OA 2015 garden thread

[jdmidwest]

Holy crap, temps in upper 30's tonight around here. When is this weather ever going to straighten out?

I am picking about 3 quarts of strawberry each day, but tossing several more due to excess moisture in the beds. Lettuce is growing crazy, spinach too. Snow peas are chest hi and putting on pods. Tomatoes are trying. Pole beans are climbing poles and cucumbers are growing. We need some sunshine, warm temps, and dry weather for a week. I don't even think it made it above the 50's here today.

[Seth]

I got the tilled garden area planted last night. We ended up doing two hills of zucchini, two hills of yellow squash, nine okra, 5' of slicing cucumbers, 5' of pickling cucumbers, four jalapeno transplants, one cherry tomato transplant and 15' of contender bush beans. Next thing on the gardening agenda is get a few more soaker hoses for the tilled rows and get some newspaper and hay put down over everything so I don't have to fight the weeds.

For you other guys that do bush beans, how long do they usually produce for you before you yank them up and do a new crop?

[jdmidwest]

Bush beans usually depend on the weather. As long as it does not turn dry they keep blooming. I plant Blue Lake and Jade. The Jades seem to be more one and done where the Blue lakes keep producing longer all season.

I will see this year, I have mine enclosed in chicken wire to keep the rabbits out. In the past, at the first dry spell when grass gets skimpy, they attack the bean plants and clean them up in a few days. They are looking good now, pole beans are starting to climb the poles about a foot high now. No blooms yet.

[ness]

Seems to me I'm always fighting some disease or pest on my beans. So by the time I've gotten bush beans, the plants are hurting pretty bad. But, they generally put off for 2 to 3 weeks. I have done spring and fall plantings in the past, but this year I'm going to do some bush beans when the greens and radishes come out in a couple weeks.

[fishinwrench]

Last Fall for yard decoration I bought a giant pumpkin, the thing was as big as a Volkswagon and it sat there until it turned to mush.

I noticed yesterday that several pumpkins are growing there. Will it be another giant if I take care of it ?

[ness]

Last Fall for yard decoration I bought a giant pumpkin, the thing was as big as a Volkswagon and it sat there until it turned to mush.

I noticed yesterday that several pumpkins are growing there. Will it be another giant if I take care of it ?

Only one way to find out ...

[jdmidwest]

Last Fall for yard decoration I bought a giant pumpkin, the thing was as big as a Volkswagon and it sat there until it turned to mush.

I noticed yesterday that several pumpkins are growing there. Will it be another giant if I take care of it ?

Feed it well and it will grow. Hope you have lots of room for the vines, they can grow about 20'.

[ness]

Seems like a weird year, but it also seems like I say that every year.

Half my maters are thriving, the other half are stunted. One Cherokee Purple is about dead, the other is fine. I planted two reliable varieties of snap peas--one is about 4 feet high (Dwarf Grey) the other is less than a foot (Amish Snap). Something keeps munching the leaves and tops off some of my banana peppers, but leaves the others alone. I'm gonna have to go buy some plants. Spinach has always been a tough one for me, but this cool wet spring should be ideal right? Well the Bloomsdale never germinated (new seed) and the America is just barely poking along with very small plants in about half the squares I planted. Bush beans are good sized, but they've already got the crud. Pole beans are slowly coming on.

We've had more than 8 inches of rain MTD; almost 1.5 inches yesterday and 0.6 inches so far today with more to come. Kinda wish it would stop already. I planted a few gooseberry and currant plants this year and they don't like all this water.

That whole front row should be spinach:

Two varieties of snap peas on back row. Can't even see the Amish Snap behind the beans:

Beets have been munched down quite a bit. I've got more lettuce than I want at the moment:

Sun Gold cherry is giving me something to be happy about:

Raspberries too:

Got a new toy -- weather station so I can keep up on rainfall, temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction in my neck of the woods:

This has been kinda fun. Data pushes to Weather Underground site which produces nice charts and tables. Radar is overlaid. Yellow circles are other weather stations near here, displaying temperature, wind direction and speed (bar indicates direction):

Graphs and tables too. Data is downloadable, in case all this hasn't satisfied your geekiness make a spreadsheet:

The app is even cooler. Each metric can show history for week, month, year, etc.:

So, enough about me. How does your garden grow?

[BilletHead]

Yes Ness,

Rain, rain, rain. Haven't even wanted to check my old fashioned rain gauge this morning. Like your weather station. May have to think about one of those. Next year want to get some of those sun gold too. Everything still looking pretty good here. One of my squash plants a bit icky looking. Too wet I think even in a raised bed. Baby tomatoes all over my plants. I also know what you mean on the lettuce but miss mine since it is gone.

BilletHead

[ness]

Funny -- I still go out and look at my rain gauge too. Need to go dump it.