What did you do in the garden today?

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

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?

Thank you @Sueby. Yes they will ripen after picking. They won't be as tasty, but it's better than losing all of them. Apparently after a heavy harvest I likely won't get any peaches next year. So I would like to rescue as much of this fruit as possible.

 

[gtaus]

Looks like tomorrow will be a day of hurricane prep.

So it's just storm prep for now.

I hope you guys do not get hit too hard. As for me, we have some rain in the forecast for this afternoon which would be the first rainfall in a couple of months. Probably too late for the garden as most everything appears to have given up. But any rainfall would be welcome at this point for everything else.

 

[Sueby]

You may be surprised how quickly plants can bounce back after some rain, maybe it's not too late for some.

Yay, the monarchs have found my butterfly weed!

 

[Birdsonghill]

Best wishes(my prayers) for you folks in the line of severe weather! My rain gauge, that I forgot to empty last night, was overflowing this morning and that means more than 6 to 7 inches of rain in 24 hours, now. No really severe weather here , just deluges of rain, that if they continue like this, will bring flooding beyond just the low places and creeks. My gauge had 2 1/2 inches in it yesterday afternoon. that means my house has had over 9 1/2 inches of rain since last Sunday morning! The nearby big city in the next county over(NWS) is reporting less than half that much, for the past week, with the normal disclaimers about local areas receiving more or less. A creek bed that runs through my property, most often dry, is now pushing a 30 foot wide stream, likely, just about 3 feet deep in the middle of the creek! That is common enough, just hope it does not get 7 feet deep and a couple hundred feet wide, because it could wash out my largest lower garden! It has come somewhat close but only a couple of times in the past, over 26 years, in very bad, protracted, weather events, so I should be OK here!

 

[Sally PB]

Last year when canning supplies were in short supply/non-existent, I got canning lids from Fillmore Container.

https://www.fillmorecontainer.com/70mm-generic-lids-silver-bulk.html

Good price, and I want to say that so far, 8 out of 8 have sealed. I know some people were getting lids online that were Ball knock offs that didn't seal worth a darn.

I put this on my tomato harvest thread, but I want to add it here and on the Preserving Your Harvest thread too.

 

[Birdsonghill]

You may be surprised how quickly plants can bounce back after some rain, maybe it's not too late for some.

Yay, the monarchs have found my butterfly weed!
View attachment 2804888
View attachment 2804889

I am happy for you! I love Asclepias Tuberosa (milkweeds) and they grow scattered all over my property wild. Most are finished blooming here on my place with only a few still showing color. The passiflora incarnata, maypop vine is another wild treat I love here and is everywhere and a huge one or two grows on my lower garden fence, every year. Native phlox pops up here, less and less commonly. People using lots of insecticides and herbicides and mowing fence to fence, rarely enjoy these treats at home. Roadside herbicides has reduced them to scarce, by comparison to my youth, when they and other roadside wildflowers were an abundant seasonal treat! Opportunist wild flowering plants were plentiful, here, before roundup and 2,4D containing herbicides came into common use. That reduced many roadsides to scruffy tougher plants, like tougher grasses, ragweed, pigweed, thistle, Johnson grass, sedges, cocklebur and the like. Those opportunities/sights of splendor have largely been removed by Bayer/ Monsanto and other big corporate chemical corporations and corruptible politicians. Snakes, Birds, Frogs, Toads, Honey bees, Butterflies and God knows what all else, has suffered and dwindled from my youthful days! I am not a total anti chemical guy! But we have to do better, at how and what we use, in our damaged environment! We can live well, without Roundup(glyphosate) and by having a mixed species natural yard, instead of a carpet of lawn grasses that requires constant re applications of chemicals to maintain. WE, don't usually eat our lawns, but we are letting our lawn maintenance destroy our water and hasten the demise of species. Stupid, isn't it? I was a licensed (not just certified) chemical applicator in Tennessee at one time. Boy o' boy, how they deceived me!

 

[pennyJo1960]

Need to take photos I have tiny peppers on the jalepeno Tomato are reddening taking over the garden .. Lot's of tomatilla's are ready

 

[Birdsonghill]

I put this on my tomato harvest thread, but I want to add it here and on the Preserving Your Harvest thread too.

I had trouble last year and was lucky enough that my grandson ordered hundreds of each, std. and lrg. sizes , for me. I should maybe get more, now ?!

 

[TJAnonymous]

WE HAVE WATER!!!!!
View attachment 2804038I am going to tell you all exactly how easy it was to get this all set up (minus wandering stores for 2 hours trying to figure out the last few parts I needed) because it seriously took maybe 20 minutes to set up (and most of that was unrolling the tubing).

Supplies Needed:

• 500' of Drip Irrigation Tubing (Ace Hardware has the cheapest price, but Menard's was the only place nearby that had it in stock)
• 1- Backflow Preventer
• 2- 3/4" to 1/2" Adapters
• 1- Threaded Hose Adapter (to make the female on the 3/4" to 1/2" adapter into a male end)
• 25 pack of Straw Staples
• A sharp knife to cut the tubing

Step 1: Attach the Backflow Preventer to the spigot.

Step 2: Insert one end of the tubing into the unthreaded end of one of the 3/4" to 1/2" Adapters. Use one of the Straw Staples to hold this end of the tubing in place (near the spigot).

Step 3: Unroll the tubing to where you need it to end. Straighten it out as needed. (I originally had to walk backwards to my garden while unrolling the tubing, so I had to go back and pick it up near the beginning and pull it tighter. Wear gloves if it is hot and sunny because this tubing gets hot quickly).

Step 4: Attach the adapted end of the tubing to the spigot.

Step 5: Use the Straw Staples to secure the tubing to the ground.

Step 6: Insert the unadapted end of the tubing into the remaining 3/4" to 1/2" Adapter.

Step 7: Attach the Threaded Hose Adapter to this end.

Step 8: Attach a hose or sprinkler to the Threaded Hose Adapter.

Step 9: Test that water does indeed travel all the way to the end with no leaks.

Step 10: Water the dry cardboard with grass piled on top of it out of SHEER JOY that the whole process was so simple and quick!

Step 11 (OPTIONAL): Bury the tubing so you don't trip on it or run it over with the lawn mower (I haven't done this, yet, but I am going to because that tubing gets scaldingly hot surprisingly quickly).

I will need to make (3) 90-degree turns to get water to the garden. How flexible is the tubing to accomplish that?

I currently have 3 or 4 garden hoses hooked end-to-end and draped on a fence to keep it off the ground. This is still a pain and not sustainable. I need to do something else... My distance is around 350 ft between the house and garden but I will have to cross under the driveway. I have a culvert I can use if I put the tubing in a conduit or something to protect it.

 

[Sueby]

@TJAnonymous my DH ran pex to the garden for me this spring, he was sick of moving my hoses when he mowed. He buried it & used 90 degree fittings for the corners & put a spigot in in the garden. He'll just blow the lines out when the seasons done. I couldn't be happier!