Its almost Garden time

[lovedr79]

well much to my amazement i was watering my seeds that i started on sunday morning i shocked to see plants sprouting already! so hopefully in 2 weeks when my 4 year old daughter comes up for the weekend it will be dry so we can start planting.

 

[Moedaddy]

Use to do a garden but haven't for years. Cuts into my fishin time to much

 

[BigTerp]

Mine is really starting to take off. Harvested some spinach yesterday and replanted. Also thinned out my lettuce. Potatoes are starting to come in as well. Spinach was GOOD!!

Giant spinach!!

Onions

Lettuce

 

[Ictalurus]

Going good in TN too. Had a half dozen or so little tomatoes show up this past weekend.

 

[Jim]

Just spent all day removing old dirt and weeds. If my vegetables grew 1/4 the amount the weeds do I would be OK.

 

[JMichael]

Just came in from outside doing a little weeding and picking some radishes. My tomatoes started off with a bang. Had 5 plants blooming a week after they went in the ground and 4 of them had tomatoes on them a few days later. Then the tops of all of them started curling up. I suspect it was some drift from my neighbor who was spraying weed killer of some sort on his yard 2 days prior. It brought all growth to a stand still for 2 weeks, but looks like they're pulling out of it now. I think the cool nights (in the 40's) put a hold on my cucumbers right after they got their first set of perm leaves. They haven't done much of anything for the last 10 days but hopefully that's over now as the cool nights are supposed to be history. Planted 4 rows of corn (peaches n cream) Thursday and I saw a few poking their heads up this morning. Will plant 2 more rows in 3 weeks to stagger the harvest.

 

[lovedr79]

well i finished planting yesterday. my spinach, collards, potatoes and peas are taking off. this weekend i planted tomatoes, string beans, squash, carrots, okra, zuccini, cucumbers, radishes and corn.

 

[JMichael]

well i finished planting yesterday. my spinach, collards, potatoes and peas are taking off. this weekend i planted tomatoes, string beans, squash, carrots, okra, zuccini, cucumbers, radishes and corn.

Nice variety. After I harvest my corn I intend to plant that patch with purple hull peas.

 

[lovedr79]

cool! i didnt have luck 2 years ago with the corn. i planted right along the fence. this time i happened to have an open 5' wide row in the middle and i had seeds. so we will see what happens this go round. at the very least the deer might get something to munch on if i get the tiny ears again.

 

[JMichael]

It's been a struggle trying to keep the birds out of my corn long enough for it to grow. They would snip it off flush with the ground. Most of them would continue to grow but in some cases they pull it out root and all. Well, it survived the birds and I'm going to plant the last two rows this week if it dries up a little. I've also planted 5 hills of watermelons in with my corn but they haven't germinated yet.



My radishes have gone nuts and one of them escaped my attention for a bit too long.



Cucumbers are looking good. This one hill probably has about 15-20 little 1.5" cuc's on it already.



And this will be the first time I've ever harvested a ripe tomato before June 1st.

 

[Jim]

Done and now the waiting game begins!




2 ghost peppers and a Caribbean red habanero.

 

[JMichael]

I'll never understand how any human could put either one of those peppers in their mouth and actually "enjoy" the results. :lol:

 

[lovedr79]

LOL! i didnt even plant peppers this year. they do not grow well in my garden. i have about worn out collards and spinach though. have cooked several batches. snow peas are starting to boom now.

 

[Jim]

I'll never understand how any human could put either one of those peppers in their mouth and actually "enjoy" the results. :lol:

Same here! :LOL2:

Actually the habaneros I do eat, the ghosts I might do once or twice, but I enjoy giving them away.

 

[JMichael]

LOL! i didnt even plant peppers this year. they do not grow well in my garden. i have about worn out collards and spinach though. have cooked several batches. snow peas are starting to boom now.

I planted my snow peas in a new spot this year and they didn't do well at all. I've written them off as a loss but there are about 10 plants still struggling to stay alive. I looked the other day and I actually have a few pods on them. :lol:

 

[BigTerp]

Everyone's gardens are looking great!! Mine has really taken off as well. Considering building another 4' x 4' box for next year to increase my harvest.

Carrots with onions right behind.

Trying to get another harvest or two out of my lettuce and spinach. We'll see how what I recently planted will fair with the upcoming summer temps.

Yukon Gold potato. I had a red chieftan potato to the square beside it, but it was so large I was afraid it was going to shade the tomato plants behind it too much. So it got pulled.

Better Boy tomato and an Ice cherry tomato plant to the right.

Peas. To the right is a regular pea plant and the left is a sugar snap pea plant. They finally started to flower the last day or so. Hoping they hurry up because I want to get my beans in!!

It's amazing how much I've been able to cram into my 4' x 4' square foot garden. If it produces well I'll probably build another.

 

[Jim]

Nice job Big Terp! :beer:

 

[JMichael]

Is everyone enjoying the fruits of their labor now? My radishes were delicious and I enjoyed them a lot but now it's too hot to grow any more. My cucumbers are doing great and I'm picking about 4-6 almost every day. I give away a lot of what I grow to family and friends because I always plant more than I'll need for myself. Tomatoes are loaded up and just started to ripen the last couple of weeks.

This past Tuesday I went out to weed and water my corn only to discover there were 30+ ears of corn partially eaten and strewn all over the area. Several stalks were broken and many others laying down. Needless to say I was furious. That evening I sat in the swing under my carport with my spot light and a 22 loaded with CB's and waited for it to get dark.



Now I've got to deal with some mockingbirds that think my tomatoes are for them. They damaged a half dozen yesterday so I'm going to remove a couple of our state birds from the ranks of the living when I catch them in the act.

 

[Johnny]

I deal with varmints around here the same way ...... only with .22 hollow points.
The Mocking Bird is also the Florida state bird.

I bought some of the very fine plastic 1" mesh to fence out the chickens.
if you have a small area to protect, that might be an option.
LOL or buy tomatoes from your neighbors road side stand !! LOL
have you ever wondered why his veggies are like store quality ???
and ours are bug ridden and sometimes just plain pathetic ???

but oh well, gardening is FUN !!!

 

[JMichael]

I'm in town and it's illegal to shoot even a pellet gun in the city limits. so I have to resort to the CB's for things like this, if I don't want the neighbors reporting me. I did the mesh netting for a few years but what a pain that was. And the damn mockingbirds still managed to get under the netting some times. That's how I originally discovered what birds were doing the damage. Of course once they got under the net is was easy to dispose of them but I hated trying to take care of my plants and harvest with the netting. And I agree that gardening is enjoyable but I put way too much work into it to allow some animals to destroy the fruits of my labor. :mrgreen: My sister lives on the other side of town and she has 3 pear trees. For the last 5 years she hasn't gotten to enjoy a single pear though. The squirrels are so bad, they eat every single pear from all 3 trees before the first one is ripe enough to pick. So last year I started a campaign to regain control of her pears. Last year I took out about a dozen squirrels out of her yard. This year I've only gotten 2 so far (missed 3 times today ), but the pears are about half grown right now and there's still about half of them left on the trees so far.