Victory Garden

[gyre]

I've seen a recipe for cockroaches using boric acid and flour.
Can't find it now.

It has been used for fireproofing too.

Problem with it here is humidity changes it.
Drying it out is supposed to help bring it back.


If anyone wants help with a grow light system, I can help.

I have a couple of 1 KW grow lights myself, one is the very compact porcelain metal type.
You can build these much cheaper.

[unjonharley]

Put in some onion and garlic sets today.. It's warm eough in one of the flower bed to make it through the winter..

Thinking about some one to share garden with this year.. My ADHD needs help keeping me on track.. Sides I'm getting to old to bend over that much anymore..

The big thing is to find someone that will follow through.
If I ask on "say" craig's list, I'd be over run with ansewers..

Need a Hippie/veggie of some kind

With everything down off the trees. It's time top grind the dropingsn up and malch it..

Right now I have three cub yard and enough to make another three..
I'll spread some and seed clover for cover on somee bare areas.. Clover in great in the compost..

Right now am making soup from the summer garden

[unjonharley]

Had a crew come in yesterday to trim the hedge..

They took it down from 16 feet to 12 and two foot off one side..
Next year will have the other side cut back..

This gives me about 3-4 yards of wood chips for ground cover weed kill.. Will put down news paper first.. I a year or so ai will rake it up and run it thro the compost and worm feed.. Nice black/rich dirty..

Grew enough dirt last year to have a big garden this spring/summer..

Planing a fence/green house.. Will share how that works out.

[can't sit still]

This is an interesting vid showing that one can get a lot of yield off a very small plot;
http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/commu ... -real.html

[Ugly Dougly]

John Jeavons is the go-to man for this:
http://www.johnjeavons.info/

[unjonharley]

Guerrilla Gardeners in Argentine..

Artcultores (Art Farmers) instead of planting flowers.. They are seed bombing areas with vegetable seed bombs..

Homeland would be on you in a flash if you tryed that in the US..

[unjonharley]

.

New potatoes for dinner to night.. also wild onions.. Salade from a inside hanging basket. yumm

[can't sit still]

Harley, you might want to cover some of your veggies.
"would have to be 100's of times higher to pose any minuet threat to the public"
I'm not sure what a "minuet" threat is but, radiation doesn't sound good.
http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=427736

[unjonharley]

.
Ordered some LED grow lights.. Will be trying to grow in a cabinet// They do pot that way. Why not food?

[Oldguy]

A whole week of sunshine this week, yahwhoooo. Temps in the 80's Thursday. Yardwork coming up. I always plant after Easter here. Ground prep to begin soon.

[unjonharley]

.
Can't put the sets out yet.. They would wash down the street..

[Oldguy]

I bought an instant herb garden this year. Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, garlic chives, bayleaf, oregano, and pepper. I'm not doing seeds this year...waste of time and money, I'm using fresh herbs from pots instead. Regular veggies much cheaper and better at dollar stores and farmer's markets...I turn 60 on the 12th of May, I'm going to ease back so I can go another 40 years. Yeah, I know, I'm not really old , the kids just call me oldguy or O.G.

[unjonharley]

/
Hanging the bell peppers upsidr down this year.. Just rigging them in cheap hanging baskets..

[Sic Pup]

I've expanded a bit this year, my base is 2 year old compost I fashioned out of spent mash from a local brewmaster I befriended, leaf compost from the town recycling facility, wood chips a tree guy was more than happy to dump in my driveway, shredded garden clippings (no grass!) and newspapers, pre-cooked kitchen waste, sweat and elbow grease.

This year I have the garden area proper, a small patch of squash and containers(recycled from a local landscaper) on the deck . I'm growing tomatoes (Brandywine, Yellow-Striped, Roma and Grape), peppers (Jalapeno, bell, yellow bell), cucumber, eggplant, peas, onion (Walla-Walla, shallots, garlic), Italian beans (bush), green beans (bush), squash (yellow, patty-pan and zucchini), potatoes (white and red), strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, mint, chives, lavender, parsely, oregano, cilantro, thyme, tarragon, sorrel in addition to a couple of grape vines, apple, pear, and peach trees.

So far I had critters dig up the garlic and feast on the zucchini/yellow squash(I've mitigated somewhat with hardware cloth), the shallots are playing hide and seek for some unknown reason, I started the cukes too early so what I have now are directly sown (most of the other vegs were started in my basement in March/April under florescents). The berries and grapes are more a lure for the birds to keep them off other things although we did have a couple of small strawberry harvests so far. The potatoes, grape tomatoes and many of the herbs are in containers on the deck. I think I've finally beaten the sunchokes which I tore out due to borers, they're not so much invasive as they are persistent (now mint is invasive!).

I just harvested these today, they'll probably go into a spring pea risotto this evening (excuse the shitty cell phone pic):





We also belong to an organic farm CSA - my wife and youngest daughter are vegan, my older daughter is vegetarian, the dog, 3 cats and I are carnivorous. Although we're "permitted" to have up to 3 chickens (suburb of NYC) my clan would sooner slaughter me. Needless to say I'm the only egg eater.

Edit:the sunchokes were not running away at the sound of footsteps.... I meant invasive (fix't)

[Sic Pup]

I gotta say search sucks, I searched for 7 phrases I know are in this thread and subject and got zilch, finally had to scroll pages to find it. The old search was a wealth of returns and even though you couldnt locate what you were looking for you knew it was in there somewhere, disconcerting.

Anyway, this morning I made the time to do a little weeding as the garden has been neglected the past week due to preoccupation with painting a project. I harvested some yellow beans, yellow and green squash, beets and a ton of Italian green beans. Earlier in the week I grabbed some yellow beans for a three bean salad and my daughter made her minestrone (awesome!).



The second round of peas are coming in, cucumbers finally took from seed when the transplants failed (planted too early), patty pan squash are flowering as are some tomatoes and pepper plants (the grape tomatoes are formed and are ripening), apples, peaches and pears are just shy of golf ball size, a few of the blueberries are turning blue, squashes are prospering (lock your car doors!) but I think my spuds are duds. We had late blight last year in the Northeast and I read that it's been discovered again this year, so far it hasn't impacted the tomatoes but the potatoes are looking like goners.





Since I was taking pics with my crappy cell phone I caught my nick namesake up to no good, the boy is wacked, just one look at the tail tells you all you need to know.



His name is Buddy (and he truly lives up to his name), what he lacks in smarts he makes up for in rambunctiousness and gumption. He has no healthy fear of larger animals, I've been bitten three or four times getting between him and a pit as well as a shepard (the bites were form him.... bastard). Yet if a thunderstorm hits, you drop a pot lid or fireworks are going off he trembles like a leaf (this time of year SUCKS). He's a misfit, like me, but how could you not find the befuddled look endearing when you give him one of is favorite things, an ice cube, he stashes it away and then later goes looking for it. Oh, and he has this annoying habit of cozying up to me, and resting his head on my foot or knee.



I grew him from this:

[Sic Pup]

So I've resigned myself that the potatoes didn't make it and figured I should clean out the jumbo totes they are in so I can at least make an attempt to contaim my ever-growing BM pile this morning. Lo and behold:



Dang!

I guess the reds were just trying to tell me they were ready.

The whites arent' quite as dilapidated so I guess they have awhile to go.

Funny thing is I never saw flowers. Hmmmp, live and learn,

Next planting I either have to put them in bigger containers or less in each one so they grow a little uniformly larger (I knew I was overcrowding when I planted these).

I smell potato salad with dinner.

[Bounce530]

My first tomatoes of the season will be ready tonight! yahooo! I'm very nervous about the progress of my green beans for my dilly-beans that I gift. The plants seemed to have stalled out, and something ate the dill all the way down to the stalks, but nothing else, a dill bug? Other then that, the garden is growing nicely, just a little late.

[Sic Pup]

Wow, tomatoes, very cool! Mine are getting there but not quite ready for prime time.





I feel like a little Mexican tonight (a straight line if I ever wrote one)



What's up, Doc?



Care for a spot of tea? Mint or lavender?

[Sic Pup]

How rewarding it is to reap the bounty of one's labor.

Tomatoes are getting closer every day.

This morning's "catch":

[Drawingablank]

The second round of peas are coming in, cucumbers finally took from seed when the transplants failed (planted too early),

I had a lot of trouble with transplanting cukes the past 2 years. I thought it was something to do with planting out too early or the soil, but some research turned up that cucumber roots are super extremely delicate. I started some in peat pots and planted them without disturbing the pots and now mine are 4 feet tall and flowering / producing cukes like crazy. The previous batch in peat pellets did not fare well - 11 of 12 died within 10 days.

The rest of my garden is doing ok, but the tomatos are getting a slow start - the plants are about 4 feet tall now and I have less than a dozen marble sized tomatos so far between 27 plants. Which kind of sucks since they don't like to set fruit in very hot weather. I suppose I should have spent less time practicing my PBR downing skills and more time trimming their side shoots.

[FIGJAM]

Go to a garden center and get some "Fruit Set".

Mist the flowers with it and every flower will fruit.

[Sic Pup]

Hmmm, you may have something there. Last year, the cukes were started with the tomatoes, transplanted and did just fine. Maybe I jostled them a bit too much this year when transplanted. I'm pretty diligent about hardening off before putting them out which is why I thought it curious that they withered away.

Well, I guess I learned my lesson about overcrowding the potatoes, it was my first attempt so I'll walk away with that and these:



Live and learn.

[AntiM]

I grazed the first raspberries off the canes today.

[Drawingablank]

Go to a garden center and get some "Fruit Set".

Mist the flowers with it and every flower will fruit.

Will run and get some right after work today.

Anyone have any experience growing radishes? I have been playing with them off and on for 20 years and still only get a very low yield of what should be an easy crop.

My radishes seem to lay across the ground for about 1.5 inches (red stem) before the green leafy parts start. It seems that any that grow this way don't produce a radish and I suspect that red area should be below the soil, not on top. My root veggie bed is tilled to 12". The carrots and beets in the adjacent areas seem to be doing fine.

[Drawingablank]

I grazed the first raspberries off the canes today.

Nobody in my family likes them so they get left for the critters.

I'll be up at the cabin again this weekend and hopefully the blueberries and huckleberries will be ripening.

[The CO]

OregonRed & I have some holdover strawberries from last year, already eaten a lot of them.

This years garden:

Corn (pollen starting to appear)
Snow Peas (Flowering)
Sugar Snap Peas (Fruiting)
Lemon Cucumbers
Slicing Cucumbers
Early Girl Tomatoes (first fruit appearing)
Jalapenos (harvestable in a week or 2)
Multi-Variety Bell Peppers

Working on the lettuce patch, but I have to get the marigolds sprouting around the border to help repel slugs. Bumper crop of the slimy buggers this year.

[Bounce530]

My bell peppers, and green beans are starting to flower, but I think it's going to be too late to harvest and pickle them for TTITD.
Other then that, garlic is growing nicely, strawberries are producing, getting a few tomatoes a day, herbs are growing nicely as well, and pumpkins are going to be huge!
what didn't make it was the lettice, green onions, and the dill. (some kind of bug sure enjoyed those)

[Drawingablank]

Second crop of sugar snap peas is starting to flower.

Bell peppers now about 2" with loads of flowers coming on.

Lots of tomatoes but none close to ripe yet.

Beans producing well.

Several eggplants in the 3" range and a lot more flowering.

Radish crop was a wash - 1 radish.

Beets and carrots doing mediocre at best.

Cukes starting to harvest with tons of flowering still happening.

Pumpkins flowering like crazy for about 7 weeks now but no fruit setting.

Watermelons never got longer than 2" before something trashed all of them.

Tarragon, rosemary, thyme, and lemongrass growing like weeds.

[Sic Pup]

I have tons of tomatoes coming, what was I thinking? Canning is in my future for sure.
The grape tomatoes are ripening a little quicker, grabbed a handful yesterday for a salad, I don't know why my grape tomatoes always have a thicker skin than store bought (it goes without saying fresh picked beat grown-a-continent-away-and-gassed-for-shipping by a mile in terms of taste).

I'm also over-run with zucchini and yellow squash. The dill is lovely so I'll pickle a bunch. I bought a basketful of squash to my dentist's office. It sounded like only one of the ladies behind the desk has a garden (she's the only one I heard an audible "ugh" from).

Hot stuff! Looks like poppers with dinner this evening:

[AntiM]

All my strawberries are AWOL. I think the crows ate them. I did get one pepper today. And how do you tell when onions are done? My peas look awfully dry. Sheesh, I suck at gardening.

My raspberries are going full blast though, but they are low maintenance. I pick almost every day in summer. And then eat them.