What did you do in the garden today?

[Fluffy_Moth_With_Silkies]

This is my back yard during the winter last year
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This is after some of the water receded.

Ooh, that's pretty bad. Is all of that mud?

 

[CedarLane]

Closer yet.
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I like the barn quilts!

 

[Fluffy_Moth_With_Silkies]

Same here, with rain expected for the better part of the weekend.

Cleaning out the garage to keep busy.

Rain and thunderstorms today and tomorrow. I need a rest anyway.

Seems to be a high chance of rain all around. Me too. It's been cloudy and nasty all week and I'm just waiting for it to start raining. We have a 40% chance of rain, though the weather report isn't always right around here...

 

[gtaus]

Our butternuts didn't do as well as last year, and we had only two vines. So, I picked up several squashes too. Buttercups. I like butternut better because we like their taste and texture as much as other types and they are so much easier to cut up but I think the buttercups will make better pies - they are drier fleshed.

I usually plant buttercup squash, but this year none of the local nurseries sold any starts. Unfortunately, I did not start my own because I was growing so many tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants that other plants did not get any attention. I figured I would just buy some starts. Then, nobody had any this year.

I ended up buying some butternut squash starts. They grew OK but not as prolific as the buttercup squash from last year. Dear Wife has been chopping them up and putting the butternut squash in her stir fry. Tastes great, but both Dear Wife and I agree that we like the buttercup squash better. So, next year, I will be sure to start some buttercup squash in the house.

In both cases, I don't like the way I grow the squash, just letting it grow all over the place. I'm going to look into growing the squash on a trellis or something else vertical. I was not able to mow the lawn around the raised beds for about 2 months because the squash vines were everywhere on the ground.

Dear Wife got an Upo plant, which is an Asian white squash, and that sucker spread out about 40 feet from the center. For as much room as it spread out, we only got about 6 squash to eat. Again, there has to be a better way to grow them so I'll be looking for alternatives for next year.

Well, that's my squash story for this year.

 

[Acre4Me]

Sweet potatoes dug up, now curing in the barn.
One variety - produced well.




Using the portable greenhouses in the barn loft with a heater and bowl of water for humidity. Plastic will wrap it all to keep in heat and humidity, but air can escape - it’s not exactly tight. They should be cured in 2 weeks!

 

[jerryse]

Squash seeds are drying at 100 degrees in the dehydrator. First pic has a zucchini looking squash and a yellow. Second pic is another color that pops up. All grew from the same volunteer squash. I just smashed the overwintered hard shell fruit with my foot. No SVB.

 

[Smokerbill]

Sharpened up my hoe and cleaned the weeds out of my kale/Brussels sprouts bed. Chopped the weeds out of the almost-empty big bed too. Spread out the floating row cover in the sunshine to dry out so I can roll it up and store it away.

Edit: It's rolled up and in the shop now.

 

[Acre4Me]

Picked the 2large “Fairytale” pumpkins. We did get a few more, but smaller.

They are pretty heavy! We tried one of the smaller ones, but didn’t live it— maybe not fully ripe. Hopefully these are better. Supposedly very popular in France and often used in recipes.

 

[Sally PB]

I tried drying apples from SweeTango trees from the fruit market and we like the Honeycrisp's better.

I bought another half bushel of Empire apples to dry.

Sweet potatoes dug up, now curing in the barn.
One variety - produced well.

Using the portable greenhouses in the barn loft with a heater and bowl of water for humidity. Plastic will wrap it all to keep in heat and humidity, but air can escape - it’s not exactly tight. They should be cured in 2 weeks!

How do you tell when they're cured? If you can't get the temp/rh up as high as they say it should be, can you just cure them longer?

 

[Tstraub]

Last night my wife picked all the blushing tomatoes plus several green ones for me to fry. She removed a couple more spent tomato plants. It has been raining here all day so I didn’t do anything today except walk what is left of the garden. I caught about a dozen grasshoppers off the beans and threw them to the chickens. If tomorrow is dry I will try to pick some green beans.