@Fuzzalini I’m moving to a house with a very large backyard but there are a lot of trees and not much sun. I’ll probably be doing something like that next year.
I have 3 tomato plants growing right now. The plants are growing huge… The tomatoes, not so much. The full size tomatoes are only about 2" wide and one of the two cherry tomatoes is maybe 1/2" wide. I heard watering could be the problem so I hooked up a dripper and the plants grew even more… But the tomatoes are still small.
The one cherry tomato that is normal sized, well, the flavor is underwhelming. The skin seems really thick.
Don’t know if I just picked bad varieties or what.
I did use miracle grow soil, and tomato fertilizer. Maybe too much fertilizer since its a combo?
@RiotDemon Don’t water too much. Tomato roots go deep and too much water will sap them of flavor. They need air and sun. Take off some of the sucker branches (they are the ones without flowers.) Don’t take them all off, maybe half.
If you have branches that are turning yellow, take them off as that is sign of disease. Don’t put them in the compost pile if you have one, just throw them away far from the garden.
The thick skins might be due to too much heat or the variety. I don’t use fertilizer - we can only use organic but I’ve never found the need.
@RiotDemon Miracle Grow is a high nitrogen fertilizer (24,8,16), maters need a fertilizer with higher potassium and phosphorus numbers something like 8,16,16 though that is not a real number those are NPK numbers N nitrogen makes mater plants grow lots of vine but does not support fruiting.
@cranky1950 thanks. The miracle grow is something that I got for $1, and another bag for free, so I didn’t want to waste it. The fertilizer I used afterwards was specific for tomatoes. I wonder how long the miracle grow stuff lasts. The bags were sitting in my garage for a long time before I used them… But they didn’t look bad. Don’t know what that does to it.
@RiotDemon One other thing once the evening temps get above 75deg, the plants will stop setting fruit anyway, so if it’s hot were you are you have to wait for temps to break and hope you have blooms ready and waiting.
@cranky1950 I’m in Florida, so yeah… It’s hot. I’m actually growing my plants in the shade because every time I’ve tried to do it in the sun, they died. I’m also growing them there so they don’t get flooded when it rains.
@RiotDemon Homestead tomatoes were developed for florida, they set fruit up to 80deg at nite. Ugh, I remember delivering papers at 2am in August and the bank thermometer reading 90 deg.
Call your local Ag extension agent, they can tell you what grows best where you are. I got bitched out when they thought I was using Milogranite.
at 2am in August and the bank thermometer reading 90 deg.
I had to explain to new neighbors who moved from a place with civilized summer weather that, when the day was hot (at least at lower altitudes, or in places that not strictly “desert”), it was still gonna be pretty warm midnight-2am, and the nicest part of the day would be 5-6am (and possibly not “coolish” then.)
@RiotDemon They say that and the plants are growing. Your ag agent will tell you what grows best. The remanents of that discussion are coming to the surface and I believe the extension agent said higher middle number (this was 1981 you understand).
@cranky1950 After they retired my parents lived on crooked lake, I remember standing in the front door sweating on the front, and having goose pimples on my back from the a/c.
@RiotDemon You need a large enough pot to hold the plant. For one “Deck Tomato” (yes, I grow a couple on the deck because I’m too damn lazy to walk all the way to the garden all the time) I use a pretty large at least 6 to 8 gallon pot. Maters hate to be cramped. Keep thinning out excessive branches. You probably don’t need every tomato the plant is trying to produce.
Keep the watering even, Don’t let it dry out all the way between waterings, as you’ll get blossom rot & stuff. Does it need fertilizer? Are the branches and new leaves nice dark green? Older bottom leaves always turn yellow, pick 'em off if you want. Don’t just keep fertilizing for no reason, just maybe once a week or less unless the plant is showing a yellowing. Thick skin could also be uneven watering or the variety of tomato. Also, sometimes the first tomatoes on a plant will have thicker skins.
As others have said, over-fertilizing will produce the nicest and largest plants and leaves! If you’re using a tomato fertilizer, it probably has the correct Nitrogen ratio. Just don’t over-do it.
I keep potting soil in bags for a year or so sometimes, especially if I get lots of the Costco bags in the Spring. Unless it turns to a big moldy mess, it’s OK.
Growing in the FL sun/heat is so different than my gardening! I suppose a diffused light, even like maybe a shade cloth of burlap or something. Tomatoes need direct light, not indirect lighting, so you just need to figure how to get them a shaded amount of direct light.
Good Luck & never give up. Fresh tomatoes are so damn good. Can you grow basil at all in FL? They go together.
Someone gave me two tomatoes from their garden. Does that count?
I live in an apt building on the north side so not much sun plus cats result in indoor plants having short lifespans. So no plants except an aloe plant my mom insisted I take. It is hanging from the curtain rod to keep the cats from getting at it.
@looseneck you would be suprised. Ny town is currently in a heat wave. Heat index was something like 112 today. They are barely holding on in this heat
@jbartus Oh, I don’t know if it would be a permanent thing, but they are barely holding on for this year anyway. The leaves are turning brown and shriveling.
Mom lives on a farm. Before my step dad passed away they maintained a garden of just more than an acre. Tomatoes, cukes, 2 varieties of green beans and 3 kinds of peas, more kinds of peppers than I dreamed possible, corn, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, onion and garlic, broccoli, melons, strawberries… they even have 3 each of peach and apple trees and a pear tree.
Me favourite were the tomato section. On a warm the plants have have a very strong aroma that’s nearly overwhelming. I used to snatch them from the vine and eat them. Few things I’ve enjoyed better than the taste of a juicy tomato straight from the plant, munching it down right there at the scene of the crime. Mmmm. When in full season they would get a 1/2 bushel every day. For WEEKS!
I went back for a visit when dad got really really sick. Right toward the beginning of March. She had me plough the whole thing under. Dad kept sneaking out of the house to tend his garden. The man could barely walk, but he’d disappear for hours. She’d find him in the garden. Sometimes he’d fall and couldn’t get back up. So into the earth it all went. He was pretty upset with me for a couple days after that. I can’t say I blamed him. Pity to send The whole lot into the dirt. The fruit trees remain. Much to the joy of the deer in the area.
@f00l Thank you. One bright spot: the tomatoes had a last hurrah on their way out. When I was ploughing them under the aroma was absolutely phenomenal.
@ruouttaurmind my fondest childhood memories are of staying with my grandparents every summer in their saltbox. my gramma had a flower garden, my grampa a vegetable one. neither were large but they grew a lot. my grampa also grew pink roses at the top of the driveway. the next door neighbor had an apple tree.
i helped tend to it all, my gramma hoisting me to get apples, or counting the morning glories that bloomed each day. she video taped me on several occasions reenacting my own scenes based on the show the victory garden. in the veg patch were zucchini and summer squash, then bell peppers, a trellis of pickling cukes, basil, tomatoes (with that tomato on the vine smell)…all interspersed with marigolds. the fence behind it all was thickly coated in ivy. once they grew lettuce, but they had so much we didn’t know what to do with it all. the same happened with string beans a time or two.
i can still feel the lumpy warm dirt under my feet. there was a little blob of stucco that jutted out from the side of the house by the end of the garden- the perfect stoop for my small body or a little platform for making mud pies.
i loved it even when the season ended, and my grampa would sew the winter rye, and a blanket of thick icy teal colored grass would take its place.
one thing i regret is never eating the tomatoes. i didn’t like them, i thought. my mind was already made up having tried tasteless and out of season city restaurant tomatoes once before. it would be decades before i realized my terrible mistake. still, i ate my weight in cucumbers- bit into like a banana, sprinkled with salt from my own personal red rubber topped shaker, still warm from the sun, spines rubbed off under the spigot on the patio, also a good place to set up a bucket to wash sand from your legs and feet when you returned home from the beach.
years after my gramma passed away, when my grampa died in his 90s, we had to sell the house. i wanted to keep it - i always dreamed of living there and restoring it to how it was. i know my mom wanted the same. her brothers felt differently though, and the timing wasn’t right, we couldn’t move down there just yet. we couldn’t buy them out, either.
i still think if i ever win the lottery, i’ll drive down and see what whoever living there will take.
@jerk_nugget It sounds like a marvelous experience! Well written too. I could feel the sun on my face and smell the marigolds and apple blossom as I read this.
I’m sorry you weren’t able to keep the place in the family. Through your glorious memories though you will always keep the best part of the house with you, no matter where you live.
@ruouttaurmind thank you, yeah, i’ve always found that comforting, that the memories are mine regardless of the rest so too are yours, of that great sounding farm garden. i’m sorry you had to be the one to plow it under, but i get the impression that you may have been best suited to handle such a job. everything has its time, i suppose.
@looseneck - Aren’t you going to ask us to name your progeny? I’m thinking Watson the Watermelon, and you could call the cucumber ‘Zucchini’ to make it feel a little intimidated and try to grow bigger.
@KDemo I’ve been too busy to visit the garden more than once a week. I have found zucchini sized cucumbers - so fat and long I couldn’t fit them in the mason jars
I garden.
approx 35 years of growing my own garden. I started gardening in the 70’s, by the 80’s I was growing enough to fill the freezer & can for the year & haven’t stopped since… I also took some local Master Gardening classes & kept in it for 4 years. I designed/built a nice little 10x10 greenhouse/garden shed a few years ago:
It has a 50% shade cloth on right now & I installed a thermostat controlled fan.
Here’s a few garden pics I took today for Meh…
Corn is 4’+ tall. Early Supersweet corn in the front, late Golden Jubilee in the back
We have 15 large blueberry bushes
Raspberries:
Back to the garden, pumpkins & butternut
Cabbage. We’re gonna make kraut out of maybe 4 or 5 of the heads
Zukes:
Lettuce with a south-facing shade to keep strong sunshine off:
Poblano & early Jalapeno Chile peppers
Maters. I cover 'em with plastic to keep any heat in there a bit
Pole greenbeans, Kentucky Blue. We’re eating from a small patch of Blue lake bush beans for a while. Bush beans come on earlier.
I chop everything with this Troy Bilt I bought new in the early 80’s. Still starts on 1 pull…
Well, that’s enough garden. Here’s the girls:
5 Rhode Island hens & 1 Americauna hen.
I built this for them, to spoil them & to match the greenhouse:
Funny little eggs, they just started laying 1 week ago. The pingpong balls are to show them where to lay
And, because rodents & critters were stealing chicken food at night, I installed a solar electric automatic chicken door, closes at dusk & opens dawn.
Sorry if this was too long. I cut a few things out to shorten it & please: Ignore the weeds…
@daveinwarsh I’m so jealous (but not about the weeds) - we’re not zoned for chickens but we can have 26 dogs. I just bought a house on almost a 1/4 acre. It’s surrounded by trees with ivy growing as grass since no sun can get through. I can’t even think of gardening there until trees get chopped down. We’ve named it the dog park for now.
@daveinwarsh You are really serious about this gardening thing. I’d never have the patience to do all that needs to be done to lead up to the eating part! All I can say is WOW!
@ruouttaurmind Yeah, it is.
We’ve raised, butchered & eaten about every type farm animal here (no goats except for milk, though).
The kids are raised & gone, so down-sizing continues…
I don’t have a garden yet at the new house. My daughter wants one, so I shall have one. I have to do a raised bed since my entire yard is practically sand.
@looseneck Thank you. My husband wants to do more in another part of the year next year. My concern there is the big tree that gives lots (too much) shade. I’d have to make sure whatever was planted didn’t need full sun.
btw, i live in an apartment now so no garden, but it’s very bright so i have about two dozen houseplants so far - soon to be more since many are having babies this season. got half a dozen chile plants that i need to get my act together on and pot up and fertilize before it’s too late.
I have a 4x4 raised bed, but this year I decided to take a break and let the squirrels find their tomatoes elsewhere. I was busy with other stuff in the Spring.
I am sitting on my swing chair enjoying a very rare a little bit of rain here in our desert monsoon season and what passes for my garden. It consists of some grass that came up when I put down mulch to keep the dogs from kicking up too much dirt and the plants that chose to grow here.
@mikibell For the past 2 seasons I haven’t had the time to get the garden in and now it’s throughly overgrown, there is a 6ft tall black walnut tree growing in one of the boxes(courtesy of my neighbors damn black walnut tree). Next week I have to start digging and get the whole thing under black plastic.
@cranky1950 we have more poison ivy than anything else in our yard … gotta figure out a way to kill it without ruining the soil for planting. I, personally, have given up for this year…
1 aloe plant hanging from the curtain rod to keep the cats from getting it.
Grass for cats in a window box on the table near the window… fat cat sits in it so much the grass is deprived of enough sun and so it dies.
Take care of a friend’s horses and cats - get to eat whatever tomatoes and strawberries (the every bloom variety) are ripe.
Different friend gave me 2 tomatoes from her garden
Go the the family farm 1200+ miles away and sneak up the hill and swipe an ear of corn here and there from the many acres of corn; sneak into a different farm along the another property line and compete with the goats to eat the huckleberries, blackberries until my uncle sprayed roundup on all of them (WHY???), poke around the stream for raspberries, blueberry bushes keep getting eaten by the deer and the cows that get loose that belong to the farmer who owns the corn field, elderberries until that bush finally died, crab apple tree whose primary purposes are for hanging a kid swing from and crab apple fights (although we keep having to confirm that no, crab apples are not especially good to eat), and flowers - plenty of flowers bordering the house and cabin (with fencing to keep the rabbits and deer from eating them/digging) some of which have been there since 1958.
@Kidsandliz I ate a crabapple about 20 years ago. That is something I will NEVER do again! They are beautiful and I have 2 at my house now. One is half dead so I will have to get that cut down.
/image crabapple tree
I have one weird tomato (I think) plant that has grown from the seeds of last years rotten tomatoes. The fruit is currently green and oblong…not really tomato shaped, but I don’t know what else it could be. We inherited the plant when we bought the house and didn’t take care of it. This year, I’m trying to keep the fruit off the ground. Maybe I’ll take pics later.
@medz Look at plum tomatoes. I think they are where romas came from. I like less sweet tomatoes like good old beefsteak, but there are a zillion little sweet varietals around now.
@moondrake Yeah. The Roma or Plum tomatoes are really good. They are a less-juicy tomato, you can snack on them or cook with them. We grow mostly the Roma tomatoes. We had some growing last year that looked exactly like that! It was one of the Roma plants & had the odd-shape fruit. They still tasted great!
@daveinwarsh Want want want the raspberries and blackberries!!! My uncle put roundup on those at the farm!! The corn well we can stealth go up the hill and swipe them here and there out of a very large field.
I planted fennel in my garden this year for the black swallowtail butterflies and promptly forgot to weed it. The caterpillars don’t seem to care. Next year I’ll work harder.
Nice watermelons. I have no space so I’m considering getting one of these:
https://gardentowerproject.com/shop/product/garden-tower-2
@Fuzzalini I’m moving to a house with a very large backyard but there are a lot of trees and not much sun. I’ll probably be doing something like that next year.
I have 3 tomato plants growing right now. The plants are growing huge… The tomatoes, not so much. The full size tomatoes are only about 2" wide and one of the two cherry tomatoes is maybe 1/2" wide. I heard watering could be the problem so I hooked up a dripper and the plants grew even more… But the tomatoes are still small.
The one cherry tomato that is normal sized, well, the flavor is underwhelming. The skin seems really thick.
Don’t know if I just picked bad varieties or what.
I did use miracle grow soil, and tomato fertilizer. Maybe too much fertilizer since its a combo?
@RiotDemon Don’t water too much. Tomato roots go deep and too much water will sap them of flavor. They need air and sun. Take off some of the sucker branches (they are the ones without flowers.) Don’t take them all off, maybe half.
If you have branches that are turning yellow, take them off as that is sign of disease. Don’t put them in the compost pile if you have one, just throw them away far from the garden.
The thick skins might be due to too much heat or the variety. I don’t use fertilizer - we can only use organic but I’ve never found the need.
@looseneck thanks for the advice.
@RiotDemon Miracle Grow is a high nitrogen fertilizer (24,8,16), maters need a fertilizer with higher potassium and phosphorus numbers something like 8,16,16 though that is not a real number those are NPK numbers N nitrogen makes mater plants grow lots of vine but does not support fruiting.
@cranky1950 thanks. The miracle grow is something that I got for $1, and another bag for free, so I didn’t want to waste it. The fertilizer I used afterwards was specific for tomatoes. I wonder how long the miracle grow stuff lasts. The bags were sitting in my garage for a long time before I used them… But they didn’t look bad. Don’t know what that does to it.
@RiotDemon One other thing once the evening temps get above 75deg, the plants will stop setting fruit anyway, so if it’s hot were you are you have to wait for temps to break and hope you have blooms ready and waiting.
@cranky1950 I’m in Florida, so yeah… It’s hot. I’m actually growing my plants in the shade because every time I’ve tried to do it in the sun, they died. I’m also growing them there so they don’t get flooded when it rains.
@RiotDemon Homestead tomatoes were developed for florida, they set fruit up to 80deg at nite. Ugh, I remember delivering papers at 2am in August and the bank thermometer reading 90 deg.
Call your local Ag extension agent, they can tell you what grows best where you are. I got bitched out when they thought I was using Milogranite.
@cranky1950 the thing is, I bought Bonnie brand plants. They only bring what grows here locally to the stores, so I should be good.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@cranky1950
I had to explain to new neighbors who moved from a place with civilized summer weather that, when the day was hot (at least at lower altitudes, or in places that not strictly “desert”), it was still gonna be pretty warm midnight-2am, and the nicest part of the day would be 5-6am (and possibly not “coolish” then.)
/image sun
@RiotDemon They say that and the plants are growing. Your ag agent will tell you what grows best. The remanents of that discussion are coming to the surface and I believe the extension agent said higher middle number (this was 1981 you understand).
@cranky1950 After they retired my parents lived on crooked lake, I remember standing in the front door sweating on the front, and having goose pimples on my back from the a/c.
@cranky1950 thanks. I’ll look into the extension agent.
@RiotDemon You need a large enough pot to hold the plant. For one “Deck Tomato” (yes, I grow a couple on the deck because I’m too damn lazy to walk all the way to the garden all the time) I use a pretty large at least 6 to 8 gallon pot. Maters hate to be cramped. Keep thinning out excessive branches. You probably don’t need every tomato the plant is trying to produce.
Keep the watering even, Don’t let it dry out all the way between waterings, as you’ll get blossom rot & stuff. Does it need fertilizer? Are the branches and new leaves nice dark green? Older bottom leaves always turn yellow, pick 'em off if you want. Don’t just keep fertilizing for no reason, just maybe once a week or less unless the plant is showing a yellowing. Thick skin could also be uneven watering or the variety of tomato. Also, sometimes the first tomatoes on a plant will have thicker skins.
As others have said, over-fertilizing will produce the nicest and largest plants and leaves! If you’re using a tomato fertilizer, it probably has the correct Nitrogen ratio. Just don’t over-do it.
I keep potting soil in bags for a year or so sometimes, especially if I get lots of the Costco bags in the Spring. Unless it turns to a big moldy mess, it’s OK.
Growing in the FL sun/heat is so different than my gardening! I suppose a diffused light, even like maybe a shade cloth of burlap or something. Tomatoes need direct light, not indirect lighting, so you just need to figure how to get them a shaded amount of direct light.
Good Luck & never give up. Fresh tomatoes are so damn good. Can you grow basil at all in FL? They go together.
@daveinwarsh thanks for the info. Basil can grow here… But I never really eat it. I don’t really cook with any fresh herbs at all.
@RiotDemon for shame! Fresh is best!
To severely understate the situation, my garden is not exactly an object of pride at the moment.
@cranky1950 Show us how terrible it is then
@looseneck No
@cranky1950 You’re no fun. And cranky.
@looseneck duh
Someone gave me two tomatoes from their garden. Does that count?
I live in an apt building on the north side so not much sun plus cats result in indoor plants having short lifespans. So no plants except an aloe plant my mom insisted I take. It is hanging from the curtain rod to keep the cats from getting at it.
My flowers and hostas have not died yet…does that count?
@tinamarie1974 Yes! But I don’t think anything can kill hostas.
@looseneck you would be suprised. Ny town is currently in a heat wave. Heat index was something like 112 today. They are barely holding on in this heat
@tinamarie1974 we’ve literally run hostas over with trucks and had them come back. I would be shocked if that heat killed them permanently.
@jbartus Oh, I don’t know if it would be a permanent thing, but they are barely holding on for this year anyway. The leaves are turning brown and shriveling.
@tinamarie1974 I bet not. They are invincible!
@looseneck
All I can say is “beautiful” : )
Mom lives on a farm. Before my step dad passed away they maintained a garden of just more than an acre. Tomatoes, cukes, 2 varieties of green beans and 3 kinds of peas, more kinds of peppers than I dreamed possible, corn, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, onion and garlic, broccoli, melons, strawberries… they even have 3 each of peach and apple trees and a pear tree.
Me favourite were the tomato section. On a warm the plants have have a very strong aroma that’s nearly overwhelming. I used to snatch them from the vine and eat them. Few things I’ve enjoyed better than the taste of a juicy tomato straight from the plant, munching it down right there at the scene of the crime. Mmmm. When in full season they would get a 1/2 bushel every day. For WEEKS!
I went back for a visit when dad got really really sick. Right toward the beginning of March. She had me plough the whole thing under. Dad kept sneaking out of the house to tend his garden. The man could barely walk, but he’d disappear for hours. She’d find him in the garden. Sometimes he’d fall and couldn’t get back up. So into the earth it all went. He was pretty upset with me for a couple days after that. I can’t say I blamed him. Pity to send The whole lot into the dirt. The fruit trees remain. Much to the joy of the deer in the area.
@ruouttaurmind
I’m sorry things got you the point where you had to consider that option.
That must have hurt.
@f00l Thank you. One bright spot: the tomatoes had a last hurrah on their way out. When I was ploughing them under the aroma was absolutely phenomenal.
@ruouttaurmind my fondest childhood memories are of staying with my grandparents every summer in their saltbox. my gramma had a flower garden, my grampa a vegetable one. neither were large but they grew a lot. my grampa also grew pink roses at the top of the driveway. the next door neighbor had an apple tree.
i helped tend to it all, my gramma hoisting me to get apples, or counting the morning glories that bloomed each day. she video taped me on several occasions reenacting my own scenes based on the show the victory garden. in the veg patch were zucchini and summer squash, then bell peppers, a trellis of pickling cukes, basil, tomatoes (with that tomato on the vine smell)…all interspersed with marigolds. the fence behind it all was thickly coated in ivy. once they grew lettuce, but they had so much we didn’t know what to do with it all. the same happened with string beans a time or two.
i can still feel the lumpy warm dirt under my feet. there was a little blob of stucco that jutted out from the side of the house by the end of the garden- the perfect stoop for my small body or a little platform for making mud pies.
i loved it even when the season ended, and my grampa would sew the winter rye, and a blanket of thick icy teal colored grass would take its place.
one thing i regret is never eating the tomatoes. i didn’t like them, i thought. my mind was already made up having tried tasteless and out of season city restaurant tomatoes once before. it would be decades before i realized my terrible mistake. still, i ate my weight in cucumbers- bit into like a banana, sprinkled with salt from my own personal red rubber topped shaker, still warm from the sun, spines rubbed off under the spigot on the patio, also a good place to set up a bucket to wash sand from your legs and feet when you returned home from the beach.
years after my gramma passed away, when my grampa died in his 90s, we had to sell the house. i wanted to keep it - i always dreamed of living there and restoring it to how it was. i know my mom wanted the same. her brothers felt differently though, and the timing wasn’t right, we couldn’t move down there just yet. we couldn’t buy them out, either.
i still think if i ever win the lottery, i’ll drive down and see what whoever living there will take.
@jerk_nugget It sounds like a marvelous experience! Well written too. I could feel the sun on my face and smell the marigolds and apple blossom as I read this.
I’m sorry you weren’t able to keep the place in the family. Through your glorious memories though you will always keep the best part of the house with you, no matter where you live.
@ruouttaurmind thank you, yeah, i’ve always found that comforting, that the memories are mine regardless of the rest
so too are yours, of that great sounding farm garden. i’m sorry you had to be the one to plow it under, but i get the impression that you may have been best suited to handle such a job. everything has its time, i suppose. 
No garden, just weeds.
/image weeds
@narfcake I’ve taken that out quite a few quantum levels here.
@looseneck - Aren’t you going to ask us to name your progeny? I’m thinking Watson the Watermelon, and you could call the cucumber ‘Zucchini’ to make it feel a little intimidated and try to grow bigger.
@KDemo I’ve been too busy to visit the garden more than once a week. I have found zucchini sized cucumbers - so fat and long I couldn’t fit them in the mason jars
My garden is savage
I garden.
approx 35 years of growing my own garden. I started gardening in the 70’s, by the 80’s I was growing enough to fill the freezer & can for the year & haven’t stopped since… I also took some local Master Gardening classes & kept in it for 4 years. I designed/built a nice little 10x10 greenhouse/garden shed a few years ago:
It has a 50% shade cloth on right now & I installed a thermostat controlled fan.
Here’s a few garden pics I took today for Meh…
Corn is 4’+ tall. Early Supersweet corn in the front, late Golden Jubilee in the back
We have 15 large blueberry bushes
Raspberries:
Back to the garden, pumpkins & butternut
Cabbage. We’re gonna make kraut out of maybe 4 or 5 of the heads
Zukes:
Lettuce with a south-facing shade to keep strong sunshine off:
Poblano & early Jalapeno Chile peppers
Maters. I cover 'em with plastic to keep any heat in there a bit
Pole greenbeans, Kentucky Blue. We’re eating from a small patch of Blue lake bush beans for a while. Bush beans come on earlier.
I chop everything with this Troy Bilt I bought new in the early 80’s. Still starts on 1 pull…
Well, that’s enough garden. Here’s the girls:
5 Rhode Island hens & 1 Americauna hen.
I built this for them, to spoil them & to match the greenhouse:
Funny little eggs, they just started laying 1 week ago. The pingpong balls are to show them where to lay
And, because rodents & critters were stealing chicken food at night, I installed a solar electric automatic chicken door, closes at dusk & opens dawn.
Sorry if this was too long. I cut a few things out to shorten it & please: Ignore the weeds…
@daveinwarsh really nice garden!
@RiotDemon Thank You. It’s so much smaller with just two of us at home now. And, I HATE weeds.
@daveinwarsh
I love your garden. And your deck. And your ferocious killing-machine guard-dogs.
@f00l Guard dogs Chevy & Jetta, resting on a couch as they plan the next rabbit hunt.
They love to protect the garden from all threats!
@daveinwarsh I’m so jealous (but not about the weeds) - we’re not zoned for chickens but we can have 26 dogs. I just bought a house on almost a 1/4 acre. It’s surrounded by trees with ivy growing as grass since no sun can get through. I can’t even think of gardening there until trees get chopped down. We’ve named it the dog park for now.
@daveinwarsh Fantastic garden! More like a small farm!
@daveinwarsh You are really serious about this gardening thing. I’d never have the patience to do all that needs to be done to lead up to the eating part! All I can say is WOW!
@ruouttaurmind Yeah, it is.
We’ve raised, butchered & eaten about every type farm animal here (no goats except for milk, though).
The kids are raised & gone, so down-sizing continues…
I don’t have a garden yet at the new house. My daughter wants one, so I shall have one. I have to do a raised bed since my entire yard is practically sand.
Three kinds tomato plants - Indigo on the left, beefsteak in the middle, cherry on the right (I had no idea they’d get this big):
Indigo tomato:
Beefsteak:
Cherry:
Catnip:
Corn:
And some miscellaneous sunflower plants compliments of the birdfeeder.
@lisaviolet I like how you trained the birds to get your bad worms. I hope they are leaving the good ones behind.
Lovely garden!
@lisaviolet Fantastic! Oh how I miss the aroma of tomato plants om a warm day.
@looseneck Thank you. My husband wants to do more in another part of the year next year. My concern there is the big tree that gives lots (too much) shade. I’d have to make sure whatever was planted didn’t need full sun.
@ruouttaurmind Yeah, that tomato plant smell. It’s nice. And strong.
Mine is full of weeds and overgrown.
btw, i live in an apartment now so no garden, but it’s very bright so i have about two dozen houseplants so far - soon to be more since many are having babies this season. got half a dozen chile plants that i need to get my act together on and pot up and fertilize before it’s too late.
I have a 4x4 raised bed, but this year I decided to take a break and let the squirrels find their tomatoes elsewhere. I was busy with other stuff in the Spring.
I’ve already got plans for next year, though.
I am sitting on my swing chair enjoying a very rare a little bit of rain here in our desert monsoon season and what passes for my garden. It consists of some grass that came up when I put down mulch to keep the dogs from kicking up too much dirt and the plants that chose to grow here.
I have tubs for plants and fish. I’ll see if I can manage to upload pics tomorrow, too much work from my phone.
I am with @cranky1950 – my garden is abysmal. It really never got planted with anything other than weeds
Life will get better, right???
@mikibell For the past 2 seasons I haven’t had the time to get the garden in and now it’s throughly overgrown, there is a 6ft tall black walnut tree growing in one of the boxes(courtesy of my neighbors damn black walnut tree). Next week I have to start digging and get the whole thing under black plastic.
@cranky1950 we have more poison ivy than anything else in our yard
… gotta figure out a way to kill it without ruining the soil for planting. I, personally, have given up for this year…
Hmm my garden:
1 aloe plant hanging from the curtain rod to keep the cats from getting it.
Grass for cats in a window box on the table near the window… fat cat sits in it so much the grass is deprived of enough sun and so it dies.
Take care of a friend’s horses and cats - get to eat whatever tomatoes and strawberries (the every bloom variety) are ripe.
Different friend gave me 2 tomatoes from her garden
Go the the family farm 1200+ miles away and sneak up the hill and swipe an ear of corn here and there from the many acres of corn; sneak into a different farm along the another property line and compete with the goats to eat the huckleberries, blackberries until my uncle sprayed roundup on all of them (WHY???), poke around the stream for raspberries, blueberry bushes keep getting eaten by the deer and the cows that get loose that belong to the farmer who owns the corn field, elderberries until that bush finally died, crab apple tree whose primary purposes are for hanging a kid swing from and crab apple fights (although we keep having to confirm that no, crab apples are not especially good to eat), and flowers - plenty of flowers bordering the house and cabin (with fencing to keep the rabbits and deer from eating them/digging) some of which have been there since 1958.
Best part - don’t need to weed anything!
@Kidsandliz I ate a crabapple about 20 years ago. That is something I will NEVER do again! They are beautiful and I have 2 at my house now. One is half dead so I will have to get that cut down.
/image crabapple tree
@looseneck yeah they are better for throwing than eating.
I have one weird tomato (I think) plant that has grown from the seeds of last years rotten tomatoes. The fruit is currently green and oblong…not really tomato shaped, but I don’t know what else it could be. We inherited the plant when we bought the house and didn’t take care of it. This year, I’m trying to keep the fruit off the ground. Maybe I’ll take pics later.
@medz
seriously, though. Why do they look like this?
Google image search says they might be Roma Tomatoes, but mine sure are wonky-shaped.
@medz Not some kind of eggplant?
@jbartus Nope. They turned orange and then red last year. The purple on the left is a flower.
@medz Look at plum tomatoes. I think they are where romas came from. I like less sweet tomatoes like good old beefsteak, but there are a zillion little sweet varietals around now.
@moondrake Yeah. The Roma or Plum tomatoes are really good. They are a less-juicy tomato, you can snack on them or cook with them. We grow mostly the Roma tomatoes. We had some growing last year that looked exactly like that! It was one of the Roma plants & had the odd-shape fruit. They still tasted great!
@medz I was going more off of the shape than anything.
Grrr, I am an idiot. Here’s an album instead.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KXCPGRPs5zENs5DF2
First harvest!
They say they’re good for salsa. I’m going to try them in a fajita.
Picked our first corn today!
Also, picked 3+ lbs of raspberries & a gallon of blackberries.
@daveinwarsh Want want want the raspberries and blackberries!!! My uncle put roundup on those at the farm!! The corn well we can stealth go up the hill and swipe them here and there out of a very large field.
My garden looks like crap:
But THE MONARCHS ARE BACK!!!
Awesome, @sammydog01!
And your garden looks great.
Careful, though. Sometimes those royal monarchs let power go to their heads.
I planted fennel in my garden this year for the black swallowtail butterflies and promptly forgot to weed it. The caterpillars don’t seem to care. Next year I’ll work harder.
