2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Watchman
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Watchman »

PROBLEM SOLVED ABOUT PEPPERS!

The county extension office just gave me the straight skinny on my peppers. It is not a disease, per se, but is called "sun scald". It happens when peppers are getting too much sun and they don't have enough foilage to protect them. Because mine are in containers, I can move them to a spot where it will get some morning sun or afternoon sun. She said that later peppers should be fine.

Oh happy day!
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bee_pipes

Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by bee_pipes »

Something good to know. I would have never guessed. We do get bell peppers, but they seem to have a more difficult time than the hot peppers. Cyan, jalapeno, even the lowly banana pepper all do well and bear a lot of fruit. Bells seem to struggle.

Regards,
Pat
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Watchman »

A tiny bit of additional information. Sun scald begins as a dark spot on the pepper and then, gradually, turns to the blotchy (dead) surface spot you see on the photos. The agent says that the peppers are edible in the early stages but would advise cutting the spot out when it turns tan. I am 100% positive now that this is the problem because the underside of the peppers is not affected, just those areas that are in direct sunlight.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Watchman »

Now the @#$%^&* tomatoes have blossom end rot :evil: Each container has over a cup of agricultural limestone and about 15 crushed eggshells each. I don't know what the @#$%^&* is wrong.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by fern »

Have you ever used soft and hard rock phosphates in your soil? I have used it for almost 30 years in my gardens and our family farm even longer. I am attaching a website that gives the info on what it does to your soil. I never have a weed, never have such problems as the tomatoes or peppers. It takes about two years of treating your soil in the fall and spring to really see the difference. It is like sweetening the soil and creating such a perfect balance of nutrients that the bad stuff cannot grow and the desired crop blossoms. It is very easy to work with and plant too as it never cakes or hardens. Our entire family farm is luscious. Hay fields that are equal in height, beautiful and weedless. The best smelling stuff on earth when cut. Our corn will have 5 and 6 healthy ears at a time. You must use certain lime and good ole chicken poop to complete the process. Here is the website to begin but there is much more info on this topic if you are interested. http://www.hbci.com/~cmills/PHOSPHATE%20Reams.html
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by fern »

This may be a better website for the information and better understanding. http://www.crossroads.ws/brixbook/BBook.htm

Dr Reams died about 24 years ago and his research and information has been carried on by many other folks. I have most of his lessons stored away somewhere and would be happy to try to dig them out if anyone desires. This website references the refractometer. They are not as costly as they used to be and a very handy tool in seeing the changes in your final product season by season. The refractometer is also used to test your own PH and sugar levels.
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SS5R

Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by SS5R »

I was hoping using rock phosphate around my fruit trees would help hold the fruit this year but I guess from your post above it will take a season or two to see some results. I have two large apple trees and so far I have picked up 3395 apples off the ground and they are not slowing down. Yesterday alone I picked up 311. I tried to thin them but it became an overwhelming task, I started to late. After hitting the ground some are still good to eat, dry, and make applesauce and pies some go the chickens and I give some to a friend with horses but many are bird eaten and bruised and have to be thrown out. My pear tree is the same way it just started dropping small unripe pears, 86 in the last week.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by fern »

What I do every single year is: very lightly till hard rock phosphate in the soil in the fall. (I use much less hard rock and skip it after as few years but you will know as your soil improves.) You do not have to till the hard rock if you don't want to but I try to get it in there a bit. In very early spring or late winter depending on the climate where I am living...chicken poo just spread on top. A month later, the soft rock phosphate and lime well tilled. Then wait at least 2 weeks and let nature take its course. By the end of your second year, the soil is like working with peat moss but heavy. The following spring and thereafter you will see little to no weeds or bugs and your plantings really start pushing out the produce. I keep barrels of the neighbor's horse leftovers and let them collect rain water and water with that when necessary. The formulas for the amount of hard and soft rock are on many of the Dr Carey Reams sites. The important part is the lime/soft rock and you need to be particular on where it is from as not all soft rock will give the results. I purchase from only from Florida.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Lessons learned from Garden 2009 (so far):

1) You do NOT need fertilizer (the commercial type). I use only composted material from our two properties. You may have to make a soil additive, depending on what type of soil you have. I am finding that out regarding lime/calcium.

2) Altogether we spent about $300 on supplies, including seed. So far, we have harvested (estimated) about 100 pounds of squash (zucchini and crookneck) - have dried it, pickled it and froze it. By my estimation there are about 1,000,000 zucchini left on the bush that are still maturing. Our local China Mart and Safeway sell zucchini for about $1.69 a pound, so I estimate our final squash value will be about $320. Of course, we give it away also, as fast as it grows. We just finished harvesting about 30 pounds of green beans and that may pretty well finish it, although we didn't plant much but we're leaving the plants intact because they still have blossoms. We're going to leave the bean plants in the ground overwinter and then till them in for the nitrogen. About $60 in value for green beans. While I was down on my hands and knees picking beans, I stealthily checked the Yukon Golds and glory be, we probably have 200 pounds of potatoes just underneath the surface. Yukon Golds sell at China Mart for about 0.80 a pound, maybe $1.30 at Safeway. So going with Wally's lower price, we have (estimated) value in potatoes of $160. Our tomatoes and peppers were a complete bust - BER and sun scald but maybe we will get a bit from them. Onions, oh my! We only planted 4 rows and have been eating them for two months, starting out with scallions. The onions are fist-size now and they are selling for about 0.80 a pound at Wally. Estimated value from onions is around $48.

So friends, what I'm saying, is that in our meager-sized garden we at least got back more than we spent. Some may wonder what is the purpose of all the labor? Well, first and foremost, it gets these tired old bones moving and secondly I ABSOLUTELY KNOW where they were grown and that they have nothing harmful added. So far, I believe we are about $137 to the good. That is not to say that the asparagus bed is progressing, although slower than I had hoped. It looks like the strawberries will produce fine next year.

Even on a postage-sized garden you can produce enough to feed you and your family.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Toepopper »

Thismorning I walked down the hill to the garden flat to pick black rasberries for breakfast. There are millions of them in a 6' wide by 60' long area and we are overwhelmed with the fruit. I also picked a half dozen tomato's and noticed that some had blossom end rot, some were cooked from this heat spell and others were fine. I don't get it. Evidently this blossom end rot has no rhyme or reason and over the years I have tried just about everything to prevent it . This year I added crushed egg shells but still have BER. Also, some small critter has chewed the branches off of 4 of my chili pepper plants killing 3 of them. I have found some of the small branches stuck in the chicken wire that surrounds my garden. This is an indication of woodrats as these little rodents like to line their nests with fresh cut leafy material. I thought I had trapped them all but must now bring out the Victor rat traps again and proceed to catch these critters before they wipe out the rest of the pepper plants. The local coyote , fox and bobcat population is down and these little furry devils are increasing in number as a consequence and turning my garden into a contest over who gets to eat the fruits from my labor.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

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A couple of days ago we finished picking green beans for the season. We got about 8 quarts which we froze; we had previously canned 14 quarts. So 22 quarts from a $1.79 pack of seeds - not bad. We're still picking yellow squash and zucchini. There are [tons] of little green zucchini left. Will harvest potatoes in a couple of weeks - I think. Can anyone tell me when is the right time to harvest potatoes? Picked all the anaheim chilis and hungarian yellows that I planted (just a few containers). All the onions are up. We have a flat in the basement and gave away a bunch to our grandson. Thew tomatoes were a complete failure this year, well not complete, but we might have got a couple of dozen from all the plants. The rest - BER. Same with bell peppers. No matter what I did I could not get good fruit from them. Cayenne peppers, well thats another thing - there are loads on the plants. Will dry those.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by cowboy38229 »

We always wait till the vines die before digging our potatoes.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Toepopper »

Thats what we do also, but we leave the spuds in the ground and dig them up as we need them. I spread some straw mulch over them during the winter to prevent freezing just in case the temps drop below 32 degrees. Thismorning I went down to dig up some for breakfast and noticed some bear tracks in my potato patch. Fortunately he did not dig anything up but went for some blackberries instead. :lol:
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Hotshot

Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Hotshot »

Been a good year just put my second planting of green beans in and should be putting cabbage out soon.We still need to pick potatoes to can and will be picking pears in the next week or so to put up
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Seed Exchange?

Post by dejure »

Behind the house, and part of the property on which we are fortunate enough to be allowed to take up housekeeping, is about twenty acres of orchard (a very small one by standards around here). Asparagus is very common there. Additionally, there are several irrigated, hundred acre fields of commercial asparagus. Finally, on the way out to a couple irrigation circles my buddy watches, and occasionally has me watch, is a hundred acre field of asparagus being allowed to go to seed.

Additional to the foregoing, the fellow renting the orchard out back has another one a few miles away. That orchard is a mass of broad leaf plantain, which is a fantastic "stop smoking aid" and a well known and respected antibacterial.

In light of the availability of these items, it might be worthwhile to consider setting up one of the seed exchanges some people do.
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Re: 2009 garden results

Post by cowboy38229 »

Image
these were some of my tomatoes that were only fertilized with horse manure
Image
they got so big they broke off the vine before getting ripe
Image
compare the size to this 4x4 post
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some of the biggest red potatoes i've ever grown
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yukon gold potatoes
Image
dosen't this 10 lbs. cantalope look good, ummmmmmmmmmm
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Toepopper »

Nice work cowboy. All that pain and labor is paying off.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

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We mentioned to our daughter when we visited that the "potatoes are almost ready". She wanted us to bring her some mashed potatoes because the rehab center food bites the big one. Yesterday I took my digging fork out and barely went into the ground (about 6 inches) and pulled out three, completely blemish-free, Yukon Gold potatoes, the biggest one being a little bigger than my fist. This tells me we have a LOT of potatoes just waiting for that nice September day.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Watchman »

Last week I planted some 11-year-old radish seeds that I had laying around. Now I can't tell you what the exact germination rate is but the rows (2) look intact, with lots of shoots and no breaks. They have been stored in a low (to non) humidity area at relatively stable temperatures. It leads me to believe that seeds will keep a lot longer than the companies state.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Toepopper »

Some seeds will and others won't. Most of the seeds over 3 years old that I have tried to germinate did not come up. I have had some green bush beans that were 7 years old and instead of dumping them out on the ground I decided to take a chance and stuck them in a vacant garden bed and to my amazement every one of them came up! This year I planted some yellow wax beans, packaged for the 2009 growing season and not a single seed germinated. I planted the rest of the package and it was the same outcome. I took the package back to the nursery store and told them what happened and they gave me another package of seeds. Package number 2 did not germinate either. As a consequence we have no yellow wax beans this year. I have noticed that it is getting harder to find non hybrid type seeds. They are becoming a mail order novelty item because the seed companies want you coming back every season to buy their seeds. The best, most robust plants always come from heirloom type seeds that germinate in the refuse/compost pile and pop up voluntarily from last years veggi garden.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Final Report on Our 2009 Garden: I think we may possibly have won the zucchini war :twisted: We just finished picking a final 40 pounds of zucchini and yellow squash. All summer long, from about June, three packs of seeds ($4.37) yielded about 250 pounds. We dried it, battered it, pickled it, ate it in salads, grated it and froze it for zucchini bread, gave away about 75 pounds to our local senior center and friends. Was in China Mart yesterday and zucchini (Mexican, of course) is selling for $1.99 a pound and I can't remember seeing it much cheaper, maybe down to $1.49 a pound at Safeway when it was on sale. Roughly $500 worth of food from $4.37 spent. Water was from a well (no cost), used compost ONLY, no pesticides, fertilizer. Tomatoes were a bust this year. Got about 200 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes from the 10 pounds of seed potatoes that I planted ($10). China Mart was selling Yukon Gold for $.80 a pound - do the math. We canned 42 quarts and gave away probably that much in loose potatoes. Got 14 quarts (home-canned) of green beans and about the same frozen, from a $1.79 pack of seed. Every single one of the onion sets I planted ($4.50) grew and we had been using them all summer long, green and sliced. They're all gone but are selling for $.69 a pound at Smith's. I figure we may have got a total of 40 pounds. Egyptian (walking - perennial), we hardly ever eat them but granddaughter and wife cut all the green stalks off of them, then into 1-inch pieces and dried them for seasoning. Planted a pack of 11-year-old radish seeds and as far as I can tell, they all grew and we enjoyed them very much. This has been an experimentation year for us and we consider it pretty successful for our first garden in about 23 years.

Dug out all the squash plants (frost got them anyway about 3 nights ago) and they are now part of the great compost pile. Left the bean plants in the ground over winter for the nitrogen. Wife is getting ready to bake son-in-law an apple pie (for his birthday) from apples we dried 5 years ago. Already tried it this year and he didn't know the difference.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by side_job »

I have always had good results with seed I got from this source, and they offer sealed kits.

http://www.heirloomseeds.com/main/index.html

As far as germination, I sometimes will soak the seeds overnight in a cup of water if I have had them for a while, smaller seeds can be done the same way in a wet paper towel. I have used those water based sponge seed starting trays (something? domes) and find a nearly 100% germination rate with them.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by Watchman »

My gardening is done for 2009. Last week we picked the last of yellow squash and zucchini and gave 95% of it away. The rest we battered and fried. Tilled everything in the garden. Am awaiting a bag of alfalfa pellets at our local ag store and will till it in also - Lord help us, the ground doesn't freeze. We had our first snowfall of the season today, about 6 inches worth. If you have anything else to say on your 2009 gardening experiences, please do so between now and November 30th. I'm going to close and lock this string on the 30th and begin a '2010 - How Does Your Garden Grow' on December 1st. Thats about the time that seed catalogs begin to appear.
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Re: 2009 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Post by fern »

If anyone has an interest in reading about the soft and hard rock phosphates I mentioned a few months ago, I found a website that offers more detail.
http://www.hbci.com/~cmills/PHOSPHATE%20Reams.html
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