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Garden Geeks thread

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Sounds like you're having some fun in the garden there, FreshFish. :)

Picked my first cucumber today!!! WooHoo! Lots of little cukes will be ready soon. There are lots of pickling cukes ready to go also. Haven't been in the garden since Sunday and boy do things change in a hurry. Some GIGANTIC zucchini's (my wife and daughter love stuffing and baking them), lots of summer squash and picked another good batch of beets.
Tomatoes on the vine! Lots of 'em. Not ripe yet but hoping soon.

My water well crashed and burned earlier in the week and just got it up and running today. Got some water on the veggies and the sprinkler system will be back to work tonight. Just in time as temperatures in the 90's are expected from now through mid week. Everything green will be happy again. :)
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

First cuke here too. Planted in Earth box. They are going NUTS. Have about 10 more close to ready and more coming. The SS and Zukes are anemic and barely growing. THe beans aren't ready yet.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

I picked the first, and so far only, green bean yesterday. They're coming on strong though, so in a few days we'll be eating them nearly every night and giving away a boatload as well. Once they're fully producing we have to pick at least twice a week, maybe three times, and each time is 2 to 2-1/2 5 gallon pails. Lotsa beans, especially since we don't preserve any. Years and years ago, when we started the wall-o-beans, my wife said that no canned or frozen green beans would taste decent at all after eating the fresh ones from the garden. She's been proven right so far. If anyone has a method that they consider foolproof for preserving them and having them taste pretty much fresh picked, I'd love to hear it.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Carter said:
I picked the first, and so far only, green bean yesterday. They're coming on strong though, so in a few days we'll be eating them nearly every night and giving away a boatload as well. Once they're fully producing we have to pick at least twice a week, maybe three times, and each time is 2 to 2-1/2 5 gallon pails. Lotsa beans, especially since we don't preserve any. Years and years ago, when we started the wall-o-beans, my wife said that no canned or frozen green beans would taste decent at all after eating the fresh ones from the garden. She's been proven right so far. If anyone has a method that they consider foolproof for preserving them and having them taste pretty much fresh picked, I'd love to hear it.
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We blanch for b/w 30-60 seconds. Spin dry in the salad spinner then lay out on towel for a few hours til dry. Then freeze in those ziploc vacuum bags and freeze
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Carter said:
r. If anyone has a method that they consider foolproof for preserving them and having them taste pretty much fresh picked, I'd love to hear it.
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All I know is even frozen my beans are far better than any bean you'll buy in the winter. plus the fact that I know where they came from and how they were grown. I freeze a crap load of them
 
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Ok all. I picked a bunch of zucchini and in the patch were two cream colored (almost white color) squash (picked from the zucchini plant). They look like zucchini but the color is weird. Are these albino zucchini? Anyone ever seen this before? In all my years of gardening I never have.
 
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Chard, Spinach, lettuce and green beans from the garden this week, the beans were out of this world. Freakin deer have found my garden again. My fence is in rough shape looks like Tractor supply is going toget some of my money for fence, posts and probably a fence charger
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

It's been tough here with the drought, but thanks to constant watering the garden is still doing good. Started picking tomatoes last week. I Fixed them up in a couple of dishes - not enough to preserve yet. Jalapenos have started to come in, and we have had some sweet peppers so far. We've had several meals of beans, and I'll be doing a lot of freezing starting this week. The potato plants are getting brown; don't know if that's OK or because they are in sandier soil than the rest of the garden. Does anybody know when potatoes are ready in the southern WI area? Corn is very close. A bunch of watermelons - one very large - but the 'Moon and Stars' variety doesn't have anything yet. The watermelon vines have spread through the corn and the rose garden, and is aobut 20 feet into the yard. Good thing the yard is brown and doesn't need mowing. The hops look like it will be a bust of a season because of the drought; but I still have some from last year for making beer..
 
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A story about the resiliency of tomatoes....

We had had a brush pile for a few years on a cement slab, finally paid someone to haul it away. There was a lot of composted dirt at the bottom once it was gone, which I shoveled into several big flowerpots.

Tomatoes started growing from this dirt in the pots (from seeds that had fallen from the brush pile).

I decided to keep them, for fun (we picked a few cherry tomatoes the other day). However, you know how tomatoes branch out like crazy...I snipped a few branches off to make the plants more manageable, and just out of curiosity, I stuck those branches in the soil and started watering them. They are growing just fine on their own despite not having any roots to start! yup, they started growing roots out of the sides of the stem stuck in the dirt!
 
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Great. The bunnies weren't enough, now a pair of deer are in the neighborhood busily eating our garden. :mad:
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

goldy_331 said:
Great. The bunnies weren't enough, now a pair of deer are in the neighborhood busily eating our garden. :mad:
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Carnivore urine. Go pee on the perimeter. Lil did that when he was lil'er and that really helped. Then he decided to pee when ever outdoors and Mr les put a stop to it.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

leswp1 said:
Carnivore urine. Go pee on the perimeter. Lil did that when he was lil'er and that really helped. Then he decided to pee when ever outdoors and Mr les put a stop to it.
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Mr les is a party pooper?
Why do men pee outside? Because we can. :D

I have posted this deer repellent a few times in the past. Here it is again.
Beat 2 eggs very well and mix with 1 gallon of water in a spray canister. Spray any plants you don't want the deer to eat. It won't hurt the plants and IT WORKS. The deer will nibble on the plants, but they stop because they don't like the taste of the egg. You can add a few sprinkles of garlic powder to this concoction as well... they don't like garlic either. Reapply after a rainfall.

If you travel and can't be around to reapply the egg concoction, try these. Although not inexpensive, the wireless deer fence works very well.

Unbeknownst to my wife, I had wireless deer fences set up in the garden some years back when I had a big deer problem. My wife was picking veggies one day and she leaned against one.... ZAP! LOL. I heard her scream and yelled over to see what was up. She says, "what the hell was that? It scared the crap out of me" LOL.
Have had them about 10 years now and they still work. Hardly use them now... the deer don't come around much anymore (they hang out in my neighbors garden now). I put them around my shrubs every fall to keep deer off my shrubs in winter.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

leswp1 said:
Carnivore urine.
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I've got a good coyote urine story. Anyone else ever buy that stuff, besides me? Holy mackerel, it's like buying fancy perfume, like $50. an ounce. :eek:

Anyway, I had a very bad deer problem a few years back. The darn deer thought they were my pets. They'd sleep in my front lawn, would stand at the stonewall and watch me mow the lawn as I passed by them 5 feet away (they didn't even flinch). They thought I planted all those nice shrubs, veggies and flowers for them to feast on! HAH... I'LL SHOW THEM! So I go get some coyote urine.

I get home and spread the urine around the entire perimeter of the property. That'll fix 'em... NOT. I go out the next morning and there are deer tracks in all my gardens, they bedded down in a fresh mulch pile I had just had delivered. I'm guessing there were probably 8 -10 deer there overnight. Hell, that wasn't coyote urine, it was 'deer in heat' urine. Went right into the house and called my friend in Maine that farms for a living. She gave me the egg remedy. Them Mainer's sure is smart.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

So I better drink a lot this evening so I can go pee around the garden later (after dark so as not scandalize the neighbors).

May try the egg mix too.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

leswp1 said:
Carnivore urine. Go pee on the perimeter. Lil did that when he was lil'er and that really helped. Then he decided to pee when ever outdoors and Mr les put a stop to it.
Click to expand...
I do this every day, it might help but it sure doesn't stop them. I get my dog over there too but I still have issues. Bullets, electric fence work, pee maybe
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Not related to gardening, but it reminds me of my old coon-hunting neighbor who decided to hunt around Dane county. So he makes an enclosure in his back yard for four large dog houses, and in front of each he plants a 3" diameter post for the dog to pizz on. The idea being that the hound will use the post and not the new dog house. The fun part was that old Merl went out the first evening and pizzed on every post himself to give the dogs the right idea. Ah, the good old days.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

My little garden is pretty much a disaster after the drought. Cucumbers and jalapenos are flowering, but nothing yet. Even the parsley and chives, which usually grow all the time, are sad. Probably should've done a better job of watering - at least we've had rain on and off for the last week or so.
 
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Our cucumbers have been infested with small yellow caterpillers who are merrily noshing all the leaves. Outside of wearing rubber gloves and squishing each one we find by hand, any suggestions on how either to get rid of them, or at least contain them so they don't spread any further?




Meanwhile, the peppers are doing quite well, and fingers crossed! no blight (yet?) on the tomatoes.
 
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I don't know what's going on with my green beans. Tons of vines, lots and lots of blossoms, and virtually no beans. We watered very regularly through the drought, and have been getting good rain recently. My wife picked some up from a truck farmer and he said they had 400 feet of green beans. His most recent picking was only 2 pounds, so it's not just me. I think it has to be something to do with the drought. Maybe whatever pollinates the blossoms took a hit??? Frustrating, because there's nothing else in the garden I love like those beans.
 
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