What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

Seeds for next year's garden have been ordered.
And I'll start harvesting seeds from garden this week too.

 

[pennyJo1960]

We have several tomato turning color read nice red tomato the flavor is to die for hot house tomato cannot compere

 

[Birdsonghill]

I have been getting free wood chips at our local county landfill for the past 2 years. I have never seen any trash in the wood chips. But I suspect that the crews know that if they threw any garbage in the wood chips that the county landfill would either turn them away or charge an extra fee for dumping the wood chips. The tree crews have to pay to dump their wood chips, and I'm sure they don't want to pay any extra fines or to be banned for having trash in the wood chips.



Dear Wife has been freezing some of our beans, but she is new to the process. Is there a reason that you blanch the beans before freezing them? As you can tell, we are still learning this stuff....

Yes, I am sure the county landfills would frown these days, about the boys throwing their job trash in with the recycle program chips there. The companies, a few years back, tried to find free nearby sites for dumping the chips or used their own land and it(the load) was never excessively, trashy. They(the slobs) were the local power coop crew trying to avoid the drive to the dump, after , I left the landscape industry and invited them to dump! It used to be a nice thing to have free chips delivered to my farm by them! I still, occasionally, get a free load dropped off, when I can talk to a private tree service company, working in the neighborhood. It was just the power coop crew and their new supervisor, that did this and I just stopped them coming after several messy loads. They chopped up anything and threw stuff in the truck that would not chop and dumped it all! When I supervised a landscape maintenance company, including a tree crew, I even got special loads from a grove of clean cedar, cherry trees or hickory trees. But what kind of stuff gets shredded, is still, somewhat, a wild card, beer cans and drink cups are common shredded material in chip recycle ops and even bones and teeth are found sometimes in wood chip mulch! It ,mostly, will make good compost with a little effort! The blanching, I am told, is to prevent (or kill )certain enzymes that may cause slimy beans occasionally and preserves the color better in long freezer storage. I read that years ago, I don't remember where. We just got another 2 1/2 inches of rain in about 2 1/2 hours! Now ,its getting soggy around here! That is less than a week after really badly needing a rain and now we are up to 6 3/4 inches here in 5 days! It may still rain a bit more this evening and tomorrow is about as likely to have another storm, if they have not changed the forecast.

 

[BullChick]

Forget free chips, I had to pick trash out of my last load of limestone.

 

[BullChick]

… and my sister used poison ivy as T.P.

 

[Birdsonghill]

I

… and my sister used poison ivy as T.P.

Bless her poor ,uhh, heart!

 

[gtaus]

Forget free chips, I had to pick trash out of my last load of limestone.

When I was buying bags of compost at the big bag stores, I would manually sift the bagged compost and find bits of metal and plastic that I would have to throw out. Not only do I think my chicken compost is better, but I know I will not have any garbage in my compost.

 

[Sueby]

I don't buy tomatoes from the store, we only eat what I grow. Store bought ones are tasteless so I don't bother.

I had a couple pepper plants knocked over from the rain yesterday. Def not looking forward to Henri, it's going to be a mess out there. Looks like tomorrow will be a day of hurricane prep.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Good morning gardeners. We ended up with 3 inches of rain yesterday, still drizzling off and on. Yesterday was my regular big monthly shopping trip. While I was in the grocery store DD had sent me a text, which I didn't get until after I got home and put the groceries away. Apparently she sent it while she was waiting out a tornado warning hunkered down in her bathroom with her little dog and a sofa cushion. Fortunately she lives in a basement apartment. A small tornado did touch down not too far from her and the town right next to her sustained severe damage from some straight line winds. No high winds here and the only casualties were some disgruntled hens who didn't get to free range. The big storm is heading directly at us on Sunday afternoon. I'm hoping to wait until Sunday morning to gather any and all vegetables that are even close to being ready. Right now we're not sure if we will be on the West side or the East side of the storm so I'm especially concerned for my peach tree. The branches are struggling with the heavy load of fruit. I'm not sure what to do other than picking the ripest to lighten the load and hope they finish ripening indoors. But the rest of the plants should be fine. My pepper and okra plants are loaded. All that's happening with the SM tomatoes is waiting for them to ripen. So it's just storm prep for now. Have a great day everyone.

 

[Sueby]

Yea, I didn't have any desire to tie up the pepper plants, but I guess I'll have to. They are full of unripe peppers & would be such a waste to lose them now. Ugh.

I hope your peach tree is ok! I know you've been waiting a while to get good peaches. Will they ripen off the vine?