official veggie gardener's thread

[BoomerD]

Uh...Marv, those don't look like bell peppers to me.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Turned most of my frozen anaheims into tamales. Unfortunately the peppers seem to have taken on a bit of a chemically/bitter taste. What's up with that? They were always fine fresh.

 

[Ms. DICKINSON]

Thai chilli plants

 

[DrPizza]

Took a while to find this thread - searched for garden and gardening in thread titles. Duh!

Got the garden growing. Tons of surprise squashes out on the manure piles. Might be hubbard, pink banana, acorn, buttercup, or a couple other varieties of squash. 75 tomato plants in. Half a dozen of them aren't what they're supposed to be, at least I don't think they are. They never grew very much, and are producing cherry tomatoes, except yellow ones. They're quite tasty. Harvested some cukes already, zucchini, yellow squash. Lots of tomatoes on the way. Planted a good variety of herbs, and my broccoli took off while I was on vacation. Put in a large strawberry patch as well, and a handful of other things like green peppers.

Planning on canning about 50 quarts of tomatoes and tomato sauce. Plus another 4 dozen or so pints of spaghetti sauce made with the herbs in the garden, and am going to try some pizza sauce as well.

Got a shitload of honey from my bees, and a large crop of blueberries very close to ready. I'm heading to the beer/wine supply store tomorrow to purchase the equipment for making a blueberry mead. (honey wine, with blueberries) Sounded pretty good to me. I might even get two 5 gallon carboys and make some plain mead as well.

The apple trees are loaded, this fall should bring gallons upon gallons of cider. I really need to learn how to preserve the cider to have throughout the year (other than by freezing it.) If one of the carboys is empty by that time, a few gallons of hard cider as well.

 

[BoomerD]

<sigh> No gardening for Boomer this year. Hopefully next year we'll be able to have a small garden in raised beds again.

 

[TraumaRN]

Have full garden once again in the suburbs. 5 kinds of potatoes, leeks, shallots, red onion, Dakota black popcorn, green beans, dinosaur kale, collard greens, cucumbers, 6 kinds of peppers, 6 kinds of tomatoes, cantaloupe, orange flesh watermelon, basil, oregano, thyme, sage, spinach, snap peas, 2 kinds of carrots, broccoli and celery.

Will make a half dozen quarts of pickles, 25 quarts of tomato sauce, I'll dry out a good amount of the peppers then grind them into chile powder. The rest will be consumed fresh.

 

[ponyo]

Our garden is doing really well. We have several varieties of cucumbers, peppers, squash, eggplant, lettuces, tomatoes/cherry, all kinds of herbs, sesame, sweet potatoes, beans, strawberries, cantaloupes, and watermelons. Some of the plants like romaine, red leaf lettuce, and basil have flowered already but we planted replacements. We have so many cucumbers that we already made several batches of pickle kimchi. And we're getting nonstop tomatoes, peppers, and sesame. It's our first garden in several years and it's fun. Wife is completely hooked and wants to double its size next year.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

Garden is a mixed bag this year. ripped out the raised beds and planted directly in the soil. I have Corn, Onions, Tomatoes, Pole Beans and some herbs. Cucumber plants all got eaten by the critters and i gave up on em.

Blight is slowly killing about half the tomatoes, but i have about a million green cherries, romas and regular sized tomatoes.

 

[leeland]

Just found squash vine borer in my garden...killing everything!

Yet another 'learning' experience on what to look for...G.D. moths!

 

[DrPizza]

Non-stop harvesting of zuchini squashes and yellow squashes. Not sure what variety they are, but we ended up with some cherry tomatoes that are golden, not red. And they're tart. I enjoy a small handful, but no more than that. The manure pile that I planted most of the rotted squashes in has been taken over by various types of squash. No clue what types yet, but the seeds were from acorn, butternut, buttercup, spaghetti, hubbard, and 2 or 3 other types of squashes. We're planning for next year: spread those piles out & plant even more. Each manure pile is probably enough to yield 10-20 bushels of squash

 

[NetWareHead]

Just harvested my first full sized tomatoes this week, although cherry tomatoes have been available in the garden for a few weeks already. I've been grabbing cucumbers for 2 weeks now. We also harvested our first eggplants too. I have high hopes for those as each plant is LOADED with small eggplants, much better than last year. Same with zucchini and squash. Have 2 big plants and those have been supplying me with about 2 per plant per week. I've harvested all my radishes ad lettuce already and going to plant another crop soon.

I also ran into he same problem where I had random squash and pumpkin growing everywhere in the garden. Its all because all my food waste goes to my compost. I allowed some zucchini to grow into long boats so I could harvest and hollow them out to make stuffed zucchini. The seeds went in the pile along with an entire pumpkin at the end of the season that was starting to rot. Apparently my pile did not get hot enough to fully compost the seeds because when that compost was spread on the garden before planting, later I had dozens of squash and pumpkins growing all over the place.

 

[ponyo]

Our cucumbers are almost done and so are most of the regular sized tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are still producing heavily as are the peppers. We pulled our squash plants. It just didn't produce like we wanted and were taking up space. Our focus is now on watermelons and cantaloupes. The melons are growing like weed and getting big. I think several early ones will be ready in a week or two.

 

[DrPizza]

Our cucumbers are almost done and so are most of the regular sized tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are still producing heavily as are the peppers. We pulled our squash plants. It just didn't produce like we wanted and were taking up space. Our focus is now on watermelons and cantaloupes. The melons are growing like weed and getting big. I think several early ones will be ready in a week or two.

That's weird that your regular tomatoes are "done." Not sure where you are, but here (NY), we have regular sized tomatoes non-stop from the time they first start reaching maturity until the first frost hard enough to kill the plants.