Where your time is spent....
 

Well, now that I look back at some pictures, I see where all my time has gone! Its worth it in the long run, but I would be affraid to see how many hours I have put into this garden this year. Had a few issues along the way that I have worked out and some that are yet to be solved. Had some wilt on my tomatoe plants, think I solved that with a copper spray. Seems to either have started to solve the problem or the plants are out growing the fungus?
Still have some flea beatles to get rid of yet. From everything I have read so far, I need to get some neem oil at the nursery to spray for them. My poor bean & sunflower leaves on some of the plants look like someone was target practicing with a shot gun! :bash2:
So far this year I have been staying ahead of the weeds - SO FAR! Been watering it at least once a week since we have not had much rain lately around here. Had to replant my peas 3 times, beans twice and zuccini twice as well. Have already done my second planting of carrots, lettuce, and beets. Think the wife will have the first planting of beets gone by the end of next week. She will have to go without some for a little bit - the second planting are only about 2 inches tall or so. The leaf lettuce is starting to get strong tasting since it was planted back in first part of June, so hopefully the next round will be maturing soon as well.
Need to get some compost to put on the garden this fall for sure. The soil is good, but there isn't too many worms living in it so I think I want to move some in for next year. Was planning on putting an inch or so of compost on the garden around the end of September or first part of October and then I can have it on there and ready to plow under this fall when the garden is done. I do not really want to add it in the Spring if I can help it. From what I read it is better for the soil to have it there over the winter. Now if I can only get ahold of some oak leaves to work in there too. They are supposed to be great for nutrients too. My one oak I have will not give me enough leaves to conver even a quarter of the garden. :biggrin2:

Hopefully the tomatoes will start to ripen in the next couple weeks as well. They are spotty right now because of the copper spray I had to soak the plants in. That is why they have that kinda blueish green spottiness to them in some of the pictures.
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Looks great Mike! Been wondering where you've been. Your garden looks great! Great looking dirt too!

Nice garden, Mike! Good to see you posting! :ThumbsUp:

That has to be one of the nicest looking gardens I have ever seen. Awesome looking dirt too. What kind of vines do you have growing around the tripods? I had never thought of doing that. Guess it shows my lack of farming skills. :angry: LOL

Looks good Mike. I have never seen a garden without one weed until now. Great job and enjoy the harvest!

Thanks for the nice comments!

On the three tripods together I have yellow beans and then two kinds of green beens. The rail fence in the middle is spagetti squash, then the small rails at the corner next to the raspberries is just flowers. Supposed to be huge white flowers that kind of look like a trillium. Actually looking forward to see them when they blossom. Supposed to have a great smell to them as well. Idea behind the flowers throughout the garden is to get different smells around the garden in hopes of keeping the deer away. So far the fence has done its job that I put up. I added another 3 feet to the already 7 feet I had yesterday. I need to get one more roll then I can have it finished off and then cut the tops off my tall posts. I figure if a deer is going to want to jump over the fence now.... the begger had better be inside when I wake up in the moring, cause he'd be going into the freezer! :angry:

Oh trust me, there is weeds in that garden....I find them everyday!! :bash2: I just know I do not want to let them go like I have in the past....its REALLY hard to stay ahead of the weeds around here. Doesn't help that I have a field next to me full of them that doesn't get cut down each year. Needless to say when I get an East wind, a lot of the seeds fly my way and get my lawn and garden. I hate weeds!

How are your tomatoes doing Allen, I seen your wife's posting a while ago that she was having issues with them?

My daughter was looking at the garden yesterday and was joking she was going to submit it to the newspaper, she thought I was nuts spending so much time on it and how clean it was. My mother was comparing it to the Victory Garden in England because of how its arranged and different looking - I told her she was nuts, its NO WHERE near that nice!!

The soil is pretty nice I do admit. Sandy loam for the top eight inches or so then its a good layer of sand below that and if I get down as far as a foot and a half I will hit clay, REALLY hard clay. I know this soil is much nicer to work with than the clay that I grew up with at home in the garden - now that sucked to work in!

They are doing ok, Mike, The extreme heat is getting to them though. Not sure how much longer, they'll last.

That is A Nice Assortment of Legumes you have there.
All kidding aside your garden is nice I try to keep mine fenced in to keep the 4 hoofed rats out.This year my eggplants were attacked by beetles that ate up the leaves.Only one survived.My pepper plants are not producing due to the hot weather,the blossoms keep falling off,so no peppers.Have you read the Square foot gardening method?Good book to look up.

Will have to look up that book - always nice to find something worth reading! Yes, you said it....the wife says I am odd as well..... :bigthink:

Finally got some rain the night before last - lasted for about 2 hours, it was GREAT! Honestly, I think my second planting of sweet corn jumped about 3 inches in two days!?? :Shocked:

GREAT looking garden! Im so impressed it makes me want to be a better gardener.

This is my first year and Im experiencing a few problems that I hope to learn from for next year. We have had bushels of green tomatoes, but most of the ripe ones have suffered from Blossom End Rot. Im possibly over-watering because I don't know what the heck Im doing :bash2:

Bell peppers are coming in and looking good!

Watermelons are getting about the size of a baseball and then turning black on the bottom side...:bash2:

So far, the pumpkin plant and sweet corn plants are looking good and healthy.

Im also planning on adding a bunch of compost this fall before plowing it under. Reeeaaalllly looking forward to using the plow...:beerchug:

So did anyone learn some lesson's from this past growing season and found out what they are NOT going to do next season? :bigthink:

I know I need to find another bread of onions to grow in hopes that is my problem as to why I can not grow them to full term before they start rotting like they have the past 5 years on me! Getting sick of having only chopped up frozen onions instead of nice fresh ones into the early fall from the garden. Would be nice to have a burger with onion on it in October.

What I am NOT going to do!!??

Well I am not going to use this method of staking tomato's!!

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Do you know how hard it is to give away 1300 pounds of tomato's??






:biggrin2:

:LMAO1:

That's classic Cadplans!!

Too funny!

Very nice garden! I wish I could have kept ahead of the weeds this year. It takes tons of work, daily monitoring, and dedication. When the barn went down, all effort in the garden stopped as we moved into other focuses.

What did I learn?

1. 30 tomato plants is too many. (75 quarts is a years worth, but takes a ton of energy and water to process)
2. 150 feet of bush beans is too much. Left a ton out after we froze a years worth.
3. Didn't have time to pickle the cucumbers in July, so won't be growing them again.
4. My family is tired of squash. So much is produced it is hard to eat it all.
5. Better timing of the sweet corn so it doesn't pollinate with neigboring commercial field corn. (DO NOT GROW the hybrid 4th of July. YUCK!)
6. My 300' (6 50' rows) of potatoes is perfect for keeping the family fed for a year. Do not grow reds for storage, as they will be rotten by Thanksgiving. Grow Yukon Gold for storage.
7. Better educate myself on curing and storing onions. Two years in a row, I lost them after a couple of months.

We moved back into town after the disaster this past year. My new lot is smaller than my garden was! So, this year I am going to have a 24x24 patch to play with and grow things we like to eat, with minimal stoarge. Succession planning, here I come!

Great post growing season review!

Youll be surprized in what youll get out of a mall patch. One thing Ive done with my beans is to grow them in a block, meaning I till the row, and put them in 12 wide row. I saw this in a troy bilt book and it works real well. No weeds, and you can have a bunch in a small area. I do maters that way too, run my steaks down the center burry a soaker hose as not to get the folage wet and you use less area for more plants.

Ill have to agree on the taters, we do the regulare white baking for storage, while all the reds get eaten upright away. And I too could care less if I ever see another yellow squash!

For me I find growing my Broccoli, cabbage, and carrots in the late summer is best. I put them in around the first of sept and water the hec out of them, those 100 deg days are hard! But then by the end of sept the weather cools and the huricains and tropical storms that come threw provide the water I need. Also I put in a cover crop in the fall of crimsion clover, it put nitgrion in the ground. Last year I didnt use any fertlizer on the garden and we did real well.

:HeadScratch:
So a lot of you guys are using soaker hoses for certain plants...what is the advantage besides not getting the leaves wet all the time? You find less diseases doing it this way? Takes in the moisture better and less wattering needed? Is it worth me investing in a soaker hose or two? I was fortunate to get some tall sprinklers for Fathers Day and I added a couple more later in the Summer. Should I have gone with soaker hoses? I like leaving the hoses out all summer and just using a quick attach end on the hose reel I roll out when I want to water the garden. That way I do not need to walk through the wet garden to move around sprinklers. Have two runs of hoses with two or three sprinkers on it and have it divided up to keep the water pressure up enought to throw the water around from the sprinkler. It seemed to work well? I want to plant more strawberries and raspberries this year if I get the opportunity. Have to add another raised bed for the strawberries though. Wouldn't mind two or three apple trees as well - but that might not work out where I planned on planting them. Don't want to cut down on my sunshine early in the morning. Will have to look into that thought. Going to do something different this year with tomatoes. Start training them to grow up a stake or a heavy rope attached to a framework above the row perhaps? I have a heck of a time with the tomatoe vines falling over and breaking. Not much air flows around them then and I find they rot that much sooner. Have enough problems with wilt as it is - gotta do everything I can to keep the tomatoes growing until they mature enough to pick. Can't always eat fried green tomatoes! I'd love to be able to dry down onions properly and store them. Been chopping them up for the freezer for so many years. Would love to have a fresh onion sliced from the garden in September or October instead of having to buy one from the store!

:beer2:

It's the chopping and freezing that is the worst part. If I could properly cure them, the only chopping would be when the are needed!

Soaker hose reduces the chance of disease, and puts the water where it is needed, at the root zone. It uses much less water than a sprinkler system. You would be surprised how much water in a sprinkler system never hits the ground due to evaporation.

If you are using a well, no big deal, but if you are paying for the water from a city, then, soaker is the way to go.

Rarely do I water, however. I use water during emergence or transplanting, then hold off, unless we have a real dry spell. Let the roots go deep and find their own water first. Then, use water during key times, like flower set, fruit set, pollination, etc. Just don't over do it, or you can get too much leafy growth and not enough fruiting.

Im on a well, and have left the soakers hoses on for as long as over night half way threw the next day before I remembered! Never ran out of water but its been low a few times. I have city water to back me up.

I like the soakers cause you wather the roots. The more water you give them the deeper the roots go, the better the plat dose. I t r y not to wast water, but I do. On the hot days in the summer with the soakers buried in the ground with about 4 inches of dirt on them, the plants really like it. All the produce farmers do rased bed covered in plastis with a pipe running threw the bed. I do what they do. When I see the south of the boarder help planting I plant. 99% of the time they are right.