I got all the supports in for my canning tomatoes last night, they are now about a foot high. Tonight before supper we put up all the spinach that was pulled the other day, now there is more than 10 pounds of frozen spinach put up. I harvested romaine leaves this morning and the wife made a salad using carrots, cucumbers, 3 types of lettuce, and spinach, we will be eating on that for a few days... It's hard to believe that it's almost June, reminds me I need to get my okra started.

I am excited that the corn finally came up and the pole beans already have them surrounded, the sugar peas look nice and the grapes look great.

The netted area seems to keep the bugs out, but it keeps catching doves... I keep telling them that they are not in season yet.... Speaking of that area, I now have celery that is over a foot high; just the ones from last year, this years plantings are only about 6" high.

I have about 2 weeks worth of work that I need to do in the garden, but I think I will have to settle for a long weekend....
 
My broccoli has little heads. This is an accomplishment. The last few years I had purchased my broccoli plants and never got a head. This year, I started mine from seed and grew out some nice little plants. They haven't gotten large and the heads are lilliputian, but I grew them from seed. Actually, all the plants I started from seed are looking real good. It's been very cool here. I'm not complaining because it's saving me on the A/C bill.

Dad got the last of my raised beds topped off with the big yellow bag soil. Tomorrow it'll be leveled off and planted with green beans and pickling cucumbers.
 
Wow you all are harvesting already! Our plants are looking good, but young.
I picked enough for a very modest first salad this evening. Also, either the beets are sprouting or the weeds are plotting against me and growing in rows so I don't pull them. Around here, it's a 50/50 shot.
 
Johnson grass is hard to get out of a bed, but it can be done.
I got old sawdust from a closed mill & ended up with ten weeds I never seen before & Johnson grass, so every Saturday I pulled it up until it never came back.
 
Johnson grass is hard to get out of a bed, but it can be done.
I got old sawdust from a closed mill & ended up with ten weeds I never seen before & Johnson grass, so every Saturday I pulled it up until it never came back.
I'm pulling it from my new beds as soon as I see it. Figure easier to do that than fight it after it gets established
 
So yesterday I started having stomach issues at work and after over two hours I decided to just go home. I rested for a bit there until I felt better then I got to work in the garden. Prepped both beds and got all my tomato and eggplants seedlings in the ground. Ended up with 17 tomatoes (one seedling had weirdly shaped leaves so that one went in the weed bucket) and 12 eggplant (the last seed sprouted late but seems healthy). Staked all the tomatoes but eggplants are still too small. Then I put up my ladder trellis and planted my cucumber seeds and succession planted some more lettuce and spinach.

Today after work I'll get my two pepper seedlings and the last of my micro tomatoes into containers. Then I need to finish weeding the raspberry bed. And plant more beets. It's supposed to rain this weekend, we need it but I wish it would rain during the week.
:rolleyes:
 
I'm pulling it from my new beds as soon as I see it. Figure easier to do that than fight it after it gets established
I had Smart Weed ride in with some rye seed 4 years ago. It is a horrible battle in the garden. I love how it feels when you pull it though. The stems are stiff and come out of the ground easily when it is wet. Also have Bermuda that came in on the undercarriage of my lawn guys mower. It is in my berry patch.
 

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