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Post by Kathy on Jul 28, 2006 19:00:00 GMT -5
This is almost pitiful; I'm all excited because out of 48 tomato plants and a dozen tomatillo plants I now have one tomatillo!   I still haven't gotten a single regular type tomato off of any of those plants. But I noticed one little green husk on one of the bushes, maybe with a little luck I'll get enough to make one batch of salsa verde! ;D My zucchini plant does have three more small squash so at least that plant is producing.  The yellow summer squash produced absolutely nothing and finally dried up and died even though they were regularly watered.  The hot peppers are producing pretty good-not a huge crop but adequate. The eggplant only got that one fruit and there's been no more blossoms. It's been a real hit & miss adventure this season with the weird, hot weather.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2006 13:08:46 GMT -5
Yay for the tomatillo!  Hasn't this summer been weird? I have 11 tomato plants in the garden, and most of them have green fruit on them, but they're not getting bigger and they're not turning color. I don't think it took this long before. And my one beefsteak tomato plant is blossoming, then the whole end of the stem falls off, blossom and all. There's one green tomato down near the bottom of the plant, but it's still green... And I've been making sure they have plenty of water, too. My beans are covered with flowers but not a single bean so far. My summer squash made one fruit, and it has a cluster of blossoms yet, but nothing is happening. My winter squash finally started making blossoms (3 so far) but I'll have to see if anything comes of that. Of course the heat outright killed my peas, lettuce and spinach. Well, the lettuce and spinach bolted, so I'm letting them go so I can collect the seeds. But the peas bit the dust before they ever got going good. I ate 3, count 'em, THREE pea pods when they started to fill out, and within a day or two all the plants were dead. The only things that are growing well this year for me are my peppers (hot and sweet), and my cabbage and celery. The cabbage and celery are under a frame covered with floating row cover material to keep the blasted cabbage moths off them, and it's working. They're starting to form heads now, AND they still have leaves! Woohooo! I only have four cabbage plants, though, and only 2 celery plants made it to puberty, but they'll taste good eventually. ;D We hit 111 degrees yesterday, and the forecast is for the same or hotter for the next 2 or 3 days, but not a drop of rain is expected. I suppose I should be glad anything is still growing out there. Heck, even our WEEDS are dying! That's really something! ~Lannie |
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Post by antiquestuff on Jul 31, 2006 10:59:50 GMT -5
My cucumbers are covered in blossoms but not one cucumber is forming yet...I've also seen NO honeybees at all here! Some bumblebees and more yellow jackets than I like to see, but no honey bees. I think that's affecting things...
On the brighter side, my potatoes are growing good, my beans are fine (though not many blossoms anymore), and my peas I planted earlier this month are growing fast...the carrots are okay too.
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Post by Kathy on Jul 31, 2006 11:05:46 GMT -5
AS, how do you plant your potatoes-in the ground or do you use one of the alternative methods like planting in straw? I'm very interested in the straw method and hoped I'd find someone who has tried it. I'm trying to find out when it's ok to plant peas in this zone since it's so hot right now. The soil is not just warm-it's HOT!  Deep watering every morning at 5:30am and by that same days sunset-the soil is dry. I'm going to plant some fall salad greens soon as well as radishs. |
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Post by antiquestuff on Jul 31, 2006 11:24:47 GMT -5
I dug a shallow trench and planted them in that, and made a "cage" of chicken wire, and as they have grown, I've filled it with dirt and when I ran out, mulch. Now I don't have anyway of covering them more and the plants are nearly 3 feet above the highest mulch/dirt (partly because of a big thunderstorm the other day washing some away). If I put anything more on them it'll disturb the beans and cucumbers and maybe a couple sweet corn stalks.
Have never tried the straw method. Maybe I should...
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Post by momo on Jul 31, 2006 11:42:53 GMT -5
Because of the near drought it has been so dry. We had to quit watering the garden..just couldn't afford to pay both a high water bill and a high a/c bill. The a/c won out. So, we don't have near as much producing as we did earlier. One advantage of the dry weather is that the tomatoes that do make it are very sweet. The newspaper said that with less water in them, they have a more concentrated flavor. Tomatoes and hot peppers are about all that is left. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2006 12:48:27 GMT -5
I did the straw "lazyman" potato thing last year and it was great! Here's what I did.
I cleaned up the surface of the dirt where the potatoes would go, and Rich ran the tiller over it to break it up some. Then I watered it copiously so the dirt would stay wet for a while. I placed the seed pieces on the surface of the dirt - no digging or burying - just pressed firmly down (with a cut side down, of course). Then I piled hay on top, and not that deep, either. When I saw tops coming through the hay, I piled more hay on, and so forth until it was a couple feet deep. I checked under the hay periodically to see if the dirt was wet or dry, and I think I only had to water that patch twice or three times last summer. The hay insulates the dirt from the heat and drying winds very nicely.
I should have waited to harvest my potatoes until after the tops died down, but we had an infestation of potato beetles and they decimated the tops in just a couple days, so I went ahead and pulled the hay back and harvested my taters. They were all nice and clean from growing in the hay instead of dirt, and I saw absolutely no black spots (mold) on any of them. They were a little on the small side, though, like new potatoes (which is I guess what they were! LOL!).
Anyway, I really loved having something in my garden that I didn't have to "tend" on a daily basis. You can do the same thing with old tires, just putting a seed piece on the ground inside a tire and filling with hay or straw, then adding a tire and more straw as the tops grow, but we were fresh out of old tires, so I just made a big patch on the ground and it worked really well. If I remember correctly, we used two bales of hay total on a patch that was about 8' x 15' or so. I had 30 seed pieces, anyway.
~Lannie
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Post by antiquestuff on Aug 1, 2006 9:59:40 GMT -5
Because of the near drought it has been so dry. We had to quit watering the garden..just couldn't afford to pay both a high water bill and a high a/c bill. The a/c won out. So, we don't have near as much producing as we did earlier. One advantage of the dry weather is that the tomatoes that do make it are very sweet. The newspaper said that with less water in them, they have a more concentrated flavor. Tomatoes and hot peppers are about all that is left. Did you mulch the plants heavily that you cannot water? |
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