What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

Id be looking for that bird all day if she wandered into the cattle pasture!

 

[Acre4Me]

Watermelon sadness...

the other variety of watermelon has been on vine and has been checked daily. Propped up on sticks to keep off ground. The largest one we’ve been checking for the yellow spot onbottom, and a few days ago it was just getting yellow so we decided to leave it a couple more days. Picked it last night, turned it over and it is gross !!! One oozing spot was bubbling and remained bubbling even an hour later!! 2 or 3 days ago it was fine!! Clearly we are not eating that one.

There was one other melon of that variety of similar age, and due to the rain in the morning had split open on one end, so we picked it, cut it in half and ate the good half, chickens got the other half. It was fine since it had only split a couple hours earlier and bugs hadn’t found it yet. It was ripe and good, but it wasn’t chilled, so maybe it would taste even better cold.

so, watermelons have been a learning curve.

 

[drstratton]

Good morning all! I just found this thread!
We brought in our first spaghetti squash & I made homemade sauce with the tomatoes, peppers & fresh herbs from our garden, the remaining ingredients came from the store.
We picked & canned 24 quarts of tomatoes yesterday. That was half of what was ripe...so we will be back at it today!
We will be harvesting our corn soon & putting it up in the freezer!
Here's a few pictures of our garden...this was earlier in the year...I'll get some current pictures & share them after the sun comes up...I woke up way to early today!
Beans, tomatoes, Zucchini, spaghetti squash, cucumber, peppers, potatoes & garden box section!

Melon, pumpkin & corn section!

 

[Minky]

Love the Speckled Sussex and Flower hens. Your last two birds look identical to two of mine (easter egger and welsummer?)

You guys have inspired me to get a note book and take some notes on what I want to do with my garden. I always plant way too much of a few veg, and I always forget to succession plant. When my kids are older I will can some tomato sauce but I did it a couple for years ago alone, and it was just too much work. My lettuce always bolts before I have eaten even 20%, and if I don't mulch with a ton of straw( didn't mulch this year at all) I basically grow 5 ft weeds everywhere. Disaster.

How do your freeze squash, can I ask-? Doesn't it get mushy?

I grew some pumpkin seeds that my 1st grader brought home. 1st time with pumpkins, and these are such a cute shape- all sort of identical and short and wide. Not really ideal for jack o lanterns... Not sure what to do with them? Cook them? Pie? LOL

My orchard (21 trees) made one single plum this year. We have three types of apple, peach, donut peach, cherry, quince, pear, asian pear, apricot and two types of plum. We had a horrid year for gypsy moth- took all the leaves. Then 2 plum trees and a Quince got black knot. Had to hack them back to stumps. And I had fertilized and pruned and thought this was the year fruit would finally grow.

 

[Minky]

Good morning all! I just found this thread!
We brought in our first spaghetti squash & I made homemade sauce with the tomatoes, peppers & fresh herbs from our garden, the remaining ingredients came from the store.
We picked & canned 24 quarts of tomatoes yesterday. That was half of what was ripe...so we will be back at it today!
We will be harvesting our corn soon & putting it up in the freezer!
Here's a few pictures of our garden...this was earlier in the year...I'll get some current pictures & share them after the sun comes up...I woke up way to early today!
Beans, tomatoes, Zucchini, spaghetti squash, cucumber, peppers, potatoes & garden box section!
View attachment 2312788View attachment 2312789View attachment 2312790

Melon, pumpkin & corn section!
View attachment 2312792
View attachment 2312793

Good GREIF! That looks like a whole lot of work! WOW. Hopefully you weren't doing all that yourself. I'm exhausted just looking at it. You can come to my place and fix me up anytime!

 

[drstratton]

Good GREIF! That looks like a whole lot of work! WOW. Hopefully you weren't doing all that yourself. I'm exhausted just looking at it. You can come to my place and fix me up anytime!

Lol, I could never do this on my own...my husband is the main gardener and I help him. We've been cultivating this garden area for about 25 years, but this is the first year we've used landscape fabric & drip tape in the garden & it has been amazing. I will hopefully never have a garden without it again! We built 2 of the garden boxes last year & 3 this year...what a backsaver they have been. It was a lot of work putting it all in, but next year shouldn't be as hard. We also added a free range pen & improved the coop this year to accommodate a larger flock. It was a lot of work, but worth it.

 

[igorsMistress]

Love the Speckled Sussex and Flower hens. Your last two birds look identical to two of mine (easter egger and welsummer?)

You guys have inspired me to get a note book and take some notes on what I want to do with my garden. I always plant way too much of a few veg, and I always forget to succession plant. When my kids are older I will can some tomato sauce but I did it a couple for years ago alone, and it was just too much work. My lettuce always bolts before I have eaten even 20%, and if I don't mulch with a ton of straw( didn't mulch this year at all) I basically grow 5 ft weeds everywhere. Disaster.

How do your freeze squash, can I ask-? Doesn't it get mushy?

I grew some pumpkin seeds that my 1st grader brought home. 1st time with pumpkins, and these are such a cute shape- all sort of identical and short and wide. Not really ideal for jack o lanterns... Not sure what to do with them? Cook them? Pie? LOL

My orchard (21 trees) made one single plum this year. We have three types of apple, peach, donut peach, cherry, quince, pear, asian pear, apricot and two types of plum. We had a horrid year for gypsy moth- took all the leaves. Then 2 plum trees and a Quince got black knot. Had to hack them back to stumps. And I had fertilized and pruned and thought this was the year fruit would finally grow.

If the pumpkins are mature size then I'd guess they're pie pumpkins. You can peel, boil and freeze to use later. Don't forget your chickens, they'll love it too, just cut in half and set on the ground.

 

[Minky]

drip tape is soaker hose? I need to get some of that. Watering and weeding..I could do without those two things.

 

[Minky]

If the pumpkins are mature size then I'd guess they're pie pumpkins. You can peel, boil and freeze to use later.

LOL Im not even sure- but they do seem to have stopped growing. (not turning into giant monsters) Will try to post a pic.

 

[drstratton]

drip tape is soaker hose? I need to get some of that. Watering and weeding..I could do without those two things.

It's different than soaker hose, I was trying to get a link to what we bought, but the page isn't loading for some reason. Here's the product...5/8", 15 mil, 8 inch, 0.67 GPM/100', 1000', Toro Aqua-Traxx® we bought it at Irrigation King, best price we could find, you also have to buy the fittings for it. I can let you know what landscape fabric we used, if you're interested. It's all a small investment that has been totally worth it!