What did you do in the garden today?

[chickengr]

I went down the slope to check my big garden. peas are growing, cauliflowers are tiny but started heads and picked 3-4 bell peppers and 5-6 tomatoes. eggplants and tomatoes are still flowering.

 

[jerryse]

recipe???

 

[Sally PB]

Last night I thought I heard a Menards commercial that said 'get it before the rebate ends" but figured I was mishearing it as the dumb rebate program as been running non-stop for three years.

Our local Menards run the rebate program off and on. I think we're going to be buying some lumber for a project while it's "off," unfortunately.

 

[Sueby]

The forsythia are blooming.

 

[CNJ]

What about your chickens? Mine „love“ crickets, that’s why I don’t have any

I put a wire fence on the side of my house to keep the chickens in the back. I laid river rocks on the side of my house which extends to the back. The crickets live and hide under the rocks. I see my chickens scratching and searching for them every morning, but they can't get the ones on the other side of the wire fence.

 

[CNJ]

Even though I covered my parsley with frost barrier, it

BTW, those heavy duty black & yellow totes were on sale at Lowe's on Black Friday for $9.98. Not sure if that was everywhere or just here. I picked up several...

I am afraid of crowds; I usually wait for holiday events to settle down before I go out and I never shop on the weekends. Those totes usually sell for $12 where I live, so $10 is a good buy. I'll check it today; I need some gardening stuff..................

 

[TJAnonymous]

How did they fare?

I haven't checked them yet... I'll have to walk down there today and look

 

[TJAnonymous]

Well, the scale problem is FAR WORSE than I originally thought. I resprayed Dormant/Horticulture oil on the Mona Lavender, but also liberally doused all the other plants in the sunroom. When I looked at the plants in the living room, I realized that the aloe plant in there also has scale on it. So does the aloe in the sunroom which is across the room entirely from the Mona Lavender and other plants. So this has clearly been a problem for a while and I just never noticed it. I sprayed both aloe and checked other plants in the living room. So far it seems isolated to the aloe and Mona Lavender... But I'm treating everything as a precaution.

 

[CedarLane]

Save some of your small ones. That's what I did. I have a bag of them in with the rest of the potatoes, saved for next spring's planting.

Good idea!

I have a lot of little ones! It was nice to start with labeled varieties though. Of course I immediately forgot which ones got planted where.

One of the reasons we always have a diagram of our garden and what's planted where. Of course, that's not always fool-proof....

(We have a diagram for every year since we were married, as well as a chart of our frozen and canned goods & how much was used each year to help plan for the next year.)

Oh, me too.

I didn't buy any seed potatoes last year, and don't plan to buy any in 2024. I'm looking to become as seed self sufficient as I can.

I will still try new varieties of tomatoes, via purchased seed. When I find one I like, I save seed, and grow it again the next year. Then I buy something else to try.

I have heard (correct me if I'm wrong) that using potatoes from the previous year only works well for 1 or 2 years before quality of harvest deteriorates???
This year we couldn't get any Kennebec seed potatoes and used leftovers from last year. I'm not sure how long we could continue doing this without issue.
Maybe there's something that certified seed potato growers do/know that we don't???

 

[saysfaa]

The main point of the certified seed potatoes is they are disease free. Well, at least of a list of diseases. Many places have quite a few viruses and such in the soil. It is hard to avoid the plants getting infected during the growing season even when they start out disease free but it helps a lot for the plants to get a good start before they are infected.