If the pampered peas have had a few days exposure to cool outdoor temps they should be able to handle a light frost just fine.
I’m a bad community garden member. I stopped by today and my bed is full of weeds. There are a few leeks which seem harvestable – who knew I even planted leeks?!
So, if I get up the wherewithal, this weekend I’ll clear it out and plant some cantaloupes and sauce tomatoes. The things I love to grow and eat, but that are too big to fit in the patio pots. I think I’ve left it too late for watermelon, and it’s been a cool spring, so maybe not the requisite 100 days of sun. Maybe some peppers…
We picked up our tomato, squash, green bean and lettuce starts. The soil is still too cool to put them in the ground, so they’ll sulk on the back porch for awhile. The OP’s list is staggering. How on earth do you manage to use all that produce? We can’t even keep up with our two tomato bushes.
The two blueberry bushes I bought two years ago have survived another winter on the balcony, are now growing nice and thick and have finally started producing berries.
Gotta love Chicago weather; a couple of weeks ago it was snowing, and then Sunday it was 75 degrees.
As usual I appear to have bitten off more than I can chew, even with 8 raised beds and the 2 long skinny ones against the garage. I was hoping that the kale, radishes, bok choy and other Asian greens, carrots, beets, peas, and spinach would be petering out by now, but they are really just getting going in earnest. So I think the only way I will be able to plant the rest of the peppers and eggplants and sow the squash and cucumbers and melons will be to intersperse them wherever there are bare spots. (Or maybe sacrifice a few sprouts.)
That shouldn’t be too difficult for the cucumbers and melons; those will climb up a trellis in the 20’ skinny bed, and that trellis is already in the bed and doesn’t have anything planted behind it, so I can just stick the seeds at the base of the trellis behind the other greens that are growing there. But then I will end up with a giant jungle of vines, because the peas are just now getting going. If it warms up, though they will probably start growing 6" a day! Remind me about this next year.
The squash were supposed to climb up another trellis which was supposed to go where the spinach is currently growing faster than I can eat it, and one of the varieties of carrots is just starting to get feathery tops. I guess I will just have to sacrifice a bit of spinach toward the back of the bed so I can stick in some squash seeds and be able to see what they are doing?
There are a handful of sprouts that look a lot like garlic in the bed of beets and kale, but the leaves don’t smell like garlic. What could they possibly be? Should I leave them, or yank them?
Also, remind me next year not to sow seeds so thickly. I think we will need to be eating radish and bok choy and cabbage and cauliflower thinnings for the next couple of weeks. What can I do with them? If they are really tiny, I have thrown them into salad, or sometimes in with scrambled eggs. Bizarro mixed tofu stir-fry? Soup? Any other creative ideas?
Not all of it is produce; some of it is flowers. We eat much more vegetarian than we used to, especially during the growing season, and go through a lot of eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes. We also bought a standing freezer for the basement, and I was roasting a sheet pan of tomatoes and onions every couple of days last year during harvest season and we didn’t eat the last of those until a couple of months ago. Hard-shell squash also last a long time (we just ate the last one a week ago). And I definitely gave away some cucumbers last year when it got overwhelming.
The hanging succulents on my enclosed patio are in bloom, for the first time in several years. Three big red blossoms so far, and several buds. They used to bloom on the summer solstice, so this is very early for them.
And my aloe plant has had two spikes.
Maybe my night bloomers will blossom this year as well. I don’t even remember the last time they bloomed.
Midsummer bump.
Man, those sunflower seeds were mega-viable! Multicolored blooms 8 inches across and 6 feet high all over the place. The Roma tomato I planted is yielding about a tomato a day, with no end in sight. Plenty enough for salads and such. The beefsteak all have set tons of fruit - now we just wait for them to ripen. Started the harvest of Anaheims and Santa Fe Grande. Just repotted a hab to a much bigger pot, because since the weather turned hot they’ve been growing like teenagers.
Flowers galore, and the hanging pots looked kinda cool swinging in yesterday’s earthquake.
How does your garden grow, so far?
Have finally been spending some time in the garden so not too crushed with guilt to respond to this thread. Actually watered the garden on Wednesday, first time this year: we’ve had so much rain that I just haven’t needed to get the hose out.
Veggies are doing well, hop vines came roaring back, flowers a bit slow to get started but growing apace.
Missed the window for harvesting Mertensia seed again this spring, keeping a closer eye on salvia and columbine to try to get some of them.
The mock orange is just a massive shaggy beast so I am going to start its 3-year pruning regime this month, and get some of the aggressive bindweed around it too.
Trying to identify whether one of the volunteer flowers is the milkweed for monarchs that I was hoping to get, but I don’t think it is, but don’t know what it is. Also, the plants with huge burdock- or rhubarb-like leaves by the front steps have got WAY too big, will remove them at end of season but have zero idea what they are.
I live in Calgary and we don’t get the best weather for growing things like vegetables. This year I am just concentrating on herbs in pots. Some I grow from seeds ( I have strong growing lights) and some I buy in pots. But the rain. It is just rain, rain, rain - and the herbs are dying. I have brought about half of them back in the house and put them back under the grow lights to give them another chance.
Got one good tomato so far, and zuc crop is gonna be Epic! Went nuts and planted artichoke all over the place, and most are going pretty well.
The kitchen window broccoli went nuts and is HUGE! Don’t know what to do with it.
I took the advice of a knowledgeable garden center manager for heat-tolerant tomatoes and planted Cherokee Purple and a new hybrid of Big Beef this year. The Big Beef didn’t keep their promise, and the only fruit on the vine now are ones that set during a brief cool spell a couple of weeks ago, but having any tomatoes in July at all is still an accomplishment*. But I am ecstatic over the Cherokee Purple! It’s still producing more than I can use fresh, so friends, neighbors, and my freezer are getting their share. I was concerned about how they looked when ripening at first(back in April) - They are still green on about the bottom third when fully ripe, and the skin in that area can be a bit leathery. But boy howdy are they great! - deep red(not purple as the name implies), very solid, meaty flesh and many are big enough for a one-slice sandwich. They are my new favorite.
*For those in higher latitudes: Tomatoes require nighttime temperatures below 76 degrees to set fruit. That doesn’t happen often in the summer in South Texas, so we traditionally plant a spring crop in February, tear them out in June/July and plant seedlings in August for a fall/winter crop.
After the late start things are looking better.
Picked first zucchini, yellow squash and cuke the other day. Did my third picking of green beans. (Got enough of those for Mrs. FtG to freeze some instead of eating them all in a couple days.) Getting a few banana peppers.
The tomatoes are having problems. Weak growth, deer eating them, etc. (I’ve never had deer eat tomato plants. The green beans, sure, but not tomatoes.) Plus some have fallen off for some odd reason. Mrs. FtG is trying to ripen one of those indoors. I am not hopeful.
Well, the weather this year has pretty much sucked. Cold and rainy for ages, and then hot as hell. So things took forever to get going, and then the greens bolted. We took literally a trunkload of bolted radishes and turnip greens and bok choy to feed my friend’s chickens.
The strawberries were delicious, but are starting to peter out, as are the peas. The greens that didn’t bolt have done fabulously well; there’s an entire hedge of kale along the side of the garage. We gave away a couple of dozen raspberry plants, but they just keep coming back for more. The first round of squash and cucumbers and melons didn’t germinate at all, so I planted a second round of which it looks like only the squash and maybe one or two cucumbers have germinated. Is it too late to plant more cukes?
Remind me next year not to sow the greens so thickly; they would probably be much happier if not crowding each other out. Same for the carrots.
We finally had a patio built in the backyard so we could have something to put the chairs on so they didn’t sink into the mud when we sat on them, and I made a flower border around the edge. One side is rainbow chard (which I only planted a couple of weeks ago; it’s rained so much that it took them a while to finish the job), and the other side is marigolds, nasturtiums, and zinnias, which are just getting going. (The 2 other sides are the back of the house and the sidewalk to the garage.)
Today will be some weeding of the flower bed in front, ripping out the peas, and planting 3 huge bags of some kind of wild iris that a friend thinned out. And maybe planting the ornamental cabbage seeds in front where the wildflower seeds never really did anything.
The garlic will be ready to harvest soon, and I’m thinking of planting more kale and beets in that bed for a fall crop, because they have done the best of anything this year.
We had a nice rainy spring, and the weather has been great, so this is one of our best years ever.
We planted lots of onions, and got nice green onions and a bunch of respectable looking onions for the ones that we left in.
We had a very nice snow pea crop, just finished.
We did red leaf lettuce, and it was the best crop we ever planted. Beautiful, and much tastier than grocery store red leaf, which isn’t bad.
We put in bok choy too late and it all went to seed. So that was a flop, but we’ll replant in the fall.
One set of bean plants got eaten by slugs, but the other set has produced a few pounds already.
Eggplant is okay. It’s coming along.
My tomatoes have exploded into a tomato jungle. Just a few have ripened, but I’ve had my first two BLTs already (with the garden lettuce) and I’m looking forward to more. There is a ton of fruit already. Plus, we have two volunteers which have tons of blossoms and some fruit on one. Last year all my tomatoes got eaten, so I’m excited about having enough this year.
One zucchini plant, and we’re already giving it away. One yellow squash, which is okay, not great. And a bunch of volunteer butternut squash, already big. We were on a trip when they ripened last year so it was a bust (year before was great) but we’ll have plenty.
We’re already cooking from the Squash cookbook.
New potatoes are well under way, as well as courgettes/zucchini. Lettuce has been great, possibly because we haven’t had any really hot weather (just to the south of London). Land cress is going great, rocket is like a weed.
Runner and French beans are just starting, peas are imminent, broad/fava beans are a couple of weeks away.
I overdid it on the pumpkin plants again. I always do.
j
Since the daily rain here in Central PA has turned into every other day things have started to grow much better.
My cherry tomatoes are pushing green mayor’s.
I staked up the peas, yellow beans, green beans, pintos, and limas and they are climbing.
Two different kinds of watermelon and cantaloupe are growing good.
The potatoes are looking great.
I have above knee high sweet corn! That’s my biggest win so far.
Really excited to see what’s to come!
Above knee high is all very well, but I believe the objective is
(Heh Heh)
j
Oh what a beautiful morning.
Pro tip: Burdock is not a good choice for an ornamental edging plant for a walkway. Yes it’s tough as hell, requiring basically no additional water once it’s established, and stays green from early spring to late fall, and the huge leaves are eye-catching. But it’s a very aggressive grower and needs to be cut back all the time, including the burr-bearing flower stalks if you don’t want passersby getting all stuck with burrs later in the season. Lesson learned. Haven’t figured out what I should plant instead once I rip the burdock out this fall, though.
Just harvested my first tomato (a Black Beauty) this weekend - very good.
The eggplant crop has been coming in for about three weeks. At 16 tubs of eggplants I may have overdone things just a bit - probably will have to begin freezing some of them soon. Sweet peppers are due soon, then there will hopefully be cucumbers, squash and beans.
The first ripe figs (Chicago Hardy and Italian honey fig look like the best bets) should be ready to harvest in less than a month.