What Did You Do In The Garden?

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

I planted the last of my started plants and trees yesterday and today. Whew!

Yesterday was a handful of northern catalpas and today was a handful of 4"x4" starts of Yellow Wonder strawberries into our strawberry bed . The bed has 50 Ozarks, inspired by this thread, and then the rest will be Yellow Wonder. Obviously they'll compete and intermix and I am absolutely fine with that

 

[ducks4you]

Not much today. Bought 12 cabbages and 6 cauliflower, transplanted them all into the main bed.
FINALLY transplanted the leftover asparagus, bc they were up and making fronds, all 7 of them.
Mowed the south pasture. TOO. MUCH. BURDOCK...but also the grass is recoving.
Gonna be home tomorrow and I will mow the interior with the tractor.

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Checked bean plants for bean beetles a d found one. It was squished! Lol
Sprayed cabbages with BT after noticing cabbage loopers eating some leaves. Our long spring has been wonderful for brassicas and lettuces.
We bought more garden hoses and set up a sprinkler to water the back garden since we dont have rain forecasted until end of the month!

 

[Zeedman]

All of the gardens were tilled to planting depth by Tuesday morning. We finished putting up the fences at home & started to plant Tuesday afternoon, but only got one tomato, one pea, and one bean in before rain moved in. We didn't get much, but more chances of rain (and possibly thunder) in the coming days. It remains to be seen if the soil will dry out enough to plant; but lots of things to start indoors regardless. The busy times are here.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Finally finished the newest raised bed garden. It's planted with red lettuce, marigolds, U of H open pollinated sweet corn, cucumbers and 'Black Cherry' tomatoes. There were some old cantaloupe seeds planted along the edge but none of them showed up. There's now some sort of watermelon seeds planted there that were saved from a Thai watermelon last year, not sure if they will show up or not. If they don't come up, there's more watermelon seeds on order from Baker Creek that will probably have about 100% germination (most BC seed seems to do that), but those seeds haven't showed up yet. Of course, they were only ordered last week and it takes forever for things to get here so it's not Baker Creek's fault.

The corn (also U of H's OP corn) in last year's raised bed garden isn't quite ripe yet. I tried opening one ear but it was barely in the milk stage. Maybe next week.

Today, I took pictures of carrot flowers. Hopefully we will get seeds for planting later.

and the other garden things for today is picking red things:

"Beduin" cherry tomatoes, Donna Mitt's red sweet peppers (that's who the seeds are from, dunno the variety) and those are either Pettingill apples or apples from the M1-11 rootstock. They're half sized apples and pretty tasty, sweet with a bit of tart zing. That's about half our apple harvest there, this is only the second year the tree has had apples since it's only about four years old.

Oh, and mulberry cuttings and bay laurel cuttings were given away to a friend, so gardening in other gardens was helped along, too.

 

[Zeedman]

Oh, and mulberry cuttings and bay laurel cuttings were given away to a friend, so gardening in other gardens was helped along, too.

I'm really interested in the techniques you used for mulberry cuttings, since I am considering mulberry as one of the replacements for all the ash trees dying in my back yard forest. Wild mulberries are common here, but I would like to take cuttings from a female tree with larger berries. I only need female trees, since there are plenty of male trees on my lot line.

The soil at home was dry enough to do a little more planting today. We put in 2 more tomato varieties, 1 pepper, 1 more bean (Bert Goodwin), and 2 soybeans - before rain moved in again. A lot more planting indoors: Tromboncino & Australian Blue squash; WI 5207 cucumber; Abashi, Taiwan Large, and Chinese bitter melon; and Liso Calcutta gherkin. Also trying to start Sacred Rhubarb indoors, which looks like it could be an eye-catching hardy perennial for one of DW's flower beds.

And planted about 200 seeds each of 4 old soybeans, and 40 seeds old seeds of Ralph's Italian Pole bean, in attempts to rescue those varieties.

 

[Niele da Kine]

For mulberries or basically any kind of cuttings, a couple of feet is cut off the end of a branch. Not the new growth but the part where there's brown bark. The leaves are all taken off except for a very few at the tip. Then it's poked into the ground and watered for a week or two. That method works about half the time, but this is Hawaii, it may not be as productive in other locations. If you're more concerned about the cutting starting, then a rooting hormone powder can be dusted on the end and it can be put in a pot with better soil and babied a bit. Some folks will put them in water until roots form, then put in a pot for awhile. I'm lazy and there's more branches if the first ones don't take so I'm good with only half the cuttings rooting.

Mulberry, grape, rose, blackberry an ti plants are all started this way. For sweet potatoes, a bit of the potato is put in water, when it sprouts and makes vines, portions of the vine are planted.

Today was more landscaping than gardening, although I did find a nice volunteer tomato plant in the middle of it. I'll relocate that to the garden tomorrow, no telling what type of tomato it will be but the plant is nice and healthy. I'm terracing a hillside with heavy galvanised curved sheets of corrugated metal. It used to be a big water tank, but it is now going to be a curved and recurved sort of terrace. Kinda a do and then plan as you go sorta project. Not sure what to plant at the edge of it, I've got a couple edges to plant along. Maybe climbing roses to trail over the edge? Although a friend wants to give me vetiver grass for the edge, not sure if that's a good answer or not.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

On May 12 I put plants in pots with some of the cow manure and one I used the walls of water on. I took the picture yesterday, so 9 days after planting this is how much the tomato grew. The other 3 grew big too in 9 days, so probably the cow manure and not the walls of water. Tomatoes in garden that did not have the cow manure are struggling with the cold weather.

 

[digitS']

No frost damage noted . So ... tomatoes set out. Cucumbers and the vining plants went in. In & Out? Matter of perspective .

Broccoli transplanted. I know, a little late with that but they had a late start.

Peppers and eggplant are still on hold here at home. They may be hardened off enuf for normal growing weather but, I don't trust "conditions." Besides, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf with the peppers. It's the first time I remember having moved them to more room out of cell packs. And, I'll try a nice, late start. (Already a late start. Several times, I have had the garden fully planted with early and late crops by about the 12th and 15th. Toooo chilly recently ...)

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

FINALLY got to the new beds on both sides of the the old cattle fencing12 ft from the street. Laborous but necessary digging under the fencing and shoving cardboard there, and adding cardboard to the sides, being sure to not leave cracks. The used stall bedding that I dumped there this winter has done a pretty good job keeping the weeds down, but I dug up any weeds, or baby maple trees and threw them into the lawn to be chopped up by my mower.
I transplanted about 12 scarlet runner beans on the street side and 24 pickling cucumbers on the other side. They were well watered, but it's windy, BUT it's supposed to storm in 1/2 an hour, so, "good luck, boys!" I also transplanted 2 volunteer white pumpkins in the corner, that were growing with a random spinach.
I could only get about 30 ft, ~75 left. Not a big problem, since I transplanted iris and surprise lilies there last Fall. Should be an interesting mix of vegetables and flowers, primarily those that need a fence to trellis on.