What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Niele da Kine]

This has been a busy week so far. Dump runs on Tuesday and today to get rid of the Mulberry branches that I didnt want to keep for firewood or kindling- too much of the stuff. So far3/4's of it is now gone or sitting in the parking area drying out.
<SNIP>

If you know anyone who has rabbits or other livestock, mulberry is a very nutritious forage for many critters. We grow is especially for the bunnies, although we don't feed them the berries, they just get the leaves and branches.

There may be someone nearby who would possibly swap mulberry branches for bunny manure?

So THAT's where carrot seeds come from? Who knows what root veggies are getting up to under the soil?

 

[Trish Stretton]

I have grown diakon radish only once, @Trish Stretton . It's primary purpose was for leaf harvesting since the variety was noted for that use.

Are you making kim chi in both jars and bags? That reminds me of my "freezer sauerkraut." I am eating cabbage right into winter this year and only a little as sauerkraut - which, by the way, keeps well unfrozen in the fridge

The diakon plants produced a few leaves, little skinny roots and bolted to seeds as summer arrived. I had hoped for a longer growing period than that but that first sowing may have been too early. I did enjoy snacking on a few seed pods.

It was warm enough that the carport refrigerator could be stuffed with cabbage months ago. A few decaying leaves have been peeled off but the cabbage has stayed fresh and crisp. I've had to move them to coolers and indoors several times when temperatures dropped well below freezing because everything will freeze quickly in that refrigerator if the carport is very cold.

We can eat a lot more cabbage than sauerkraut. However, I'm having to be very conscientious about temperatures.

Steve

The one is the bag is cos there wasnt quite enough to fill another jar.
I love sauerkraut, good thing the place my DD works makes some really tasty ones.
This is my first Daikon Kim Chi, usually, its the cabbage one.
I had a taste this morning, not ready.

Today has been yet another crazy summer day that doesnt seem to know whether its summer or spring.
8am, I'm trying to get the 'stepping stones' bed finished. 9am, its hammering down with rain,but wait...an hour later the sun comes out and its a scorcher!. Didnt get to take a pic cos my camera battery went flat on me.
I did finally get the bed laid out...now I have to figure out what to plant in it so I dont trip up on things.

Camera finally charged up, so I did manage to get a pic for you before it got too dark.

 

[Cheaperthantherapy]

Good morning
Stuck in bed so been looking at all the garden catalogs and wondering what my budget will be. Not traveling this year as planned, so all the gardening is going to be awesome.

Seed prices are high. News says food pricing is going to be stupid high. When I get outta bed I am so looking forward to be outside.

Without using those silly softwares, how do you try to plan? I do have a large garden that tends to get a bit wild in the hot Atlanta summer. Am trying to resist just buying everything.

 

[digitS']

@Cheaperthantherapy , I kept a garden journal at one time. Postings were made every few days during the season - I wasn't consistent about that but tried to put information that I thought was important in it.

For years, I would refer back to the scheduling of things. Finally, it just seemed simple enough that I, fairly well stopped doing that. The journal was important just for that reference purpose years after new information was no longer posted. That turns out to be rather unfortunate because I forget things like how a certain variety performed. (It's fortunate that TEG has a good search function and I've been around here a lot over the years since the journaling.)

DW has a better memory than I do and can accurately locate growing areas for things from the previous year even after the tractor guy has made a mess of the ground. I do the measuring using my exactly calibrated 12" shoes . In the journal, I would have maps using graft paper. It really wasn't difficult. Of course, that was pre-tractor guy.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

i remember where i put things in all the gardens, so each year i plant the next crops in places i didn't use for that same plant the previous two years if i can help it. for the main crops of tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, squash and garlic. garlic gets planted the previous fall/early winter so that comes up and reminds me where i've planted it (i don't forget so far ).

then any remaining spaces we don't have plans for we put in peas and beans. since the peas have to go in before any of the warmer weather crops i do have to figure that out early.

 

[Zeedman]

Without using those silly softwares, how do you try to plan? I do have a large garden that tends to get a bit wild in the hot Atlanta summer. Am trying to resist just buying everything.

Maybe I'm just old school, but to me "software" and "outdoors" should not be uttered in the same breath.

I use much the same planning process as @digitS' and @flowerbug . My gardens are too large & complex to do from memory; so I make a map for each plot on graph paper. I like having the hard copy to take with me when planting. The maps from the previous year are used during planning, to rotate everything to different positions. Those maps also help me to decide how many transplants of everything I need to start. I keep the old maps on file as a history of what grew where, should I find a cross later & want to identify the prospective parents. Those maps just came in handy, to identify some unnamed garden photos I took 15 years ago.

As a collector, the planning of what to grow each year is more elaborate than the mapping, and the whole process usually takes about a week... longer if I'm waiting for new seed to arrive. Even then, the plan almost always gets changed several times before planting. But the garden can be as simple or complex as you want it to be - as long as it meets your needs, and you have fun with it.

 

[Zeedman]

If there has ever been a winter for those "when I get around to it" projects, this is certainly the one.

This week, I finished organizing all of the digital garden photos taken since 2005. I've been wanting to organize those photos for years. They had all been arranged by date taken, and very few were labeled as to the variety pictured... so it was really hard to locate something by variety. Fortunately, I still have all of the garden maps for those years, and using those, was able to identify most of the photos. I've now created folders for everything in my collection, and copies of all identifiable photos have been moved into them - which took several days. Besides allowing me to find specific photos quickly, that will now enable me to more easily identify what photos are needed to "fill the holes" for each variety; leaf, flower, pod, seed, etc..

For the last few days I've also been inventorying my seed stocks, something long overdue. Taking note of low quantities, throwing away old stock, and updating my records (which includes the seed listing linked to my profile). And because we have reduced the size of the gardens by 1/3 & will be growing fewer things each year, the size of the collection needed to be reduced. Sadly, some seeds had to be disposed of, if they were the inferior version of something else that I had, or if they were already widely available from others. In some cases, there was no interest in a variety for over 10 years - making it pointless to waste further effort on them, when I could be devoting that time & space to breeding projects or new trials. With a smaller garden, and DW & I getting (not younger), I knew I would have to abandon some varieties... but still, doing so felt like betraying old friends.

I've made lists of all the varieties needing grow outs, and will begin planning once I have reviewed this year's SSE Yearbook (due out this month).

 

[flowerbug]

yeah, it is hard to not be able to work with each and every bean that comes by.

i did my photo collection indexing a year or two ago where i went through and tagged every picture (about 10,000 pictures) but i did not and haven't ever taken pictures of each individual type of bean plant or seed or flower. that'd would be a huge task.

i have old pictures in garden journals that Mom kept (she was going to throw them away and i kept them) that are not digital that someday perhaps i'll take pictures of them for the records but that may not ever happen. i have enough projects on the stack for existing things that are going forwards, as much fun as we have looking back at the pictures of the early gardens i'd probably have to be retired from gardening to get to those. which may happen in the future, but not too likely in the present.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

Today I set up the rest of my grow lights and started Green Globe and Imperial Star artichokes indoors.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

I made a new compost pile, shoveled and then spread ashes from the fire pit. Also raked pine straw to put on the blueberry bed.