What did you do in the garden today?

[NewBoots]

The peach bread pudding turned out fabulous, I love having a good use for the undersized (lots of new girls just coming online) and older eggs. I'll make a jar of refrigerator jam with the last 2 peaches. Tomorrow I'll bring in all the tomatoes on the ripening table and make sauce. Long way from fall planting but I think it'll be carrots, mustard greens, kale, and beets. It's supposed to rain here next Friday so cross your fingers and toes for me please.

Penny's coming right along, barks when someone comes close to the house but calms pretty quickly when we ask. She's still pretty reactive though and sometimes barks when she thinks she might have heard something. As above, several of the new girls have started to lay, mostly smaller eggs but that's fine, that means we get to have some eggs for our use.

 

[WthrLady]

Just realized I didn't see the swallows today. But I did see them Thursday. We had a family unit of about 35. Gone, phew. Fall is coming. Gone as fast as they came.

 

[Swiss]

Just an idea, your schedule may vary, although you're my zone too, I think.

I prune in the last week of January, while it's still well below freezing.
I spray before 1st buds appear-bonide fruit tree spray
I fertilize with 10/10/10 on the first of every month, but stop in July.
I spray right before blooms open-bonide fruit tree spray
I spray after every hard rain, or once a week for fungus-copper fungicide-and cedar rust
I spray 3 weeks before harvest - bonide fruit tree spray.
And water water water water.
Emergency pruning as needed.
Swear daily.
Cry when a gorgeous tree, just goes spotty and up and dies.
Bawl when a young tree full of fruit is snapped off the trunk and the apples are half eaten by deer.

You're supposed to be able to JUST use bonide fruit tree spray, but we are in a high cedar rust area and it needs the extra treatment.
Neem oil I only used one season for one spraying and I couldn't stand the smell or the rash I got, Your results may vary.

I have 40 trees, and yes, it's a total pain in the arse.

All the spraying has to be done when there is no wind, which usually means the crack of dawn, but after the dew...LOL...and even if there is no wind, somehow Mother Nature sees me with the pump sprayer and turns just enough on that I should never have cedar rust disease or moths.

Thank you for this! I have it bookmarked.

The peach bread pudding turned out fabulous, I love having a good use for the undersized (lots of new girls just coming online) and older eggs. I'll make a jar of refrigerator jam with the last 2 peaches. Tomorrow I'll bring in all the tomatoes on the ripening table and make sauce. Long way from fall planting but I think it'll be carrots, mustard greens, kale, and beets. It's supposed to rain here next Friday so cross your fingers and toes for me please.

Penny's coming right along, barks when someone comes close to the house but calms pretty quickly when we ask. She's still pretty reactive though and sometimes barks when she thinks she might have heard something. As above, several of the new girls have started to lay, mostly smaller eggs but that's fine, that means we get to have some eggs for our use.

My dog used to bark when he thought he heard something, and I learned that if he wouldn't stop when I told him to, I'd look out the window and tell him, "There's nothing there." That would almost always make him stop. I miss that tub of lard!

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Good morning gardeners. It was nice to get away and smell something other than peaches yesterday. DD and I went on our little day trip to Ipswich and ate fried clams and oysters till we couldn't anymore at the Clam Box. Then we visited this magnificent country estate on Castle Hill. It was like a vision out of Downton Abbey. Today, back to the grind. This morning I picked more green beans, tomatoes, a few okra and some peppers. I also picked a bunch of oregano. The okra is in the freezer and the oregano is in the dehydrator. So my inspiration for dinner this evening is homemade pasta with a bolognese sauce of home grown tomatoes and herbs. My focus today will be getting more peach slices into the freezer and maybe an afternoon nap. LOL! Tomorrow I really need to freeze more green beans. So tomorrow also looks like a good day to work on the garage since the green beans are not all that time consuming. The lima beans are getting plumper and the Fall garden items are doing well. It seems the lima beans perked up after I planted carrots with them so I'm thinking those are a good pair for future plantings. As far as the peach tree fertilizing: I fertilized one year and I got nothing from the tree. The following year I dumped pellet stove ashes on it. Some peaches formed but dropped off. This past winter I put the ashes on the ground under the peach tree twice. I've harvested so many peaches it's like making up for when it wasn't producing. I only sprayed with neem oil once. The ratio of perfect peaches to those with worms was about less than half had some degree of worm. Apparently the local growers here spray twice. So next Spring I'll spray twice but only with neem oil. I refuse to use chemical bug spray on anything I'm going to consume. But that's just me. Have a great day everyone.

 

[NewBoots]

My dog used to bark when he thought he heard something, and I learned that if he wouldn't stop when I told him to, I'd look out the window and tell him, "There's nothing there." That would almost always make him stop. I miss that tub of lard!

This is exactly what I was doing and it seemed to help. So good to hear it might actually be helping. And I'm sorry for your loss.

Sauce is on the stove and it looks like I'll be processing about 30 pounds of trimmed tomatoes today.

 

[Peppercorngal]

I'm biding my time looking forward to fall and Thanksgiving! Picking a lot of tomatoes, yellow squash and feeding the lettuce to my chickens!

 

[chickengr]

my okra produced leaves only

 

[pennyJo1960]

We had the first of the fall rain come in last night .
I have no brussle sprouts yet small brussle stalks.
Lotls of tomato on the vines yet maybe a green tomato salsa in my future.
Bought 12 big brown eggs at the auction they are in my incubator now.

 

[TJAnonymous]

Oh yes! Definitely she is allowed to gorge on insects. She won’t be killed. We don’t even kill the hairy wolf spiders…..unless one gets in the house, which is rare. But y’all boots go in for dealing with the compost mid-summer and on bc the wolf spiders LOVE the compost!

I don't kill any spiders in my garden.... Not even the black widows I find occasionally.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I finally got out to the garden today for the first time in 2 or 3 weeks. I watered it... Looks like some kind of disease killed off most of my strawberry plants. I'll likely have to start over again next year. The only ones that look green are the alpine strawberries.

DH canned about 4 pints of tomatoes today. We ended up throwing out at least a dozen tomatoes to the chickens because they went bad in the fridge.

All that work for a garden and the chickens invariably get more out of it than I do.....