Garden Secrets: A Journal of Our Methods, Successes, Failures...PICS!

[Beekissed]

My sister had planted her whole garden early and it got frost killed. She started over and is struggling to get it all in but they had heavy rains over there and she has been halted by this....meanwhile she has a perfect plot filled with opportunistic weeds. :/

She said she was going to till over the pathways and plant to clover. I'm glad she is finally trying to minimize her gardening woes this year....weeds are a drag and she has too big a garden to mulch with anything but plastic. The clover seems the best way to go and she also uses her garden space for cow,sheep, and pig penning at different times of the year...clover should come in handy then.

That makes two clover converts!!! :bun

 

[TanksHill]

My garden is lagging with a capitol L this year. Things are just soooo slow to grow. I am not sure if it's my soil or the late start or a combination of both.

I started my green and wax beans this year with some pretty old seeds. Two weeks later still no sprouts. So I checked the date. I have been planting these seeds for years. Literally!! They were ordered from Johny's in 2002. Oooopps I think they are past their prime.

For the most part this year I am trying to plant the heirloom seeds I bought from Bakersville. Not that I am the greatest seed saver but I am interested in seeing the heirloom varieties, and how well they tolerate my adverse conditions.

I have pests this year as well. Grrrrrr!!! Something is eating my little sprouts the minute they pop. It is either pill bugs or ear wigs. I have been using DE around the little sprouts and about 3 or 3 days later I water it in. The bugs don't seem to bother the plants when they are larger.

My German elderly neighbor gave me some cabbage starts. This is the first time I have gotten them to grow. But again they are being eaten to oblivion. They look like Swiss cheese. They take up so much space I am considering pulling them and utilizing the space for something else. Why should I spend 3 months babying these cabbage when they will b e all holey and inedible?

Well I will get some pictures in the morning. I think my seed potatoes are doing the best. So much eating low carb.

 

[journey11]

Something I wouldn't recommend is "putting all your eggs in one basket"!

I like to start my cukes/pumpkins/melons inside to get them going early and fit comfortably within my growing season. I did so well with this last year and had a whopper harvest of the tastiest canteloupes ever and also an abundance of butternut squash.

Well, I got ambitious this year and started all my cucurbits inside. They all started out fine, but between the late frosts and that 2 week rainy spell that hit us, I got seriously delayed in planting them (over by about 3 weeks) and they got pot-bound and started blooming. I planted them anyway. The watermelon and the pumpkins recovered. Everything else is looking sad though--all bloom, kinda pale and wimpy, not much new growth.

FORTUNATELY I only started about half of each kind of seed I had. I direct sowed seed to replace the duds. About 2 weeks later than they could have been started, but not too late...

Disappointing to have nothing to show for the time and effort of nurturing along those indoor seedlings, but at least I was able to start over and replace them.

 

[desertwillow]

I think I have the biggest challenge of all. I garden in the desert. I've found that just about anything will grow her that is for our zone 8b as long as we amend the soil and give it water. We have 2.5 acres but we've planted 75 trees...palo verde, fruitless mulberry, locust, mesquire, leyland cypress, eucalyptus, chitalpa and catalpa. We have grapes, apricot, plum and peach trees. I even have a fig tree. Out zone , supposedly 8b also have a heat tolerance of 12 with our summer temps going above 110F. Roses grow very well here and I have a dozen or so and also bearded iris about 80. we have a vegetable garden, one about 20x20 which we added 15 bags of ammend as our soil, which is really disintegrated granite is very alkaline. We have a smaller bed about 6x12 and a raised bed that is 3x5. My tomatoes grow in it because I can protect them from sudden frosts (we're at 2500 feet above sea level) and the constant winds that sometimes exceed 75-90 mph. We have carrots, green peas, onions, turnip and mustard seed, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow summer squash, acorn squash, cantaloupe and red potaoes and green pole beans. We have had one meal of carrots, several of red potatoes and green peas. We use straw for protection and compost also. I found out a tip with my tomatoes that I'll share. When I dig the hole for the tomatoe plant I add 3 tablespoons of sugar and the same of epsom salts and plant at least 80% of the plant cutting off the leaves to that point. The tomatoes grow large and are very sweet tasting. I'd like to hear about tips for the garden from others. Oh! I also have a large selction of cactus that lovely blooms on them.

 

[wifezilla]

I throw some of the oyster shell I keep on hand for my laying ducks in the whole. The tomatoes really seem to like it.

 

[Beekissed]

I have been in the garden this day, doing the final hilling of the corn and tackling all the weeds that grew because I had not mulched yet.....they were tremendous and all the same kind. I've seen this kind before but I have never seen them in this abundance!

I don't know what they are and it sure would be nice if we could start a thread that was full of pics of commonly known garden weeds and pests, wouldn't it?

Just when I thought my garden was going to be a bust, we got a few good rains and things started growing and greening. It is still not what I envisioned this year but it does have hope now.

Just wait until I mulch it...that always seems to give it a growth spurt as the mulch holds in moisture, keeps the ground from capping and invites more earthworm involvement that aerates the ground more.

I'll take some pics soon....the clover is still lush...great year for clover!

One tip about what NOT to sow in your garden in the early spring....buckwheat! I had a few handsful of buckwheat that I had thrown into the clover mix that I overseeded with this year....bad idea! Buckwheat may be great for a fall groundcover that will frost kill but not so great in a spring garden....it is everywhere!!!!