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rainbowgardener
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rainbow gardener's 2018 gardens

I have a seeds thread, but not really a garden progress thread
Screenshot 2018-03-09 garden beds.png
I had to do some work to get the spread sheet to show. I hid extra rows and columns, did a screenshot, cropped all the excess stuff out, and saved it as a png. If you click on it, it opens up very clear and easy to read, but I couldn't get it to show the headings which are my names for all those different beds. But that doesn't matter for anyone else.

Everything in spring 2018 is growing or planted, except the corn. Some of it is stuff that over wintered, mainly kale, lettuce, chard, garlic. Summer is just my projections/ plans

Finally getting it together to make myself a spread sheet should help with actually doing more crop rotating. Not shown on the sheet is that I just tuck flowers (especially marigolds) and herbs where ever I can find a spot for them. I have lavender, oregano, thyme, tarragon, mint, and sage in containers and bee balm, lemon balm, anise hyssop in the flower plantings on the fence lines.

The left most column is one of the circle quadrants. The other one isn't shown because it is the same all the time: strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, artichoke; all perennials.

To get all the information for the spreadsheet, I had to go back and look at last year's pictures. I was amazed how full and lush everything looked. Hope I can do it again this year!

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rainbowgardener
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Here's how my late winter garden is looking:
IMG_2132.JPG
broccoli and kale

IMG_2134.JPG
garlic, onions, lettuce, potatoes in the trench

IMG_2135.JPG
tiny baby carrot sprouts not really visible, snow peas
IMG_2137.JPG
cabbage, onions, parsley, and in the tray more cabbage and some artichokes

and under lights:
IMG_2130.JPG
tomatoes, peppers, basil, and a bunch of flowers

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rainbowgardener
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Harvested my first few asparagus spears today, with more to come! :D

Strawberry plants blooming....

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rainbowgardener wrote:Harvested my first few asparagus spears today, with more to come! :D

Strawberry plants blooming....
Pics please

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rainbowgardener
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So, even though we may still have a couple chilly nights, I gave up and have been planting and planting... I had seedlings I started, that were way outgrowing the little 3" pots, but I didn't want to up pot. So I'm sticking everything in the ground, including tomatoes and peppers!!

Pictures soon, my veggie gardens are looking beautiful!

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Yes... would love some pics.
I'm a bit worried about my 3rd year asparagus, no sign of them yet, last year around this time they were near 2 feet tall.
Although I believe this year we had less warmer days.
My 10 day looks good, I'm going to harden off this week and maybe toss a few plants in the ground this weekend, I'm going to hold off on the peppers though.
Good luck on the weather.

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rainbowgardener
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Compare to the pictures from one month ago! :)

Here is the bed with garlic, lettuce, potatoes now:
E bed - potatoes, lettuce, garlic.jpg
Here's the one with snow peas and carrots, which now also has tomatoes:
C bed - peas, tomatoes, carrots.jpg
Here's the one with cabbage, onions, parsley:
W bed - cabbage, parsley.jpg
and here's one with tomatoes and peppers, baby chard and onions (and kale seed down the other long edge) that wasn't pictured last time because it didn't have much in it:
S bed - tomatoes, peppers, chard.jpg
Not pictured are the last bed inside the picket fence, which has nothing in it now, but will soon be planted in corn, the two quarter circle beds and the one at the south end of the deck. That one has chard that was planted in January and is now huge!

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rainbowgardener
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Here's an overview of the beds inside the picket fence. The one with the shovel in it is about to get planted with corn seed.
overview picket gardens.jpg
(Incidentally the red door in the background is the tack shop at the horse ranch/ riding center behind our back fence. The white fence at the very back is around one of their riding rings.)

These are the quarter circle bed that has asparagus, strawberries, rhubarb, and globe artichoke. The artichokes were started from seed this spring and are small, but are marked with sticks:
strawberry-asparagus bed.jpg
strawberry blossoms.jpg
strawberries.jpg
Strawberries have blossoms and berries. The plants are looking a little wilted because I was walking around in the bed and pulling weeds from in the middle of them. They will perk up again.

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three weeks later, here they are again, everything is going to town!
fenced gardens.jpg
potatoes lettuce garlic.jpg
potatoes, lettuce, garlic, etc
peas and tomatoes.jpg
behind the peas are three tomato plants currently getting shaded out. Planting tomatoes behind broccoli works better, since it doesn't get as tall!
cabbage etc.jpg
the cabbage bed now has a couple squash plants that volunteered in to it
tomatoes kale chard.jpg
tomatoes, kale, chard
broccoli.jpg
broccoli got a little stunted because the chickens kept getting in that bed and decimating it. I really thought they were goners, but have pulled through since I put more secure fence around it. Probably won't get full sized, but I'm glad it lived!
strawberries.jpg
strawberry bed is full of these. Yum!

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rainbowgardener
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I always love to take pictures that are full of sky, because I love the beautiful blue skies down here so much.

This week we paint the pickets!

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applestar
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Oooh. I’m loving how it’s all coming together and how you are letting us share your pleasure in your new home and garden.

I really like the way you mix them up in each bed. :-()

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rainbowgardener
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I looked back at my garden progress thread from last year (you can find them by scrolling down to similar topics at the bottom of the page). Cool weather stuff is doing fine relative to last year, but warm stuff like corn and tomatoes, this year is way behind the same time last year. Not surprising, this year we kept on having late frosts and cold nights for so long.

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rainbowgardener
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New picket fence is all painted!

Image

Now we should do something about the ugly old shed. It used to match the house, but since we entirely repainted the house, the shed matches nothing. But what I would really like to do is get rid of the shed, which is full of mice and spiders.

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Wow what a difference painting that picket fence makes!
rainbowgardener wrote:Here's an overview of the beds inside the picket fence. The one with the shovel in it is about to get planted with corn seed.
Image
...I’m thinking it’s the same fencing you used for the chicken run, right? So if you were to get a few more sections, paint them white and attach them to the lower part of the shed like extension to the chicken fencing ... maybe “faux” window/fence boxes (or hanging flower bucket planters) planted with flowers, too... that might look interesting.

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Image

Broccoli is mostly done, just side shoots still coming. That is my third picking of strawberries and they are still coming, but smaller, not any of the really big ones like I was getting at first. There's a ton of snow peas out there, but once I pick those, they will be about done, because there's very few flowers left. A lot of the early planted chard and spinach is bolting and lettuce is wilted.

Time to clear out a lot of the cold weather stuff and plant more summer stuff.

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Did you ever mention what kind of strawberries these are? Are they June bearers or day-neutrals?
It’s good have different kinds — you Want the June bearers so you get them coming in all at once, enough for freezing, preserving and extra culinary experiments — like Ice cream or pie... but it’s nice to have the day neutrals surprise you with more when you start missing the fresh ones.

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rainbowgardener
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As you say, it is a mix.

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Aida
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Aww, I love the look of your beds and fence. The plants look great, too. Will you be planting something pretty to trail along the picket? :mrgreen:

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broccoli and cabbage 5-28.jpg
Broccoli, cabbage, kale, which now has also a couple pepper plants, a volunteer tomato, and corn seeds in between all the broccoli and cabbage.
corn and squash 5-28.jpg
corn and a volunteer squash plant. The bare spot has more corn seeds in it. The fence behind the corn plants is 3.5 feet tall.
purple cabbage 5-28.jpg
purple cabbage, overwintered parsley, onions, garlic, and volunteer squash
tomatoes and kale 5-28.jpg
tomatoes, kale, chard, pepper plants, basil. The tomatoes are way behind last year, but do have baby tomatoes on them

Some of those purple cabbage heads are at least 6" in diameter. How do you know when to harvest them?

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rainbowgardener
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Today's harvest:

Image

Image

Broccoli, kale , chard, lettuce, strawberries, purple cabbage, and one banana pepper. I have about 350 sq ft of raised beds planted in veggies and there is so much food out there now!

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applestar
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Wow looking great! What will you make with the red cabbage? What variety was it? I’m growing Kalibos this year.

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rainbowgardener
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good question. I have a ton of cabbage coming on and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I chopped those two heads into wedges and blanched and froze them, so I can figure out what to do with them later. (The blanch water turns deep purple!)

I grow cabbage because it is so easy and effortless and gives you so much food. But neither of us like sauerkraut and Jamie won't eat coleslaw or anything with vinegar. I do use cabbage in soups and sometimes stir fries.

For dinner we had green salad with broccoli, bean cheesy chard with brown rice, and strawberry shortcake!!

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My mom used to make red cabbage and chestnut stuffing for the turkey. Maybe that will be to both of your taste? (sans turkey :wink:). I’ve made German style pasta with sour cream and cabbage using red cabbage to surprise the kids. You can imagine the color! :lol:

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NICE harvest. There are lots of German recipes for Red Cabbage. I wish my Swiss Chard looked that good.

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Incidentally, they say to soak your cabbage in salt water, in case there are any little worms or anything in it.

That cabbage did have little green cabbage worms on it, before it had heads and when it was just starting to. I hand picked them off and smushed them, every few days for three times. Total probably smushed a couple dozen. After that I never saw another one. I don't know if I had managed to really eradicate them (seems doubtful) or if they just all turned in to cabbage butterflies (I am still seeing those).

Anyway, when I soaked the cabbage and then when I cut in to it, it was completely clean, no sign of any worms/bugs.

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harvested the first potatoes today, a few baby ones and one full sized one. They are beautiful red-skinned, very white fleshed. I always just plant grocery store potatoes and I wasn't expecting these red-skinned ones. I probably just forgot I did that.

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A lot of the early planted chard has bolted, but some is still going and is huge.

Image

Also, I was clearing a lot of the bolted chard out of the bed this was in and discovered mixed in with it a half dozen or so potato plant volunteers that I hadn't even known were there. Potatoes turn out to be sort of a perennial crop. When digging/ pulling them, you almost always end up leaving behind a few of the marble sized or smaller potatoes. This bed did have potatoes planted in it last year. So some of the baby ones left behind must have over-wintered and sprouted. I love things that come back all on their own. A lot of my garden is volunteers this year, the potatoes, several squash plants, a tomato, and a bunch of cypress vine that I planted to grow up my fence last year and which seems to have re-seeded itself nicely.

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Pulled the first garlic today and it was huge:
IMG_2275.JPG
All I do is pop cloves of grocery store garlic in the ground. I've no idea why it came out so big...

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today's harvest:
today's harvest.jpg

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Nice! Underground crops are always fun. It’s like digging for treasure. :()

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today's harvest:
peaches.jpg
Peaches from our tree!!

I never did any spraying at all, so most of them have some bad spots, but those can be cut out and we will still have a lot of peach. And there are still more on the trees.

Yay!!

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Nice harvest! Mine are still green....

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rainbowgardener
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oh man, why is canning so often a summer thing to do? I want an outdoor summer kitchen like the Victorian ladies used to have.

Made up 3 half pints of blackberry-peach-wine jam with blackberries from a friend's garden. And 3 half pints of peach-wine jam.

It is very yummy, but not fun standing over a hot stove, putting jars in and out of the hot water bath!

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I wish I had a peach tree or a bushel basket of peaches. Fresh peaches, peach jam, peach cobbler, peach wine all sound good.

How old are your trees & how much fruit do you get each season?

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rainbowgardener
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The trees were planted in spring 2016, so still youngish. One of them was loaded with peaches this year, maybe a gallon or more, not all of which were still good. The other one still has relatively few.

Besides all the jams, we still have maybe a quart of cut up peaches just to eat --- they are so good!!

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This isn't gardens exactly, but I thought I'd throw it in...

One of the things I love so much about being here in the South is the blue skies. Cincinnati seemed like it was always grey-- grey and cloudy and rainy in the winter, grey and hazy in the summer.
sky and garden.jpg
That was yesterday. That's the neighbor's yellow shed, though we have a yellow shed also. But it is our apple trees and fence line plantings

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last garden pics (on p.2) were a month ago, so here's an update:

corn and squash
corn & squash late June.jpg
corn and squash.jpg
(that silver queen gets SO tall!!)

corn ears
corn ears.jpg
acorn squash (volunteer)
acorn squash.jpg
garden view with volunteer sunflower
garden view late June.jpg
cherry tomatoes
cherry tomatoes.jpg
regular tomatoes
tomatoes.jpg
Not a great picture, but there's tons of full size tomatoes out there, six plants worth (one is unknown volunteer) besides two cherry tomato plants. Some of the full size tomatoes are blushed.

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Everything looks great, whatever your doing... keep doing it!

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Actually I have been very busy with Poor People's Campaign (https://www.facebook.com/anewppc/) and have paid very little attention to my garden for the past month or more. It has just been coasting.

Today's harvest:

Image

Image

dill seed, basil, garlic, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, hot peppers, chard, last of the broccoli. I didn't bring any in, but there is so much kale and cabbage out there. Being weighed is my first big tomato, a pink Berkeley tie dye, just under one pound. It isn't fully ripe, but blushed enough to finish off the vine.

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The garden was looking very mid-summerish, raggedy and suffering. Now it's all been refurbished: weeded out, dead stuff pulled, new stuff planted, stuff trimmed and treated for disease and pests, compost added, and a fresh layer of mulch.

The spring planted kale was all chewed up and full of holes. It turned out to be full of harlequin bugs; I killed dozens of them (cut off the leaf they are on, drop it on the ground, stomp it and grind it -- they have tough exo-skeletons and just stomping doesn't kill them). Then I looked them up and found that they are piercing/sucking types and weren't chewing the holes. There were also a number of small caterpillars and probably slugs. I disposed of the caterpillars and all the eggs I found (the black and white eggs of the harlequin bug and some unknown white eggs), trimmed off all the chewed up stuff, and treated with sluggo, diatomaceous earth AND Neem. So we will see if it comes back or needs to be pulled. Incidentally swiss chard was in the same raised bed with the kale and was untouched! If you can only grow one thing, grow chard!

Several of the tomato plants were suffering from septoria. I trimmed all that off, treated with hydrogen peroxide, fertilized (actual fertilizer, which I rarely do), composted and mulched.

I had started corn and squash in little pots, since for some reason I was having trouble getting it to start in the ground. So planted out 18 baby corn plants and a few squash (seminole and butternut)

The bed that did have corn and squash now has tomatoes and peppers (and a purslane I saved)
Image

the bed that had purple cabbage and parsley now has all the baby corn plants and a bunch of carrot seed in the ground that hasn't sprouted yet and a Thai basil.
Image

the bed that had kale and chard with tomato plants down the middle, now has the same kale and chard (as noted above) with bean seeds down the middle, as those tomato plants were too far gone, plus a couple pepper plants and a Thai basil.
Image

These are some of the tomato plants I saved and treated, with carrots around the edge:
Image

Overview:
Image

Still been harvesting lots of tomatoes, peppers, and a bunch of acorn squash. Here was one day's harvest, with a sunflower seed head from one of the volunteer plants
Image

Still need to refurbish all the beds outside the picket fence!! But the ones that are done should be ready to just coast again, with just some watering for the seeds and baby plants.

I love how the garden constantly changes through the year.



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