Nevadans?

[chicharomirinda]

well, you were a bunch of chatty cathy's today! I was unplugged most of the day. We started digging post holes for the run today. made quite a lot of progress but it is tough going. our soil is rocky, hard clay. We're going to use 4x4 posts as the framework. We had trouble at the end of run. It's several feet from our maple tree and we kept running into big roots so we'll have to try some different spots. I hung up the sign my sister gave me on the coop. I will post some photos in a bit.

Then I made the second batch of tamales. Tonight i cleaned out the pantry and upper cabinets in the kitchen. lots of old food and expired vitamins. It is a good feeling to have everything cleaned out and organized.

thanks for the photos, aubrey! everyone's looking good!

love the gardening chat. I have done a garden since we moved into our house 7 years ago. I have had mixed success. I would love to have a consistently good garden. My main problem is follow through. i need to stay on top of everything all growing season. Last year I kept it very simple with all the projects I had going on. I planted tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash plus some herbs, basil, etc. My tomatoes did great but my summer squash and zucchini just kept flowering and never set fruit. that was weird since in 2010 my zucchini did great and tomatoes didn't. I have built raised beds and have space for some more. I'm thinking about growing some of the veggies out in the front this year. We get some great sun in parts of the front yard. Anyway, you all are motivating me to have a great garden this year.

I have ordered seeds in the past from territorial seeds and john scheepers. I will have to check out Park. For my landscaping, I have ordered plants various times from high country gardens and liked the quality, although it has been several years since I've ordered from there. well, i'm going to get some photos off my camera so i can post them.

 

[NevadaRon]

Quote:
They taste awesome! I had to send some FedEx to my sister in Fremont 'cause they were so good. Her whole family had to call me and tell me how good they were! My nephew said "And I don't even like cantaloupe!" They grow quite well here. The smell in the garden as they were ripening was amazing. I wish I had planted more!

Funny how plant success seems to go in cycles like that Elizabeth. It doesn't make any sense either! Sounds like you've had a busy day though. I wonder how much longer this weather will hold out?

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
Looking forward to the pics! I tried to get some today but time got away from me.

Hate to say anything bad about High Country Gardens since they have been so great for me so often. I notice it more in large orders and part of me wondered if it's like the hair cut thing? You know, you go to a new place for a hair cut and they do a great job the first few times but after awhile they start getting lazy, like they know you're a loyal customer so they kinda get sloppy and take you for granted, like it doesn't matter as much any more? Or maybe the typical romantic relationship is a better analogy?

I'm curious to know if anyone else with large and/or frequent orders at this nursery has experienced this? They did replace the plants when I complained but the new ones weren't much better. Still most of the things I order from them are awesome and I can't find them anywhere else.

 

[americanvalkyrie]

Quote:
How many zucchini did you plant? Do you have squash bugs or earwigs? Sometimes, a plant can come up with all male blossoms, which does absolutely nothing as far as producing fruit. Also, this year I had to rotate my zucchini to the front of the yard because I had earwigs and squash bugs eating the stamens/pistels in the blossoms and giving me no squash. Getting chickens has decreased the number of earwigs, though. When I had the earwigs, 15 plants kept us in zucchini... after moving them to the front, 5 plants drowned us in them.

Sunny, I am over-ordering everything! If there's something you want, just let me know. Also, if you wanted to wait til some of my tomato varieties are seedlings before trading, I'm cool with that, too. I just stuff everything into old laundry baskets, and it stays together until it finds new homes.

I've also had this idea that I've wanted to do for YEARS... a food swap. Having a set time each weekend to meet, and if you have extra food then bring it to trade with other gardeners. Or, if you don't have a garden, bring fresh eggs or homemade cookies... just something to trade. The past couple seasons haven't allowed that kind of excess, but in 2009 we fed 2 other families out of a garden half the size of last year's. I don't know if it will work... I always come up with tons of ambitious ideas, and a lot of them never turn out.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
They taste awesome! I had to send some FedEx to my sister in Fremont 'cause they were so good. Her whole family had to call me and tell me how good they were! My nephew said "And I don't even like cantaloupe!" They grow quite well here. The smell in the garden as they were ripening was amazing. I wish I had planted more!

Funny how plant success seems to go in cycles like that Elizabeth. It doesn't make any sense either! Sounds like you've had a busy day though. I wonder how much longer this weather will hold out?

Awesome!!! Now I am sooo excited for cantaloupes!!!

Elizabeth pollinators are the usual culprits when one crop doesn't do well. I had a nectarine tree that frustrated the heck out of me at the last house! The same variety that gave me the most delicious fruits you have EVER tasted refused to fruit here in Reno. Every year I would get this huge abundance of buds and OMG every year the winds and clouds etc kicked up something awful the whole week+ when it bloomed!!!!!

One year I even went out in a horrible wind storm determined to hand pollinate those blooms! *this was a self-fertile variety, not semi* That was a joke by the way. It did not work! When the wind was sending heavy patio furniture flying I don't know what possesed me to think I could keep light little pollen granules on the end of a Q-tip.

I want to get some mason bees but I keep forgetting since they sell them during winter and I only think about it during bloom time. I think that means they're selling them now. I better add them to one of my orders. Anyone know who has the best price on mason bees? They fly on cloudy days and even on rainy days if the storm isn't too severe anyway. They aren't cheap but they are great pollinators!!! They just like a mud puddle somewhere near to build with and they don't have stingers so no chance of getting stung by these bees. If you have honey bees you do need to separate them though. They are too docile to survive an attack from more agressive bees.

 

[americanvalkyrie]

Quote:
We have pretty good pollinators here, since some of these hippie houses in the neighborhood have beehives. My daughter's flower garden is also adjacent to the veggies, and she has hyssop in there to bring them right in. Whenever I grow winter squash or pumpkins, though, I get a little personal with the blossoms, and they usually produce that way.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
How many zucchini did you plant? Do you have squash bugs or earwigs? Sometimes, a plant can come up with all male blossoms, which does absolutely nothing as far as producing fruit. Also, this year I had to rotate my zucchini to the front of the yard because I had earwigs and squash bugs eating the stamens/pistels in the blossoms and giving me no squash. Getting chickens has decreased the number of earwigs, though. When I had the earwigs, 15 plants kept us in zucchini... after moving them to the front, 5 plants drowned us in them.

Sunny, I am over-ordering everything! If there's something you want, just let me know. Also, if you wanted to wait til some of my tomato varieties are seedlings before trading, I'm cool with that, too. I just stuff everything into old laundry baskets, and it stays together until it finds new homes.

I've also had this idea that I've wanted to do for YEARS... a food swap. Having a set time each weekend to meet, and if you have extra food then bring it to trade with other gardeners. Or, if you don't have a garden, bring fresh eggs or homemade cookies... just something to trade. The past couple seasons haven't allowed that kind of excess, but in 2009 we fed 2 other families out of a garden half the size of last year's. I don't know if it will work... I always come up with tons of ambitious ideas, and a lot of them never turn out.

I would love to do that!!! When I was a kid and we lived on the farm we would do that a lot! Not just swapping food but you would share eggs or veggies with someone and they would babysit your kids for you, etc. We didn't keep track or anything folks just helped each other a lot more then. I miss those days! Course every once in a while you get someone that takes advantage but in a small community that person gets a rep pretty quickly. (Missy hide your daughter's eyes) We even traded the parts of our bull we didn't want for other stuff after we slaughtered him.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
We have pretty good pollinators here, since some of these hippie houses in the neighborhood have beehives. My daughter's flower garden is also adjacent to the veggies, and she has hyssop in there to bring them right in. Whenever I grow winter squash or pumpkins, though, I get a little personal with the blossoms, and they usually produce that way.

A pumpkin pimp!

We had a lot of Honey Bees at the old place too but they don't fly during cloudy or windy weather. The darn nectarine tree just love to bloom at the worst time! I bet it produces this year now that we're gone. haha

 

[americanvalkyrie]

Quote:
I see more and more people returning to that way of thinking. Or maybe I just run in the right circles.

 

[chicharomirinda]

Missy, I had about 5 zucchini plants, I think. I did not notice any bugs. The food swap idea sounds great, but I tell you, I've never had excess of anything in my garden. Maybe this year! I'm sure I'll have lots of eggs, though

Your gardens are impressive. the laundry baskets for toting seedlings is a really great idea.

Ron, your produce looked so good. I'm envious.

Sunny, you may be overanalyzing your relationship with high country gardens!

ok, here are the promised pics.
This is the coop with the sign my sister gave me for xmas.

Here are the new roosts. I will probably put in poop boards at some point.

I had to put a few of the girls up there to check it out.