The Conservative Cave
Interests => Living Off of the Grid & Survivalism => Topic started by: BlueStateSaint on May 18, 2011, 12:24:55 PM
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Where I am, Memorial Day is regarded as the start of the gardening season. But, I've got a few window boxes that I'm growing things in, for quick-grab stuff for dinner. Anyway, I was noticing the spacing between the broccoli plants in one window box, and the spacing between the spinach plants in another window box, and I thought, That's a lot of space! Could I put something else there? My first thought was radishes. Any opinions on this, or anything else (tomato plants, pepper plants, green beans, etc.) I could put in between the spinach and broccoli plants?
And, where I am, we have cutworms. A few nailed three of my cousin's tomato plants the night after he planted them. He remembered a tip that our grandmother had used to deal with cutworms--wrap the stems of the fledgling tomato plants in wax paper and tape the wax paper together. Make sure that the paper is in the soil about 1/2". Cutworms won't touch the stems that are in the wax paper. When the plant gets big enough, its' growth will break the wax paper. Anyonw else try/do this?
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Basil :yum:
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Basil :yum:
My SIL told me that. She told me that planting basil around the tomato plants improves the taste of the tomatoes. I'm not too sure how this is done, but . . . The music director at my church is my basil contact.
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I have no idea... I just like basil.
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I have no idea... I just like basil.
http://www.ehow.com/info_8128713_growing-tomatoes-make-tomatoes-sweeter.html
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This might help you. My parents have been companion planters for a good long time, and I am getting into it myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
A google search of "companion planting" will yield some good info, too.
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Marigolds will also help keep away some of the insects.
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Marigolds will also help keep away some of the insects.
I've got a whole bunch of marigold seeds, and I'm going to plant a bunch of full-sized marigolds as well.
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Broccoli is very cold hardy. I plant it in the garden as soon as I can work the soil. It can take some frost and acually does better in the cold and you avoid its worst pest the cabbage moth (those gross little green worms). It needs alot of room both above and below the soil so I wonder how much you got? Radishes will grow fast with little room.
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Broccoli is very cold hardy. I plant it in the garden as soon as I can work the soil. It can take some frost and acually does better in the cold and you avoid its worst pest the cabbage moth (those gross little green worms). It needs alot of room both above and below the soil so I wonder how much you got? Radishes will grow fast with little room.
Right now, it's in a window box. My sister-in-law told me that it could grow "wide" very easily. I'll see how many radishes I get out of that window box before it gets too crowded.
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This might help you. My parents have been companion planters for a good long time, and I am getting into it myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
A google search of "companion planting" will yield some good info, too.
Nice Link! I am getting into it as well.
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I really like growing radishes in small spaces in the garden, and I've had pretty good luck with them. I'd put a few seeds in and see how they do.
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Radishes are good, also quick growing stuff like salad leaves which you can harvest as a baby leaf before it grows too big. Spring onions would work too.
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I have been dealing with white flies on the tomatoes and cutworms on the collards and watermelons here. I pitched some Sevin Dust on all of them and that really knocked the fight out of them. The plants have shown steady growth over the past few weeks since I did that and I haven't seen much insect pop. since then. Hit them with about 5 gallons of Bonnie's plant food yesterday before our big rain here and we'll see how that goes
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Well, we're turning the ground for the Parish Community Garden at 10 AM today, and I have a gray fungus growing on my tomato seedlings. I've got a fungicide that I've been spraying on them. Hopefully, I can salvage the seedlings. Two radishes have broken the soil. I think I have another spinach plant in a corner of a window box, too. The Iceberg lettuce leaves are growing like weeds.
Talking with my sister-in-law yesterday, she noted that she has had tomato hookworms. I told her about the basil solution. I have no idea whether or not she'll do that.
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At the risk of pimping my own thread similar to how a DUmb**** would do, we staked out three rows of plots--21 in all--Thursday evening, with storm clouds all over the place. No rain on us, though. I do have to go over and level my plot out. As for the tomato seedlings, I saved all but two. They're growing again. I had to go out and get some tomato plants for the Topsy-Turvy planters--I got three, two Cherokee Purple and one Red Beefsteak, all heirloom plants. I also got one hybrid cherry tomato plant by mistake (I'll put it in a window box or something). I put them into the planters yesterday and turned the planters so that the plants would get maximum sun, and they're growing well because of that (after 1/2 day!). The bush beans I started are growing well in the window boxes. Radishes, broccoli, spinach--they're also growing well. The Iceberg head lettuce is growing well, too.
Back at the church--I'll be leveling the plot today, and planting on Monday. I'm going to plant potatoes--Russett Banana and Yukon Gold--and onions (Stuttgarter), along with a bunch of salad greens, beans (yellow and green), peas, yellow and green zucchinis, cucumbers, etc., with a marigold border (for squirrels and rabbits--MSB, could you comment on this?). If our plots don't fill up fast enough, I'll grab the one next to mine for some things that I might have forgotten in the first bunch--maybe watermelons.
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Good for you! I have about 20 baby zucchinis now, and my cucumber and pepper plants are blooming like crazy. Tomatoes got off to a slow start. Boyfriend's garden has corn and potatoes, as well as peppers and tomatoes. We should be eating very well in the next few weeks. Picking up marigolds and strawberries today.
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Well, I spent an hour and a bit leveling the 350 sq. ft. with a cultivator rake . . . and if I had a dollar for every time I had to pull a staghorn sumac root out of the plot, I'd have a Ben Franklin and at least an Alexander Hamilton in my pocket right now. It's not 3 PM and I've had to hit the showers three times today. My wife told me that if I had to do it again today . . . ! :o :o :o I did buy 40 pounds of potting soil, and I filled the Topsy-Turvys with that. I'm beat from that time. I did bring a water bottle, but like a fool, I didn't drink much of it.
'Course, starting in the wrong plot didn't make matters any easier. :thatsright:
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Well, there's a fair amount planted . . . and coming up. But, I noticed something this morning--the birds--crows, I think--nailed a couple of the green zucchini sprouts. Really pisses me off. But they haven't nailed the yellow summer zucchini sprouts yet.
One of the other gardeners--actually, the parish POC for the plot--gave me some tomato plants. She said that the name of the type is "Heritage," with rather sweet-tasting tomatoes. I put some basil seeds in between them. My tomato plants that I started from seeds are getting there, but not as fast as I'd like for them to grow. One of my potato hills has an ant nest (small ants--maybe 3/8" long, and thinner than red ants, and browner) in it, but maybe the ants will keep the bad insects out.
Back at the apartment, I've got three cherry tomatoes that are ripening. The Heiress has already spoken for those. She nails all of the strawberries that I pick, too.
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Well, I just replanted some string beans....again...but on the bright side...I got the best crop of nutgrass you've ever seen growing in my corn ...even my black thumb can't kill that stuff...oh well...if there's water there for the grass there's water there for my corn.
Couple of cucumbers are blooming like crazy, some small squash appearing on some plants, gonna have a tomato or two in a week or so. The other tomatoes are growing well and blooming. The butter beans and peas I planted over 3 weeks ago are doing just fine. Going to plant some more beans and peas this afternoon.
I hope we get a shower of rain about friday. I certainly don't want another flood like a 10 days ago that washed/drowned everything out.
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The Sevin dust and plant food worked like a charm. Most of the crop is churning out food now, tomatoes and peppers are coming in daily and have about 6 watermelon vines with 1 melon on each. Having to water extra though with these high temps. About half over more than usual.
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Just pulled up my potatoes, and wowee! They taste fabulous! I am done with summer, can we go back to spring?
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Last night, after cantor practice, I went to Toys'R'Us and got a BFS. The damn thing is about 4' long, when uncoiled. It stays in a coil, though. I put out an email to the rest of the gardeners about it, so if they see it in my plot, they should not try to cut it to pieces with a hoe.
And my zucchini sprouts are coming up just fine. Along with some cucumber sprouts.
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An update: The potatoes are coming up nicely. I ran the table on those--but it's probably pretty hard to screw those up. I'm out two hills of cukes and two hills of green zucchinis, plus two yellow zucchinis. A jalopeno plant that one of the other gardeners had given me. I let my wife talk me into planting watermelons, and I found out they need an insane amount of water to grow. In the second plot, I've got a swath 8 feet wide by 20 feet long, with absolutely nothing of value in it. I've got a whole bunch of tomato plants (the ones I started from seeds) in that plot. They all seem to have made the transition nicely. I also bought some basil plants and put them in there. Tomato hookworms don't like the aromas of the basil.
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Potatoes harvested. Good! Can't water fast enough to keep up in 100+degree heat. So far so good though. Have zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes popping up everywhere.
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My zukes, cukes, and squash (you can figure that out on your own) are doing nicely. I've got four zukes in the 12" range, which I'll pick tomorrow. (Gina, PM me. :tongue: ) A couple of cukes ready. The squash are smallish and will continue to grow. The damned squirrels are continuing to hit the tomatoes. I'll fix their asses today, and without shooting them. The potatoes . . . I know that they're coming along. The Yukon Gold plants are about 8" to 10" shorter than the Russett Banana plants. I'm looking forward to the potatoes.
At the apartment, the Cherokee Purple tomato plants have 13 to 15 tomatoes each. One of the big tomatoes on one of those plants had a racquetball-sized black patch on the bottom of the thing, and it felt softer than the rest of the tomato. I picked the tomato off and tossed it. The Red Beefsteak has very small tomatoes on it. Those three plants are in Topsy-Turvy planters, and they get a lot of sun. The small bush bean plants have a fair number of beans on them. The Iceberg "stalks" (they never formed heads!) have yielded a lot of lettuce. I wish I could say the same about the broccoli and radishes . . . but there's still time yet.
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I've been harvesting a lot of zucchinis and summer squash over the last couple of days. Also, a lot of small cucumbers. The young elementary-school teacher one floor below me has told me that she'd eat whatever vegetables I gave her. (I did offer--at least the squash.) We've also got a box set up inside the church for donations from the gardens, to go to local food pantries. There's tomatoes coming in spades, too.
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Congrats. The weird weather here has delayed everything, I wouldn't be harvesting stuff yet but I can tell it'll be a very late harvest. Just hope the autumn is good.
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Congrats. The weird weather here has delayed everything, I wouldn't be harvesting stuff yet but I can tell it'll be a very late harvest. Just hope the autumn is good.
Drought and heat has dried up everything around here. I am trying to keep my garden alive, but it isn't happy.
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Drought and heat has dried up everything around here. I am trying to keep my garden alive, but it isn't happy.
Same here. About all I'm getting now is collards and the occasional peppers. Tomatoes and watermelons have been severely stunted due to lack of rainfall/oppressive heat.
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Same here. About all I'm getting now is collards and the occasional peppers. Tomatoes and watermelons have been severely stunted due to lack of rainfall/oppressive heat.
I had a lot of cucumbers in the beginning, now they start out, and by the time they are about the size of a gherkin, they are yellow and brown, and shrivel away.
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Last evening, after I posted, I managed to get two medium-sized and one large zucchini into the donations box, along with one summer squash. There's one medium zucchini and one summer squash in the fridge now, waiting for that teacher to come up and claim them. I've got to go out on the road today (Batavia, in between Buffalo and Rochester), and I've got someone who is going to water things. I figure that I'll have squash and zukes ready by Wednesday afternoon, when I come home.
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Draught and heat has been murder on my garden. Been eating a lot of fresh stuff as it comes out of the garden and puttin up what the extra. I've put up a few quarts of peas, 3 quarts of lima beans, a few quarts of squash and orka. That's from the upper garden.
I have watered the lower garden several times but the heat and draught has worked on it too. Between the worms, 'coons and dry heat, I only put up a 120+ ears of corn. The squash, orka, peas, beans, tomatoes in it look great, beans, and peas just now blooming. The string beans look great and have been blooming like crazy for a good while now but haven't put on a single bean. There's something wrong with the string beans. I wonder if they have to have honey bees to pollinate? If so, I'm screwed. I've seen only 2 honey bees all summer.
I've picked and shelled some lima beans already this morning. Gathered some squash and okra this morning, cut up enough for supper tonight and put up the rest. Going to thaw out a few ears of the corn to cook, cook the beans, squash and okra, cut up some tomatoes and WA-LA it's supper time.
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Most of the zukes I've put into the donations box have been smallish--the better to do something with. If they get big and fat, they tend to get filled with seeds, and at that point, they're good only for breads. I've started to donate the "pickling-sized" cukes. A fair amount of squash, too. The crows are really playing havoc with the tomatoes, but there's a lot they can't get to.
A neighbor in a nearby building told me that her mother has a recipe for fried zukes in cinnamon and brown sugar, which she says is great. I told her that I want that recipe.
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A neighbor cuts zukes in half, scoops out the seeds, etc, and refills them with pizza sauce, pepperoni, sausage, whatever, and bakes them.
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Got a couple of bushels of crowder peas sent up here to me from East Texas. I am in hog heaven that'll I'll have peas 'til next year now.
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Got a couple of bushels of crowder peas sent up here to me from East Texas. I am in hog heaven that'll I'll have peas 'til next year now.
I got to pick peas today. Purple peas and crowder peas. We had some rain the last 2 weeks and the vines have run everywhere until there is no room between the rows for me and my bucket. The runners have even speard over into and run up my head high okra plants. From powder dry to soupy wet....oh well, that's climate change for you.
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I just got back from over there. I planted two good-density rows of salad greens way back when, and since they hadn't tasted good to the local deer population, I was a tad leery about picking them . . . I was wrong (they taste pretty good). I got four "stalks" of the greens, and there's enough salad leaves from those four stalks to last until Monday at the least. I did lose a cuke plant. My Yukon Gold potato plants are dying off, so the potatoes underneath should be ready soon. The Russett Banana plants are still going strong. My tomatoes there haven't been turning red, and something walked through the area last night, toppling a few branches of plants. But, I've got a lot of stuff. Still a few zukes coming, and squash coming.
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An update . . . the tomatoes are on the cusp.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5a/Attack_of_the_Killer_Tomatoes.jpg/220px-Attack_of_the_Killer_Tomatoes.jpg)
I'm finding out just how many tomatoes will come off of 45-50 plants.
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You people with full sun.....................................suck.
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You people with full sun.....................................suck.
I agree. We have had a lot of rain, and the tomatoes are splitting on the vines. :argh:
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Today I plow the lima beans under and sow turnip greens...WHY? I don't know. I don't even like turnips or the greens. I just want one mess of turnip greens to remind me why I don't like them.....and why do southerns refer to everything as a "Mess of _________." A mess of peas, a mess of beans, a mess of turnip greens....is a "mess" some form of ancient measurement? How many pounds, ounces, cups does a "mess" compare to? Can one have 1, 2, or 3 "messes" of peas in a pot at the same time? Enquiring minds want to know....before I go and make this mess.
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Saturday, I took The Heiress to the gardens. I was wading through the watermelon plants, and I picked one up . . . and put my hand into it. One could say that I left them in the garden a tad too long. Tonight I'm going to go over there and see if I can put whatever ones I can salvage into the donations box. This should be interesting.
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Saturday, I took The Heiress to the gardens. I was wading through the watermelon plants, and I picked one up . . . and put my hand into it. One could say that I left them in the garden a tad too long. Tonight I'm going to go over there and see if I can put whatever ones I can salvage into the donations box. This should be interesting.
Oh yeah, man, you gotta check those periodically for ripeness before you think they max out on mass. You didn't know that? :-)
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Oh yeah, man, you gotta check those periodically for ripeness before you think they max out on mass. You didn't know that? :-)
I do now! :banghead: ::)
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Oh yeah, man, you gotta check those periodically for ripeness before you think they max out on mass. You didn't know that? :-)
As a kid, I could thump a watermelon and tell you exactly how ripe it was...I couldn't do that now to save my butt.
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As a kid, I could thump a watermelon and tell you exactly how ripe it was...I couldn't do that now to save my butt.
I dunno Johnny. If you thumped it and your hand went into it, I bet you would know it is overripe. :whatever:
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As a kid, I could thump a watermelon and tell you exactly how ripe it was...I couldn't do that now to save my butt.
Yep, gotta get that "holla" sound out of it.
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Yep, gotta get that "holla" sound out of it.
Picked a couple of 'em last night that had that thump.
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Just about everything that can be harvested, has been harvested. I've got a few tomatoes that still have to go, but that's about it. I dug up the four hills of Russett Banana potatoes yesterday. I figure that I got about 20 to 25 pounds of them out of the four seed potatoes I started with. They're pretty small; but there's a lot of them. And they seem pretty good.
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Just planted cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts and lettuce. Hopefully the winter will be nicer to my garden.
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I talked to one of the other "Gang of 3" today, and he said that he's going to try to put in winter ryegrass in the whole plot, after we get the farmer who turned it over in the first place to plow all of it under. Problem with that is this: It's 75 degrees today, and we still have some growing yet.
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Just saw this thread for the first time... :thatsright:
What a fun read to see how y'all did with your gardening!
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My wife roasted some of the Russett Banana potatoes last night, and I had some after I got back from my AA meeting. They were pretty good.
ETA: Deb, where did you think I put my excess energy this year? :???: :tongue:
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Where I am, Memorial Day is regarded as the start of the gardening season. But, I've got a few window boxes that I'm growing things in, for quick-grab stuff for dinner. Anyway, I was noticing the spacing between the broccoli plants in one window box, and the spacing between the spinach plants in another window box, and I thought, That's a lot of space! Could I put something else there? My first thought was radishes. Any opinions on this, or anything else (tomato plants, pepper plants, green beans, etc.) I could put in between the spinach and broccoli plants?
And, where I am, we have cutworms. A few nailed three of my cousin's tomato plants the night after he planted them. He remembered a tip that our grandmother had used to deal with cutworms--wrap the stems of the fledgling tomato plants in wax paper and tape the wax paper together. Make sure that the paper is in the soil about 1/2". Cutworms won't touch the stems that are in the wax paper. When the plant gets big enough, its' growth will break the wax paper. Anyonw else try/do this?
Hmmm... Have you looked into using a control predator?
Try these folks~
http://www.buglogical.com/
and order some of these~
(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTCoGQdwNlLEt32FA77A6F1rQDzeIThufxikmU0Si9xq0GY1IAE)
Your cutworms will realize that bringing a knife to a gunfight was not a good idea.
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Last harvest yesterday. I put up 3 pints of horseradish and it is HOT!
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We're already talkiing about when we'd like to plow up the land next spring. Both Rich and I realize that we need to be a lot earlier than we were last year. We'd like to get one of those 9' high deer fences (and finally put the well in), and we realize that we need to get the pastor behind us if we want to pull that one off. That shouldn't be too much of problem.