2023 Gardening Thread

[topwater blowup]

Best way to stake tomato plants?

[Pedernal]

Any of yall ever fry the blooms from the squash plants? I actually have some pumpkins growing and i fried some of the flowers/blooms last night, they where great. Tasted like fried squash

Any specific seasoning? Salt and pepper?

[rtp]

Any of yall ever fry the blooms from the squash plants? I actually have some pumpkins growing and i fried some of the flowers/blooms last night, they where great. Tasted like fried squash

I just got back from Italy and I had something that was fried with a high quality cheese in the middle. It was a squash blossom. One of the best things I had over there.


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[rtp]

I had the same issue. I bet you have squash boring bugs in all of them. I did... must be a Fulshear out break[emoji23]

My wife is none too happy! Her favorite thing in my garden.


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[eradicator]

Any of yall ever fry the blooms from the squash plants? I actually have some pumpkins growing and i fried some of the flowers/blooms last night, they where great. Tasted like fried squash

Yep, they make a nice dang fritter!!!

[eradicator]

We got another 3/4" of rain last night and there must have been some wind in it... Some of our peppers n maters were beat up pretty bad. Would have probably broke 'em off if they hadn't been in those cages. Hope they survive. Had most all the standing water pumped out by about 10:00 this morning. We've just about cut all the broccoli and cauliflower. I think there's 3 or 4 plants of each still growing heads. My bride just started fermenting our very first batch ever of anything. She's trying her hand at making Kimchi... I love the stuff and we're running out of things to do with cabbage. If the fermentation deal works out, she's gonna try sauerkraut next. Still a few heads of cabbage growing... Just about done with the lettuce. It's starting to bolt so it'll get bitter I'm told. So far it's still good. Spinach is gone. We cut the last of it early this week and turned the plants in. Planted more pepper plants in those bags...Squash is coming along though we're fighting mildew and other stuff relating to all the wetness... I think we'll still have a crop. picked a few already. Blossom end-rot has hit us a bit. I'm gonna throw down some Calcium nitrate this evening and water it in good... may be too late but worth a shot.
Peppers and maters are looking real good. Hope they don't have the end-rot stuff. Gonna give them a little shot of calcium too and it's early enough that application should do them good. Got lots of blooms on the eggplants, but no fruits as of yet. Plants are nice and healthy though.


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Dill weed (not Dope weed) is almost 4' tall and making those little heads that you see in pickle jars so I guess it's doin' what it's supposed to. Italian basil is like a hedge. Was told to literally take the garden shears and trim it back to make it bush out more... Makes the whole garden smell so good! Don't really have any use for the stuff, but it sure is pretty and aromatic to grow.

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Dang in-ground garden is just sitting there... corn and purple hull peas (the two main crops I plan for the in-ground garden) have hardly grown at all after coming up just before the rains started. Need to get the netting off the corn patch so I can run the tiller in there and get the grass knocked down. Not much but want to keep it under control... Purple hull peas haven't bloomed yet and they're barely 6-8" high... should be almost ready for a first picking by now... Harvested about half the beets. They did pretty well. First time for us growing those too... Got 5 pints of pickled beets so far. Will harvest the other half after they've had a chance to grow a bit more.


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We actually picked the English peas and first of the green beans early this week. (Plants aren't even big enough to attach themselves good to the trellis!) Had enough to make a nice English pea salad and we had fresh green beans for supper twice. Had a couple nice round (8-ball and queball) squash to slice and fry up with 'em... Fried cabbage, fried squash, fried deer-burger and fresh green beans all doused with fantastic Chow-Chow... That stuff turned out great!!

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Wife transplanted her cantaloupes into a molasses tub waiting on the plot to dry out enough to get them in the ground... Since 2 days after I added 4 yards of compost to the plot, it's been standing in water... It's a muddy, sloppy mess. I told her if we have a cantaloupe this year, she'll likely have to grow them in those molasses tubs!!


Blackberries... bout all I can say is wow! They're kickin' it into high hear now. Picked these yesterday and was out there earlier this afternoon and there's probably another dish pan full ready today. Will pick 'em again tomorrow. AND they're still blooming. The primocanes haven't even started to bloom yet and there's more new growth on 'em this year than I think we've ever had.


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What are you using for calcium other than lime, if anything? I usually add some lime to my tomato garden in the fall. Just curious if there was something else that had a quicker effect during growing season if symptoms showed up.

[Muskles]

Any ideas on what might be munching on my cabbage? We pulled a few cabbage worms off of the back side of the leaves, but this "scat" was in the bowl. It has bored into the head and probably ruined it. I don't think it's from the cabbage worms, because it's bigger around than the worms.

[East6101]

How is everyone keeping cats out of your garden ?

Just cut and fit chicken wire around them. Keeps them from digging. They hate the wire on their feet as well.

[txtimetravler]

Best way to stake tomato plants?

I made a cage out of field fence/net wire.

But I also use tomato cages, rebar, etc. anything to give them structure and support.


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[Geezy Rider]

How is everyone keeping cats out of your garden ?

My barn cats were using mine as a litter box so I fenced it in. One side is welded wire panels with a smaller meshed portable fence at the bottom. The other side is some modular dog kennel panels that were given to me. Last year I used a nylon netting for chicken coops but I think it hampered pollinators from getting in.



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[Katch66]

Any ideas on what might be munching on my cabbage? We pulled a few cabbage worms off of the back side of the leaves, but this "scat" was in the bowl. It has bored into the head and probably ruined it. I don't think it's from the cabbage worms, because it's bigger around than the worms.

That looks like what tomatoe worms leave behind on tomatoe plants.

[MooseontheLoose]

Enjoying the updates and all the pics Charlie, please keep posting them.

Things are going well over here. Added a whole new bed, a bunch of grow bags, and wicking tubs to my setup this year. My whole back yard might be a garden before long. I was worried I planted my cabbages too late but they all grew nicely. Was out of town and waited a little long to pick these but they still tasted good.

Down here in SA it never really got cold, save for a few days, so I overwintered a handful of pepper plants. Only one plant didn’t make it, but the rest have gone nuts to start the year. Think this little banana plant might have more pepper pods than leaves.


Thai chili also coming along nicely.


I’ve never done the wicking tubs before, but I have a couple of elderberry plants in them now and will get my blackberries planted in some next week. Just got the plants recently so they’re still small. Hoping to be set up nicely for the future with them.

[SaltwaterSlick]

What’s going on here? Everything else in this box is doing well including the squash plant right next to it.




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Hey Richard check out this thread Stolle posted a few days ago... Post 11 and following for info and treatment...

https://discussions.texasbowhunter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=870386&highlight=squash

Edit: Upon looking more closely it appears your stems are healthy. I'd say you may have had a fungal disease. Some of the inside fungals diseases that work on the leaf structures are really not treatable and just getting rid of the plants is all you can do. Downy Mildew is treatable and are some of the others using a strong Neem oil (use only 100% Neem oil, not the refined stuff), and Liqui-Cop (liquid copper). If you catch some of the others early, this treatment will stop it too, but nothing will repair damaged portions of the plants. We sprayed about every 5 days until we got ahead of it. We also chopped the plants back hard that were infected. Any damaged leaf was removed and stuffed in a trash bag and thrown away... All healthy garden refuse is fed to the chickens... Suckers will eat dang near any and everything!! They are great garbage disposals!!

[SaltwaterSlick]

What are you using for calcium other than lime, if anything? I usually add some lime to my tomato garden in the fall. Just curious if there was something else that had a quicker effect during growing season if symptoms showed up.

If you use Calcium Nitrate, that will break down right away (within a couple days), plus the nitrogen will give your blooms and fruit a shot too. That's the fastest stuff I've used... It does no good to spray on the plants... Calcium comes internally through the roots. Calcium can't migrate from the leaves to the fruits... It comes from the ground up. It appears that my squash plants have begun to recover from that and the dang mildew... Picked another half bucket of squash today.


The three inches of rain we got dang sure did not help!! Had both pumps running since daylight this morning. Gonna just let 'em run all night...
Garden would be pretty much a bust were it not for the bags/wicking tubs...
It's almost impossible to over water those... They just shed the water they can't absorb.

[SaltwaterSlick]

Enjoying the updates and all the pics Charlie, please keep posting them.

Things are going well over here. Added a whole new bed, a bunch of grow bags, and wicking tubs to my setup this year. My whole back yard might be a garden before long. I was worried I planted my cabbages too late but they all grew nicely. Was out of town and waited a little long to pick these but they still tasted good.
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Down here in SA it never really got cold, save for a few days, so I overwintered a handful of pepper plants. Only one plant didn’t make it, but the rest have gone nuts to start the year. Think this little banana plant might have more pepper pods than leaves.
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Thai chili also coming along nicely.
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I’ve never done the wicking tubs before, but I have a couple of elderberry plants in them now and will get my blackberries planted in some next week. Just got the plants recently so they’re still small. Hoping to be set up nicely for the future with them.

Adam, LOVE the peppers!! Since we have a small greenhouse now (with plans for a ma-honker for next Spring), I'm going to try to over-winter some of my peppers. Everyone says they produce better in the subsequent years than in their first year. I need to find that YouTube video about pruning the peppers back at the end of the season specifically for over-wintering... want to try both methods, one just bring them in out of the cold and the other, cut 'em back and see how they do compared to each other.

My peppers are about 2-3 weeks late, but man, I've got gobs and gobs of little peppers and blooms...


I have tubs to make more wicking tubs than we'll ever use... been thinking about just lining them up in the in-ground plots and making rows of them and planting peas/corn in them like rows to see if that would work... I'm getting sick and tired of working my arse off every year only to get flooded out!