What Are Some Tips for Successful Gardening?

[turbo]

Here is my garden as of two days ago. The tomatoes (left center) and string beans (right center) took off like crazy recently, and there's barely room to get between the rows, so I had to rope up the tomatoes today. This is our third garden at this spot, and after I have tilled in a couple of truck-loads of composted cow manure, and a huge truck-load of peat and hundreds of pounds of organic fertilizer over the past couple of years, the garden is starting to come around. It got off to a slow start this spring because I fall-tilled about 1/2 ton of peat into the soil and that depressed the pH to the ~5-5.5 range and reduced the availability of some nutrients. An early-summer treatment with dolomitic lime turned that around, though, and sometimes it feels like the vegetables are coming faster than we can handle them. When we moved here, the garden spot was mud and rocks, and the previous owner thought that he could cheat the system with Miracle-Gro and lime. All our neighbors are commenting about the dramatic turn-around and now our organic-only vegetarian neighbor is swapping produce with us and is going to help us establish a crop of Russian and German garlic this fall. Mmm!

 

[Ouabache]

Great looking garden, turbo!
I wonder what is at the top of your tower, a small wind generator?
(a great way to reduce dependency on commercial power, not to mention lowering greenhouse gas footprint)

 

[turbo]

Thanks! The garden is a lot of work, but it's worth the effort because the food is so much better than anything you can buy.

That mast holds a TV antenna. There's no cable out here and the terrain is very hilly. As much as I watch TV (usually just news or 60 Minutes), rabbit ears would have been fine, but it was already here...

A wind turbine would be nice, if I could justify the cost of the initial installation, but we already use very little in the way of fossil-fuel. The oil furnace might have operated for a fews hour last fall on days when when I was out hunting and the temperature dipped, but otherwise all our heat comes from wood, and I think we used about 3-1/2 cords last year. I filled the oil tank 2 years ago, and it is still over 3/4 full.

 

[turbo]

Great News!

For me, that is. I have not see a single honeybee all summer, and all the pollination has been done by bumblebees, solitary mason bees, etc. Today the vegetable garden and the potted vegetables on the back deck are being worked over by honeybees. All I can think of is that a hive split or swarmed and they took up residence nearby. When the bees leave here, they head due east. I may have to take a walk and look for dead trees, hollow logs, etc. Bumblebees are great pollinators, and they pay a lot of attention to the squash and cucumber blossoms, but I really welcome the honeybees. With their smaller size, they'll probably help get the peppers pollinated better than the bumblebees.

 

[Astronuc]

I have noticed the last few years that we have very few, if any, honeybees visiting our gardens, particularly our butterfly garden, which contains a lot of plants which are supposed to be attractive to butterflies and bees.

I talked with a couple of local bee keepers, and there have been problems with CCD (collapse colony disorder - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder) where 50-80% of hives have been lost. The bees go out and don't return!


Most of the pollination has been by bumblebees.


Meanwhile, we are harvesting blackberries and blueberries now. The raspberries are almost all gone.

I was out in Washington state last week and read an article on blackberries and other can berries. Oregon growers produce almost all of the commercial blackberries in the US (41.5 million pounds in 2006 on 6900 acres), and the Willamette Valley is a major production area. Oregon and Washington lead the country in caneberry (raspberry, blackberry, . . . .) production.

I also read that blackberries have the highest concentration of antioxidants per serving (unit mass?). Among these is ellageic acid which is believe to have anti-cancer and anti-viral properties.

http://www.oregon-berries.com/

http://www.oregon-berries.com/cx21/welcome.htm

http://www.oregon-berries.com/cx15/welcome.htm

http://www.wvfco.com/
http://www.wvfco.com/products.php?cat=1
http://www.wvfco.com/products.php?cat=2

 

[turbo]

I also read that blackberries have the highest concentration of antioxidants per serving (unit mass?).

Blueberries and blackberries are both high in antioxidants, which is great news because I love them both - especially blackberries.

This report says that cranberries, blueberries, and blackberries are highest in antioxidants,

http://www.newstarget.com/007593.html

though some lesser-used berries like currants, elderberry and choke-cherries are significantly higher according to a recent study.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20041202/purple-berries-pack-potent-antioxidant-punch

We have planted elderberries on the property and I found a bit growing wild, too, though it will be some time before the bushes are large enough to produce usable quantities. Warning: don't eat raw elderberries. Most people do not tolerate the cyanide content too well, though cooking removes that.

 

[JasonRox]

Turbo-1 has a sick garden and the location looks great too!

I can't wait to have my own little garden.

 

[turbo]

Thanks. My wife has been away with family for a few days helping out with a wedding/reception and the vegetables are coming in too fast for me to handle right now. The tomato plants have also grown more and need to be roped up to the fence again so I can pick the string beans. Note: next year, give those crops MORE ROOM between rows.

 

[JasonRox]

Thanks. My wife has been away with family for a few days helping out with a wedding/reception and the vegetables are coming in too fast for me to handle right now. The tomato plants have also grown more and need to be roped up to the fence again so I can pick the string beans. Note: next year, give those crops MORE ROOM between rows.

Yeah, but you have 100% fresh vegetables! That's like... a dream.

 

[turbo]

Yeah, but you have 100% fresh vegetables! That's like... a dream.

True, and we get so many vegetables that we can and freeze as much as possible, too. We found a great way to freeze green beans and may try to apply the method to other vegetables, too. Simply pick the beans (no rinsing, snapping, etc) and lay them out dry and loose and whole in the chest freezers on metal trays. They freeze VERY quickly this way, and once they're frozen, just pack them in gallon freezer bags. They have WAY better texture, taste and color than commercially-frozen beans, and because they are frozen minutes after picking, the enzymes in the beans don't get the chance to degrade the vitamins and minerals. Since they haven't been wetted, they don't stick together in the freezer bags, so if you want a quart of beans for a casserole or maybe just a handful of beans for a small soup, you can go to the freezer and get just as much as you want. Rinse them in cool water to thaw and clean them, snap the stems, tips, etc like you would with fresh beans, and then steam them or throw them in the soup. Last year, we washed, snapped, blanched and froze a lot of string beans, and they lost so much texture and flavor that they were only marginally better than commercially-available beans. These are great.

 

[Astronuc]

Yeah, but you have 100% fresh vegetables! That's like... a dream.

My experience is that anything we grow is so much better than what is bought in the store!

Our tomatoes are sweeter and tastier. And there is nothing like walking outside the back door and picking fruit/berries off the plant and eating them or putting them in cereal, pancakes or other food.

I need to work on berry jams and sauces.

Duck and game meats are great with blackberry sauce.

 

[turbo]

Duck and game meats are great with blackberry sauce.

I got your wild blackberries, right here. They are just starting to ripen off now and should be in season for another 4-6 weeks. We have two varieties of wild blackberries. This particular variety ripens from the base of the berry to the tip, and when the tip is red, it is not quite ripe. Quite a nice visual marker, so you don't have to touch the berries that are not yet ripe. With the other blackberries, they are often still firm after they have turned purple, and need another day or two on the cane.

 

[turbo]

The string beans had slowed to the point where we could only get a couple of hands-full out of a 35' row, so we tore those out today, to give the tomatoes "breathing room". I untied the tomato plants, moved the outer stakes and support ropes another foot toward where the beans had been and opened up the plants to the sun. The cucumbers are now maturing at a rate that we will probably have to can at least 8-10 quarts of pickles every other day. We canned 13-14 qts of dill pickles yesterday - some with hot lipstick peppers, and ALL with the huge rich-tasting cloves of Russian garlic that our neighbor gave us. We are blanching and freezing beet greens and Swiss chard for the winter, are starting to harvest carrots in a thinning process that will allow the remaining ones to grow much larger. Mmm!

 

[ZapperZ]

Orchids, Wonderful Orchids

So I've been trying to grow orchids for the past 2 1/2 years, indoors. My beginners starting species was limited to 3 variety of Phalaenopsis. I bought them all at roughly the same time while they were blooming. 2 of them are doing well. In fact, one of them seems to be blooming twice a year, and the bloom lasts for several weeks.

However, one of them never re-bloom after that first one. It seems to be doing fine because it looks healthy, and it keeps putting out new leaves. It went from having only 1 pair of leaves when I bought it, to 5 pair of leaves now. I kept looking and looking at it, hoping for something, but nothing. In fact, I remember yelling it it "Enough with the leaves already! Give me some flowers!" (I know, highly rational act.)

Well, guess what? The darn thing started putting out a flower shoot about a month ago. When Moonbear was here, there were already small buds all along the shoot. I was almost holding my breath each time I look at it closely because this will be its first bloom in 2 years! I've even forgotten the color of the flowers. I made sure it had the weekly small amount of orchid fertilizers that it needs when it is about to bloom, I made sure it had enough moisture and humidity, etc... etc. I really want the thing to bloom, damn it!

Well folks, it finally did it! About 2 1/2 weeks ago, the first flower started to open. Since then, one by one, they open up to reveal this glorious, light-purple bloom. I've forgotten how gorgeous they were!

If I'm sounding like a proud papa, well, I am! These are my babies! And it isn't finished yet. I notice that there's one more bud that has yet to open.

If everything goes well, this will last well into Sept. It will decorate my coffee table in the sitting room whenever we have company.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go fuss around the other orchid plants and see if they're putting out any new shoots.

Zz.

 

[Evo]

So I've been trying to grow orchids for the past 2 1/2 years, indoors. My beginners starting species was limited to 3 variety of Phalaenopsis. I bought them all at roughly the same time while they were blooming. 2 of them are doing well. In fact, one of them seems to be blooming twice a year, and the bloom lasts for several weeks.

However, one of them never re-bloom after that first one. It seems to be doing fine because it looks healthy, and it keeps putting out new leaves. It went from having only 1 pair of leaves when I bought it, to 5 pair of leaves now. I kept looking and looking at it, hoping for something, but nothing. In fact, I remember yelling it it "Enough with the leaves already! Give me some flowers!" (I know, highly rational act.)

Well, guess what? The darn thing started putting out a flower shoot about a month ago. When Moonbear was here, there were already small buds all along the shoot. I was almost holding my breath each time I look at it closely because this will be its first bloom in 2 years! I've even forgotten the color of the flowers. I made sure it had the weekly small amount of orchid fertilizers that it needs when it is about to bloom, I made sure it had enough moisture and humidity, etc... etc. I really want the thing to bloom, damn it!

Well folks, it finally did it! About 2 1/2 weeks ago, the first flower started to open. Since then, one by one, they open up to reveal this glorious, light-purple bloom. I've forgotten how gorgeous they were!

If I'm sounding like a proud papa, well, I am! These are my babies! And it isn't finished yet. I notice that there's one more bud that has yet to open.

If everything goes well, this will last well into Sept. It will decorate my coffee table in the sitting room whenever we have company.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go fuss around the other orchid plants and see if they're putting out any new shoots.

Zz.

Oh how pretty! You can see the sparkles! How long can you expect a bloom to last? In my house with a cat, a bloom will last approximately 10 seconds.

 

[ZapperZ]

With the other 2 orchids, the last of the flowers falls off in about a month. So the whole bloom lasts for quite a long time. I expect the same thing with this one. It has the largest flowers of any of the three.

That's why they make excellent room decorations.

Zz.

 

[turbo]

Very nice, ZZ. One of my college friends (organist in our band) was a horticulture major and he lived in and maintained the university's greenhouse. He absolutely loved orchids, and he had a real talent with them. Yours are gorgeous.

We have tons of native orchids here in Maine, but the blooms are mostly of modest size, though the appearance of a well-bloomed inflorescence can be pretty impressive.

 

[turbo]

Here is a cabbage white butterfly feeding from (and pollinating) a blossom on one of our cucumber plants. The cucumbers are coming hard and fast, and we may well have to make up 8-10 qts of pickles every couple of days for a while. Not a burden, but a blessing, especially when you can go to the cupboard in the winter and crack open a new jar.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Hooray - plumeria flowers at last!

They smell so wonderful. I wish I had more of them.

 

[turbo]

That's a pretty flower, MIH, Most of our flowers are connected to vegetable plants of one type or another. Here is the smaller of the two species of assassin bug that hunt in our garden. He's hiding in a carrot-top waiting to ambush some unlucky bug.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I hope the assassin bug doesn't get your cabbage butterfly!

 

[turbo]

I hope the assassin bug doesn't get your cabbage butterfly!

Well, the butterfly's caterpillars don't necessarily eat our vegetables, but then, if they do, the assassin bug is ready to grab lunch.

 

[Astronuc]

Well, I looking forward to seeing this place in person - tomorrow.

 

[Astronuc]

I know what I'll be doing next year - besides falling from high places.


http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/academic.html?i=1251#BHUT%20JOLOKIA%20IS%20HERE!

After extensive field trials our analysis revealed that the variety possessed an extremely high heat level, 1,001,304 SHU. That's a heat level you normally see only with ultra-hot sauces using pepper extract (capsicum oleoresin). For a more complete and in-depth story please refer to the link below.

 

[NeoDevin]

I need to order me some of those.

 

[turbo]

Well, I looking forward to seeing this place in person - tomorrow.

Careful! I might need help weeding. One row weeded = one cheeseburger with your choice of hot sauces.

 

[turbo]

I know what I'll be doing next year - besides falling from high places.


http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/academic.html?i=1251#BHUT%20JOLOKIA%20IS%20HERE!

I might just stick with my lipstick chiles and habaneros. They charge more for a little packet of seeds than I pay for a flat of well-established plants, and the season is so short here that I have had little success raising peppers from seed.

 

[turbo]

Well, the fall is coming on strong. We had a frost last night and will probably get another tonight, but I have some lightweight poly to tent the rows of the garden with, and can protect at least the hot peppers (sacre bleu!) and the tomatoes and cucumbers from damage. The root vegetables, squash, Swiss chard, spinach, etc are actually improved by the cold, and we will allow them to get exposed to it. I'm going to cull tomatoes and pick some of all the varieties of peppers tomorrow and start another big batch of salsa.

Our neighbor works at the paper mill that I used to work at and his free time is at such a premium that he has largely abandoned gardening, except for raising exceptional crops of German and Russian garlic. He has been incredibly generous with his garlic (for cooking canning, etc) and has promised to give us enough to separate and plant a very large raised bed of those two delectable varieties this winter, that we have taken him into our salsa/chili relish protection program. We had expected to perhaps get a year ahead in the production of canned salsas and relishes this year in case next year's crop is poor, but the lure of an endless supply of wonderful garlic has changed our plans. He has a nice cache of very expensive growing containers that have water reservoirs located in the bottoms of oversized planters, and he has a modest greenhouse. I am going to approach him about the possibility of us going into partnership to see if we can start hot, hot, hot peppers in his little greenhouse, transplant the seedlings and grow them on his deck and ours in the containers, and grow some in our garden, and I will turn them into relishes, so we will never run out. I think he'll go for that.

 

[ZapperZ]

I have 2 pots of mother-in-law tongue plants growing in the house. For some odd reason, they seem to be thriving in 2 very different locations with drastically different amounts of light. Anyway, many people have never seen one flowering before, or even know what the flowers look like. Again, for some odd reason, the one I have near a window (shaded) seems to be doing so well that it has again sprouted out a flower stalk for the 2nd time that I've ever remembered.

The flowers are nothing to write home about, but their appearance themselves is not very common. I've had this plant for more than 10 years and this is only the 2nd time I've seen it flowering (supposedly, this plant came from a cutting from Chuck's grandmother, and from the news reports that I've heard, no one else who got the cutting have ever reported of it flowering).

What is interesting is that the flowering stalk oozes out these droplets of clear, sticky liquid at several places. I don't know if that's supposed to attract insects to have it pollinate or what? I suppose to could be the surrogate pollinator, but where do I find another flowering mother-in-law tongue? So in this next picture, if you look carefully, you might see the little droplets forming at a few places.
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/8126/img9525hq5.jpg

On a separate note, the orchid that I reported was flowering has now finally done with all the flowers. It was blooming for more than a month, so I had full enjoyment of it. But now, another of my orchid plant has started to shoot out its flowering stalk. I named this one "freckle", because the flower is predominantly white with purple freckles. :) It is rather cute. So for the past 2 weeks, it has been growing the flowering stalk. I can already see buds at the end of it, and I can't wait for the flowers to come up. This orchid also keeps its bloom for a very long time, at least 3 weeks.
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/1639/img9531km3.jpg

As I've said earlier, excuse me if I am sounding like a proud papa, but these are my children! :)

Zz.

 

[turbo]

Great pix, Zz. The mother-in-law's tongue may be self-pollinating (don't need another plant in flower) and it may also rely on non-standard pollinators. If that liquid is sticky and sweet, it may attract ants as opposed to flying pollinators that seem to cue in on colors.