What Are Some Tips for Successful Gardening?

[Astronuc]

Ewwww.

What can I say. It was an interesting taste. Not what I expected.

 

[baywax]

I inadvertently ate a Japanese beetle. I was eating raspberries off the cane, and one seemed usually crunchy with an unusual taste. I removed some of the crunch bits and found a crushed beetle carcass.

If I don't get violently ill, I might start eating them - they are rather cruchy.

You may like the worms that curl up inside the huckleberries out in the bush here. I try to watch for them, but there's always more protein in my berry snack that I bargain for!

 

[turbo]

My wife used the relative cool of early morning (high 70s and muggy) to get out and harvest some broccoli. The broccoli is at least 2-3 weeks ahead of normal years. Another sweltering day under way, so I'm watering the garden again.

Darn! If I wanted to live in central Florida, I would have moved there!

 

[turbo]

The garden is just a bit larger this year than last, due to a new PTO tiller that made it much easier to loosen ground that hadn't been touched for decades. All the heat and sunshine has pushed most of the vegetables ahead of schedule, though I have to water frequently due to lack of rainfall. Quite a change from last year.

There is quite a bit of bare ground due to the excavation work needed last fall. I didn't seed the new loam, just mulched it with old seedy hay from my brother-in-law's barn. I'm glad I didn't spend money on seed because the lack of rain would have ruined that plan. The grass will fill in eventually.

 

[turbo]

Here's the garden again. Cukes and squash plants are quite a bit bigger, and the snow-fence and peas are all gone. The heat did in the peas.

And here is part of the flower-bed in front of our house. There are red and purple varieties of bee-balm (bergamot) in the back and the bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies love it.

And here is our raspberry patch. I started it in 2006 with a 5-gallon bucket of canes (maybe a dozen canes or so). I can get 2-3 quarts of berries every 2 days from this patch.

 

[baywax]

Excellent Turbo...! This is definitely how your garden grows!

It looks like a recently logged area around your place. Is that so or are you in the alpine!?

 

[turbo]

Logged within 20 years or so.

 

[Astronuc]

We harvested the garlic, and will select some for fall planting.

We'll also visit a local nursery that has some specialty garlic - Music Garlic.

Meanwhile, I'll be looking for other varieties such as German and Russian, and particularly Korean Red Garlic (Thanks to Evo for the heads up).

http://www.backyardgardener.com/plantname/pda_7cea.html

FYI - http://www.territorialseed.com/product/63/19

 

[turbo]

We are getting swamped with cukes and green beans! Got to take some to the neighbors' place tonight. The grand-daughters love them!

 

[turbo]

Cucumbers are coming in strong. We plant only northern pickling cucumbers because they are very crisp and a bit tart.

 

[turbo]

If you grow a vegetable garden, consider planting some nasturtiums in it. They attract aphids and that's one way to keep the pests off other plants. If you buy some lady-bugs, they will have a more concentrated supply of aphids to keep them happy.

Plus, nasturtiums are edible. The flowers make an attractive garnish on desserts and salads, and the leaves have a mild peppery flavor, kind of like watercress. Both were in tonight's tossed salad. Simple supper tonight with sweet/hot BBQ'd chicken legs and salad.

 

[Evo]

Cucumbers are coming in strong. We plant only northern pickling cucumbers because they are very crisp and a bit tart.

Nice cukes turbo!

 

[turbo]

Nice cukes turbo!

I'll have to make a batch of bread-and-butter pickles next week (I'm the pickle-maker around here) and transplant my dill to the garden. When the dill starts to flower, it will be time to make kosher dill pickles with the florets, as well as salsas and chili relishes.

 

[turbo]

My wife and I have decided to buy a large pressure-cooker. We have beans coming in like gang-busters and freezing them in our chest freezers is less than satisfactory. Canning non-acidic vegetables like beans and beets requires high-temperature treatment, and canning will save us freezer-space since we can store the canned goods about anywhere that's above freezing. We'll probably can fiddleheads too, starting next spring. They are free and they are delicious. I plan to can applesauce, too. My father eats toast and applesauce for breakfast every morning and if I can save him the cost of buying that, good. We both have apple trees, so the only extra expense will be for a bit of sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

 

[Evo]

I was going through old pictures and found these of my first raised bed garden back in Houston.

 

[turbo]

My neighbor has leveled a spot in his back yard, with the intention of building fairly narrow raised beds for easy access. Like me, he has spent too many years on paper machines in the heat with concrete floors. His knees and feet are shot, as are mine. My wife does the weeding between plants and on the tops of the raised rows. I do all the other other weeding and tilling, and some of the between-the-plants weeding as long as I can do it by bending over. Kneeling is out.

 

[Astronuc]

Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-urine-is-an-effective-fertilizer

. . . .
Pradhan and Heinonen-Tanski, environmental scientists at the University of Kuopio in Finland, grew the beets as an experiment in sustainable fertilization. They nourished the root vegetables with a combination of urine and wood ash, which they found worked as well as traditional mineral fertilizer.

"It is totally possible to use human urine as a fertilizer instead of industrial fertilizer," says Heinonen-Tanski, whose research group has also used urine to cultivate cucumbers, cabbage and tomatoes. Recycling urine as fertilizer could not only make agriculture and wastewater treatment more sustainable in industrialized countries, the researchers say, but also bolster food production and improve sanitation in developing countries.
. . . .

[URL]https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22464&stc=1&d=1260728326[/URL] I don't think so, at least not on root crops. [URL]https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22465&stc=1&d=1260728326[/URL]

 

[Astronuc]

I was going through old pictures and found these of my first raised bed garden back in Houston.

Now that's a nice little place. Doesn't seem to be too many trees though. I like a little shade - especially in Houston.

 

[Evo]

Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-urine-is-an-effective-fertilizer

[URL]https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22464&stc=1&d=1260728326[/URL] I don't think so, at least not on root crops. [URL]https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22465&stc=1&d=1260728326[/URL]

Is there not enough animal poop on this planet? Are they suggesting we go pee on our plants or would this be broken down first as in animal poop and pee?

 

[turbo]

Garden is coming along well. The buttercup squash have over-topped the cattle-panel fence and are setting on lots of fruit. We're canning lots of beans and pickling lots of cukes.

 

[Proton Soup]

Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-urine-is-an-effective-fertilizer

[URL]https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22464&stc=1&d=1260728326[/URL] I don't think so, at least not on root crops. [URL]https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22465&stc=1&d=1260728326[/URL]

urea seems like an obvious choice for fertilizer. not so sure about things like sodium, tho. maybe on asparagus. I've also heard people talk about collecting it and pouring over their mulch piles, which might be a suitable compromise.

 

[lisab]

urea seems like an obvious choice for fertilizer. not so sure about things like sodium, tho. maybe on asparagus. I've also heard people talk about collecting it and pouring over their mulch piles, which might be a suitable compromise.

Because mulch and compost don't smell bad enough already .

 

[Evo]

Your garden is looking good turbo.

 

[turbo]

Your garden is looking good turbo.

Thanks. If the weather-gods cooperate, and my dug well has enough water in it to let me irrigate through the dry stretches, the garden should do fine. I can valve my drilled well to the sill-cocks, too, but I am not real excited about doing that. I'd rather use the dug well, or bucket-brigade from my backyard pond.

I'm really hoping for a good crop of nice ripe habaneros, so I can make a big batch of chili relish. I'm all out of the good stuff - no decent habs for the past two (wet, cool) seasons.

 

[Astronuc]

My habs are finally coming in, along with more jalapeños and Czech black. I'll be away for a few days, so I hope it cools off a bit such that they don't need water. Hopefully it will rain.

 

[turbo]

My habs are finally coming in, along with more jalapeños and Czech black. I'll be away for a few days, so I hope it cools off a bit such that they don't need water. Hopefully it will rain.

Fingers crossed! It can be hard to get some nice hot mature chilies up here. Chili peppers need nitrogen-poor soil, poor rainfall, and lots of sunlight and heat to maximize fruiting.

 

[turbo]

I began pulling garlic today, starting with the red Russian. Russian is the smaller, more pungent variety of hard-neck garlic that I grow. It has many more cloves/bulb than the larger German garlic, though, so it is much easier to propagate starting with a few bulbs, and ending up a couple of years later with a LARGE crop. I have mention many times that when the scapes emerge from the tops, you should snap them off and use them in salads, stir-fries, etc. If you don't like the "garlic-y green onion" taste of the scapes, you still have to snap them off, and here's why. The garlic on the left spent all its extra energy developing the flowering head and seed pod, and robbed the bulb of most of its potential.

How did this scape "escape" my attention? I inadvertently planted the clove upside-down, so that the emerging shoot had to take a lot of time finding the way up to the surface. For this reason, the scape emerged after I had already snapped most of the others, and I missed it.

Really, I know better, but when you plant as much garlic as I do, you are going to screw up here and there. Hard-neck garlics are wonderful in cold climates, and they can take a lot of harsh temperature extremes, but you have to follow the rules. Plant the cloves with the base (root end) down, and snap off the scapes as soon as the bulge in the stalk emerges from the foliage, so the bulbs get all the rest of the nutrients that the vegetative fronds can supply, for best growth.

The garlic is especially good this year, with wonderful flavor, and the cloves have the crispy consistency of water-chestnuts.

 

[turbo]

I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. If you are gardening organically (no pesticides) it's a good idea to shake individuals and clusters of Japanese beetles into a bucket of soapy water to kill them. Crushing them releases scents including pheromones that can attract even more of the little creeps. However, you must spare all beetles bearing a raised white dot on the carapace. This is the egg of a parasitic fly that eats pollen, nectar etc. They need a source of protein for their young to feed on, so they parasitize beetles. In a couple of days, the little maggot will hatch and burrow down into the Japanese beetle. The beetle will drop to the ground and burrow in, trying to escape the assault, giving the little maggot a nice protected place to eat the host. You definitely want as many of these parasitic flies hatching as possible to help control Japanese beetles, so it's a good idea to scrutinize the beetles closely before killing them. Don't be confused by the white spots on the rear of the beetles - you are looking for tiny raised spots on the carapace.

 

[Evo]

Talk about being marked for death.

 

[turbo]

Today, I finished pulling all the garlic. After high-grading and bunching the garlic for Astro and me to use for next fall's seed bulbs, I loaded much of the rest into the back of my pickup and headed down to the community garden. There were 3 lady volunteers there, weeding, tilling and watering, and I gave them each all the garlic they wanted, so they could start their own garlic plots. I have enough left for neighbors, my wife's co-workers, and one of my aunts, who planted her garlic last year on what she thought was their property, only to find the place next door re-surveyed and sold to somebody that has denied her the privilege of tending and harvesting her garlic. Talk about petty!

My garage is full of curing garlic, so it smells pretty awesome out there right now.

Edit: the little blonde (mid-20s probably) lit up and said "You're the Garlic Man!" I guess word has gotten around. She shook my hand and told me her name (don't remember it now), but she will remember mine as long as it's only Garlic Man.