racerttx
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Location: Texas

I have learned my lesson on the trellis. Next time it will be much taller and the the correct material so that I don't have to train them every single day. the only reason I used this stuff is because I already had it from a ferret cage I made.

[img]https://offinit.com/plot1.JPG[/img]
big beef tomato plants on the left, jalapeno in the center and cukes on the right.

[img]https://offinit.com/plot2.JPG[/img]
self explanatory

[img]https://offinit.com/src.JPG[/img]
this picture right here is of the small red cherry tomato plants (heirloom) I started indoors. this was the first day of hardening them off or whatever its called. I plan on planting them in one of my empty rows.

[img]https://offinit.com/trip/clivia_miniata.jpg[/img]
this is a clivia miniata a relative gave me.

[img]https://offinit.com/canna_color.jpg[/img]
this is the color of my cannas out front.

[/img]

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gixxerific
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My neighbor just put up a deck, of course I helped him build it. But it shades my garden a little now. Not much and only later in the day when the sun is going down. Actuary could be beneficial for sun\shade plants. It only really shades a small portion of it. Oh well nothing a can of gas and a match won't fix. :twisted: :P

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Earl K
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Of the six types of tomato seeds planted 4 days ago 5 of them have sprouted.Also 3 of 4 zukes have sprouted.Peas are now 6 in. tall.Heatwave tomato has about 20 blossoms opening so I think my fall plantings are coming :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

tedln
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racer,

I love your garden. Maybe you can leave the ferret out at night to keep the rats and mice under control. Just put him or her under the trellis and he will feel right at home :D .

You are a lot more courageous than me. Planting tomato and pepper seed this late in the season. Maybe we will have a real late first frost. I've never tried broccoli in my garden, but it should do well as a fall planting. I will be curious about how well it does.

keep us posted on how it progresses.

So far, I have been reworking my beds with compost and planting as I go. I have planted Goliath tomatoes, asparagus yard long beans, turnips, spinich, swiss chard, collard greens, iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, and yellow crookneck squash. I will plant garlic and a few other things tomorrow. I still have my spring cucumbers, better boy tomatoes, juliet cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and sweet banana peppers producing. My spring cucumbers are really looking pitiful, but they keep producing cucumbers on new growth. I am curious how they will react to about three inches of fresh compost on their roots. It may rejuvinate them or it may finish killing them. I pulled my last squash plant the other day and added it to the compost pile with the others. Most of my fall plantings are a first for me. It will either be a great success or a total failure. A lot will depend on how late our first frost of the winter is.

Ted

tedln
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Earl,

I suspect winter is the best time of the year for you to grow tomatoes on your porch. Do you get any winter weather cold enough to damage your plants?

Ted

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Earl K
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No real threat of frost or freeze,If so it may just get to freezing for an hour or two.First year so havent dealt with that yet.Also 80% will be in containers so they can come inside and sleep with us and the dog :) or just cover with a sheet :)

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Jewell
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Havested the last of the summer squash and all the tomatoes and the broad beans are in the ground in their beds. (Still have to find some recipes for fixing the broad beans) Some winter squash harvested and some still to harvest. Still have a lot of runner beans and second batch of cabbage to harvest. :) All season cauliflower, kale and beets looking good. :D Slugs ate the last planting of winter lettuce, and spinach that were not started in pots. :x Guess they like the really tender starts. Got the first batch of garlic in for next year. Made my first batch of green tomato chip dip. Yum, yum, yum. Hubby said we need to freeze some for sharing during the winter holidays. :wink:
Feeling the bounty.

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Earl K
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Jewell,green tomato chip dip?tell me more-never heard of that :?

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Jewell
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The green tomato chip dip was a trial and taste concotion. You do what you have to do to help use up some of those green tomatoes. :lol: We liked it so much I've started up the second batch. I couldn't give you an exact recipe, but here is the gist of it:

-olive oil to cover bottom of pan
-saute several garlic cloves and 1/2 diced onion
-fill large pot with green and almost ripe tomatos and cook covered until soft
-remove lid and simmer adding cumin, and salt to taste
-simmer until thick
-add large can of stewed tomatoes, can of roasted peppers, two cans of black beans and 1/2 cup of rice.
-cook until rice is cooked and mixture is thick

The green tomatoes give a tangy lime flavoring that is really good with chips. :D

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Earl K
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Thanks Jewell,I shall try that but maybe 1/2 the portions-only two of us.Sounds great :D

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Jewell
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Oh, I forgot the sugar that needs to be added to balance the acidic content of the tomatoes. I added it to the initial green tomato sauce. Good luck! :)

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Diane
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tedln wrote:diane,
My favorite type of gardening is cottage gardening. I like to see gardens that have a different surprise around every corner.

I have a friend who is a landscape architect and is going to work with me to see if we can bulldoze some dirt around, place some strategic rocks and boulders, and create a cottage garden that will aesthetically blend with our house. Our house is a renovated two story red barn.

Ted
I dream of a cottage with a garden growing around and over it. :)
Your plan sounds wonderful.

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Diane
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My tomatoes are turning red and still going strong. The butternut squash and cukes are still producing. My pepper plants stopped, but are now going strong again with lots of blooms and tiny peppers. I hope they have time to grow. A few potato plants are getting very large.
I planted radishes last week because they should be ready in less than a month and I could squeeze them in. They are my first fall planting. :)

tedln
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We ate the first produce from my fall garden today. I was very disappointed with the production of my Blue Lake, stringless, pole beans this year. I decided to try something different for my fall garden and planted the yard long asian, sometimes called asparagus; beans about a month ago. I had no idea what to expect and kinda considered them a novelty. I could not determine how they were doing. Their foliage is very sparse with lots of long vine between clumps of foliage. I had noticed an occasional purple blossom. but didn't think anything was growing from the blooms. I started looking real close the other day and realized that many of the long stems were in fact, long beans hanging down. Each bloom has two beans hanging from it when it opens. Each new bean starts out about 6 inches long. In two days, each bean is over 24" long and 1/4" in diameter. The first day, I only harvested about 15 beans, but they are so long, it made enough for a good meal for two.

I had read negative comments about the taste of the beans and didn't know what to expect. I told the wife if we didn't like them, I would pull all the plants tomorrow. I prepared the beans by snipping the ends with scissors, and cutting each bean into 2" segments. I then prepared them in the same manner we normally cook green beans. We drop them in hot boiling water and allow them to cook until tender. Drain the water, add salt and pepper with a little margerine.

We typically cook fresh vegetables just slightly more than blanched. I prefer cooked vegetables with a little crunch left in them. I cooked the asparagus beans a little longer to remove any strong taste.

After dinner, the wife told me to not pull the plants. She liked them better than regular green beans.

Ted

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gixxerific
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I planted some Blue lake beans as well they really aren't doing anything either, it has been pretty warm not HOT but warm.

I also have peas and brussles that aren't doing much. My Arugula and Swiss chard are going pretty good. Just planted a bunch of other things too that are just today starting to sprout. Oh and the Sweet potatoes are delicious but not real big. Mustard green bolted a month ago. Etc etc I will take some pics this weekend of my garden by then my sprouts will be up and I will more than likely have planted some other things.

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applestar
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Well, we had the two frosts last week but we're back to 60's/40's at least through Sunday. I'm dithering about my sweet potatoes. I've had them under floating covers for a while now. The leaves sticking out got frost damaged, but there were a lot of immature SP's in the the one 2'x2' block I dug up (me, a proponent of "no-till" gardening, and I'm up to my elbows digging up that bed all the way down to hard pan clay :roll: ) In addition, I found out when we went pumpkin picking at a farm not far from here that THEY are not starting their sweet potato "picking" until November 1. In the mean time, I came across a reference that said SP's should be dug up when soil temp falls below 50 as they'll rot in the cold ground.... :?

I also have Edamame still filling out under the floating covers occupying a good portion of my garden (the plants got MUCH bigger than I anticipated (definitely bigger than last year's bulk dry soybeans -- Edamame is NOT Bush Beans. :roll: They basically overwhelmed the lettuce and cole crops I planted for fall.) My whole carefully planned and imagined fall schedule is unraveling. :shock: I'll have to plan better next year to get a better organized fall planting in. Carrots are about the only intentionally planted fall crop I'm harvesting. Another crop that is still hanging in is Swiss Chard. The Rainbow Chards are looking brightly colorful in this cooler weather. I'm picking the last of the Sweet Peppers (floating covered for the past two weeks) out of the garden, and the peppers on the one Jalepeno plant, brought inside with the houseplants, are coloring up bright red one by one.

I fell behind on planting the garlic and potato/multiplier onions as well as Egyptian walking onions, but hopefully, they'll manage.

In terms of late fall harvest, the Enterprise apples are coming along nicely. I just finished baking an Alton Brown Apple Pie. :()

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gixxerific
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Wow you dug up the dead. :P

But glad to see you still have stuff going.

My sweet pots were harvested a couple of weeks ago, still eating them and they are great. Swiss chard still hanging in as well as spinach and some other varieties of lettuce. My mustard is unstoppable, too bad I realized I don't like it that much. I will know for next year. Arugula is unstoppable as well but I love that. Maybe next year I will be prepared with cold frames.

Beans were killed by a frost a while back but were harvested and actually had them for dinner last night along with with a fresh salad. Peas are growing like mad but the fruit on them are pretty sad.

I have had carrots in for a few weeks and garlic was planted last weekend.
As some of you may know I am experimenting with indoor gardening this winter, just went and got some more pots and soil, it is evolving as I said it would. 8)

tedln
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applestar,

Sounds like your garden is still doing well even after two frosts. I think and hope my first frost in Texas is still about a month away. I hope it is because I have a ton of tomatoes starting to ripen on the vine that I don't want to harvest green.

I am curious about the Edamame. I've noticed a number of gardeners starting to grow it. It has been my understanding that it is a variety of soybean that is grown specifically to boil and eat in the pod. I was curious about the availability of the seed for next years garden. I checked on wikipedia and learned it is the normal soybean, but harvested when the pods and beans are young and tender. According to Wikipedia, the name Edamame actually applies to the Japanese dish by that name which is only the young bean pod boiled in salted water and served in a sauce. Is the Wikipedia definition correct?

I am also curious about your floating covers. What do you use for a floating cover? Do you put weights on the edges? Normally when we get weather changes as a cool or cold front approaches from the North, we get some pretty high winds associated with the approaching front. I think any floating cover I try to use will blow away without weighting the edges.

Ted

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gixxerific
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tedln wrote:
I am also curious about your floating covers. What do you use for a floating cover? Do you put weights on the edges? Normally when we get weather changes as a cool or cold front approaches from the North, we get some pretty high winds associated with the approaching front. I think any floating cover I try to use will blow away without weighting the edges.

Ted
Yeah me too, I'm still a little confused as to how people do them. Do you build a frame? Do you just stick something in the middle to make like a tent, or do you just lay it over the plant using the plant as the "tent stake"?

Any pics?

Thanks

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rainbowgardener
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They sell floating row cover at any garden store. When I use it, I usually put it over a wire frame or hoop (the frames for political yard signs work well for this purpose) and then weight or stake down the edges. Earth staples are great for that, but you have to buy them, not inexpensive.

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applestar
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There are spun bonded sheets/covers of different thicknesses. The thinner ones are called "floating covers". Some garden centers will sell at least two -- lightweight/summerweight and frost protection weight. Walmart had just the super lightweight. Lighter weight ones are more easily ripped. On-line sources like Johnny's Selected Seeds and Territorial Seeds sell something like 4 different kinds (with % light transmission indicated).

Floating covers can be used without support structure because they're thin enough not to weigh down the plants (you do want a support over leafy crops). For light frost protection over sturdy plants like now, I drape them directly over the plants and use clothes pins and plastic clamps to clip them onto garden fences (my garden beds are all surrounded by 24"~28" chickenwire or rabbitwire fences), bamboo stakes, or even some heavier branches on woody plants like peppers and tomatoes. My only purpose is to prevent the frost from settling on the plants and to keep them a little bit warmer. As I mentioned, we're in 60's/40's right now. The lighter weight covers also transmit more light and don't hold too much heat in when it's sunny and temp in the sunlight is in the 70's -- so I can just leave everything covered.

When it's windy, I just use more clothes pins and clamps -- it usually works better to wrap the corner/edge of the cover around what I'm going to clip it to. I also poke bamboo pole stakes supporting the plants through any hole (by this time there are usually several) and then clip the edge of the hole to the pole, etc. I have to admit that sometimes, even that's not enough -- the wind is enough to billow the lightweight covers around and rip them to shreds.

In spring when the plants were smaller and the temps were down in the 40's/20's and 50's/30's, I surrounded the sides of the garden fences with a sheet of plastic and covered the tops with a double layer of (at the time new and hole-less) floating covers supported by hay strings tied across the garden fences. I wrapped the edges of the covers with tomato stakes, resting on the ground, to create a tight cover. I'm not sure what I'll do when the temps get down lower now. I had hoped to build a temporary hoop tunnel, but I might be out of time. I do have a hoop structure over the Sweet Potato bed, but I planted popcorn along one end of it and they're still not dried on the stalks.... :roll: I'm also concerned that if I put plastic over the SP's with some frost damage already on the leaves, they might immediately start to develop mold problems....

Anyway, hope that explained things a bit. Oh. A couple of my sweet peppers are covered with an old nylon shower curtain liner since I ran out of floating covers. It seems to be doing the the job. I think I mentioned elsewhere that I tear up strips of these lightweight covers (the ones that the winds have completely destroyed already) for tying up tomatoes and espalier branches. In the process of cleaning up the tomato vines, I've been finding spiders nesting in almost every knot. :D

tedln
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applestar,

A few gardeners have told me they have had good luck filling a few gallon milk jugs with hot water just before they go to bed at night. They place the jugs of hot tap water under the floating row covers and it seems to prevent a moderate frost from harming their plants for a few hours. Have you tried that?

Ted

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applestar
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Oh! I *have* heard of doing that, and I've used the method earlier in the spring (I used 2L soda bottles filled with water next to the basil transplants). I had not thought about that particular technique lately though. Thanks for reminding me. :D

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gixxerific
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Thanks for the explanations, I think I asked this before I remembered after I asked it again. Sorry but great explanations just the same.

To add to this, I read somewhere that if you are expecting a freeze to water thoroughly beforehand. Because the saturated soil will take longer to actually freeze than dry soil, If I remember right.



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