What did you do in the garden today?

[Sooner Magnolia]

What is this bug? Saw it on a picnic shelter at fairgrounds. It was moving slowly, like it wasn’t worried about anything - so made me think it was possibly one to not mess with. Look at it’s “mouth” area-looks like a long spike…and a strange curved body type.

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I think it is a species of assassin bug.

 

[Sueby]

I have questions about timing for potatoes, onions, and garlic. I planted onion sets and seed potatoes when they were sold at my grocery store. I think late spring/ early summer. What timelines do you guys follow for planting them? Do you do a spring and fall planting of all of them and how do you know when they are ready?

I plant garlic & shallots in the fall, onion (plants, not sets) in the spring. Fall planted garlic is done here around July, give or take. You pull them when like 3 of the leaves have turned brown, but there are still a good 3 leaves green - that's what gives them a good paper on them. Spring planted onions are done around August here. You pull them when they pop out of the ground & then the greens fall over looking like someone walked on them. Fall planted shallots are done about now - you also pull them when the tops fall over. Of course I'm in New England so we may be completely different from you. & I don't do potatoes so I can't help with that!

Okay, @Sueby, and @Sally PB, 59 and 1/2 is such an odd number, why that age?

As @Sally PB said, it's when I can collect my pension & retirement funds with no penalty. Lordy I can't wait! 9 more years!

I had a sales rep show up at my door today pitching bug and rodent control services. I certainly use home defense, specifically to prevent carpenter and and spiders from making our house their home. This guy was offering a service though that included lawn treatment that he claimed penetrates into the ground, killing all insects on and below the surface down to 2ft. I personally found this to be very disturbing. While I don't enjoy them in my house insects are a vital part of the ecosystem, especially pollinators. Is disturbing to think that neighbors may be having broad spectrum pesticide spread all over their lawn. Creating a home barrier is one thing, but killing every insect on your property!? That seems extreme to me. The best part of this whole experience was the company the sales rep works for is called Eco(something), and he boasted how they use all natural plant based insecticides. Seemed odd that they want to destroy all insects, but they rely on plants to produce the chemicals they use - many plants (if not all) rely on insects in one way or another.

That is horrifying! I'm so anti chemicals that this makes me cringe. Just nuke everything? Ugh!

Aside from the sales rep, I picked two baskets of cucumbers today. That's another 3-4 gallons of pickles to process. I've got them sliced and packed with salt in gallon zip bags and will can them tomorrow. While out in the garden I noticed there's a lot more banana peppers growing, so I might pickle then too tomorrow. I also noticed that there's habaneros growing. I'm not sure what I'll do with them all just yet... thinking about getting some fermentation jars and making hot sauce. Anybody experienced with fermenting, especially fermenting hot sauce?

First, can you explain the salt & cukes thing? How much salt & how long? Do you refrigerate while soaking? Do you rinse? & then yea, I fermented hot sauce last year - I'm not sure it was worth the extra work for me, DH couldn't tell the difference. But he doesn't have a very picky pallet - he just stuffs everything in his mouth & swallows - he doesn't savor anything or try to actually taste it. So, he's not a good judge. A lot of people on the pepper sauce website I use swear fermenting adds a little sour savory tang that some want in their sauce. It wasn't complicated to ferment, I just bought the burping lids & did them in canning jars. If you have a lot of fruit flies, expect to be infested. I didn't have an issue, but the burping lids keep them at bay.

ETA: fermenting it makes it last a lot longer too without canning it. That's a bonus.

Anyway, hi all. Did some weeding & trimming of the cukes. My neighbors came over to check everything out as they'll be collecting eggs soon for us when we go away. They were shocked at what we've done to the yard since moving in, they loved the garden, flowers & chicken run. It was nice to hear since we sometimes feel like we annoy the neighbors with the chickens & our rock crawling hobby & all the heavy equipment & tools that comes with it. Course I gave them eggs & cucumbers to buy them off. They did ask us to not move any time soon.

 

[Sueby]

Oh & I'm going to process the harneck garlic for storage, it should be cured now. & I'm going to try & braid the shallots, they should be ready now too.

ETA: Here's the shallot braid, noob mistake, I did it upside down! Wanted the big ones on the bottom. Oh well, I wasn't paying attention.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Morning Gardeners busy morning may see if anything is ready to eat yet have a ton of brussle sprouts planted.

 

[MrLeeHo]

Fertilized and watered yesterday. Picked a handful of okra and a few tomatoes. Our newly laying girl Big Sass has given us 3 eggs since Thursday. Hopefully her sis starts laying soon. Put some sweet potato slips in a bag yesterday, the ones that were eaten up by something are coming back nicely. Need to do some weed eating around the beds and chicken run but im feeling lazy so it can wait till later.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Found as bag of scallops in the freezer too long taking those to birds as treat

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

I looked at the pickle recipe I use @Sueby and it calls for 2 1/2 pounds of sliced cucumbers and 1 pound of sliced onions (I always add an extra 1/2 pound of cukes). Mix the onions and cuke slices with 3 tablespoons of pickling salt in a non reactive bowl. Cover with a wet towel and put ice cubes on the towel and refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours. Then you wash the salt brine off the cukes and drain the liquid off. Then proceed with pickling. I’ve found that cukes with smaller seeds work the best. I hope this is helpful.

 

[NewBoots]

Yeah that looks like an assassin bug, I guess their bite is terrible.

Watered this morning and tied more tomatoes. Starting to get a few small tomatoes but we're still a couple weeks from real production. My small experiment with planting two tired looking tomato starts didn't go well, neither one took well and are just too slow to recover and get their grow on. At least I know now. My late planted potato bags are hale and hearty so it'll be another month at least before I start opening them.

It looks like I'll still have some (maybe 4 quarts) tomato sauce left over from last year when the new crop comes in so I'm going to try some experimentation with making tomato based drinks. I looked at a couple of sites that said blend the sauce 1 to 1 with water, or strain the sauce through a cheesecloth lined sieve. I'll try the blended with water (but less water) one first and add a little vinegar, jalapeno, worcestershire sauce, maybe a little onion and celery. I'll play with it.

 

[WthrLady]

The pillbugs got to ALL my onions. Grrrr.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I'm in the process of trying to make Louisiana hot sauce... Peppers are fermenting for the next few weeks.

I'm the meantime, I'm also going to use the hot banana peppers to make some hot mustard.

And I STILL have a gazillion peppers that I have to figure out what to do with....