From commentor Linda Featheringill:
This is my fall garden. Those containers are grocery store reusable bags. Soil is in the bag about 6 inches deep and each bag holds about one squre foot, if you’re into that sort of thing.
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The plan is to grow 8 brussels sprouts, 15 rutabagas, and a bag full of leeks [maybe about 15 or so]. All of these have 90-some-odd maturation periods and I’m aiming for a frost date of last week in October. About a month from now, I should plant kale, broccoli raab, spinach, and beets [50 to 60 day maturation periods].
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It has been quite hot for a week and it looks like there’s more heat ahead, so I placed these bags on the east side of the house where they can enjoy morning sun and afternoon shade. After it cools off a bit, I can pick them up by their handles and move them over to the west side of the house.
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I’ve never been around a fall garden before. We’ll see how it does.
From commentor Scout211:
Here is my garden about a month ago. All the plants are huge right now and producing bushels of good stuff.
Aaaaand from commentor Jo6pac:
These are from 4 weeks ago. I’ve already harvested one 5 gallon bucket of tomatoes (turn them into sauce) and a melon. The bells are a little slow this year but hope to stuff 100 or so.
“Only two things that money can’t buy — that’s true love and home-grown tomatoes.” Somebody on Cole’s last (BLT) thread misquoted the highlighted phrase as “free“, which all us gardeners know isn’t true… it’s the memory of all your planning & fretting & (literally) sweat equity that adds the extra-special flavor.
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(Works the same way in relationships, in my experience; Monday marked the 18th anniversary for me and the Spousal Unit, but only because we spent 15 years ‘experimenting’ before we took out the paperwork.)
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How are things looking in your gardens this week?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Flowers good, maters peaking, butter beans undecided, crape myrtles bustin it, the chief gardener’s ankle is progressing!
the boss wants to know where Linda lives? North Carolina?
MazeDancer
Was wondering about the zones, too. Would help with understanding why some people are awash in tomatoes and others still looking a little green balls.
People might not want to disclose their locations, but maybe they wouldn’t mind adding the gardening zones like they do at gardening blogs.
Corner Stone
Nothing to do with gardening, but something to do with growing:
Obama picks Republican Barlow as U.S. Attorney for Utah
“We are very disappointed in the decision,” said Todd Taylor, the executive director of the Utah Democratic Party. “What’s the deal? Is there something in his background that we don’t understand or is there some sort of deal that was cut between the Obama administration and our senators? And what are they giving up for this? There are a lot of fine-print details on this that don’t make any sense.”
beltane
I’ve got a greenhouse full of obscenely big, yet not quite ripe, plum tomatoes. Blueberries and the ever-bearing strawberries are also looking good. The broccoli was done in by deer and never recovered. Oh, and the mystery packet of assorted Italian winter squash has provided all kinds of wonderful surprises.
Zone 4 (per MazeDancer’s request)
All in all, a much better year than last year.
barath
Nice gardens!
We’re trying out growing potatoes in buckets this season (ordinary paint buckets – clean, of course – with a few drainage holes drilled in the bottom). I’ve heard of people getting pretty good results, and by growing in buckets the potatoes don’t get eaten by someone else first.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
WTF? You all must live in some gardeners’ Utopia where there are no groundhogs and other garden destroying vermin. Or do you shoot those little fuckers and feed them to the dogs? I’m hoping for the latter.
Oh, and this year’s destructive beast: Tomato eating catbirds.
JPL
@Corner Stone: I guess there is more to the story..one he’s appointed in a very right wing area and two he worked with Michelle in Chicago. Maybe it’s payback, maybe not but if Michelle felt comfortable with him, I can’t argue.
Mary G
I didn’t do much to the garden, though the roses look great all on their own, but I have had a bumper crop of monarch butterflies in the back yard this year. There are usually 8-10 fluttering around the vines on the fence. So pretty.
Joel
Reusable grocery bags. Very clever.
I grew some cole crops this year, but my cauliflower and kohlrabi bolted. My cabbage did well until the aphids came in, and my brussels sprouts were totally ravaged by those nasty little buggers.
barath
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Here’s a neat idea on how to protect tomatoes – drawstring bags.
JPL
Linda, sounds like a plan and at Thanksgiving when you show us your bounty we will be green with envy…
different church-lady
I PICKED THE FIRST CHERRY TOMATOES TODAY!1!!!!
Corner Stone
@JPL: I’ve never appointed one. But it gives me pause when the state D party is left agog.
I just know from personal experience that in some areas the D backbench is very light because they can’t get spots that will give them experience and credibility for higher office.
I live in a conservative area and see the eventual bullshit of “I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the best person!”
And somehow it always turns out they vote for the R.
Dream On
Hmph! Survivalist.
Linda Featheringill
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
NE Ohio.
The gurus online tell me that if you can keep the roots of certain plants above 30 degrees or so, they will stay alive and keep their produce fresh, even if they aren’t producing more goodies. I’m hoping to accomplish that with wind breaks, leaf mulch, and snow.
We had a very hot [for us] week or ten days and I lost some plants to the heat, so I’m trying to protect these.
different church-lady
This would be a good time to repeat my tip for encouraging woodchucks to leave your premises: if you have a woodchuck den on your property, just empty your cat’s litter box into her den hole. She’ll never be seen again after that.
Linda Featheringill
@barath:
Oooh! What an idea. Do let us know how this works out.
Linda Featheringill
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Anne suggested keeping a saucer or dish of fresh water out for visiting critters so they’ll leave your produce alone. I tried that and it seems to have been welcomed. And my tomatoes haven’t been damaged.
Linda Featheringill
@JPL:
If it works, I’ll certainly send pictures.
But of course it’ll work. I read about it on the internets. :-)
poicephalus
So awesome.
Your community rawks!1
Linda’s bag thang would work in my west facing apt.
Thanks
barath
@Linda Featheringill:
Will do. I’m told that once the stalks start browning and falling over you just dump the bucket out and that’s it. Sure beats digging around forever to find them under the soil like we had to do with our in-ground plants.
JPL
@Linda Featheringill: fun.. you could keep us updated during the growing season just to see that it works how fun.
@Corner Stone: I hear you but I really don’t know the thinking behind it. I do know that if the tea party were to make hay over his association with Michelle, that would cause problems for his nomination.
Know is to strong a word..but
CaseyL
I grit my teeth with utter undiluted envy when I see these gardens. I thought for a while about trying a container garden – my townhouse has no yard, but it does have a very large porch – but then remember I managed to kill a cactus and am in the process of maybe killing an orchid (I don’t want to! I do what the plant experts say! It seems to be dying anyway, because I am cursed!) and cannot bear to kill any more blameless plants that don’t even have the option of running away or snarling at me.
I’m excellent with cats. Not so much with plants.
barath
@CaseyL:
Is it the watering that gets you? (Either over or under watering?) I ask because one neat technique is to use an olla, which is an unglazed clay pot that you fill with water from which plants extract water at the rate they need it. Here’s some info on how to use ollas.
Lolis
@Corner Stone:
Isn’t it standard practice to appoint US Attorneys from both parties on the basis of recommendations by Senators?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Glad to hear the chief gardener is healing well. That’s very good news.
As to the thread topic, no veggies this year and my flower garden is chugging along without much assistance from me, since I’ve been weathering the heat so poorly this year – just wears my ass out in a hurry. It’s a consequence of multiple sclerosis, which I found out from my recent MRI is what’s been causing the intermittent lower limb numbness. Makes the little pituitary tumor we were looking for – and found – seem insignificant. So my future garden chores will all be very early morning I suspect. I thoroughly enjoy seeing everyone’s photos; thanks for those.
TaMara (BHF)
I covet all your gardens and really missing not digging in the dirt this summer.
On the Mayo vs. Miracle Whip from previous thread…I found what I was missing in real mayonnaise was the tang of Miracle Whip and what bothered me about Miracle Whip was it was overly sweet. My solution? Add red wine or other good vinegar to my mayo. Problem solved…for me anyway.
Anne Laurie
@barath:
I would be interested in hearing how that works out for you. Last year I grew potatoes in (expensive, patented) gro-bags, but $20 of gourmet organic seed potatoes delivered 10 pounds of potatoes at the end of the season, and I couldn’t taste much of a difference between “mine” and the grocery-store yukons. So, this year those gro-bags each contain 3 tomato vines, and so far they’re doing nicely! (Zone 5/6 here, north of Boston)
Anne Laurie
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Try putting out a water source to distract them. A big plastic pot saucer I can top up while watering has protected my tomatoes from the local vermin for many years running. Once every second or third year I accidentally let the ‘bird bath’ run dry, and the chipmunks inevitably get revenge by leaving several ripe, drained tomatoes, each with a single bite missing, sitting on the ground by my planters.
barath
@Anne Laurie:
I’ll be sure to follow up in a couple of months. (CA Bay area, so the season is a bit longer.)
Anne Laurie
@different church-lady:
Congratulations! What’s your zone?
We’re getting more ripe cherrys every day, but most of the full-sized tomatoes are still taunting me with great, fat globes that stubbornly refuse to ripen.
MazeDancer
@beltane:
Thanks. Zone 4 is nippy. And probably a short season. (Though these days, who knows.) Do you keep the berries in the greenhouse, too?
Scout211
We have had such an amazing year here in Central Valley California. We had an unusually wet spring and an unusually cool summer (90s instead of 100s). The garden has been late but has been very productive.
I have harvested bell peppers, banana peppers, corn, buckets of tomatoes, beans, yellow crookneck, zucchini, eggplant, rhubarb so far (and still producing). I have cantaloupe and watermelon growing and they look like they will be ready in about a month.
The pic above is from about a month ago.
It is best garden year we have had in decades. Usually by August, we are far too hot and dry, even with the drip system.
We live in zone 9.
Lolis
Austin gets too hot at night to grow tomatoes in June. I am totally jealous of people who live in climates where they grow all summer.
Lolis
@Scout211:
I was born in Visalia. Go Central Valley!
jwb
@Corner Stone: I wonder if it’s a package deal to get other nominees through the Senate logjam.
BTW, good job calling the debt ceiling deal weeks before.
jnfr
Tomatoes coming in, finally some peppers fruiting, the eggplants grow well, acorn squash are growing but only males on the yellow crookneck which is annoying.
Bindweed rules all, as is normal.
Martin
@Lolis:
Indeed! Go! Far away! Go!
different church-lady
@Anne Laurie:
Six — just outside of Boston. Although I seem to be in this strange little very personal super-micro climate. Everything on my property seems to be 2 weeks behind my neighbors; veggies, flowers, hedges, you name it. Other people on my block are had golfball sized beefstakes forming up before I even had flowers on mine.
The cherries are sungolds — I’m told they’re hard to find because the skins are very thin, and thus the big growers don’t provide any demand for the seeds. I couldn’t find any in 2010, but three plants spontaniously volunteered from 2009’s spill. This year I managed to get them to grow from saved-and-dried fruit from last year. (That makes the seedling flat I bought in ’09 the best $4 I’ve ever spent.)
They vine like crazy — I need to trellis them sometimes.
lamh34
So what so u guys think of spotify? Is it worth it?
clayton
If you want pictures of everything burned up by the sun, I can send them.
Just let me know.
Wannabe Speechwriter
Such a righteous takedown of the clowns at Reason Magazine by a community activist from the Central Valley-
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/03/EDTD1KID15.DTL
It takes on their hatred of high speed rail. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: No shit. Zone five here. Never, ever thought I’d want to kill God’s little critters … but those chipmunks, moles and raccoons are being hunted down. I’ve had it with the destruction not just of our gardens (yes, we have multiple gardens), our lawn, but flowerbox and pot plantings, and our foundation! That bloodthirsty rant expressed, things aren’t too bad here … except we have NO sweet corn, thanks to the masked bandits.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Linda Featheringill: Oooh … I’m liking the water idea. I’ll try that.
Anne Laurie
@CaseyL:
Well, if it helps: Both cacti & orchids are difficult houseplants. I can’t even keep a spider plant alive for more than a few weeks, but the thing about tomatoes is, they’re annuals. Which means they’ll die after a single summer, no matter how good a gardener might be. So (true story), when I brought home my first post-Memorial-weekend 6pak of straggly cherry tomatoes, I told myself that if they didn’t make it, well, they weren’t long for this lifetime anyways. And a couple of them didn’t survive transplanting (into undersized pots full of crappy discount ‘top soil’) on the patio of our rented duplex, but the others gave me a handful of my very own home-grown tomatoes! I was so thrilled, even * I * realized how ridiculous I looked…
jane from hell
Have heard tell of someone growing maters in the 5-gallon buckets…once, after the season end revealed they were full of COCKROACHES MWAHAHAHAHA! No, really.
Anne Laurie
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that. You’ll be in my thoughts…
ruemara
@TaMara (BHF): Bah, add wasabi. That resolves any problems.
I’m almost jealous. All my garden is offering is a few random cukes and squash, perhaps some paste tomatoes. It’s been an odd growing season in N Cal.
jenn
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Oh, geez. I’m so sorry. Sending healthful vibes your way.
CaseyL
@barath: No, it’s the snipping.
My neighbor (who gave me the plant as a thank you for taking care of her dog while she was away) said to put a couple ice cubes on the bark once a week. I’ve been careful to do that, and not to overwater. Also have been very careful to dilute the hell out of the orchid food.
The orchid has two stems, very hearty dark green leaves, and each stem had flowers. The little info card that came with the orchid said that after the flowers die, to snip the stem below them, near a node. The flowers on one stem have died. I snipped in what seemed to be the right spot, and the stem turned a pale color and seems very dry – like maybe I killed it. I must have cut it too far down?
So now the flowers are dying on the other stem, and I’m scared to death to cut the stem when they finally die dead, since I obviously have no sense of where I’m supposed to cut the damn thing.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
Politically ambitious U.S. Attorneys tend to end up bringing high-profile cases that have the entire local Establishment shitting itself. See, e.g., Rudy Giuliani. I’m willing to wait and see on this guy.
Petorado
On the Front Range, heat, and possibly blight, are messing with black and boysenberry production. Grasshoppers are getting biblical on all the kole crops. And salads are done until it gets cooler.
Tomatoes and grapes are the bright spots … and hot peppers. Black Krims and Golden Girls are ripening. Golden Cherries are going gangbusters. Pineapple and Brandywine tomatoes are having issues. Live and learn.
Yutsano
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
There are a couple of really awesome treatments out there that can keep you functioning well for a very long time. I had a boss who managed to keep her full-time job (and her third kid!) with an MS diagnosis. You are about to enter the wonderful world of dealing with neurologists, who are their own level of asshole. May the FSM keep you close.
Cliff in NH
I’ve got 29-36 started tomatoes (bb’s to normal size nearly)
And yesterday the early girl that was on the plant when I got it finaly started to ripen.
the others just all exploded in the last few days … lots of blooms, and now starts ..
Also, too..
I just finished starting the no knead lunch/dinner pizza dough for use some time in the next few days.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/6010330167/in/set-72157627175778700
when the sun is up the updated tomato pics will look very different from the last update.
cckids
@different church-lady:
I do believe I’d bug out too.
West coaster & late to the show. Love your gardens! Being Aug in S.Nevada, everything is just holding on, trying to get through till Oct. when it will BEGIN to cool down. Today we had 108-ish temps with an all-day wind that felt like a furnace blowing. That combo is deadly for lots of stuff. Tho I did plant a very late heirloom tomato plant in the shadiest part of my yard, and it is still producing a few tomatoes a week. ‘course, they are little golden cherry tomatoes, so I just pop them like candy, but they are MUCH appreciated.
August is the month here that tries my soul.
Kristine
@different church-lady: So did I! Well, one, at least. I took a photo of it to document the fact that I actually did harvest something this year. Then I eated it.
All the tomatoes have greenies, and the Tommy Toe cherry are ripening. But I’m seeing a number of brown/dying blossoms this year, which I don’t recall seeing in previous years. I’m blaming the heat.
Zone 5, 5 1/2, me.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
Did the FSM make any other kind?
IDK, I’m not a USA nor do I know what gets them there.
Just, IMO, seems odd to have the UT D Party guy asking WTF?
I’ve got to figure s/he knows more than we do about it all.
And yeah, it’s supposed to be partisan. That’s understood, at least to me.
Corner Stone
@jane from hell:
But how did the maters taste?
Corner Stone
@jwb:
Thanks. This blog seems to want to swallow some bullshit a little too hard sometimes.
It may be because John Cole is pretty fucking stupid when it comes to politics, and the commentariat takes their cue off him.
He’s not too bright. Reminds me of a male matoko.
Gretchen
@cornerstone: If you have two Republican senators, like we have in Kansas, they can veto any well-qualified Democrat for US Attorney, like mine just did here in Kansas. Give us a republican or do without:
@different church lady: how do I find the den hole? They just seem to live in the vegetable garden so they won’t have to move too far to eat.
@clayton: you sunburned garden pics might make me feel better about my sunburned garden. We were a record-breaking 110 degrees yesterday, with practically no rain.
I’ll be trying the water dishes and tomato bags, if it ever gets cool enough for tomatoes to flower again.
Ripley
@lamh34: Spotify is full-bore adware unless you pay. Pay and it elevates to an average online music service that tries too hard to be your iPod.
Shop around, or stick to YouTube – there are free apps to rip the audio, like Ant Downloader (integrates with Firefox). The ethics of this are shaky, of course: call it a free market solution, which seems to bring absolution these days.
opie jeanne
@Corner Stone: Do you think she really meant potatoes? Because that would make sense.
opie jeanne
All of the gardens look great, and I’m a bit jealous. It’s green here just outside Seattle, and the weather is not too hot, high 70s and mostly sunny most days. Mostly.
And we are just now seeing tiny baby green tomatoes on almost all of our plants, and it’s August 5th. I don’t think there’s much hope of them ripening before it cools off again.
gravie
@ Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: My neighbor, who is an urban farmer, tells me that the birds eat tomatoes because they’re thirsty, not hungry. She says she has had great luck in keeping them away by putting out a big dish of water somewhere near the garden (but out of range of the cat).
Mark D
I am so damn jealous of all of you who have nice, large, producing-lots-of-tasty-stuff gardens. They look great! (We, sadly, aren’t sure exactly how we can do it, given the deer, raccoons, possums, bunnies, etc., and the relative small size of our yard. But I have some ideas involving chicken wire and a car battery … ;-) ).
I’m also interested in hearing how things turn out with the taters in buckets, barath. That definitely sounds like a great idea.
Speaking of which … how big of a pot does one need to grow a nice tomato plant successfully?
We did one this year in a pot that’s ’bout, oh, 2-3 gallons … and it’s pretty much dead after producing two maybe-edible ones (we’ll find out tonight) and about 8 guaranteed-not-edible ones.
Any help ’tis appreciated!
(Oh, and are anyone else’s hostas turning yellow this year, particularly the variegated varieties? Our at-one-time beautiful ones look horrific and are rotting out at the base. They’re growing back in, so that’s good, but … well, just wondering if it’s something going around, or if we fucked up somehow [even tho we only lightly watered]. Thanks in advance!)
Gretchen
@mark d: all the hostas in my neighborhood are yellow and dead-looking, but it’s been so hot and dry there was no way to help it. I hope they come back when it cools off, and I think they probably will.
Maude
@Mark D:
I did tomatoes in pots a few years ago. The toms were small, but they were good. The pots were too small. I didn’t have a big pot. I watered and fed them and had the last of them which I picked semi ripe in late October. The post were on a white stone covered flat roof one story up from the asphalt.
You could have broiled a steak out there.
opie jeanne
@Mark D: My sister never lets her tomatoes ripen on the vine (she’s nuts, but I digress), always brings them inside when they are as green as grass, and ripens them in the kitchen.