I’ve noticed similar reticence from other gardeners to take on excess seedlings - my theory is that they’re just control freaks who want to have watched their plants from germination on! My community garden has an online portal including a space for posting excess seeds or seedlings, and no-one ever uses it.
I picked my first two pickling cukes, and grabbed some dill too, and made fridge pickles. Yum! I also sliced and pickled a few plums I had lying around, it looks very pretty, but I’m yet to try them. I hope they’ll be nice on a sandwich or with a curry?
I also ate the first three or four cherry tomatoes, the Sungold variety fruited first. I’m growing a few different varieties, all circling a large cage/trellis, which I’m half-heartedly using - no pruning, no tying, just pushing the growing tips of the plants from one side to another when they’re long and flexible enough to do so. I have a few determinate tomatoes in pots at home too - I did intend to grow a determinate at home this year, and prune and tie religiously, just to have a comparison… but, oops. I didn’t.
The watermelon and cantaloupe are growing quickly now, and have male and female flowers. The wax pepper plants have hardly grown an inch, but have fruit and flowers all over - I think I’ll pull them all off and see if I can get the plants taller before letting them bear fruit.
Well, don’t think I’ll be getting any lettuce this year - something ate it all again, leaving just enough to regenerate a few inches. After which I now expect it to be eaten again.
>sigh<
The rest of it seems to be growing, but will have to contend with weeds until after Sunday when I’m finally back from Wisconsin for good.
About a week ago my local Ace Hardware had a display outside with the sorriest looking plants you’ve ever seen. They were giving them away since they were headed for the trash. So, I grabbed 6 green pepper plants and 6 cauliflower plants. They’ve spent their loves in those little 6 pack pots so they’re very stunted, only about 6 inches tall.
I planted them next to the 3 tomato plants that I rescued from Tractor Supply, and they’re are acclimating nicely, and have begun to grow and stretch their legs.
The tomato plants that I rescued were stunted and gangly. I planted them deep and with some good food and lots of water, they are flourishing now. Each one now has a couple of nice sized fruits and tons of flowers.
My little garden is full of unwanted/rescued plants. I will update on their progress.
Got a whopping big handful of radishes and a very nice white onion. Mmm… salad for lunch.
I’m sort of resigned to no lettuce this year. The chard is sort of limping along, I’m hoping it’s just waiting to suddenly shoot up. The carrots, dill, turnips, and beets seem to be coming along. As usual, I seem to have lost track of the parsley, I usually do mange to find it again.
The beans, corn, and squash are (so far) quite happy. Planted extra beans this year.
Scored pickling cucumbers at the farmers’ market today. Home canned pickles are, honest to god, an aphrodisiac. Both dill and bread-and-butter. Also picked up some sprouted dill for the above. A case of nectarines, just for breakfast in the coming week. And a flat of marionberries; some for jam and some for breakfast.
The tomatoes are turning into a forest - I transplanted some of them to the spot where the braising greens were (until they got too woody and started to bolt, and I pulled them out). The squashes and melons and cucumbers are going insane, no matter how much I prune them, but so far aren’t producing flowers. It’s been cool and rainy more than usual, which I am guessing may be part of the issue. When should I normally expect to see flowers and the beginnings of fruits?
However, I am growing a bumper crop of broccoli and kale, and the snow peas are starting to do their thing - I am about to go haul in the first few to stir-fry for dinner. The carrots could probably use some further thinning - it seemed like the greens came up out of nowhere all of the sudden, but not much in the way of roots yet. I did thin out the beets a good bit and had mostly greens with a few teeny beets, both of which were delicious.
The peppers and eggplants and amaranth don’t seem to be doing much of anything, partly because they were overtaken by the squashes and cucumbers and tomatoes and broccoli, so they didn’t get much sun. I don’t know if I can really salvage them enough at this point to be worthwhile.
The herbs are doing pretty splendidly, especially the basil and mint. Pesto and mojito time!
I still have some seeds for a later crop, once I pull the beets and carrots, probably - broccoli rabe, cabbage mix, and 2 kinds of kale. Maybe plant those more like August or September?
Note to self: next time, plant half as much stuff!
I hate weeding in 90° weather!
Everything seems to be going well. We are going to have to sell pumpkins in the fall by the looks of it. We had a great berry crop this year! I may even get a couple corn dinners if im lucky.
I’ve been pickling madly, various different kinds, not sure what I’ll do with this lot, as I’m just about out of jars. I’ll take some to work, I suppose, although that backfired last time - a colleague took a bunch of cukes and brought me a jar of pickles! There’s about six different cherry tomato varieties, you can see sweet 100s, yellow pears, Juliets and, um, another one in this photo.
And, after being away for 1.5 weeks, my watermelon and cantaloupe plants have doubled, tripled in size! There’s a watermelon the size of my pretty large foot, and some smaller ones, and three softball-sized cantaloupes now, lots of flowers still full of bees. Love it!
Started harvesting cherry tomatoes. More green beans. And now tons of zukes are showing up. Made a chilled zuke & onion curry soup today. Good stuff. Sweet Sue II freestone peaches are due in in about another week or two at the farmers’ market. We’ll can about 130 pounds this year for winter treats.
My vegetable garden sucks this year. I am very disappointed. I’ve never had a really green thumb, so over the years I’ve cut things down to the basics- tomatoes, basil and hot peppers.
Been a very strange summer in SE Michigan so far-- unusually cold, lot of rain. I literally have not had to water the garden once since I first watered right after planting in late May. The cold weather seems to have slowed everything down. The tomato plants are spindly with only a few fruits, far from turning ripe yet. I’ve had a problem with early blight for years, but this year I’ve been using a copper-based fungicide, which seems to be helping a little, but still, whether it’s cold, too much water or disease, the tomatoes are not well.
Then there’s the basil, which usually grows like weeds (speaking of which, the actual weeds I keep pulling in the garden are growing just fine). I typically would have made a couple batches of pesto by now. But this year the basil looks yellowish and sad. Turns out the basil has downy mildew, which I didn’t even know existed until googling the problem a few days ago. Apparently it’s a relatively new disease arrival that’s spread to 40-some states in the last ten years or so.
I’ve heard of a way to sterilize the soil by stretching some clear plastic over it and letting the heat of the sun nuke it for a summer. Think I’ll just take next summer off and try that :mad:
We didn’t plant much due to the drought. The tomatoes though are doing great.
I planted a pattypan squash because it was the only healthy looking interesting squash in the nursery, though I’ve never had any. I discovered it was great. The zukes are okay, but only okay.
The winter was so warm that the herbs have never died out, and the parsley went to seed and is all over. Our basil is good also.
One benefit of the drought - tomatoes touching the ground typically get eaten by snails and such - but this year is so dry snails are scarce and they are fine.
My cukes are pretty much dead, which sucks. Beans just went crazy this week. I plan to put lettuce seeds down today or tomorrow. Fall gardening never works for me for anything else.
My tomatoes are still producing and my peppers have just started really coming in. Very excited about that. I’ve already torn out the green beans. Next weekend I need to harvest pumpkins and butternut squash and tear out the squash beds to prepare them for fall/winter crops. I haven’t had much luck with cool season crops in the past, but I keep trying. I am thinking beets, greens (lettuce, kale, chard), and maybe something like cabbage or cauliflower.
My tomatoes are really just getting started, thanks to a cat-related mishap in the spring with my seedlings. I’m going to rip out the last of the moribund squash plants. Cool season crops so far: I planted cabbages, which don’t even seem to be sprouting, as well as some kale and broccoli rabe. Fingers crossed!
Some of the peppers that I planted earlier in the season got totally shaded by the broccoli and tomatoes, and so they didn’t do much. Would it make sense to transplant them, now that I’ve ripped out some of the midsummer stuff and there’s some room? Or just throw in the towel?