Lets see your garden !

[tjb]

Oh man... three things I really do not like... Broccoli, beets, and egg plant... .

I'll take all three.

 

[Scra99tch]

Heres a couple of mine. I'll start doing some in ground next year. Tomatoes are doing great this year, pepper plants not so much.

 

[tq60]

Dirt with heavy clay and 30 years of working organic in.

Use drip tape under plastic to reduce water loss and slow weeds down.

Fully metered flow so we can control amount of water.

Tomatoes, mellons and berries.

Good grazing this time of year.

Tomatoes until november.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[cjtoombs]

This is our garden in the desert.



The back side shows the irrigation system (a must where I live).
The stand is wood with casters, it holds 12 5 gallon buckets with pvc spigots epoxied in part way up from the bottom. These allow the irrigation water, which comes into the top buckets to drain into the lower ones. At the bottom is a gutter that directs the runnoff into another planting bed with some herbs in it.

I made the aluminum pipe holders in the shop, so a bit of tie in to the machining aspects of the forum

 

[WobblyHand]

Today's harvest from our kitchen garden. Right now in tomato glut. Need to make up some more sauce! Have about 3 times as many tomatoes in the kitchen sitting on the counter. Love the tomatoes, especially the Brandywines.

 

[homebrewed]

Today's harvest from our kitchen garden. Right now in tomato glut. Need to make up some more sauce! Have about 3 times as many tomatoes in the kitchen sitting on the counter. Love the tomatoes, especially the Brandywines.
View attachment 417581

Nice! I wish our garden was producing more.

Due to our cold spring and early summer, our tomatoes are just starting to come in. Mostly cherry tomatoes, which seem to ripen a bit sooner.

We normally get a pretty decent harvest of hot peppers but that's starting to look less and less likely. We're getting some ripe Gypsy and banana peppers but they're not spicy. We usually have so much basil we give it away by the bagful but it REALLY didn't like the cool part of the summer this time around. We had a number of nights when it got down into the 40's and basil doesn't do well when that happens.

On the flip side our broccoli and cauliflower have done very well. Same with the cucumbers.

Often the growing season in this part of Oregon ends late Septemper or early October so there still is a chance of getting a decent harvest out of our garden, but every season is different, one way or another. Last year we had 116F in mid-June, this year it didn't stop raining until about the same time. We've gotten frost in mid-September (rarely) but some years we don't get a hard frost until December...

 

[WobblyHand]

Nice! I wish our garden was producing more.

Due to our cold spring and early summer, our tomatoes are just starting to come in. Mostly cherry tomatoes, which seem to ripen a bit sooner.

We normally get a pretty decent harvest of hot peppers but that's starting to look less and less likely. We're getting some ripe Gypsy and banana peppers but they're not spicy. We usually have so much basil we give it away by the bagful but it REALLY didn't like the cool part of the summer this time around. We had a number of nights when it got down into the 40's and basil doesn't do well when that happens.

On the flip side our broccoli and cauliflower have done very well. Same with the cucumbers.

Often the growing season in this part of Oregon ends late Septemper or early October so there still is a chance of getting a decent harvest out of our garden, but every season is different, one way or another. Last year we had 116F in mid-June, this year it didn't stop raining until about the same time. We've gotten frost in mid-September (rarely) but some years we don't get a hard frost until December...

It's not all good in the garden. Cucumber beetles wiped out 50% of my plants. They bring wilt, and the vines just turned to mush. The basil has gone astringent - basically it's not good to eat. This tends to happen when the plant gets woody.

The garlic did come in well. Got 38 heads, 7 nice big fat heads are being saved to plant next year. Onions were not as good this year as last - they are smaller than last year when they were 3-1/2" in diameter.

Due to the garlic taking its time, planted the beans late. Hope to get some before it gets cold. The cherry tomatoes in the picture are from self seeded plants. No idea what variety they are except they are really sweet. The garden is a mess, but stuff is still growing. Really need to pick up the volunteer tomato plants and tie them to stakes. They are out of control - in a good way. Every year some odd tomato plant starts growing by itself without me planting it. And yes, I do clean up the drops, but apparently some do get away. It's kind of fun guessing what "that plant" will turn out to be.

Last year, instead of raking up leaves to be hauled off, I just raked them and dumped them in half of the garden plots. Some of the leaves I shredded a bit, so they would not blow around. The soil really enjoyed the addition of humus. Need to do the other half this fall. On a lark, I trimmed my fig plant and put some cuttings in the ground and covered them with leaves. 5 out of the 6 cuttings survived the winter. I have them in little pots or cans. Gave one away, will repot the rest soon. These brown turkey figs will fruit in about a year. Of course they need perfect weather for that, which doesn't happen here that often, but the figs are really big and juicy if the weather is good and I am religious about pinching them and feeding them. I have never had such delicious figs anywhere. Don't get many of them each year, but the ones I do get are like ambrosia. This year was a bit disappointing, as I was waiting for 3 big figs to ripen. Apparently the carpenter ants determined the fig was ripe before I did. They had eaten out the inside of the fig. I wasn't happy, but the ants sure were!

 

[7milesup]

@WobblyHand what are the green things in your box?

 

[WobblyHand]

@WobblyHand what are the green things in your box?

Funny looking pickling cucumbers that are affected by the cucumber beetles. They are a bit shorter and wider than before those cursed beetles show up. They still taste great, but they are strange looking! Going to have to take a rest on growing cukes next year. Have to think of something else to grow in that spot.

 

[homebrewed]

Funny looking pickling cucumbers that are affected by the cucumber beetles. They are a bit shorter and wider than before those cursed beetles show up. They still taste great, but they are strange looking! Going to have to take a rest on growing cukes next year. Have to think of something else to grow in that spot.

We've been applying nematodes to the garden plot soil to help control pests like cucumber beetles and flea beetles. They go after larvae of insects that hatch in the soil, and are OMRI approved if you're trying to grow organic. I also have experimented with traps, both commercial and home-made. The commercial ones that use a pheremone as an attractant seem to work better than home-made traps that use an essential oil to attract them (I guress the idea is to smell like cucumber flowers). We also plant "trap plants" that attract cucumber beetles so they don't hit the cucumber plants so hard. Zinnias, so you get flowers out of the deal too.

I have read that cucumber beetles also go after squash plants so growing squash next to cucumbers is a bad idea. I don't know if it's both summer and winter squash, that would take a bit more investigation. But they all are in the same general family (Curcurbita) so it's likely they all are attacked.

The wilt actually is caused by a bacteria that gets into the cucumber plant when the beetle sucks its juices. It sort of plugs up the plant's vascular system so it can't transport water, hence the wilt. Some cucumber varieties are less susceptible to wilt than others. The so-called "hothouse" types fall into this category. And lemon cucumbers don't appear to be affected at all...or maybe the beetles don't like their taste....