BYC gardening thread!!

[lizardandchicks]

Thank you, that does help a lot.

 

[hippiestink]

Beans keep putting out and the corn tassels are going dark. Melons are forming and my Proboscidea louisianica are beginning to put out their okra-like fruit. Tomatoes are beginning to redden.

How's everyone else's plants doing?

 

[RichnSteph]

Okra is so tough we can't eat it, the green beans are dead, cantaloupe fruit is rotten inside even when it looks great on the outside and the chickens dug up everything else except the watermelon vine which is hiding in our aquaponics pond..... and that's just the dirt garden we have. The AP system is a complete wreck....


This fall I'm planting cold season crops in the AP system. Next spring I'm hauling in a half ton of mushroom farm tailings (used soil) and planting all our high nutrient consumers (peppers, tomatoes, etc..) in there and using the AP for leafy greens and herbs until I can get the nutrient input/output stable.

The next garden will be epic!

 

[hennible]

Yes the next garden will be epic... I feel you, slugs everywhere totally destroying my tomatoes, flea beetles outside messy up a bunch of crops... Greenhouse over crowded (duh) so not producing as well as it should... I want to rip it all out and get outside prepped for spring and the greenhouse prepped for fall crops... Also still don't have the new greenhouses up or the sites prepped... And it feels like September here?

 

[Bugseye]

Never give up! I tell myself that. I'm getting mediocre outputs from most everything. The tomatoes are coming along, slowly. There's nothing to be done about how the sunlight falls on my patch, and I can't move it either. I'm collecting 3-4 green beans a day, and a pea pod here and there. The slugs have made a comeback, and I'm after them again. The lettuce looks good, if I can keep the rodents off (slugs too). I haven't used the kale yet, but it's waiting. There are a couple of good-sized heads of cabbage, and I've harvested broccoli. The cauliflower, though, hasn't produced anything but leaves. Still so much to figure out!

 

[MeepBeep]

Never give up! I tell myself that. I'm getting mediocre outputs from most everything. The tomatoes are coming along, slowly. There's nothing to be done about how the sunlight falls on my patch, and I can't move it either. I'm collecting 3-4 green beans a day, and a pea pod here and there. The slugs have made a comeback, and I'm after them again. The lettuce looks good, if I can keep the rodents off (slugs too). I haven't used the kale yet, but it's waiting. There are a couple of good-sized heads of cabbage, and I've harvested broccoli. The cauliflower, though, hasn't produced anything but leaves. Still so much to figure out!

Our garden went in late but our tomatoes are coming along just fine... Our green, yellow and purple string beans are done with a new fall batch planted, we got huge production out of them... Same with peas they are done and replanted, and we had huge production from them... Our purple hull peas just exploded over the weekend, we will have a good harvest of them as well later this week or next... Lettuce is another big producer, it's growing so well we have thinned out about half of it and fed the entire plant to the chickens... Beets are done for the season, they too went gang buster... We have harvested some carrots, I wasn't expecting much from them due to not tailoring the soil to their liking, but they still did pretty good for being in containers that only allowed them to go about 10" deep, that will be remedied next year as will making the soil more carrot friendly...

The one thing we can't seem to get going is the broccoli and cauliflower just like last year it leafs out like crazy but never actually flowers... Brussel sprouts are yet to be determined... We tried some celery and got zero germination, and as I said previous our corn is a bust this season, the weeds have taken over...

Melons, squash and gourds went in extremely late, so we will have to push the frost dates to see how they develop, they are growing like crazy and just started to flower...

Looking forward to next year, we spent too much time prepping the garden this year, but it's obvious that the overhaul in design is beneficial for us...

 

[seth osborn]

This year I have planted strawberries, raspberries, kale, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, and beats.

 

[21hens-incharge]

To keep slugs under control you can bury a beer can with about 2 inches of beer in it and they will go there and drown. I also read but have not needed to try that you can use oyster shell around the edges of the garden to stop them from coming in. Something about crawling across the shell they do not like.

The beer can trick worked to keep them off the strawberries here. The first year they ate about half of every berry the second year I did the cans and had a good harvest.

I did battle with the cabbage butterflies this year so think I will do row covers to keep the flea beetles and cabbage butterflies out next year.

 

[Bugseye]

Yes, well, I laid beer traps, but I had to keep refilling them to trap all the slugs, and it got out of hand. My strawberries grow in the openings of cement blocks, so it's a little more intense to keep slugs out of them and not get the berries eaten. I used DE, but it didn't work over time either because of getting wetted down, I think. Besides, the straw bales I had in reserve outside the plot became a haven for slug babies and a new supply to the garden each time I brought some in. So it's been a chore to stay on top of that population. Now I'm back to protecting the ripening tomatoes--tying them up, laying slug bait. I like using straw in the garden, but it requires monitoring what's going on underneath.

 

[MeatTheFlockers]

Peppers are taking off now, beans are doing well, sunflowers are getting huge!