52 replies to this topic

[Bisley]

Rod I sure hope your other neighbor kicks in on the fence with you. My neighbors both backed out of their promises to share their cost so I'm out $25,000 but now they're my fences and they best not lay a hand on them.

You are sure a M U C H more understanding man than I will ever be.Those really are some beautiful gardens you guys have. After all the room additions and porches (front and back) added, we were lucky enough to barely have enough room to plant a few squash and zucchini.

[Braz]

That looks like a fun project John.

[nitis]

Finally got my pepper plants in the dirt today. 38 plants total! now I need to go get one more piece of lumber and build a 4x6 square inside the horseshoe for some zukes cukes and squash. Been really busy with the new house almost a half acre lot not too big but big enough to keep me moving non stop. but since we moved in in december got lawn in back patio poured horseshoe pits in and now garden. dad has been so busy he just now got me dirt friday to fill the boxes (he has dump trucks and connections) has anyone priced descent garden soil lately ouch!

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[ShooterJohn]

Yes I just bought a yard of planting mix as they call it at my landscape yard where they get $30 a yard for it. It's really gone up over the last few years mostly due to fuel prices. But it's the best way to go to fill planter boxes as the soil is sterile without weeds seeds. It sure beats the home improvement box stores selling it by the 2 cubic foot bag. The only problem I have with planting mix is the compost is so fine. I like a little texture in my soil so I add in my own home made compost from the second year on. I have some helpers that help break down my compost.

[ShooterJohn]

Well I took a few more pictures of things in the garden today. The first picture is my new way of breaking up garden soil. Yes I still have a large garden tiller but a broad fork is old school with a new twist. My friend bought one that looks like this and I liked it so much I copied the design and made my own saving me $190 and shipping costs. The tines on it are fourteen inches long so it digs plenty deep. You just step on the bar and wiggle it back and forth until your foot is on the ground and then pull back and it opens up the soil. It's the new friendlier way to loosen your soil without messing with the soil microbes or killing your worm and night crawler population.



Here is my finished strawberry pot we made the other day. I'm going to change the second one slightly I'll post pics when I finish with it. But I think it will work out okay either way.



My cherries are ripening and the birds took notice as well as the squirrels. I put this red/silver foil tape up and it works really well at keeping the birds and some of the squirrels out.





My potatoes are coming along nicely I have nine varieties I think I'll find out for sure when I pour them out of their grow bags. I have fifteen grow bags here and a few others scattered around the yard.



Next are my blueberries. I have so many varieties now I just started planting them into pots for the time being as the blueberry bed I had is too small for all of them. This way I can move them around until I find the best place for them.





Blackberries and raspberries are next. We have mostly thornless so I don't bleed to death picking them in the future. I put in a new trellis in back of my horse stalls that faces South and they seem to be growing really well. Check out this one blackberry stalk, the leaves are the size of my hand and the stalk is still growing at over 9 feet.









A shot of some tomato plants in one bed.



A shot of some of my cherry tomatoes starting to grow up my arches.



Here are the first of my pole beans starting on another arch. I'll have several groups of these as the season goes on so that I can can more this year.



This the last of my early season carrots with some leeks and bunching onions down on the far end. I'm going to be planting peppers in this bed next.

[Bisley]

I am in absolute awe. Beautiful garden(s). I don't know if it's your soil, your knack, or both, but those are some darn fine looking plants. With that many of them, I can imagine that between trimming, weeding, watering, and especially picking it gets to be like a full time job at times. But I bet it is sure worth it after tasting them

[ShooterJohn]

I guess everything takes time like weeding, watering and picking. But the end product is worth it. I enjoy it so that always makes something more worthwhile.

[ShooterJohn]

Our blackberries are finally starting to come on with a worthwhile harvest. We've already made some blackberry jam but now their size is increasing too. These are thornless blackberries and they are only a year old.



Pretty big ones too!

[Brant]

I have never seen them like that they're huge.

[ShooterJohn]

More garden stuff. The hot weather is really increasing production on all fronts. We picked again this morning and got several varieties of tomatoes, squash, a bunch of beans and our first cantaloupe of the season.



The beans on top with the stripes in them are called dragons tongue.



This is yesterdays mostly pepper harvest.

[BullsEye]

Your garden looks very good this year John. My Tomatoes are starting to give fruit now but my zucchinis have petered out. The chilies are doing really well as is the basil.

[ShooterJohn]

More garden stuff. I really need to cut back on growing so many things. I'm turning into a vegetable.

Here's a nice pair of cantaloupes if I do say so myself. I must have 25 cantaloupes on this vine so far and we've already taken 5 off.



Here are some raspberries getting ripe.





Here are tomorrows green beans plumping up.



Sausage tomatoes.



Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.



Sungold cherry tomatoes. This vine is just loaded.





Roma tomatoes.

[mackeralboy]

John
I'm envious of the space you have to work with on your property. This year I've gotten back into my gardening and even invested in a couple of small green houses to get things growing earlier this year. Some stuff like my grapes, blackberries, boysen berries, banana, pineapple, and citrus trees I've got in the ground. All my other stuff I've got in pots for a couple of reasons. For one my house is on a corner and the street that runs east/west is like a natural wind tunnel when it blows. Second, not all of my yard is in the sun throughout the year, and part of the yard that offers more wind protection is completly in the shade during the winter.This killed some good pepper plants I had going a couple of years ago so I want to be able to keep my plants mobile for the time being. Since it is protected and gets sun year round, I did build some shelves on the backside of my garage and have some plants stacked on those.
In additions to finding sunny spots in my yard It's been a challenge to keep my chickens from devouring my plants. For some reason they have finally started leaving my tomato plants alone but they sure love my pepper plants. I have found that they are kind of lazy, and if I can raise my pepper plants a few extra inches off of the ground (the height of a cinderblock or so) the chickens will only get to the leaves at the base of the plant and not up high were the peppers are. This year I've got over 20 varieties of peppers growing and the first few are just ripening up as we speak. I've got a number of coworkers that have been doing the gardening thing this year and it's been fun swapping extra plants with each other.
Although it's not gardening but kinda along the same lines, I've been looking into bee keeping. I got the bug (no pun intended) a few years back when I had to get rid of a number of swarms that had occupied some stuff at work. I felt guitly getting rid of the colonies at the time but they were posing a hazard to the public and no other resources were available to come and get them. There is a grass roots group in the area that seems to bee gaining some politcal ground in the area of beeing able to keep bees here in the city, so I'm going to check into to it and maybee learn a thing or two.

[ShooterJohn]

Mike you have a pretty nice garden with the space you have to work with. I'm sure those greenhouses will make a huge difference in time as you get a chance to use them. Having friends that are into gardening is always fun. You learn about different plants and can trade some back and forth. Then there is all of the friends you didn't know you had until the veggies come in.

I attract allot of bees to my garden with all sorts of flowers. I wish I could have a bee hive but I'm allergic to bee stings. I've been through the shot series twice to be desensitize to their stings but there is always the possibility of a recurring reaction. We have a bee shop in my town and I did buy some mason bees from them a couple of years back and still have some of their offspring. I gather the straws and blocks that they lay their eggs in when winter comes and put them back out in the spring. I even set up some bee blocks for them along the creek and got some from there. But real honey bees would be awesome to have in a garden. Let us know if you get some.

[ShooterJohn]

A few more additions to things from my garden. Here are two new to me tomatoes. The green ones are Green Zebras and the dark one is called a Black Krim. The Black Krim is just starting to come in and is a super tasty tomato. Unfortunately it is an heirloom and can be very hard to find. So before the season is over I'll save some seeds for next year.



It's bean growing season and when they get going it's all out. We plant in stages so that it gives us time to can them. Here we have two varieties to can the Dragons Tongue that is white with purple stripes and Blue Lake green beans.





Here they are canned the jar on the left is the Dragons Tongue. The purple stripes disappear when you can them.



Here we have two new jams we made. The first is Pluot jam made from our Pluots which are a hybrib fruit of a plum and apricot cross. They are very good. The second is Ambrosia Cantaloupe jam in the making. We grow the Ambrosia melons because they are so sweet. I have never seen cantaloupe jam before and I don't know why because it is delicious. We hardly had to add any sugar they're so sweet.





And last for today the making of spaghetti sauce. This is just two days of picking these paste and cherry tomatoes. I like to add the cherry tomatoes because they add a sweetness to the sauce and it appears everyone likes it. There is nothing like homemade or home canned sauce.

[nitis]

I guess I have to expand my garden next year. I only did 38 pepper plants this year

[ShooterJohn]

Only 38 pepper plants! That's like me and tomato plants. I have only 13 varieties this year. But we have about thirty plants. Last year I had 29 plants of just one variety.

[nitis]

It's tough I would love to have more but I have to do raised beds and the cedar iis so damn expensive.

Plus we don't eat a lot of tomatoes so when I make salsa I just go buy a flat

[ShooterJohn]

I hear you on space and expense. About the only thing I buy vegetable wise is Sloughhouse corn. I just don't have the will to do corn anymore. A couple of years back a neighbor said grow your corn here and gave me an acre to work with. I had corn coming out of my ears! I have raised beds too and they make life much easier, but the wood for them isn't cheap.

[ShooterJohn]

Well, I started the gardening season the other day with the planting of the onions. They were only about a week late in getting them in but the nursery started a list this year of buyers. Apparently they have a limited supply of the onions sets this year. Being a good customer I got mine first. I planted 150 Stockton Reds and 50 Walla Walla onions in this bed. I also got another 100 for the wife's family and another 100 for a neighbor. I got them in just before the rains so they got a good watering. Here are mine planted, it sure doesn't look like 200.

[Rimrock]

Looks good, John. I planted Stockton Reds and Walla Wallas this week too. Only about 100 total though.

[ShooterJohn]

A 100 is still a good amount but I give away a number so I may get another 50 just to be safe. I made a planting stick so that I get them evenly spaced. I'll have to take a picture of it to show you. It's not much more than a stick with dowels spaced evenly on it. But it sure make keeping my rows straight easier.

[Lone Wolf]

Im in the process of buying my first house and im not buying anything smaller than a half acre so I can do all of the stuff that you guys got going on here. My grandpa has a pretty big garden that I have always enjoyed working in with him. Im anxious to start my own, especially now after seeing this