What did you do in the garden today?

[CaroleW]

Part of the windfall from after my neighbors plant sale, more to come later this week, I ran out of time to haul more wagon loads. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and succulents.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Our weather has been crazy like that too. Winter straight into summer, now back to spring

Ditto!

 

[kristinxyz]

Hi BYC gardeners. This is my first full growing season in Vermont (zone 4a) and I'm trying to keep my expectations very, very low. Yesterday I got some delicata squash seedlings in the ground, transplanted dinosaur kale, got some spinach seeds planted, and noticed the sunflowers starting to sprout.

I've got carrot and parsnip seeds in the ground too, but they're in a section of the garden that had been dug up for emergency septic repair in April. I don't have high hopes for those; I should have done a better job screening out the drainage rock and wood chips that got mixed in during excavation but I was impatient. There are some parsnip seedlings coming up, but I suspect they'll be choked out by my new nemesis: mugwort.

The previous home owners had tilled the whole garden and covered it with weed cloth. Good intentions, but that only created hundreds of new mugwort plants and a greenhouse for them to thrive in. So last year we pulled everything out by hand—mugwort, weed cloth, So. Many. Garden. Staples., and the occasional wasp nest—and covered everything in cardboard and wood chips. That seems to have worked fairly well but it's still too early in our growing season to be sure. Fingers crossed...

Next up: setting up a bajillion slug and snail traps and getting long overdue onion and leek starts planted.

Glad to be here and reading all your stories and advice!

 

[Sally PB]

Welcome @kristinxyz! We have gardeners from all over the country, so just jump in with questions or comments.

I have had no luck with weed barrier cloth. It not only didn't prevent the grass (my main invasive thing), it was a total disaster to try to remove. I have had VERY good luck with cardboard and leaves as a weed barrier, though. I use that in my squash bed, as I just let the vines sprawl. The cardboard keeps the weeds down until the plants get their big leaves, which shade out most of the weeds.

Sweet potatoes... I did those one year as an experiment. My season wasn't long enough, so I got nada. I read that the entire plant is edible, and some people eat the leaves. Maybe they'd be ok steamed, but raw they are ... fuzzy... is how I'd describe it. They stick to your tongue.

Today was plant moving day! I was going to do it yesterday, but the low last night was forecast to be 40, and I thought that might be a little cruel for the little plants. They are all now in two large dog crates, covered with a light colored bed sheet. Clothes pins keep the sheets wrapped around the corners. A queen sized top sheet will cover an XL dog crate just about perfectly. Tomorrow they will get a couple hours of sunlight. Wednesday, they will probably stay covered, as we're supposed to get a storm.

This year, like last year, I got stellar sprouting from my home grown/saved Amish Paste seeds, 20/20. Most of the other tomatoes sprouted well, though some were quite pokey. I think one side of the green house is cooler than the other, and that could do it.

Peppers were 5 out of 8. 3/4 for hot varieties, and 2/4 for sweets. Man, are they slooow. They are still itty bitty plants. Wednesday when I'm out and about, I'll stop at a farmer's market and see what they have.

The other thing I planted from seed was basil. I planted 2 each of 4 types. The Thai, Opal, and Genovese all came up. The Italian might have one, but I'm not sure. The Opal (a purple) was the fastest sprouter. I might plant some more since I think there's still plenty of time to get it going.

 

[sylviethecochin]

One of the primary things that preppers prep is Peanut Butter. So, I'm watching to see how many other prepper items are recalled.
So here I sit with 3 large containers of Jif peanut butter that are now all recalled.
I labeled it and will use it for cooking. We ate 2 whole containers of it already and didn't die or get sick.

So, I just got back to work today, after two weeks away, and my job is actually working for a lab that tests food. Specifically, we test Smucker's Peanut Butter. Smucker's also owns Jif, and one of our sister labs tests Jif.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell you the name of the company that tests Jif, because I can't find that information on Google, and frankly, I'd rather play on the safe side and not reveal confidential information. I will say that I am very glad I am not currently working for the Lexington (Jif) location, because they're being heavily audited. Someone (or multiple someones, because we are required to have at least one person check our results) is very likely to lose their job over this.

It's real. Smucker's is a very large company that does not want to lose its reputation.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Well I just spotted the "culprit" digging up my mulch, cantaloupe etc!
Biggest, fattest ground hog I have ever seen! He literally made my 20 lb. Cat look like a rabbit! He stopped, looked up at me on deck and then just stood there! Ugh!
Now I know why my boy is crowing all the time! And camera hasn't caught him yet! Only seen a skinny one eyed stray cat!

 

[igorsMistress]

I did a thing because sales and free shipping...
View attachment 3119773
They'll be here this week, darn plant math.

Got some work to do on the garden beds today, fingers crossed the weather holds and isn't horrible. They say rain... Doesn't look like rain

I think I need to try mixing a few bags of straight compost or potting soil into the garden beds. Between the heat and the quality of the garden soil we bought most of my plants are not doing awesome. My bush beans and sugar snaps keeled over, it was too much for them! The tomatoes have done nothing, the radish gave up, the garlic is dying early and the bulbs aren't fully formed.... Fingers crossed they hang in a couple more weeks and I get an actual harvest. Plant earlier, I get the message, lol.

Talking to DH about a greenhouse for winter starts and shade cloths for summer growing. This climate is just not garden friendly. I researched, just to try to understand what was happening, at what temperature do garden plants start to die back. Google said over 90 starts to be detrimental, with anything over 100 affecting everything but the most heat tolerant varieties. *sigh*

Anybody live in Kentucky? Lol. How is it?

That plant math is a real thing!

Shade will be your friend, but the heat will still make things bolt. I use 50% shade cloth, and since my shaded area doesn’t have a roof overhang I put some on the west side, leaving about 2 feet of open space on the bottom. It can get brutally hot here for days, 115 during the day and 95 at night, but I’ve kept herbs and other stuff alive in my shade garden through that. Mulch the heck out of everything too. Straw is your friend too!

 

[SheaLoner]

Well I just spotted the "culprit" digging up my mulch, cantaloupe etc!
Biggest, fattest ground hog I have ever seen! He literally made my 20 lb. Cat look like a rabbit! He stopped, looked up at me on deck and then just stood there! Ugh!
Now I know why my boy is crowing all the time! And camera hasn't caught him yet! Only seen a skinny one eyed stray cat!

They are edible. Supposed to be fairly tasty. After all you know what its been eating.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

They are edible. Supposed to be fairly tasty. After all you know what its been eating.

Yeah I'm afraid that might throw up a BIG red flag in my subdivision lol
Otherwise...

 

[igorsMistress]

Good afternoon gardeners. It is gross outside! I went to the store and home and was dripping sweat when I got back, yuck. Took a spin through the garden and I’m seeing some sad looking leaves on a few of the fruit trees, I think it’s sun scald although they’ve been in the sun since I brought them home and were getting quite a bit at the store as well. I’m in the process of adding days between waterings for them, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stretch it to a full week in summer. I’m going to give them some bunny poop and hope that helps with leaf production and shade as a consequence. This weekend I intend to build a berm around them and add some straw over a layer of gypsum between the trees for additional mulch and soil softening. The damn grackles are lucky it’s illegal to shoot ‘em. They come in to dig around for bugs and make craters. It’s pretty obvious I’m going to need cages to protect the corn and such until it all grows up this summer. So another thing to figure out. Anyway, I better get to work in the kitchen, it’s my turn to cook. Have a great night all!