Your 2015 Garden, what are you doing?

Lol. Well if the rain. Keeps up. I'll pray for their salvation

 

Container gardening in EarthBoxes. Still getting great cherry tomatoes, Arugula won't be ready for a while.

 

The garden this year is just...weird. I can say without hesitation though that hybrid (starter from the big-box store) and farmers market heirloom are behaving completely differently. Our heirloom stuff is twice the size at least. The hybrid is growing tomatoes already but the plant is literally 8-10 in. tall with as many as 5-6 tomatoes growing. VERY strange. The peas, from seed, are no more than 5 inches tall and are almost done producing. less than a lb (probably like 8 oz or less) from a 4x8 raised bed. They just never really took off.

Peppers are very slow (only one so far) but it looks like cukes and zucchini are going to take over the yard in very, VERY short order.

Bush beans planted and seem to be jumping into the fray very quickly but time will tell.

 

Speaking of gardening, I have to give mad props @Brokor (pretty sure he's the guilty party) for insisting I was wrong about soapy water on squash bugs doing anything more than giving them a warm bath. I spotted two adult squash bugs FORNICATING ON MY ZUCCHINI! Filthy buggers! That's all they do is breed and breed and pause momentarily to destroy entire plants in a single evening. I didn't have a squirt bottle so I got a gallon jug and put dish soap in it, filled it up with water, and dumped it over the entire stalk where they were getting their freak on. Well THAT broke up the party! One fell off, the other ran halfway up a stalk before falling off. Dead in less than 2 minutes. The skies parted, the sunlight came down upon my freshly cleansed zucchini plant, and it was good.

Let the slaughter begin.

 

You weren't the originator, but you dared to tell me I was wrong. Few who have done that have survived to eat pizza another day, let alone been right about it. Fewer still have witnessed me admit to their win.

For that I bow to you.

 

Had problems with my ultra hot peppers for the last week or so. It's been getting 100+ during the days here in SENM. Yep, summer is arrived. My pepper plants that I moved outside a few weeks ago were really suffering from the heat, drooping every day, sometime starting in the morning even if I watered them. I'm not sure if it's cuz the heat is getting to them by itself or if them being in thin black plastic pots (with a nice layer of mulch on top of the soil) has anything to do with it. I also have 2 heirloom tomato plants that were drooping badly. I moved everyone back inside the "Manly Room" and under the florescent lights again today. I plan on keeping the a/c off most of the time so the room will be 70-90 degrees most of the time. Hopefully they'll all recover.

Even worse, when the peppers were outside, a couple of them got knocked over and the label stick got lost! So now I have 3 pepper plants that I'm not sure what they are. Guess we'll find out when they start putting on peppers.

Right now, I've got 3 nice brown ghost peppers on one plant and a single Carolina Reaper on a plant. Give them a week or so and they outta be ready to harvest. I've eaten a couple of the chocolate ghosts and they are downright tasty.

Finally, I need to do some more thinning of the fruits on my apricot and peach trees. I did quite a bit a couple of weeks ago, but the remaining fruits are definitely looking crowded.

Kajun

 

Green thumb people, I need help. My lilacs are dying. The leaves are literally turning black & shriving up. I have checked all other plants in and round them and everything is healthy. I looked on line and I didn't find anything on lilacs leaves turning black. My small lilac is basically dead. I don't even know if I can cut it back this late in the season. Help!

** I have pictures but cannot download till later.

 

Long cool spring? Might be blight

How to recognize, treat and avoid lilac bacterial blight | Oregon State University Extension Service | Gardening

 

I thought it was blight also but the volunteers that are coming from the existing plant are healthy and happy. It is attacking the main bushes, not the new little guys.

 

I think it's transmitted thru the soil after a certain time in the ground. You may have to move them.

 

We finally got our Tomatoes, peppers and potatoes in the ground, at least 2 weeks earlier than last yr as it was still in the low 30's last yr at night. I have the cukes to put in and dh put up a trellis for them yesterday .

 

Let the harvesting begin

so far I've picked 5 gallon sized zip lock baggies full of green beans. about one gallon of sugar snap peas, several zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers and a handful of jalapeno's.
Tomatoes are comin' in but they are still green and a few weeks from ripening up. Bell peppers are starting form as well.

 

My garden is starting to do very well. Had a scare two different mornings, yesterday and the day before. 33 and 34 degrees at daylight. Beans, snow peas, zucchini and cucumbers all dodged the bullet.

 

Due to the @ditch witch zucchini thread Help, Sick Zucchini | Survival Forums I have been thinking about my seed storage. Squash is what I would call a delicate plant. I battle milky mildew and other ailments. I love squash but I have been considering that I need to concentrate on storing more of the hardy plant seeds, carrots, beets, and parsnips to name a few. I am able to can these veggies and they seem to grow fine with a longer growing season. This spring has been brutal. It has been cold, wet and cloudy. My garden is so far behind that if I needed to depend on it I would be in big trouble. I will still have squash and lettuce seeds stored but I think I really need to re-evaluate.

Kale is hardy also.

 

Good points, might want to look for varieties that are resistant to the types of problems you can run into. My biggest problem with zucchini & squash are the squash bugs (that even the chickens don't want to eat ).

Kale may be hardy, but this year all my kale has been consumed by something, other than humans. I'll keep my leafy greens (kale, lettuce and the like) to my tower garden in the house. Besides that's the only way my son will eat lettuce, if he can pick it from the TG.

 

The weather is something a lot of would-be preppers fail to take into consideration when imagining they'll plant a garden and eat like kings. Admittedly I've fallen into the trap of thinking I can predict it as well. I'm used to dry, hot, windy weather, summers that melt asphalt and rain that only comes in June and usually with lots of hail. I garden accordingly. My corn goes in the bottom of the rows, not on top of the swell, to get as much water as possible. Raised beds generally mean a LOT of watering because they dry out too fast. Beds are close to buildings or other structures where I can pull over a tarp if hail is on the horizon, and where they'll catch additional rain off the roof run when it does rain. So no big surprise when my garden, with seed selected from generations of drought tolerant plants, goes belly up when it finds itself in a never-ending monsoon season. The plants that are ok are in the usually dried out raised beds this time, and even they are having issues.

It's a good reminder to not put all your veg in one kind of bed if at all possible.

 

Lost all my cucumber plants to aphids, tried the soapy water thing but it was too late. All tomato plants going like gangbusters, butternut squash is flowering, jalapeno peppers coming up strong and starting to flower, Bell peppers forming in abundance ! Put in a bunch of onion sets, some took some were looking poorly as they went into the ground. We'll see what pops up.

I set up a couple toad houses in the planters and put some solar garden lights near them to entice the toads into taking up residence.

 

This is a good thought. I need to revisit mine as well. I practice a kind of... wild type of garden.

I started, a couple of years ago, only seed if I'm planting something new. I let my kale lettuce, other greens and cruciferous veggies bolt and seed themselves.

The corn and beans I still seed.

I use to have a five area rotation on crops but I'm trying the 'let them seed themselves' it's been pretty easy but I see motomom's point on bad weather.

I think I need to revisit my backup plan.

Thanks motomom for pointing this out. It's a huge gap in my prep.