2017 Gardening thread

[Bigyummy77]

What is everyones secret to preventing bottom rot. Nothing more frustrating then having my eye on a beautiful tomato or two and go to pick it and the bottom is rotten?
Should I hit them with Epson salt/water ?

Yes, and bone meal. It is caused by a lack of calcium.

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[tbeak]

Here's a few pics from last night. I have to edit my pictures so small you only get a close up shot.
Tomatoes are doing great and it's supposed to be fairly hot this weekend so they should be kicking off anytime soon.

Yellow squash are coming in strong.

[Joshua Flournoy]

Well, I bought her a greenhouse, but it was too late for the seed starting season this year. I'll get that sucker up and do some more research and see what we can get going for next year...

Heck, I might actually start to like this gardening stuff! ...well weedin' ain't my thing unless I can do it with my tractor... everything is too big and it's too wet now anyway. Wudda never thunk about growin' a purple 'mater!! Thanks!

They're beautiful, and delicious.

One tip on the Heirloom tomato varieties: many of them are much more prone to splitting/cracking on the vine than the hybrid varieties you normally find at the local nursery. You're going to get some small amount of cracking around the stem end with almost all Heirloom beefsteak type varieties no matter what you do. However, you can cut way, way down on the size and amount of cracks by picking your Heirloom tomatoes just as soon as you see a noticeable "blush" of color starting on the blossom (bottom) end of the tomato. Pick it (even if the majority of the tomato still looks green) and set it on your counter. Don't put it in a Sunny windowsill, and don't put it in a brown paper bag. Just put it on your counter, or in your basement, and watch it as it starts to ripen a little bit more every day. Generally, it will be fully ripe and ready to eat about 4-6 days after you pick it at first color blush, or at least that has been our experience, and we've picked multiple thousands of Heirloom tomatoes using this method over the last 3 years. A wonderful side benefit to picking at first blush is you will almost entirely eliminate problems with birds/bugs/squirrels hitting your tomato on the vine just a day before you were going to pick it. They like ripe tomatoes too, and if you don't leave it on the vine until "full ripe", the pests won't get it before you do. You also will mostly eliminate nearly ripe tomatoes splitting from a badly timed rain a day or two before "full ripe" harvest if you pick them at first blush.

We have found there to be no difference in taste between leaving on the vine till "full ripe" vs. picking at first blush and letting them ripen inside.

Have fun.

[Joshua Flournoy]

Here are a few pics from 2015. First is my son with one day's harvest. Notice that most of the tomatoes have just a little blushing color on them. The 2nd pic is 4-5 days later at the farmers market with many of them having ripened up nicely since picking at first blush. He just sorted them and set them (single layer) in tomato flat cardboard boxes in our basement while they ripened.

[jmoore2006]

Well I am starting all over the rain and flooding last week killed all of my tomatoes and peppers. Looks like I have corn and cucumbers still living. I went the hay bale route with the new tomatoes and peppers so I know regardless of any storms I will be fine next go round

[txtimetravler]

Do you hollow out the hay and put dirt in there? Interesting way of growing plants and keep them out of the mud.

[Texas Grown]

Finnished getting all the Anaheims in containers today. Still got some red chilies to transfer yet. And a few japs that made it back from the Easter weekend dry out.

The fish are biting, and there's hogs to be kilt. Gotta go!

[jmoore2006]

Do you hollow out the hay and put dirt in there? Interesting way of growing plants and keep them out of the mud.

Yes I layed the bales down packed them tight end to end and drove stakes. Once staked I cut the twine and used garden pruners to bust out planting holes. I filled using compost/manure. This is my first time with this method. Seems popular with Pinterest. 9" of rain backed up water here and probably wouldn't of happened again this year but I wasn't taking a chance. Thankfully we have put up a dozen jars of pickles, 2 dozen jars of tomatoes and 6 gallons of peppers already so a fresh start won't hurt too bad. Hopefully it didn't get my sweet corn time will tell

[txtimetravler]

Yes I layed the bales down packed them tight end to end and drove stakes. Once staked I cut the twine and used garden pruners to bust out planting holes. I filled using compost/manure. This is my first time with this method. Seems popular with Pinterest. 9" of rain backed up water here and probably wouldn't of happened again this year but I wasn't taking a chance. Thankfully we have put up a dozen jars of pickles, 2 dozen jars of tomatoes and 6 gallons of peppers already so a fresh start won't hurt too bad. Hopefully it didn't get my sweet corn time will tell

Cool. Thanks for sharing. Keep us posted how this method works.

Sounds like you already had a decent harvest.

[SaltwaterSlick]

Man our tomatoes took a hit with all the water too... We were sick! The wind blew 'em around pretty bad and we thought maybe that's why they were all so wilted... Few days later, they had not improved. Don't know if they will make it or not... We sure had a bunch of maters on those plants. My wife tied 'em off again and pulled most of the tomatoes. Peppers took a hit too. She picked all the peppers. The plants look like they had hot water poured all over them.







On the bright side, we've got cukes comin' out our ears! Ugliest things I ever saw... those burpless cukes! They sure make good bread n butter pickles and dill spears! It also seems that Okra is also ok with the extra water... Had a pretty good cuttin' this morning and likely will have another one by Monday. Second batch of corn is looking real nice as are the purple hull peas. They finally have started to bloom...







Still fightin' bugs n weeds... Also found a black widow spider in the okra. Sure am glad I found her before she found me!

[Chew]

Pickles looking good charlie!

[tbeak]

For those of you asking about the indeterminate tomatoes vs determinate in regards to plucking suckers. This is why you do it. A double stem. These are German lunch box. I apparently did not see this one the 20 times I've handled it so I'm just gonna watch it. Never grown GL's before so I don't know how it'll do. The tomatoe is about the size of an egg so not big heavies.

[SaltwaterSlick]

Lunch! Bounty from the garden... Purple Hull peas, boiled okra, boiled cabbage, pickled banana peppers, bread n butter pickles, sliced fresh 'maters, and how water corn bread with fresh butter... and dessert, fresh blackberry cobbler... It just don't get much better'n that... well 'cept if maybe I'd have done a couple venison fillets to go with it...








Oh yea, added a little to the harvest too... Gonna start puttin' up some 'maters this evening...

[ItsLeo]

First tomato blossom set for the year! This is almost three weeks ahead of last year. Lord willing I'll have a big yield this year.

[txtimetravler]

First tomato blossom set for the year! This is almost three weeks ahead of last year. Lord willing I'll have a big yield this year.

What part of the country you in?