What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

What did I do yesterday? I looked at the one area in the garden that didn't get hoe'd and weeded and overseeded with winter rye, sighed, and walked away. I just wasn't in the mood to deal with it. Maybe Sunday I'll hoe down the horrible spots, and pull back the mulched walking areas, and put down some paca poo and hardwood dust.

I'm prepping the area for blueberry bushes and need to up the acids.

Then in spring I'll put some weed barrier down and plant through that.

 

[pennyJo1960]

With ya there @WthrLady rain in smatterings here last few days not wanting to play outside in it at all anymore

 

[WthrLady]

And now 2" of rain has frozen in sheets of ice and it's snowing.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Ah man, I wish we had snow TBH. We just have more rain. Snow is better because it not only puts atmospheric nitrogen into the ground but it also freezes out diseases, fungi, pest insects, etc.

Today I will try to slog out in the mud, put a new roost bar into my chicken coop, and then pull some more asters while the ground is damp and they come out easy.

I'm digging deep into options for dealing with my serious tomato blight problems right now and have settled on several hybrid tomato varieties I'm going to test out this year. I especially have high hopes for a determinate plum paste tomato and an indeterminate big cherry tomato that are both supposed to be blight resistant. I may also invest in a copper fungicide and see what happens.

 

[WthrLady]

we have a windchill of -3 right now. Working outside with the livestock has been brutal. Our tank heater went out and we needed to replace it sans gloves for dexterity. I'm now inside thawing and going through seed catalogs like nature intended.

I stick with indeterminate tomatoes here. They fight harder through the brutal summers here that the determinate ones, which tend to give up long before they are supposed to even with being determinate.

Which cherries are you looking at? We had a gang buster crop of cherry tomatoes last year. Even the chickens refused to eat anymore. I had to freeze a bushel of them at the end. I bet they'd like some now.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I, too, prefer indeterminates... But there aren't many that have good fungus resistance. The best on is Mr Stripey which is a low-acid slicing heirloom... And we mostly can our tomatoes in a water bath.

The cherry tomato we're looking at is Mountain Magic, which supposedly produces really big cherry tomatoes in massive quantities. I actually found cherry tomatoes really easy to work with for saucing in the past because they have so little space inside them and the big ones just get halved and thrown in the pot, so I'm hopeful these will go over well.

Since we're not growing pole beans this year, I'm thinking we will grow the cherry tomatoes in that space with the trellises, which will be interesting, and also we'll grow cucumbers on the trellises.

 

[WthrLady]

I haven't seen magic mountain yet.

I find it tricky to find cherry tomatoes that aren't sweet for sauces. But I'm with you on the meat level of the cherries. I planted amish paste last year and they were just a waste of space in the garden last year and ripped them out and did a second planting. My tomatoes were almost 6 feet tall last year.

I didn't have a fungus problem until I got lazy and turned on an overhead sprinkler when my ground irrigation needed repaired. Then I spent the rest of the summer battling it. Well, that and the darn, swallowtail caterpillars and tobacco worms! LOL.

Off to research magic mountains! Thanks

 

[Acre4Me]

Today, ordered seeds and a few plants online, the plants being Raspberry and Strawberry. We have a farm store not too far away that had an AMAZING selection of started tomatoes, many heirloom ones too. So, we plan to find out when they will begin to sell those... and plan to be there then since last year we discovered this selection of tomato plants, but about 30% of their list was crossed off as sold out!

Lots of garden work to plan as it will only be our second spring/summer here. This place was maintained at a very basic level, but that's the best I can say...so, lots of updating and work still to be done, including much landscaping/gardening.

 

[itsasmallfarm]

our garden is like under a foot of snow right now, got some seed catalogs maybe look over them soon.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

So today holiday presents from my MIL and my partner's family came in. o_o; She always overdoes it, and this year is no different! I got a new XL seedling heat mat, 20"x48", and a new 4ft-4 bulb-T5 fluorescent grow lamp, plus a set of 9 4x6 cell plastic seedling trays with water catch, and the Brad's Atomic Grape tomato seeds! Guess I'm trying out yet another variety of tomatoes this year? XD

This is in addition to a million other things, like new animal food bowls, canning jars, crochet needles, clothes, and a few toys.

But as always I'm very excited for new gardening equipment! And this will go a long way towards growing all these new nifty tomatoes I am looking forward to trying out!