8th Gardening thread

Thanks for the advice fd. You aren't the 1st person to tell me this, so there's probably something to it. I had forgotten about it until you reminded me though.

I've got some sugar babies, but mine have taken forever to ripen as well. The vine on some are withering before they even get ripe. I'm looking forward to eating that massive crimson sweet that isn't ripe yet. The bald spit on the bottom is totally white. Unlike the sugar babies, I've got the sweets and grays down to a science on when they're ready.

Quick question, fd: are you getting many crimson sweets that are oddly shaped or even outright deformed? It's a round melon, but many of mine are football shaped. They look like a cross between a sweet & and a gray, not as round as a sweet and not as oblong as a gray. And the deformed ones are just weird. Could all that be a result of the extremely wet spring/summer? I always have a couple that looks weird, but never this many. They're growing fine. Just looks odd..

 

You know, its not my sweets that are odd, its my sugar babies that are doing that. They are getting huge and faint striping in the skin. Pap says maybe they cross pollinated with the Congo melons? I'm not sure idk maybe yours did the same or if its even possible. Maybe one of our resident 8th scientists can help us out lol

 

That did cross my mind that they cross polinated with the grays. I have 3 types planted right next to each other. It's like the sweets are a little of both sweets and grays. Some don't have as dark of stripes as others and grays don't have stripes. The grays are also commonly.used to get your seedless hybrids so they must be easily cross polinated. Most of my sugars are dark dark green- no stripes. Others have faint stripes.

 

Dog hair works to keep deer away as well. We keep the dog's hair we cut in the spring just for this purpose.

 

Need deer gone?


[video=youtube;9IVCwYPjFXc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IVCwYPjFXc[/video]

 

I can arrange this:

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Or better yet, this:

[youtube]RrY81GZgrtg[/youtube]

 

currently getting about 10 artichokes a week. amazing how easy to grow and maintain those plants are here. also am getting a reasonable number of blueberries. not so easy to grow and maintain though. planted my tomatoes and other veggies 3 weeks ago. starting to look good. watermelon and other melons 2 weeks ago. planted some green beans, but havent' seen much signs of life.

anyone ever have a tree get ungrafted? apparently that's what happened to my avocado tree. Personally I want to chop it down and replace it with another avocado tree that might actually get fruit one day, but my wife is very much against it because she likes the look of it.

 

Where just now getting plants in the ground here, you're a month ahead

 

yeah, it's 90 degrees here today. they always say to plant tomatoes and such here in early april. I've always wondered if I could plant them in may or june and still get decent results. last year I got something like 100 tomatoes (most small) in one week.

 

Still to early here to plant warm season crops. We're still getting a small frost here and there.

I have two hundred tomato plants in the greenhouse, 144 pepper plants, and 50 cabbages. I need to get melons and cucumbers started too.

 

wow! what do you do with all of those?

 

We can and freeze for our personal use during the year. I sell to a restaurant and to others and give the rest to the local food bank and to older people in the area.


Plus I'm about to have three hundred meat birds going.

 

any recommendations as to the best way to freeze? we did that ourselves and the results were ok.

 

It really just depends on what you're freezing for things that are sensitive to freezer burn, It's hard to beat a foodsaver, but otherwise we just use glad lock freezer bags.

 

hmm. maybe I should start canning.

 

Yeah we don't freeze tomatoes. They're really easy to can, and you don't have to use a pressure cooker for them because of the high acid amount.

 

Can anyone give a quick tutorial for canning tomatoes? I can easily grow hundreds but can't ever eat them all and would love to turn my summer crop into winter marinara or chili or soups or bloody marys.

Thanks,

 

Canning salt and hot water bath for 15 to 20 mins. Ball canning books or online should fix you up.

 

If you have the space, you can also take them from the vine into a freezer bag into the freezer.

 

do you take the skin off and freeze them whole?