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rainbowgardener
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Re: rainbow gardener's 2018 gardens

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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applestar
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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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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

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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rainbowgardener
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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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rainbowgardener
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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.

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

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rainbowgardener
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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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rainbowgardener
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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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applestar
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Looks wonderful and ready to go again. I always find it difficult to make that call — to Declare them “finished” and remove to make way for the next succession crop. So right now, some of my garden beds are pretty sorry_looking.... :oops:

imafan26
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Your gardens look really great. Compared to what you started with, you have put in a lot of time and work and it is very productive.



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