BS: Gardening 2010

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 06:28 AM

First tiny flowerbuds on the Zuccini!

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 08:20 AM

We are way behind in the veggie garden... Bad us...

Okay, to our credit we have had way too many other things to tend to but...

...no excuse!!!

Going to be real hot here in Pine Grove Holler today so I'm going to post this and get in an hour's worth of weeding...

We cooked down our blackberries last night and this mornin' we're gonna heat them back up and run them thru the "Squeezo Strainer III" to get the seed out and make our jam...

The red berries will be coming in this coming week... Some folks call them raspberries, the P-Vine calls 'um "gooseberries"... No matter... They grow wild everywhere you let 'um and they are good... Not as mnay seed at the blackberried... Think we'll try making a couple jars of jam with them this year just to see how that works...

Well, the sun block has sunk in an' I reckon I need to get out there...

Happy gardenin' to all...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 10:19 AM

Sad story and cautionary tale for those who ascribe to "better gardening through chemicals."

Dad grabbed the wrong bottle when he set out to spray their 5 "Knockout" roses for insect damage and drenched them thoroughly with weed killer. Didn't catch his mistake until all the leaves wilted.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: MMario
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 10:29 AM

Bobert - now you've got me curious...are P-vine's "gooseberries" a local name for wild red raspberries or are they the red variety of gooseberries (Ribes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stachelbeere_(Ribes_uva-crispa).jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 11:22 AM

Just watered the containers with hot water again, leaving the plastic over them until it warms up more today (if it does). This is another cold spring like we had last year. Drat! That means if you blink, you miss summer.




Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 08:45 PM

Sorry, MMario, but that page didn't work fir me...

Ahhhhh, after weeding this mroning and watering the P-Vine and I headed down to Fredrisburg, Va. to "Junk Alley" which is is the low rent district to look for some metal seating for the gardenes... That was the one thing that we found from out tours... Not enough seating in the gardens...

Well, luck would have it we found the most unusual glider... It's actually two seperat sigle gliders with a table between them with wooden slats... Never seen one like it which, of course, meant that we had to have it... Bargained the guy down from $100 to $60, stuck it in my trailer which I took just in case, and brought it home... It's perfect...

Yeah, something we never talk much about is what hardscape needs to go with any garden... I mean, we spend so much time aking stuff peaceful and then have no way to appreciate it in a leisurely manner...

Well, this little glider will certainly afford us hours of enjoyment to just sit and enjoy...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 08:59 PM

I have a little bench in my garden I made from a wooden box turned over two firewood stumps.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Janie
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 09:55 PM

Pictures, Alice and Bobert?

yeh, hardscaping. Helps the garden look like a garden, even in winter. Who was it that talked about the "bones" of a garden? On past garden threads I've shared how much I enjoy being in the garden at night. That is when the "bones" and structural elements can best be noticed and evaluated.

I brought all of my garden sculptures (metal and stone), statuary, pedestals, birdbaths, benches, etc., with me, most of it either antiques or good quality cast stone by Al's Art, Campania, etc. Because I had to scramble and my sister and I could not lift it and move it on our own, I was not able to bring a wonderful wrought-iron Mediterranean patio table that I bought at an auction, nor did I have time to dig out 4 wrought-iron trellises. I miss the trellises, but the table, nice as it was, would not have worked here. I didn't think most of the rest would work, since it had all been selected for my Victorian garden and 1914 bungalow, but I have slowly and steadily been figuring out how to make most of the rest of it work around this modest, 1960's ranch. In fact, since I have so little in terms of gardens in place, it is the benches, pedestals, etc., that create some sense of garden and intentional landscape.

At the old place, we had two chimneys taken down, and I used those wonderful old bricks to make dry-stack walls and borders. They added a lot. Here, I hope to eventually lay some stone paths and build some low dry-stack stone walls to frame a foundation bed along the front and one side of the house, and to create a raised border around the rear property line and the driveway. Think I will put up a fence first though - when my ship comes in.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 11:01 PM

Janie, this photo was taken back in May when I was setting up the containers. The right side shows the little seat that is a wooden box turned over a couple of firewood stumps. It has a triangular piece of wood nailed to the back of the box to make the seat. I usually don't sit there... I use it more often for a place to set things while I'm working there.

Click Here

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 05:51 PM

A 15 gallon black plastic pot that has been full of garden soil and sitting for years in a corner of the yard was something I finally got around to dealing with today. I needed the pot and the soil, so I dug half of it out into the wheelbarrow, then tipped the pot upside down on the barrow. When I pulled it off... the biggest ant farm I'd seen in years was in the bottom. I need the soil, so that barrow is full of boiling water, tumeric, and some Arm & Hammer laundry suds now. Thank you, ants, for aerating the soil.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 09:20 PM

Sorry, Jnaie, but pictures, at least the on line variety, are outta my technical skill levels...

I'll have some film ones at the Getaway...

Finished making our jelly today... The strainer worked great... The only problem is that outta a gallon of black berries we only got 5 pints on jelly??? Lotta seed in those berries...

Veggie garden is shaping up!!! Finally!!! Yeah, we're a little late but we're getting it under control... Lotta weeds and grass growing in it that needed to come out... Trying to find *clean* straw to mulch with... The stuff we got last year was loaded with seed (barley) and we ended up with lotta barley growing in the straw... No good!!!

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 14 Jun 10 - 01:59 AM

OK, I really didn't want to stop digging, but it was getting too dark.

I had a spot back by the alley and trash can where a landscaping neighbor unloaded some extra top soil for me a few years back. This pile really needed to be transferred over by the compost bin and garden, so I started digging it all up and wheel barrowing it over.

This was the first day that didn't rain in ages, and it was wonderful!
Not too hot, not too cold, and nicely sunny. I need to take advantage of any day like this that I can, our season is so SHORT!


Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jun 10 - 11:52 PM

I dug some more on a bed in the front yard. I realized I could expand it more than I'd originally designed, so I'll be tweaking some of my steel edging boundaries before I finish.

Picking tomatoes, peppers, herbs (had a real nice pizza the other day with a bunch of stuff from the garden). I dug the last of the garlic this evening, dropping those little corm things back into the dirt. Local gardening guru says to let these dry some, break them into cloves, and plant them in a few weeks for next year. Will do! Those little corms need two years to make a good clove of garlic, apparently.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Janie
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 12:06 AM

My greatest accomplishment this year (so far) is to have started a chart that shows the location, color, and bloom time of each day lily that has been heeled in "where ever" over the past two years, the better to planfully transplant them as garden beds get created.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 05:10 PM

The alley spot is finished. I worked on it gradually over several days, moving the pile of topsoil and leveling the area.

I have mother of thyme all over in my yard, spreading from where I first planted it in a flower bed. I encourage it to take over the grass, as I'd love it to replace the turf as much as possible.

I dug plugs from different patches of the thyme and planted them back in the area of the alley where I cleaned up and leveled the earth.
That is a project I've wanted finished for years! It is so good to be home.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 07:13 PM

It hailed!!

There was a thunderstorm threatening all day, then the air temp dropped suddenly. I could tell that hail was coming. Garden got covered, and I took some photos before the hail pounded the poppies and the peonies.

Poppies here:
deep, dark orange poppies before hail

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 07:49 PM

Finished plantin' the veggie garden this evening... Done!!!

Found two extra pepper seedlings and on extra eggplant seedling so we made room for them...

BTW, I dpon't know if any of ya'll use fish under yer seedlings but the P-Vine got some nasty jumbo shrimp (sounds funny, don't it???) so rather than throw tham away we used them under our seedlings... The tomatoes that we put in last week must have found 'um cause you can almost see them plants grow... Anyway, good use for bad shrimp...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 08:12 PM

Good recycling/fertilizing there, Bobert.

About 20 years ago, when I planted a grove of aspen trees between my driveway and the neighbor's house, I used a liquid fish fertilizer that I would spray with the hose. The neighborhood smelled like dead fish until winter.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Janie
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 09:08 PM

Either 2 wrens had a heck of a fight on top of one of my day lilies or a deer came thru and got one mouthful before being chased away by a dog, tripping over the day lily as it took off. It was fine this morning, and beaten up when I got home before sunset.

The beautiful colleagues I have been blessed to work with for lo these many years took me out to supper tonight to say good bye and presented me with a generous gift certificate to Niche Gardens, which specializes in nursery propagated native plants. Niche is also having a spring 25% off sale, so I know where I am headed one day next week during the short break between jobs!

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 10:11 PM

Niche Gardens!!! I been hearing about them for years...

Yeah, Alice, we use Fish Emulsion on our veggies during the growing season... Good stuff... Stinky??? Yeah, but...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 15 Jun 10 - 10:36 PM

Janie, what a thoughtful gift! Best gift EVER for a gardener.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jun 10 - 12:48 AM

Would horse manure work as well in a garden as cow or chicken? We have a neighbor with a horse (It's across the creek, so I never hear it myself, but another neighbor reports that it's still back there and she and her small son stop and feed it grass every so often when they're out on walks). I could ask to go muck out the area a bit and put some in a pile to age, perhaps. Any thoughts? This horse probably eats the native grasses and hay.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: MMario
Date: 16 Jun 10 - 09:39 AM

well aged horse manure works very well.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jun 10 - 10:37 AM

You mean it should come from an old horse? ;-D

So few tomatoes this year. It's a struggle to get every fruit going. I fear they'll all be seedless, from the spray and Q-tips. Mother Nature pollinating her garden by hand.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Jun 10 - 12:40 PM

Horse manure is known to be very seedy when it is hot... If it is well composted it's fine but really doesn't have the nitrogen as cow manure, or better yet, chicken manure...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 10:05 AM

Spotted a tiny tomato hornworm yesterday. Must hit the garden with BT. All of these plants, so few 'maters. I'm going to pull a couple of these pretty soon and put something else in.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: MMario
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 10:11 AM

Back when I worked on the truck farm - the owner's father took care of the greenhouse tomatoes. He swore that he got the best fruit set with an electric toothbrush.

He used it without a brush - and would just touch the vibrating shaft to the stem of the flower.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 12:42 PM

Interesting, so he would pollinate that way... how often would he do that?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 12:59 PM

We had one day this week that was perfect, sunny and not too hot or cold, and the rest has been rain, hail, wind, cold temps, down in the 30's at night... I had to put a little coffee cup hotplate under the plastic as a heater for the mini-greenhouse.

In the meantime, wonderful bird watching. I get flocks of Western Tanagers in my yard. I have a watercolor of a male Western Tanager in the images on this page. Look to the right side where the moose painting is, and the tanager is perched on a twig in the painting. Males have a red head the body of tanagers is yellow with black on the wings... stunning. I wish I could afford bird seed for them.

With the rain, I've had time to focus more on designs, so I've added some bird related images to the blog here.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 02:45 PM

Got 7/10s of an inch of rain last night... We'll take it...

That's allowing me to do stuff other move osciallors around...

Actually, this is a day off from gardening and I've been orgainizing tools and cleaning out the barn...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: gnu
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 03:00 PM

My old man would only have a dozen or so tomatoe plants and he would just use his fingers to cross-pollinate. I don't have many. I use a makeup brush that I found after whatshername left... I think it's for blush??

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: MMario
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 03:33 PM

@Alice - I think he did it pretty much daily - but he was in there daily suckering and tying etc on the tomatoes. He only needed to touch the stem once per cluster.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 03:50 PM

Frontpage news locally here today is that all the cool rainy weather we are having is protecting the wheat crops from a major grasshopper infestation happening in surrounding states.

Bozeman Daily Chronicle:
"...The federal government has allocated $11 million in emergency funding to help farmers in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming to fight the grasshopper infestation, which could be the worst in nearly three decades. But wet weather isn't good for the small insects that can gobble up farmers' profits, which has area farmers confident they have one less thing to worry about.

"The best thing to knock hoppers back is a cool, wet spring, and that's exactly what we got," said Bob Broyles, USDA county executive director for the farm service agency."

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Janie
Date: 17 Jun 10 - 11:10 PM

I just figure the bugs and wind will see to tomato pollination. I've never tried to help it along.

Sorry you are having a bad tomato year, Maggie. Seems like that just happens sometimes.

I picked and ate one small gold cherry tomato today. It will be awhile before there are more, but all (3) of my tomato plants are growing well so far this year, have plenty of blooms, especially since they get the minimum amount of sun, and the earliest blooms are fruiting now. I notice some volunteer seedlings from the cherry tomato I grew in a pot last year are coming up in a pot I had kale growing in last year but haven't dumped yet. Debating pricking a couple of them out to plant for a late season crop. Would have to be in pots, though, so I don't know if I'll fool with them.

I probably planted too much basil. Better too much than too little.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 12:09 AM

I have a few beautiful tomatoes in the fridge, and a few on the plants, but I'm not seeing new ones on the plants.

For grasshoppers, get finely powdered kaolin clay and mix it in a slurry in a hose end sprayer and spray it over the garden. The power (from the same clay used in pottery and cat litter) will simply coat the leaves and grasshoppers don't like it. There is a commercial application. If you want to find more information, visit http://www.dirtdoctor.com and go to the library area and look up grasshoppers.

I'm slowly hand-digging a new bed across the bottom of the front yard, (the left-hand side from the path from front porch to the street when you're on the porch). I put down another 8' length of steel edging this evening, and have one length left for that project. I'll be planting and mulching heavily out there this weekend. And this means several more square yards of turf GONE! I love getting rid of grass. :)

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: MMario
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 10:18 AM

Tomatoes have problems with setting fruit at temps above 90 and virtually none will set above 95 degrees. (I found this out on google - I thought I had seen something regarding this)

So that may be the problem.

@Janie - can you really have too much basil?

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 12:02 PM

Veggie garden successfully corralled with bird netting to keep out marauding chickens... blueberry patch fully enclosed... just went up the hillside to check on my strawberry beds this morning and found--oh, NO!!!--a WOODCHUCK!!! *sigh.* That's the one pest we haven't had to deal with here--haven't seen any on our property for over a decade--but I guess it's time to invest in more critter-b-gone, netting, and shells for the .22 (otherwise known as critter-b-gone, phase II!)

On the bright side, we have tomatoes and peppers and squash blooming, peapods setting, and basil and carrots up between the tomatoes. Kale is being harvested regularly, as is the Swiss Chard. First planting of lettuce has bolted in the hoophouse. Time to yank it, give the stalks to the pigs and chickens, and plant again!

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: MMario
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 12:12 PM

No woodchucks for years....heaven on earth; we see multiples daily...

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bettynh
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 04:17 PM

I had pretty good results using hot pepper spray to keep the woodchucks off my beans. It comes neatly packaged or you can just dilute hot sauce, I suppose. I only used it on foliage, tho. I certainly wouldn't want to try to get hot sauce off my strawberries!

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 04:25 PM

I had to put Wasabi on my lawn deer in the back yard this week, because 5 fighting magpies were tearing the antlers apart. I didn't have any chili powder, but wasabi worked.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: maire-aine
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 05:13 PM

The 2 heirloom tomato plants I bought at the market have several tomatoes each, altho they're still small. And the heirloom seedlings that I started inside have survived transplantation. They're still very small, but each has put out new leaves. My black raspberry bushes are loaded this year, and they all look big and fat. Just turning the palest pink now. They usually begin to ripen about the last day of June, my birthday present.

Maryanne

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 12:06 AM

I'm about to pull out the heirloom plants. There isn't a single fruit between the two of them. I have other stuff I can put on that space.

Watered with the soaker hose again today. It's just so hot. In the morning I'll go over and get more free mulch and pile more up around my garden plants. And maybe put some newspaper under the mulch. I know that if the roots can stay moist (but not soggy) the rest of the plant will be much better off. We've been up to about 98^o every day this week.

I'm eating at least one tomato a day, two if I can manage it. They have so much flavor! I had such a drought over the winter, because no matter how much a store tomato looks like it MIGHT have flavor, it doesn't. I have the big one for the BLT. Now if I can just get my daughter (Moonglow) to come down for the ceremony we do every year. I make a loaf of bread and give it time to cool from baking, but is still Uber fresh. Then we get (or thaw - I always have some handy) bacon, and pull out fresh lettuce and the mayo and we do the Rites Of Summer. We make BLTs.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 12:21 AM

BLT's. Yum.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 07:31 AM

Most of us are a month away from our first real tomatoes, Magz, so we're havin' to enjoy them thru you... Not quite the same, however...

The P-Vine got one decent landscaping job and two orders for plants yestderday so we are off to Richmond (Colesville Nurseries) which is a wholesaler and open until 1... It's 2 hours, 45 minuits down there so...

...gotta go...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bettynh
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 10:01 AM

Two of our local farms make good money growing heirloom tomatoes for the Boston market (Boston is only an hour away from here if you drive in the middle of the night and avoid traffic). They're the last tomatoes to produce, and there are never very many of them. We won't see them till August, even when we're two weeks ahead of ourselves this year. The stands will be selling multicolored cherry tomatoes by early July, however, and they'll have vast quantities. I took the hint and grow a couple cherry tomatoes for myself and buy the heirlooms. My favorite heirloom is yellow Brandywine but most of the 30 or so vairieties are wonderful. The strawberry pick-your-own fields are in full production. Cherries and raspberries are starting. Soon they'll add the yellow and black raspberries and blueberries.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 12:10 PM

Okay, I'll leave those out there for a little while longer. But there is nothing, just flowers, no fruits. I have one bowl of tomatoes in the fridge, and none ripening on the window sill right now. Last summer we had a bumper crop.

I've been eating strawberries every day. We seem to have a new burst of activity, and I get just enough to go in a bowl of cereal or yogurt for breakfast. Mmmmm!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 02:27 PM

Turned over the compost pile - a great way to work out frustration!

Today is the second sunny day in a row, so finally the garden can grow a little faster today. Had to stake up the delphinium, as high winds came up last night. Thunderstorms forecast for this afternoon and tomorrow, but in the meantime, the garden and I are enjoying warmth and blue skies!

A couple of bush beans sprouted. They've been in the ground so long I thought they never would. A couple of the sunflowers sprouted, but the pounding rain and hail sliced and diced them.


Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Bettynh
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 02:59 PM

Geez, Alice, it's a wonder you carry on. Have you read Elliott Coleman? He thinks he has harsh weather on the Maine coast. His site shows his setup - tunnel greenhouses with black plastic mulch and fabric rowcovers in his coldest season. Sometimes he doubles up the tunnels, too, I think. But on the coast of Maine, moderated by ocean temps, he'll never see the extremes you put up with.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: Alice
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 03:10 PM

Thanks for the link - he has a great setup there!

Yup, it can snow any time of the year here. It's a challenge!
I think it will make anything I harvest even more satisfying that it survived to ripen!

A.

Subject: RE: BS: Gardening 2010
From: maire-aine
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 03:24 PM

I'm so jealous of all of you folks who can eat strawberries. It's been about 5 years since the terrible Memorial-Day-Strawberry-Fiasco. I ate a lot all at once and broke out into a terrible rash, over a holiday week-end, naturally. Ended up with shots & pills to take for a week, and everything.

I asked my doctor a few months ago whether I could try some again, and he advised against it. "Nevermore!" Arrgh!

Maryanne