NFR 2024 Garden and Growing Things thread

Non-fishing related
JudyM said:
I have a mini farm not far from my casa that has a half-acre of nothing but heirloom tomatoes. Also has produce direct from other farmers. I hope it
never goes away and becomes a housing development. The back side of my casa faces south and gets cooked every summer with no
water source. I grew up in suburban Portland with a growing garden and a hunting/fishing Dad. Y'all make me jelly....
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I don't own the mini farm, a wonderful family that lives a half mile away owns it. Sorry, I should have fixed my post, my bad.
 
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Capt Insano Emeritis said:
This years great tomato crop!
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I'm having a decent tomato crop this year as well. I repeated last years experiment. I have long had a "tomato house" which is a tall cold frame covered with greenhouse grade clear plastic. After "cooking" my tomato plants a couple years ago during a hot spell, I redid the roof so that I can lift and tilt it open during the warmest months. That seems to help, but I'm not sure it's enough. Only two of the four plants in there have grown and produced very well at all, one Sungold and one Early Girl. I think I need to make the door removable so that it can be changed out for a screen door to keep deer out. Then I planted three plants in my raised bed area, another Sungold and a new one for me, Big Beef, and a Juane Flame. They got off to a slow start because the weather was a bit cool, but once they got going it's been tall plants with lots of tomatoes. I added a visqueen tent over those plants in hopes they survive heavy rains and light frosts. So far, so good; we cant' eat them fast enough. I think next year I'll just plant Sun Gold (for salads) and Big Beef (for slicing).

I got an excellent crop of green beans and carrots, but onions look to be a bust again this year. I don't know what I'm doing wrong - I start some in a tray inside on a window sill and sow some directly into the raised bed. But they (Walla Walla) are basically the size of green onions. And something that should be dead easy, I had really mixed success growing lettuce. The seeds are from Territorial, but maybe I need to try different varieties.

Another mixed success are my blueberries. I bought one new plant this spring and put it in a large container, and it did quite well for its size this year. Of my two old plants (10 or 11 years old) either need to be tossed to the compost heap or replanted. They are in containers, large ones. But maybe they have become root bound. One no longer turns bright green and produces very few berries after being the super producer for years. The other has nice green leaves and produces a huge number of berries. However, after the first few ripen, the remainder sit there in a half ripe condition and never finish ripening. I left them all summer, and they finally dropped off the plant in a still half-ripe condition. No clue what's going wrong there.

Then there's my Honeycrisp apple tree. This started out as one of those $14 bare root Costco impulse purchases a few years ago. Last year it produced a huge crop, but this year I only got 13 apples off of it. It blossomed really well, but maybe the bees didn't do their pollenating job - beats me.

Anyway, I got a long way to go to become a green thumb gardener, but I've graduated from the totally black thumb type of gardener.
 
I tried to say as little as possible on this post . I-put the quarter in for scale. Generally Giant Belgian are huge late in the season. These were tiny. Sometimes my attempt at humor with too few clues fails miserably. In past decades I have had a lot of 11/2 to 3 lbs mammoths. This year sucked for tomatoes except the Japanese one Morotomo. Which are a uniform Japanese market tomato.
 
Salmo_g said:
I'm having a decent tomato crop this year as well. I repeated last years experiment. I have long had a "tomato house" which is a tall cold frame covered with greenhouse grade clear plastic. After "cooking" my tomato plants a couple years ago during a hot spell, I redid the roof so that I can lift and tilt it open during the warmest months. That seems to help, but I'm not sure it's enough. Only two of the four plants in there have grown and produced very well at all, one Sungold and one Early Girl. I think I need to make the door removable so that it can be changed out for a screen door to keep deer out. Then I planted three plants in my raised bed area, another Sungold and a new one for me, Big Beef, and a Juane Flame. They got off to a slow start because the weather was a bit cool, but once they got going it's been tall plants with lots of tomatoes. I added a visqueen tent over those plants in hopes they survive heavy rains and light frosts. So far, so good; we cant' eat them fast enough. I think next year I'll just plant Sun Gold (for salads) and Big Beef (for slicing).

I got an excellent crop of green beans and carrots, but onions look to be a bust again this year. I don't know what I'm doing wrong - I start some in a tray inside on a window sill and sow some directly into the raised bed. But they (Walla Walla) are basically the size of green onions. And something that should be dead easy, I had really mixed success growing lettuce. The seeds are from Territorial, but maybe I need to try different varieties.

Another mixed success are my blueberries. I bought one new plant this spring and put it in a large container, and it did quite well for its size this year. Of my two old plants (10 or 11 years old) either need to be tossed to the compost heap or replanted. They are in containers, large ones. But maybe they have become root bound. One no longer turns bright green and produces very few berries after being the super producer for years. The other has nice green leaves and produces a huge number of berries. However, after the first few ripen, the remainder sit there in a half ripe condition and never finish ripening. I left them all summer, and they finally dropped off the plant in a still half-ripe condition. No clue what's going wrong there.

Then there's my Honeycrisp apple tree. This started out as one of those $14 bare root Costco impulse purchases a few years ago. Last year it produced a huge crop, but this year I only got 13 apples off of it. It blossomed really well, but maybe the bees didn't do their pollenating job - beats me.

Anyway, I got a long way to go to become a green thumb gardener, but I've graduated from the totally black thumb type of gardener.
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I REALLY like italienischer for lettuce. It's been super easy to grow for me. Heads the size of basketballs, tasty romaine style. Stay on top of the slugs though, they also really like it and the tiny ones will get in between the tight leaves.
territorialseed.com

Italienischer Lettuce Seed | ORGANIC SEED / 1/2 ounce | Territorial Seed

55 days. Once you grow this variety, you'll know why many people describe Italienischer as a truly magnificent lettuce. Tall, upright, and sturdy 18 inch bright green plants are huge, providing more sustenance per plant than any other variety we know of. Even at its most mature size, this...
territorialseed.com territorialseed.com
 
Gardening year round. Never ends. Picking lemon aji peppers daily. A small handfull at a time. Dug compost out of my bin towers. Added 4-5” after adding about 4 cups of organic granular fertilizer and double digging 2’+ down, then got my electric rototiller and tilled it all and levelled. I did this to 3 2’x3’ deep x 6’ metal troughs. One is filled with transplanted rooted elephant garlic on the ends and a winter crop of broad Winsor fava beans. In the past week, I started Red Russian kale and hollow crown parsnips in a couple other emptied and amended beds. Next a trip to Concentrates to buy bags of cottonseed, kelp and bonemeal to do a major nuke up in my next years designated tomato raised beds. I have another yard and a half of my beautiful compost. Leaves being raked and bagged with a bit of soil in the bags for colder weather mulch.
 
Well I was making a big batch of lemon aji sauce , done simmering except for the 3/8 cup of water and 3 T of cornstarch as a thickener. Simmer a few minutes then bottle up…
This mix has 14 ounces of chopped aji, 8 garlic cloves 3 T of honey a cup of extra virgin olive oil and of course the 1 1/2 cup Braggs cider vinegar. The the thickener… atthi moment I spaced outand grabbed baking soda…

It was volcanic and messy and the end of my canning this year…a bit of time has passed and the clean up is done and I can just begin to understand the humor in this 3 hour process failure
 
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Salmon123 said:
I could be wrong but isnt October the time when you are supposed to plant your garlic?
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I suppose it depends on your geographical location, here in the Basin I think most of us plant our garlic in October (mine's planted and covered with some straw and some anti-quail, anti-cat netting.
 
Buzzy said:
I suppose it depends on your geographical location, here in the Basin I think most of us plant our garlic in October (mine's planted and covered with some straw and some anti-quail, anti-cat netting.
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August-October- not critical. Most has to do with your local micro climate. Here in zone 9a at about 240’ elev. dig mature in july dry out for 3-4 weeks and plant
 
It always shocks me at the cost of sending even a small package. 4”x 8” x7” deep in a gallon zip lock didn’t weigh much less than 16 ounces- sent to Conifer Co no tracking USPS. Lowest price- $18.37! Yikes!
 
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