Garden Update 07-20-2015

Garden kind of sucks this year, way too much rain… the tomatoes seem pretty fucked, most stuff could look better.

Volunteer tomato plant

Bed of peppers, they keep wanting to yellow out towards the bottom, I’m assuming the massive rains have been flushing a lot of the nitrogen out of the bed. I’ve been giving them a little kelp and some simple compost tea on days that it’s dry enough to water them.

beans and cucumbers, the far end got ate up by something the other night, I’ve picked one cucumber so far and probably a plastic grocery sack of beans off this bed, a couple cucumber vines have died, I think it’s just a little overcrowded.

Pole beans and some zucchini down below, I picked a couple small zucchini the other day, they were great.

Pumpkins, cantaloupe, watermelon, I’ve got one little pumpkin started so far.

Tomatoes, getting tall but the rain really ravaged the bottoms of the plants, I’ve pruned it off most of them but left a few down towards the other end. Blossom end rot could be an issue too, I might give them each a teaspoon of bone meal around the base…

Volunteer pumpkin patch, I really don’t think I planted these or threw any pumpkin there last year, and it looks like a bunch just came out of nowhere. I’ve never grown pumpkins before but it looks like I am this year.


3 Likes

I guess I could have had some pumpkin seeds in my compost pile from last year, I think I might have composted one and then that gets used in the garden. I’ve had volunteer tomatoes everywhere from the compost pile. I had some dill come up on its own and some purple mustards earlier in the year. I’ve been letting a lot of stuff go to seed and letting them drop too… it would be great if eventually the garden just created itself for the most part. That would be the really lazy and natural way of doing it.

2 Likes

Those tomato stakes look pretty good. I priced some in my area and they were about $6 each, That seems pretty pricy.

I think they were $2.50 at Menard’s, 7’ tall, I guess I have about a foot in the ground, they’re about 6’. I’ve worried that I don’t have enough stake in the ground and they’ll fall over but a pretty nasty windstorm went through here the other night and they’re all still standing.

I sure wouldn’t have bought 20 of them if they were $6 each, too buku for my blood… I’d let them roll around on the ground first. lol

LOL I would buy about 30 of them for $2.

I think they were like $2.79… they’re just rebar with that green plastic coating. Should last a long time though I’m thinking, even after the plastic comes off I’ll still use the rebar.

1 Like

I got a good deal on some CLASSICO pasta sauce so I got a dozen of them. It comes in 24 once Atlas Mason jars. I never did any canning before. Can I reuse the lids, they have no dings?

Are they the regular canning type rings and lids? If so probably… I’m not a pro canner or anything, I can some peppers but it’s just a hot water bath, no boiling or pressurization.

Just picked a bunch of tomatoes half ripe before whatever is eating my stuff gets them, plants are getting really tall and a lot of them have outgrown their stakes.

1 Like

How did the pumpkins work out?

Squash bugs started eating the ones that came up on their own, so I picked them early, still have a few left in the other patch that are probably ready to pick. I’m just going to give them to my gf so she can give them to her students. Will they be ok sitting outside on a table until then?

I don’t know for sure but I would think so. Maybe best to keep them in a cool spot.