From master gardener & Garden Chat longtermer (I’ve got photos from her going back to at least 2014) OpieJeanne:
I have been remiss all spring and summer, partly because there wasn’t much to show for while because we had such a cold, rainy spring and early summer. And then I kept putting it off, and other people had such nice gardens they were showing off.
Tomato bed.
I have to say, our garden is much better because we couldn’t go anywhere this year, so we really concentrated on gardening, tracking down seeds, starting seeds, and checking the garden diary for comments in past years about which varieties did well, or otherwise.
Red cabbage
.My niece’s husband laughed when he heard that I keep a garden diary that I started in 2010, because I couldn’t remember where I planted what, and because in 2010 we were essentially starting from scratch, not sure what variety of tomato would produce well in this new-to-us climate, which carrot, which short season corn. We knew that gardening would be a bit different after moving here from Southern California, but have been pleasantly surprised that we can still grow artichokes and keep the plant alive for several years.
Two artichokes.
We don’t know the gender of this bunny so we named it Pat, The Bunny. Pat has been around us since it was a tiny bunny, so much that we practically trip over it sometimes. It will run away from us if we get too close, so we try to walk a path that doesn’t disturb it. It seems to prefer eating grass, weeds and clover, and the only time I’ve seen it in the garden it was tasting potato leaves and choosing to eat the bindweed (wild morning glory) instead.
Pat, the Bunny
.We’ve made dill pickles twice from our two small cucumber plants when we were overwhelmed by cukes. The first batch was a batch of Kosher dills canned in a waterbath, the other batch is being brined in a gallon crock on my kitchen counter.
Pickles
.To be continued…
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
eclare
@rikyrah: Good morning! Love Pat, the bunny.
SiubhanDuinne
Love Pat, the bunny!
I have eaten many an artichoke in my life, but never knew until I was today years old that they grew on tall stalks.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
WereBear
Garden bunny! Pat sounds wonderful.
evap
Still getting lots of eggplant, but the tomatoes and beans are on their last legs. I’m going to dig them up and try planting more beans. I’ve picked beans into October in good years.
Baud
Lovely garden.
OzarkHillbilly
Beautiful garden OpieJeanne. Productive too.
Picked my first Romanesco zucchinis, Made shrimp kabobs with them last night. Damn, I’d almost forgotten how good they are. I have some patty pans coming too. Sure is nice to be free of worry over squash bugs.
Cukes are still producing. I brined a bunch and they turned out good, tho not enough dill. The next batch I’ll double the dill. Brining some beans now, we’ll see how they turn out. I have several heads of red cabbage ready to harvest. Guess I’ll turn them into sauerkraut.
Sweet peppers are a disappointment this year, yields from store bought plants are way down (I got zero germination on pepper seeds this year). Eggplants are doing well. I’m thinking about eggplant/zucchini parmesan for later this week. Tomatoes are all but done, just a few green maters on the mostly dead vines. I has a sad. :-(
The soon to ripen melons should soften the blow.
We are still getting tons of Emerite and French Filet beans. We’re running out of things to do with them. Speaking of beans, gonna have to pick my tiger’s eye beans before Laura passes thru on Thursday/Friday. They are pretty well dried now, a good rain might start up a crop of mold on them.
MazeDancer
What a beautiful garden. And bunny.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Same. If someone had asked me before today, I would have guessed that they grew on the ground like little cabbages.
In local garden news I’m too lazy to document via photos, my husband built a wood and string contraption in one of the raised beds that I’m calling a “bean harp.” Basically, it’s a tall wooden frame with twine running vertically from top to bottom to encourage bean vines to grow upward.
It’s successful so far — the vines are at the top of it already (maybe 6′-8′ feet tall or so?). I have no idea if this set-up is common or something the mister invented. I’ve never seen one.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: @SiubhanDuinne: @WereBear:
Garden bunnies, grrrrrrr…..
charluckles
@Betty Cracker:
Grow artichokes y’all! They are fun, have a cool lifecycle, and even if you are like me and don’t get much if any production they still produce an interesting and appealing leaf structure.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: But they’re so cute….
Lapassionara
@Betty Cracker: I wish you would post a photo of your bean contraption. Also, where do I get a bunny that eats bind weed? The one around here has decimated my ornamental sweet potato vine.
good morning, everyone.
lovely garden, Opiejeanne
charluckles
I know there are some folks here with a lot more experience with small fruits and stone fruits and I hope it is OK if I brain pick.
One of my peach trees was hammered this past spring by a late frost. I thought it was a complete loss, but it came back in early summer and now appears to be doing fine. The tree now has a mix of dead branches, live branches that show no new signs of growth, and sprouted branches. The complication is that this tree has now been claimed by multiple sets of hummingbirds. I don’t think they are nesting in it, but they are in there fighting and fussing constantly and I hate to disturb them or dismantle their playground.
Is there any harm to just leaving the deadwood on the tree? We don’t have much of a pest problem where I am.
satby
@charluckles: You can wait to prune it until after frost or even until late Feb-early March. Most of the orchards around here (and those are in southern Michigan) do their main tree pruning about that time, before it warms up enough for sap to start flowing but after the coldest of winter has passed. Edit: and by then the hummingbirds will have migrated south.
JPL
I have a garden full of bunnies. They dare me to release the dog on them, but since the last time a dead bunny was delivered to me, I’m a tad shy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: Not when they are munching on my sweet pepper plants.
satby
Beautiful and productive looking garden opiejeanne! I get regular bunnie visitors too, one a mamma who has her babies in my yard every year. And just this morning I was wondering why I haven’t seen them in a couple of weeks. Saw a groundhog running across the street at the end of my block yesterday though.
We’re starting a heatwave this week and no predictions of rain in sight, at least not over a 30% chance, so this area is about to tip from “abnormally dry” into “moderate drought” on the US drought monitor map. I water every day, but it’s just keeping things going, nothing is thriving. Except weeds. They’re doing great.
Butch
Onions all rotted in the ground because it’s been so wet, and the tomato and pepper plants are the size of trees with not one thing growing on them. We’ve given up; the first time in probably 30 years I won’t be doing any canning.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly:
You turned vegetables into seafood? What other tricks you got?
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Supposed to be hot here too, at least until Saturday when a cold front is due to come thru in the wake of Laura.
@mrmoshpotato: Like most humans, I turn veggies into fecal matter.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Most? I would hope all.
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: Observation is the basis upon which statements of facts are made. Seeing as there are some things I really feel no need to observe, I allow for the possibility that somewhere there is a person who does not.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw the projected path of Laura, and was hoping that next Saturday, when it’s due to shamble over our way (assuming that projection holds) it would bring some rain, but none is really predicted so far. In spite of nearly daily attempts at deep spot watering, my shrubs are already yellowing and dropping leaves for fall. I’m just concentrating on not losing any at this point.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll give others the benefit of the doubt here.
And I also don’t want Everybody Poops! to be a lie.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: NWS says we might get some rain out of it but the chances aren’t very high right now.
@mrmoshpotato: Well, everybody poops but some people swear they never eat vegetables. When I tell them potatoes are veggies, they say they’ll give them up.
pluky
@SiubhanDuinne: the edible part is a flower bud. related to thistles IIRC.
O. Felix Culpa
Good morning! I appear to have a slow developing garden compared to many of you. I’m getting onions and carrots galore, my second set of snow peas and bush beans are developing, but tomatoes and peppers are just starting to ripen. My luxuriant cuke plants have produced three small cucumbers so far. I have a bitter melon that escaped its stakes and is flowering. Everywhere. We’ll see if any actual vegetable matter is produced. The latest newsletter from a local nursery suggests that the unseasonable heat and paltry monsoon season are the reasons for the late fruiting. I hear rumors that the heat is supposed to break soon. Here’s hoping
ETA: And I want bunnies that eat bindweed.
debbie
Bunnies are the highlights of my walks. My Mamaw hated them and chased them, waving her rake at them, even through her neighbors’ yards.
pluky
smart bunny. potato leaves are wicked toxic (nightshade family — solanine)
debbie
@charluckles:
I can’t grow them, but I can eat them, and I do, every day they are in the stores. If there was a plant that just grew the hearts, I’d figure out a way to grow it.
rikyrah
Great pictures ??
oldgold
Tuesday, at the crack of noon, at the the direction of Generalissimo Motherlode, I stumbled up towards my new Butterfly Garden. Trudging towards West of Eden, I paused to rest. Then, I saw them. Four fluttering white aerial angels hovering over a zig-zagging row of zinnias. My heart went boom and I screamed “EUREKA!
This brought my neighbor Noah Tall to the fence, he paid for, to see what the commotion was about. I beamingly told him the butterflies had at long last arrived. Noah Tall informed me they were Sod Webworm Moths and I was probably going to lose the lawn. Damn!
OzarkHillbilly
@oldgold: Look on the bright side: You can sell your mower.
oldgold
@OzarkHillbilly:
Unfortunately, at this time the goat market is baad in this area.
scav
Artichoke plants are troupers. We’ve got a neighbor that grows them, but doesn’t eat them, so we could indulge 10 or more at a time this spring. Pick them a little young and roast them, they can be essentially all heart. Basically you do all the prep work before cooking and if you start with a tight bud there are fewer tough leaves to pull off and the inner choke may not even have developed (or can be dealt with using just a melon baller). Can also sauté them on the stove in a little batter so they’re like tempura (I think that was originally a Italian recipe). That was a sheer luxury this spring.
Right now? Different neighbor’s garden, I’m pulling out the thistles and nettles from the black- and huckle-berry bushes. Couple trashcans worth so far. Seems sooo 2020 an amusement.
OzarkHillbilly
@oldgold: In that case, eat the mower.
MelissaM
A rabbit that eats bindweed is music to my ears!
TaMara (HFG)
Lovely garden, opiejeanne.
I need a bunny who eats bindweed! Pat is adorable. My ducks keep weeds and bugs down in my backyard, except for spurge…damn I wish they’d eat spurge.
I have made the decision to take out 2/3 of my front yard grass and turn it into a bed of bushes, flowers, and adding a tree. I’m going to try and document it because I’m using the cardboard and mulch method to kill the grass.
There are a lot of reasons for this change and it will be a lot of work, but it will look better and use probably 1/10th the water.
WaterGirl
@TaMara (HFG): Are you still looking to move to a bigger place, or did all that get put on hold with COVID?
TaMara (HFG)
@WaterGirl: I put it on hold. The chances of finding the house I’d want has dropped as inventory has dropped.
Miss Bianca
@O. Felix Culpa: Happy belated birthday! Yes, a bindweed-eating bunny would be da bomb.
Not as much bindweed here in the central mountains as there was on the Western Slope, but still a thing!
WereBear
@TaMara (HFG): Kudos! I turned a weed-whacked “lawn” into rose gardens in a similar fashion. So much more beauty, and utility.
WaterGirl
@TaMara (HFG): That makes sense. Unless you’re moving for a job like Suzanne did, people are probably hunkering down and staying put.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Do you have photos of what it looks like now?
WereBear
@WaterGirl: Somewhere in a box I haven’t scanned yet. Ah well.
MomSense
Wow, OpieJeanne your gardens are beautiful.
Wyatt Salamanca
Speaking of gardens, more proof that Melania Trump is a clueless, brain dead, horse’s ass:
Before and after photographs of newly renovated White House Rose Garden
h/t Michael Beschloss
https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1297174218552102918?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1297224840483667969%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Fnews%2Fmelania-trumps-rose-garden-renovation-gets-torn-up-on-twitter-funeral-home-for-white-supremacists%2F
opiejeanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know why that artichoke plant got so tall this year. That top bud is about 7 feet high and I needed a step stool to get to it. It’s at least 5 years old and usually stays right about 5 feet tall, and because we had some heat, finally, it has stopped production and is having a nice rest. When winter comes we will chop it off at about a foot tall and bury all but the tip in mulch.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: It was a cold, wet spring and early summer so our zucchini plant, singular, sat and sulked after I set it out in June. In desperation I planted a different variety of zucchini, and I now have one baby squash on that plant. The sulking plant is starting to bloom now, but only male flowers.
Part of the reason Pat hasn’t been a problem is that most of our raised beds that Pat would probably enjoy are out of its reach. Pat is some local variety of rabbit that don’t get very big and aren’t usually a garden pest. We had a lot of problems with slugs and meadow voles this year, and something, maybe a rat, is clawing at the young ears of corn that aren’t developed yet, and gnawing at the apples on the trees.
The last of the feral cats that lived next door andhunted in our garden has died, and the meadow vole population is soaring. Our cat, who only goes out with a chaperone, is having a lot of fun catching them but her hunting time is limited. The neighbor who fed them has no inclination to continue, and there just aren’t any ferals around here if she did. The coyotes are efficient at making them and other small animals scarce, but not the voles.
opiejeanne
@Butch: If you click on the photo of the tomato bed, it zooms in so that you can see some of the green tomatoes on those vines. We have hundreds of green tomatoes on the dozen plants in that bed and in pots around the garden, and one huge plant inside the greenhouse, but they aren’t ripening. We have gotten only 7 ripe tomatoes from the dozen plants so far, but all of those green ones can be ripened on the counter if summer ends before then. And then we will have a day or two of making and freezing marinara sauce. We grew most of the plants from seed this year, something I’ve never done before, and they have done really well.
Kattails
Lovely garden, Opiejeanne! I am jealous of your gravel paths.
We’re in a drought in New England, and I’ve had to hand-carry water since there’s no outside faucet yet, so only the veggie beds are getting it. I had really lousy germination of bean seeds so had to keep trying with them. Ended up with about four varieties of bush beans, which produce earlier; and another three of pole beans which are now kicking in. Those are over the top of 7′ poles. Love those Emerites but will need to order online, haven’t found them in the local stores. Another one I didn’t see but would do again would be the dragon tongue bush bean; they’re tasty as a snap bean or can be let go for a good shelling bean.
The peas are gone, in their place I planted a few more bush beans hoping for a fall harvest, and some varieties of greens ditto. Just harvested a little handful of mini greens. My tomato plants are huge, there’s only two of them but still producing a lot of green tomatoes; the oriental eggplants have a lot of blossoms. Potatoes have huge greens. Put in about 25 tubers, dug the beds deep and put compost in three trenches, spuds onto the compost, (oh please oh please) I LOVE new potatoes. Haven’t wanted to try digging any yet. I’ve been trapping voles, fingers crossed got all of them.
Some of the dahlias are over my head and just starting to blossom. Cosmos showing the strain of the drought, that bed is drier, will want to raise it up more and improve.
It has been so nice to have the time to renew things and clean up old messes that always went to the bottom of the priority list, I must say.
Just heard thunder, chance of storms, will say toodles for now.
opiejeanne
@Wyatt Salamanca: I raged about the desecration of that garden on Twitter yesterday. No one but an idiot digs up and plants a garden in August, unless they don’t care if it doesn’t survive. The roses in that garden are pathetic, like they were forced into bloom just before they were planted and are struggling now.
Also, I’ll bet those are at least grade #1 1/2, which cost about half as much as a big healthy grade #1 ($50 per). Grade #2 are really cheap, and almost never acceptable unless you just must have that variety and can’t find a healthier plant.
The nod to Jackie Kennedy are the JFK roses, a hybrid tea that is supposed to be white but is greenish except when the weather is hot. The other rose is Peace, another hybrid tea, and if they had bought #1 grade plants they would tower over those boxwoods. Peace is a blended pale yellow/light pink with a terrific history, smuggled out of France during WWII, introduced in 1945, the story is known by most rosarians, what amounts to legend with them.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: :-(
I am trying to figure out what to do with my AWFUL LAWN in front, thought I might get some inspiration. oh well!
opiejeanne
@Kattails: My husband was appalled that I wanted gravel walkways, until I showed him photos of Versailles and their gravel paths. LOL. He had been mowing and line trimming around the raised beds, which looked terrific but it was a pain to do. Now we have weeds and voluntary flowers coming up despite the weed cloth under the gravel, because gradually some dirt does build up, seeds get a foothold, and the weed cloth becomes a joke.
Wyatt Salamanca
@opiejeanne:
Like her idiot husband, anything Melania touches turns to shit.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Betty Cracker:
Monsieur Colette did this a few years ago for hops (which we’ve since given up on, due to lack of time to make beer). It did the job very well, but when bare in the winter it looked disturbingly like a guillotine frame. I was not sorry when we took it down.
Dan B
@OzarkHillbilly: My mother’s aunts who lived in Fort Smith and Clarksville, Arkansas described the cl8mate as winter, spring, and the season of burning up. Tomato varieties back then died around the beginning of August. The 9nly fresh vegetable was Okra. My brother was creeped out by the muscillagenous liquid. I loved it.
BTW great garden Opiejeanne! Have you tried Artichoke’s cousin Cardoon?
opiejeanne
@Dan B: Haven’t tried cardoons yet, but this year I started some purple artichokes from seed as well as some green thornless ones. The plants are doing really well, but they haven’t started producing yet. Next year, though, for sure.