Gardeners! How are those plantings coming along!?

Well, my Kumquat tree loaded up with blossoms, then we got hit with 118 temps.  All those lovely little flowers shriveled up and fell. 

The lemon tree greened up a bit after the iron treatment, but leaves are turning yellow again... not sure if it's the heat or if I should try feeding it the regular citrus food.  We are likely to sustain 110+ temps for the rest of the month.

Something is wrong with our zucchini. We get lots of flowers and the plants themselves are huge. We get really little zucchini. But they're not growing. They just kind of sit there. And eventually they start to rot. We don't know if it's the weather or bugs or what, but we have yet to pick even one zucchini.

We took the black netting off the strawberry patch and put it on top of the tomatoes and all of the bean plants. There were hoof prints right in the garden, so the deer are just stepping over the fence and helping themselves. We found 12 corn stalks completely chewed down, the center taken right out of our tomato plants, and some of the bean plants are chewed. We even put black netting over the corn. I don't know what it will do to the plants, but either way, we're losing the garden to the deer. Rick sprinkled deer repellant around and I took some cat fur up and tossed that around, too. (Not that deer would be particularly afraid of house cats.)

We started picking peppers yesterday (Thursday). We had gotten two quite a while back, but that's been it. The plants are really starting to produce now.

Ritz, your sister does so much, considering that she is blind. My hats is off to her....she sounds like a truly amazing woman.

I'll try to get some pictures, too.

Unfortunately, I can't answer your zucchini question.

I just started a small container herb garden on my balcony, but as it was my first year having a garden AND my first year having a cat, I keep forgetting to water the plants because I'm obsessed with my cat. They almost died before I started watering them again, so I think they're going to be alright as long as I pay attention. I almost lost all the catnip, but thankfully, it's coming back.

It's my friend who is blind, not my sister.

Yes, she is amazing.  She developed blindness in her 30's; her marriage didn't survive but she did!

The squirrels already ate all the pears. :hmm:

OK, I took pics last week when is was hot out. I took the veggie garden and the garden that I have cleaned and mulched. You don't get to see the others yet. :lol3: Some of the flower garden pics are the same garden, just different angles.

Karen, what a gorgeous property you have! I love how it's landscaped. Love that hydrangea with its pink and blue flowers....I think the hydrangea is my favorite shrub. We have Blue Nikkel hydrangeas here. And two PeeGee hydrangeas....they get these gigantic globes of white flowers that eventually dry and can be used in lots of floral arrangements. I just love hydrangeas.

That's some seriously huge hosta there, too! We have the standard green and white striped hostas around here in various flowerbeds and we use it as edging as well. This year, for some reason, the hosta looks particularly well....usually by now the slugs are chomping huge holes in the leaves. Ours are in flower, too.

I really like your deck area, from what I could see, it looks nice and big enough to really move around in. We keep talking about extending our deck along the length of the back of the house....right now, it's very small, about 10 x 12, right as you come out of the kitchen door. There's no room for table and chairs or much of anything really. You go off the deck and then right there's the pool, so there's not a lot of room to move around.

Very nice pictures! I'm going to hire you as my landscaper!

Second what Winchester said--gorgeous, well kept lawn.

I too love hydrangeas, some have the prettiest colors.  There are to my mind two kinds:  the ones that dry true to size, the other kind that dry really small.  I can use both in dried flower wreath arrangements, but prefer the bigger (globe?) kind.  A friend of mine gave me a cutting from her plant, I planted it, it has survived so far, though I don't expect it to bloom for several years (it's that small).

I have a chipmunk who is enjoying digging holes/burrows in my back mulch area.  I put up with Charlie the Chipmunk because Ritz loves to hate it ; dreaming of pouncing on it.

Wow - those pictures really are gorgeous! You obviously have a good sense of design, as well as a green thumb!

Oh my goodness Karen!  Your yard looks like it could be a full time job taking care of it!  It's beautiful!!

I'm pretty upset right now. 


The cukes intertwine with the cantaloupe.  Which I'm just starting to get melons on.  I need hands on instruction.  It seems like something is going wrong with everything.  My garden is so small; if we lose these things its devastating.  I'm enjoying harvesting and eating things we've grown ourselves so much!  But this makes me want to cry!!

Karen,
What a gorgeous property..I'm so jealous!

I won't be taking photos..lol..but we have one growcamp (small raised bed structure with covering) that has been producing wonderful romaine, red romaine, red sail lettuce, arugula, rainbow swiss chard, spinach, buttercrunch lettuce.  I've just replanted in it - this time kale and 3 rows of another leaf lettuce.

In our actual "in the ground" garden, we have yellow summer squash and zucchini - these have lovely flowers and small squashes growing well (so far..knock on wood), and a row of cucumbers that we set up netting for them to climb.

By a back fence, we have two raised beds - one filled with tomato plants, and the other with peppers - poblano and I don't recall the other two.  We have two poblanos almost large enough to pick.

Lining one side of the "in the ground" garden, we have 3 raised beds.  One has green beans (just in the flowering stage right now), and leeks (doing well).  The second has radishes, red scallions, and regular scallions and another row of green beans.  The third has a row of bok choy, and 3 rows of salsify.

Re flowers etc., we just removed old, unhealthy roses from our driveway length rose bed and put in 3 new roses (for a total of 9) and alternating with the roses are the 8 lavender plants we put in.
So much more work to do. I love the property we have but wow, so much to do!



 

Winchester said:

Karen, what a gorgeous property you have! I love how it's landscaped. Love that hydrangea with its pink and blue flowers....I think the hydrangea is my favorite shrub. We have Blue Nikkel hydrangeas here. And two PeeGee hydrangeas....they get these gigantic globes of white flowers that eventually dry and can be used in lots of floral arrangements. I just love hydrangeas.

That's some seriously huge hosta there, too! We have the standard green and white striped hostas around here in various flowerbeds and we use it as edging as well. This year, for some reason, the hosta looks particularly well....usually by now the slugs are chomping huge holes in the leaves. Ours are in flower, too.

I really like your deck area, from what I could see, it looks nice and big enough to really move around in. We keep talking about extending our deck along the length of the back of the house....right now, it's very small, about 10 x 12, right as you come out of the kitchen door. There's no room for table and chairs or much of anything really. You go off the deck and then right there's the pool, so there's not a lot of room to move around.

Very nice pictures! I'm going to hire you as my landscaper!

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Thanks! I love the big white hydrangeas! We don't' have any of those.

I actually wish our deck was just a tiny bit bigger. If I have my whole family over (which isn't often) I have to set up extra tables out in the yard. Even last year when we had our Fantasy Football draft here, it was a real tight squeeze on the deck. The bad thing about my deck is it is in full sun most of the time, so it's often too hot out there.

Ritz said:

Second what Winchester said--gorgeous, well kept lawn.
I too love hydrangeas, some have the prettiest colors.  There are to my mind two kinds:  the ones that dry true to size, the other kind that dry really small.  I can use both in dried flower wreath arrangements, but prefer the bigger (globe?) kind.  A friend of mine gave me a cutting from her plant, I planted it, it has survived so far, though I don't expect it to bloom for several years (it's that small).
I have a chipmunk who is enjoying digging holes/burrows in my back mulch area.  I put up with Charlie the Chipmunk because Ritz loves to hate it ; dreaming of pouncing on it.

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We have a crazy amount of chipmunks here too! I gave up on growing strawberries because of them.

RavenCorbie said:

Wow - those pictures really are gorgeous! You obviously have a good sense of design, as well as a green thumb!

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Not me! :lol3: We bought the house off of two retiring Botany professors.

MoochNNoodles said:

Oh my goodness Karen!  Your yard looks like it could be a full time job taking care of it!  It's beautiful!!

I'm pretty upset right now. 

  My summer squash hasn't been producing and started dying off...followed by the zucchini.  I did some clearing out of that yesterday.  That's when I noticed the bottom leaves on my tomato plants were turning yellow with spots.  I also killed a horn worm on the tomatoes.  THEN I noticed some yellow foliage on the under side of the cukes in the next bed.  This is what I found today:

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It really is a full-time job during the summer! I'm way behind too, only halfway done with the weeding, trimming and mulching. It's just been too hot.

My tomatoes are doing the same as yours!

Pat said:

Karen,

What a gorgeous property..I'm so jealous!

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Thanks, Pat! Don't' be jealous. It's a lot of work. :nod:

We froze two quarts of broccoli, one pint of peppers (slivered that I can use to top pizza.....I threw both the hot peppers....they're not real hot hot....and the green peppers in the same bag), and two quarts of green and wax beans. The broccoli tastes particularly good this year, as do the beans. We took three zucchini and there's more on the way! I'd like to do more zucchini salsa if I can get enough zucchini at one time.

Somewhere along the line, we got the green beans mixed up with the lima beans and what we thought were limas is a row of very prolific wax beans. We don't see any lima beans on what we think are lima plants, but lots of flowers. Tomatoes seem to be OK, other than the damage from the deer.

What corn stalks the deer didn't get are starting to tassle. We don't expect much from the corn though....the deer have really done some serious damage.

We're considering putting up a6 or even an 8-foot wooden fence up around the garden, with a gate. I know it's going to cost us, but why bother to have a garden if the deer are going to get it all? They've got the corn, they ate tops off the tomato plants. That little wire fence isn't doing much to keep them away; they can step right over it....and they have, we've seen the hoof prints. We tried bird netting around, even in the corn, but we're losing this battle. It wouldn't be completely screened; the fence wouldn't be solid. That way we could see in the garden. And then we'd put up our wire fence around that. I know....it's going to look silly, but we don't know what else to do.

AbbysMom said:

We have a crazy amount of chipmunks here too! I gave up on growing strawberries because of them.
 

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OOO...don't give up!  We grow (and have for a number of years now) our strawberries in hanging baskets..it works extremely well.  We have 4 baskets of them hanging along the back of our house, Seascape is our favorite brand - just the sweetest and they produce well.

I think I saw a post about gardening before, but I thought I'd ask again.  Is anyone else into gardening?  Where are you and what are you growing?

I'm in Tennessee and have only been gardening for a few years.  I live on a mountain and have a fairly good size yard, but not a ton of direct sun so my garden is pretty small.  I have three 4x8 raised cedar beds, 4 barrels, and I've wrapped the borders of the yard with stone to create one long U shaped bed.  The rest is grass for the kiddos to play on...at least for now. 

This year, I'm growing tomatoes, peppers, green beans, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, blueberries and garlic.  I also have an herb garden with about a dozen herbs.  So far, I'm getting about a small basket of beans each week, a few blueberries (only 1 year old bushes) and I harvested 30 heads of garlic last week.  Most of the herbs are plants that I planted a couple of years ago, so they are doing great, and the peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers are flowering like crazy!!!!  The pumpkins are new this year...I think they look good.  Each plant has at least 1-2 big flowers on it.  My girls wanted to grow their own pumpkins for halloween this year. 

I planted all of the veggies from seed, all organic and non gmo.  I'm planning to save some of my seeds for next year's plantings, but I want to add at least one new thing to the mix.  This year, it was pumpkins...next year, who knows?  This will be my first time saving seeds so I'm hoping it works as well as I hope. 

I just posted what we are growing this year, one or two messages above you, so won't repeat..your gardens sound really nice.  I haven't tried growing garlic but I should..love it and use a lot of it!

I'm in the pacific NW.

 

Mamamia, what do you do with all your garlic? How do you keep it? I use a lot of it, but don't know how to use 30 heads at once. We roast a lot of garlic and will spread it on bredsand I will infuse oil with it (not a lot of oil at one time, though, as I worry about botulism). I'd love to create a bed for garlic, but don't know what to do with it all. I probably use 2-3 heads in a week. How would I store it? Tie it up and hang it in the basement?

Garlic is very easy to grow and fairly easy to store.  When it's time to harvest, I dig it out rather than pull it...that leaves the stems intact.  I brush off as much of the dirt as I can, but do NOT wash.  Then, I braid the stems (my braids aren't neat and pretty like the ones online, but effective) and hang it to cure for a few weeks.  Once it's dry, it stores very well in a cool dry place.  I will probably hang the entire braid as is in my pantry and use up over the next few months, and maybe dry some.  But you can also cut the stems, trim the roots and store in a mesh bag in a cool, dry place.  The biggest ones I'll keep to plant this fall.  I live in the south so the best time to plant is in late August and harvest in early July. 

AbbysMom said:

My tomatoes are doing the same as yours!
 

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Oh boy.  I bought a new spray for everything today.  I looked through the book at Lowes and the best I can figure; I'm either over watering the cukes and cantaloupe or it's downy mildew.  Of course we've had nothing but rain recently so that is not helping!  I can use the same spray on the tomatoes too.  

Pam; I'd fence my garden like that if I had to!  All that work you put into it makes it worth it!  I just had an idea; I'm going to send a few pictures of my cukes and tomatoes to my kindle so I can have them with me at church tomorrow. There is a couple there I can probably get some good advice from!  I do think I over crowded my cucumbers by not thinning them; but I had issues getting things going this year so I didn't want to waste any either.  I guess we learn through our mistakes too right? *sigh*

I am dehydrating zucchini slices! Just got the last tray prepared and turned on the dehydrator. They say it can take ten hours or so for them to turn into zucchini chips, but a lot of people have said that they're just scrumptious, so we'll see. I cleaned one large zucchini, sliced it thin (about 1/8-inch slices), put them on trays and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. We'll see how that goes....I have enough zucchini to do: salt and vinegar chips, lemon and pepper chips, bbq chips, etc. The recipes say to brush them thinly with olive oil first, but they also say that you don't really have to if you're worried about calories and fat. So I didn't. I just used sea salt and a bit of pepper. Stay tuned! I've been wanting to use my dehydrator! (I think I could use more trays, too, as I only have six right now.) 

If anybody is interested I can post the recipes for you.

Mooch, good luck with your pictures at church today. I hope the people were able to help you.

Mamamia, thanks for the info. We'd have to store them in the basement (braided). Our basement stays right around 40 - 45% humidity, so that's a bit on the dry side. I'd really love to try growing garlic.