2024 Gardening Thread!!

[Lincoln Hawk]

I'm in the Austin area, region 8, what is a great tasting tomatoe that does well for my region?

Sun gold, celebrity, super sweet 100 among many others. Google search the TBH prior year gardening threads.

[tminc]

I'm in the Austin area, region 8, what is a great tasting tomatoe that does well for my region?

We like Cherokee purples, Trophy,Mexican midgets,Celebrity,Betterboy's
Lots of good choices,Start early or grow in the fall,they dont like it when it hits 90.

[eradicator]

We like Cherokee purples, Trophy,Mexican midgets,Celebrity,Betterboy's
Lots of good choices,Start early or grow in the fall,they dont like it when it hits 90.

Thanks for the seeds bud! Received them yesterday. TBH never ceases to amaze me

[BrandonH]

What kind of bug am I dealing with and what is the best treatment? I only have 10 containers planted and so far this is the only one they've attacked.

[hopedale]

Sun gold, celebrity, super sweet 100 among many others. Google search the TBH prior year gardening threads.

Sun gold, celebrity, super sweet 100 among many others. Google search the TBH prior year gardening threads.

Thanks

[Chronotrigger]

Coming along.

[eradicator]

Coming along.

Lookin' good man. Is that a lemon tree in the pot?

[eradicator]

What kind of bug am I dealing with and what is the best treatment? I only have 10 containers planted and so far this is the only one they've attacked.

If it's the only one out of several, you may have cutworms burrowing in the pot. I'd be surprised if it was still in that good of shape if they were though. Or it could be any random caterpillar.....

[basschump]

I'm in the Austin area, region 8, what is a great tasting tomatoe that does well for my region?

I’ve had great success growing the Texas Superstar varieties Tycoon, HM 1823, Red Snapper, Bobcat and Thunderbird were all good. Been harder to find transplants this year.
I try to always have a better boy or two along with a celebrity and early girl.

Sungold is an awesome ‘cherry’ variety. Produces well into the summer.

[Chronotrigger]

Lookin' good man. Is that a lemon tree in the pot?

Thanks alot! Yes, it is a meyer lemon. One day I'll get a lemon or two from it.

[joshbrowne]

These days I'm at my vacation home in Oahu. I haven't been here for a few months, and now we're clearing the property of bushes and trees to free up some space. I've long wanted a Royal Poinciana in the garden, and now I'll have space for it.

It's been a while since I've worked with a tree removal company; usually, I take down trees myself, but the prices in Hawaii seemed a bit higher compared to Texas.
For my fellow Texans in Hawaii, if you're reading this post, when you need to remove a tree, call these guys at https://www.oahutreetrimming.com/. As a first-time client, they gave me a good discount.

[Draco]

It seems I've had to relegate myself to light duty as I had a knee replacement last week. We thought we were going to have a frost 2 days after I had it and we had to cover some stuff up. Thank goodness my wife is a machine and I mainly supervised.

[SaltwaterSlick]

At this point, I'm not totally sure what all we have planted... so far... My wife has gone nuts planting this year... This afternoon we will uncover the last in-ground plot in order to fill it with watermelons and cantaloupes... So far it's 4 in-ground plots that are roughly 35 feet wide by 50 feet deep, 260 10-gallon bags, 18 raised beds of varying size, 20 wicking tubs with blackberries, 1 wicking tub with a lemon tree that is loaded down with lemons... we over-Wintered it in the greenhouse, so it got a jump start on blooming this year. It made the greenhouse smell so good, but with the windows rolled up on it, the pollinators (mostly honey bees and bumble bees) still got to it in a big way! Some things I know we have both in-ground and in bags, so I don't have a good accurate count of what is where yet...
I know we have about 90 tomato plants, 75 pepper plants, many of which we over-Wintered and all but a couple of those are doing great! Already see that over-Wintering peppers is a worthwhile thing... Heck, we quit picking peppers off them for the most part so they'd quit blooming! We had fresh bell, jalapeno, poblano, and banana pepper all Winter! We have 60-70 or so broccoli and cauliflower plants in bags that are going great gangbusters, plus I think she planted the "extra transplants" in the ground. We actually saved 2 cauliflower plants from last Fall's garden and they have sprouted new plants from the old stumps in their grow bags. Don't have a clue what they will produce, but they're growing nicely.
In the greenhouse, we had fresh spinach and lettuce all Winter, and still have it growing faster than we can eat it all... AND my wife has planted no telling how many more new plants both in bags and in the ground!!

If all the beets she's planted make, we'll be canning, freezing, freeze drying, (and every other method we can think of) beets until we're sick of beets!!

We tried our hand at onions for the first time... planted 3 varieties last Winter in early to mid-November... The bulbing varieties are starting to bulb and look pretty healthy... Don't know if they'll get very big as the ground where we planted them is not fully amended like most of our in-ground plots are by now, so the ground is pretty hard and crusty... The bunching onions are bunching... a lot!!

In my conversations with Rocky (Sure wish he'd get back on here and contribute!) about making salsa verde, we tried our hand at tomitillos, the onions, and more peppers so we can make it using the proper ingredients this year! So far, everything is going to town just right... Now if we can just get all the ingredients ripe at about the same time!!

May have to replant my corn... I've had a heck of a time getting corn to grow and make the last 2 seasons due mainly to the weather... 2 days after we planted our sweet corn, it rained hard on the plot (3 inches in about 4-5 hours), and it is not germinating very well... Haven't decided if I will spot plant or just plow it up and start over... will give it another 10 days and see...

This is the new bag garden section we added this year... It's mostly squash and zucchini except for the far right row... That's egg plants.



This is the corn plot complete with crow proof netting...


This is the tomato bag garden plot.



This is the in-ground berry plot. It is 2 rows 80 feet long and it is covered end to end just like this close up pic!!







Actual updated corn plot pic from today after I tilled the middles to try to loosen up things a bit.


This will be the watermelon/cantaloupe patch. Not sure the rain will let us take the tarp off today or not...


The lemon tree.


Just some of the raised beds... more full of strawberries in the front of the house.


These are the over-Wintered pepper plants... The pale green ones we left whole in the small greenhouse. The ones to the right of those, we pruned back to almost just a stump and kept them only slightly watered in the big greenhouse. One dose of Medina organic chicken manure-based fertilizer, and they took off!


Broccoli and cauliflower... Sue wish everything would grow like this stuff does... These plants have only been in the ground about 4 weeks!


This is the berry plot that is in wicking tubs. This plot is not as mature as the in-ground berry plot, and it seems to be catching up fast!


This is about as empty as the big greenhouse has been since last Winter (December).

This is a "spare" cucumber plant my wife stuck in that bag because she had nowhere else to plant it at the time... Sucker is starting to take over that side of the greenhouse. It is loaded down with little cukes and even more blooms! The two bags to the right of it are "spare" lettuce seeds that have gone nutz!


These are the two tomato plants that I salvaged from the big Winter freeze... I wish now I'd have tried to prune back more of them. They have come back great! What froze was essentially the "low" or first crop. Each of these plants had just a small branch in the middle that stayed somewhat green. I cut them both back to just what was green in the middle and fertilized them and kept them well watered. They have at least 3 more layers of tomatoes on them now and are still growing taller and putting on more blooms. FTR, these are Celebrity+ hybrids like the old traditional Celebrity except with an added disease resistance package. We have planted a bunch of these in the new bags as well as in the ground! Hope they do as well as these two have!


We have been cutting this spinach (the back 2 bags) and lettuce (front bag) all Winter for salads as well as for sauteing (the spinach)... We will most definitely be doing that again this Fall. The fresh greens are so nice to have during the Winter months!


And here is the beginning of my wife's "Herb" garden... She started this tray yesterday. She already has 3 different kinds of basil and cilantro going...


Like I said folks, don't have a clue what in the world we'll do with all this stuff if it really does make fruits like it's supposed to, but we sure do enjoy watching it grow!

[bowmansdad]

Dang, Charlie, that looks awesome! Looking forward to the rest of the season.

[Chew]

Hard to work with these dang buffalo gnats. But onions, potatoes, radishes, purple hulls, green beans, cukes, corn all doing well. One of my new plots had a low spot that I missed and I guess got too wet. Cantaloupes and melons not doing so well there after a few heavy rains. Lots of peppers and herbs doing well. Wish I'd planted those blackberries. Looks great, Charlie.