What did you do in the garden today?

[ShrekDawg]

Love it. Actually, I am hoping that someone will be offering me some free zucchini this year. I had a bad start with my zucchini and only have one plant this year. Usually, I have about 5 plants to pick from. So, this year it's slim pickings...

Aww that stinks! I have two zucchini plants and one yellow squash plant but my zucchini’s aren’t producing that well. I’ve only gotten like maybe 3 zucchini so far from both versus 8 from the one yellow plant. And only 3 growing right now versus probably 8-10 off the yellow.

 

[gtaus]

Just fabulous!!! What does one do with bitter melons? I have heard of them but never seen one.

Dear Wife is a Philippina, and cooks the bitter melon in some of her native dishes. Honestly, it's not my favorite food as they are bitter as the name implies. I think it's more of an acquired taste. Growing up in northern Minnesota, I never heard of bitter melons until after I got married. I still not have acquired a taste for them...

I guess bitter melons are like a tropical version of zucchini. You can put them in lots of different dishes, by themselves, or in soups. I often see bitter melon served at our Phil-Am parties and get togethers. The Philippinas love it, it's a taste of home for them, but us American guys most often pass on that dish.

 

[gtaus]

I’ve only gotten like maybe 3 zucchini so far

Yeah, I have gotten exactly 3 zucchinis to date, but the plant is very healthy - all by itself - so I am hoping that I will get more zucchinis from the plant before the end of summer. It's one of my favorite vegetables.

 

[Smokerbill]

Originally posted in the Show Me Your Pallet Projects! thread, but this relates to gardening as well...

It's raining outside today, so I thought I might as well post an update on the progress of Dear Wife's bitter melons growing in the backyard.

Back in June, Dear Wife got some bitter melon plants from a friend of her's. She asked me if I could make some kind of a trellis for the bitter melon plants to climb up on. I scavenged through my pile of pallet wood and built this trellis for her...

I just used some 2X4's from a couple of long pallets, made a frame about 6 feet tall, and stapled on some 2X4 welded wire I had left over from making my chicken run. Total cost to me, less than a dollar for the screws and staples.

Fast forward to a couple days ago, here is a picture of the same bitter melon raised bed...

For those of you who don't know much about bitter melon, here are some pictures of what they look like. They will get much bigger before we pick them, of course, but Dear Wife is all excited that we might get some to grow here in northern Minnesota...

The pallet wood trellis is rock solid, and I love how the bitter melon has filled out the wire. Bitter melon is a tropical plant, so if we get any melons at all, it will be a great success for us. We live in zone 3b, not tropical at all.

I think I will build another pallet wood trellis next year for cucumbers, which should grow even better.

I am also thinking about building some kind of trellis system for cherry tomatoes, I started some cherry tomato plants inside the house this year and transplanted them outside the 1st of June. I thought the cherry tomatoes I bought were bush type, but the plant grew to about 6 foot tall and then flopped over from all the weight, only supported by my 3-foot-tall tomato cages. I was told later that most cherry tomatoes are indeterminant plants and that I should have a much taller cage or trellis system. My bad. So, I am looking for ideas on making a trellis or cage system out of pallet wood for those tomatoes next year.

I think you've seen how I'm growing my indeterminate tomates, up ropes, something new I'm trying this year. All the suckers are removed and only the top growth crown is allowed to grow, leaving a single vine. Leaves are removed from the vine as tomatoes set on, but a cluster of leaves is left at the top. The ropes are high enough to allow 8 feet of growth.

Grown this way a tomato plant needs only a single square foot of garden space, since they're growing vertically. Easier to access for harvest, too.

 

[gtaus]

I think you've seen how I'm growing my indeterminate tomates, up ropes, something new I'm trying this year. Only the top growth crown is allowed to grow, leaving a single vine. Leaves are removed from the vine as tomatoes set on, but a cluster of leaves is left at the top. The ropes are high enough to allow 8 feet of growth.

If you have tried other methods as well, what is your favorite method? I mentioned cages and a trellis, but I forgot about a rope system.

Even though my tomato plants have flopped over, they are producing lots and lots of tomatoes. So much, in fact, that I think we will be freezing at a least a couple buckets full of cherry tomatoes for soups and sauces this winter.

 

[Smokerbill]

I've grown indeterminate tomatoes with stakes and also just letting them crawl on the ground. I never limited the plants to a single growth node before by removing all the suckers like I am this year. On the ground or staked without removing suckers made the plants dense, fruit hard to find and pick.

I also think that by allowing the plant to get bushy they are more prone to disease/mildew etc., because of a lack of airflow through and around the plants.

So I think I like training up ropes the best. Supposedly the fruits get larger because there are fewer on the vine. But since more plants fit in a space when grown vertically, total production might be similar to growing fewer bushy plants.

That's the theory, anyway. In truth, I just don't know which what is the best.

I'm using the Florida weave with my determinate tomatoes. Google it. I leave all the suckers and let the plants get bushy, and support them by weaving string around them between fenceposts. This is new to me too. I still prune all the growth from the bottom of these plants so no leaves or branches are touching the ground and there's air flow under the plants.

florida weave, I think. LOL Old picture, plants are much larger now.

 

[saysfaa]

At the risk of answering when not asked, my sister noticed the tomatoes grow better when they can sprawl. I watched for a couple of years and think so too. So we don't trellis them at all.

I think results might vary depending on all kinds of things - variety, soil, climate, ... Or maybe not.

 

[Smokerbill]

At the risk of answering when not asked, my sister noticed the tomatoes grow better when they can sprawl. I watched for a couple of years and think so too. So we don't trellis them at all.

I think results might vary depending on all kinds of things - variety, soil, climate, ..

They probably would, because everywhere a tomato vine touches the ground, it roots into the soil.

But being on the ground I think the plants are more prone to picking up soil borne diseases. And fruit rotting when contacting the soil.

And I can barely bend over to reach the ground these days. LOL

 

[saysfaa]

..But being on the ground I think the plants are more prone to picking up soil borne diseases. And fruit rotting when contacting the soil. ...

Maybe so. Maybe not. We have a lot of trouble with diseases and fruit rotting here at home where we've usually trellised them. But we didn't trellis here this year and are having similar problems. We know we have verticillium wilt and walnut roots in the soil, we may have other issues too.

I have little trouble with either diseases or rotting of the fruit on the farm where they sprawl. Maybe a little trouble with some leaf spotting in some years - that might be some verticillium wilt in the soil.

I know for sure ground contact does not result in damaged fruit, at least not if there isn't something else going on. My parents grew several thousand tomato plants every year. We picked most of them off the ground. Only one tomato in maybe several hundred had any rot spots. That was usually at cracks from irregular watering when a lot of big storms came through at certain stages of maturity. There were enough blossom end rot to know what it is but is wasn't a significant problem - it just needs the soil fed correctly. Otherwise, a rotten one had usually been damaged.

I thought maybe I had so much more trouble in the home garden because I wasn't in charge of the decisions about growing the tomatoes back them - I know dad had a secret sauce he applied just as they started blossoming. Unfortunately, none of us still alive know what it was. Maybe I didn't know other things too. Or remember correctly what I did know. But this year, I just planted, watered well to get them started, and weeded twice and all thirty survivors of the gohpers are big, beautiful, vigorous plants with abundant fruits just starting to turn color with no signs of trouble so far.

 

[Sueby]

Wish people were throwing their zucchini at me! I hate having to buy them. I did have a volunteer this year, you can't tell the true color from the pic, but it's an ugly almost mint green so I think it's a hybrid zucchini/yellow squash. Whatever it is, I'm gonna eat it & call it a success, lol. It's got a few more fruit growing too.

Picked the first few sungolds (also volunteers), we got rain last night so I wanted to pick them before they split even though they aren't ready to eat. Couple days.

Green beans coming out my ears. Have more than enough put up for winter. May do some dilly beans this weekend, if I can get enough volunteer dill. (noticing a theme? Almost everything I have this year is all volunteers ) Or maybe some jam. Depends on the back.