Tennessee 2019 Garden

[Gary350]

Today I planted 5 water melon plants that I started from seeds in a tray a month ago. I only want 3 plants but I planted all 5 plants anyway. I also planted 6 pickle cucumber plants I started from seeds a few weeks ago. I planted 3 yellow squash from seeds and 3 zucchini from seeds. I am keeping seeds covered with a flat board or flat rock to hold moisture so I don't need to water and soil does not dry out, seeds germinate fast & plants are coming up in 3 to 5 days.

I am waiting for bean planting weather. Weather was 83 today 10 degrees above normal, 60 degrees at night too cold for beans. After the big rain maker and cooler weather moves through the area Saturday maybe I can plant beans & okra.

We have a mocking bird that sings its lungs out all day. The bird is so loud I think it has its own PA system, wonder why it never gets a sore throat. Most of the time bird is in the tree next to the patio at back door but some times it flies to other trees to sing then it returns to the tree at the patio. Bird sings the same tune over & over 98% of the time it is nice to hear a different song sometimes. LOL. Today I took a video it is the only way to get sound but no way to upload it here. Video turned out good you can hear bird singing its lungs out.

[Gary350]

My Egyptian walking onions have a lot of flower buds too many to count there must be 100. I assume they will all become a seed onion bulb.

[Gary350]

I used a sifter to get small partials from the free mulch I got for the garden to make my own potting soil. Seeds germinate and grow a small plant but plants never grow larger the potting soil has no food value for plants. If I fertilize the tiny plants they grow larger.

[Gary350]

It was 90 degrees today an going to be in the mid 80s all week. My thermometer shows soil temperature is 68 degrees so I tilled the last 3 rows in the garden, pulled a straight line then fertilized each row. Then tilled in the fertilizer and planted 1 row of Blue Lake Bush beans & 1 row of Roma Flat Pod beans. I planted 30 okra seeds in row 13. I need something else to plant in the other 1/2 of row 13. Today 1 Marconi plant is starting to come up in 1 of the pots it took a whole month, maybe there will be more plants come up in the other pots. I am sure I can find other things to plant in row 13 maybe 3 more cherry tomato plants. This is my 3rd year planting my own Blue Lake bush bean seeds saved from last years 2018 crop.

[Gary350]

Garden is finished. Now we wait for rain an watch it grow. I planted too many tomatoes & too many peppers we wanted to try new varieties this year. I may have too much corn but we have 2 squirrel families of 12 squirrels that love corn when it got ripe last year they ate 20% of the corn. Corn is a 65 day crop when it gets harvested about July 10 it will be replaced with beans to add soil nitrogen & grow more beans. When potatoes & onions are harvested they gets replaced with carrots and beans. We will have plenty of beans for seeds to plant next year plus about 60 pints of green beans for the pantry & dry beans too. New Mexico peppers mild chili peppers will give us about 30 pints of enchilada sauce, 15 pints of red chili sauce for the pantry. Soon as potatoes are 2" diameter we start eating them instead of harvesting the whole crop when they are mature. We will have corn on the cob in the freezer plus wife wants about 30 pints jars in the pantry. I hope to get 12 pints of Bread & Butter sweet pickles from the cucumbers to make relish for potato salad, chicken salad, & other things. 200 hard neck garlic will replace 1 potato row Aug 1st. I planted 500 carrot seeds in Nov after 3 days of rain soil will be easy to harvest carrots then we will see what we have and I will plant more. Garden does not seem like work because it is FUN & we have good food. I seldom spend more than 1 hour per day in the garden and I don't work in it every day, that adds up. No work for a while once a week I will keep tomatoes in the cages.

120 Kennebec potato plants
40 Red Pontiac Potatoes
298 yellow onions
50 red onions
50 white onions
106 garlic
12 Big Beef tomatoes
4 Big Boy tomatoes
4 Brandywine tomatoes
4 Beef Master
9 Cherry tomatoes
4 Amish Paste tomatoes
4 Big Bertha sweet bell peppers
4 Jalapeno peppers
2 Marconi sweet peppers
8 New Mexico mild chili peppers
400 sweet corn
340 Roma flat pod beans
240 Blue Lake Bush beans
30 okra
3 yellow squash
3 zucchini squash
12 pickle cucumbers
3 water melons
300 carrots
1 broccoli
10 Napa cabbage
30 radishes
8 chard
7 Herbs

[Gary350]

It rained all night the mulch that I tilled into the soil is doing a good job of keep standing water out of the garden. Weather man says, rain every day until Sunday. Very heavy rain Saturday maybe 2" to 3" of rain. I hope mulch does not cause dry soil in 98 degree summer weather. Examinations shows a very good large root system in the soft mulch soil. Today is going to be a nice warm sunny day exactly what good seed germination needs.

[Gary350]

Today I put a dog fence around the garden on 3 sides. I had 5 sections of chain link fence that I linked together. I had 6 sections of another type fence that I connected together. One fence is held up with wooden stakes on both sides and gravity keeps fence in place. The chain link fence is held up by 3 pieces of wire on each post. It took about an hour to put this up. Last year I learned dog will run all the way around a fence to bark at strangers and stays out of the garden. Corn is starting to come up I don't want dog to trample down corn & beans this year like last year.

[pepperhead212]

Gary, I saw on another thread that you were trying to germinate some Marconi pepper seeds. Do you want some more seeds to try? A little late for peppers, but they weren't that late, when I grew them. Another large sweet pepper I have seeds for is Aconcagua. The only other sweet peppers I have in my bag is Jimmy Nardello - looks like cayenne, but no heat - and Lipstick, which was a freebie this year from Baker's.

[Gary350]

Gary, I saw on another thread that you were trying to germinate some Marconi pepper seeds. Do you want some more seeds to try? A little late for peppers, but they weren't that late, when I grew them. Another large sweet pepper I have seeds for is Aconcagua. The only other sweet peppers I have in my bag is Jimmy Nardello - looks like cayenne, but no heat - and Lipstick, which was a freebie this year from Baker's.

I think if I had more Marconi seeds it will be a month before they germinate by then we will be having 95 degree weather and they will be the only plants in the garden that will need to be watered every day to keep them alive. June is our vacation month we don't need to be home until about July 4th for the harvest. I should have seeds from my Marconi plants for next year.

We got another 1" of rain last night an 1" the day before that makes about 37" of rain since November. Rain in the forecast again every day next week. Temperature in the 60s mold is high allergies are bad & 1000s of mushrooms everywhere. Garden plants are looking good.

[Gary350]

Today we had a visitor to the garden I have never seen before. It is a blue bird that is all blue. I have seen other blue birds with brown color breast several times but they are too quick to get a picture. This bird is not afraid like other birds it stayed for 30 minutes going from 1 tomato cage to the next pecking on tomato leaves several minutes at each plant. Bird must be eating something on the tomato leaves. Bird flew away quick it appeared to fly into the bird house on the pine tree but I'm not 100% sure. It is starting to rain again I am going in the house. Click on pictures they get larger.

[applestar]

Do you think it might have been Indigo Bunting? — I saw one in my garden on Wednesday... a very rare visitor that I’ve only mentioned seeing on the forum 3 times since I joined.

[Gary350]

Do you think it might have been Indigo Bunting? — I saw one in my garden on Wednesday... a very rare visitor that I’ve only mentioned seeing on the forum 3 times since I joined.

Indigo Bunting......I don't know? I am 40 ft away not close enough an this digital camera does not take good close up photos. If I could use my old F Nikon camera with telephoto lens I could zoom in and get an excellent pictures but can't even buy 35mm film anymore & can't get film developed anymore. Sometimes I wish I had a better camera, I like this small pocket digital. I use to carry 2 Nikons around my neck all the time 45 years ago when I was doing lots of photography an developing my own film. I wish I could get the quality of a good camera in a tiny pocket digital camera. Rain stopped I went outside only had to wait about 5 minutes blue bird showed up again. I got about 20 pictures most are not very good, here is the best photo. Bird looks like it flew into the bird house again. Maybe later I move my chair closer if it does not scare bird I can get closer pictures. I did online search for Indigo Bunting this bird has same wing markings as Indigo Bunting but appears to be a much more blue color.

[applestar]

Indigo Bunting is kind of like Gold Finch — the male’s color get flashier and brighter during making/breeding season — except it’s bright blue instead of bright yellow.

Last time I saw Indigo Bunting, it was around this time of the year in May, and it seemed like the blue male Indigo Bunting had flown in with a flock of male and female Gold Finches and flew off with them. I still don’t know if they tend to fly together, but the 1st year male, and off-season plumage of Indigo Bunting seems similar to Gold Finches as well — brown/grey vs. brown/olive — and both have bits of the flashy blue or yellow feather here and there. Gold Finch males will grow black accent feathers. 2nd year male Indigo Bunting turns brighter blue.

I thought it would be really funny if Indigo Bunting male had joined a flock of Gold Finches, then as the season progressed, it turned blue instead of yellow.... Kind of like an “Ugly Duckling” story. LOL

[Gary350]

I am setting at the edge of the garden in my chair making interesting learning observations about the garden. I planted whole potatoes this year like industrial potato growers do now I can see there are 2 to 7 eyes growing up from each potato. Just for the purpose of math I counted how many plants are on the first 23 potatoes. 6,4,4,3,4,4,5,4,3,4,6,4,2,2,3,3,2,5,5,5,2,5=90 average is 3.91 plants per potato. 80 plants per row = 313 potato plants per row. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, I want to remember what potato plants did then after the harvest I can see how many potatoes I really have. Now I understand why industrial potato growers say, use 2.5" diameter seed potatoes with 6 or 7 eyes per potato = 560 potato plants instead of 313. Second potato row was planted a week or so later it appears to have less plants. If there are 500 plants total there may be 500 potatoes. Some of these plants are Red potatoes they out produce white potatoes about 3 to 1. I am only assuming 1 potato per white potato plant.

Industrial potato growers have a machine that throws 1000s of potatoes at random all over a 100 acre field. Then another machine pushed the soil & potatoes into rows. Shortly before harvest another machine cuts and removes all the plants. Then another machine scoops up each row of soil shakes out the soil and puts potatoes into large trucks.

[Gary350]

Onions are looking good. I planted about 300 onions, 3 rows side by side 4" apart, rows are 40 ft long. After planting sets about 10% of them started to grow tops in 5 days those plants are the largest with 8 leave = 8 ring onions. Week after week more sets grew tops it was slow until we started having none stop rain every day again for several weeks. Now it appears all the sets are going tops all at various stages of growth. This is very good we can harvest the largest onions 1 by 1 all summer as we eat them instead of having 1 large onion harvest. Soil preparation was lots of mulch, 15-15-15 fertilizer, Urea fertilizer, and wood ask.

[Gary350]

Now I see why Blue Bird keeps returning to tomato plant Buffet these plants are loaded with 1000s of tiny bugs. It is early to have this many bugs, I think this is going to be a bad year for bugs. I bought a 5 lbs box of baking soda ph = 8, I want to try this first so Blue Bird can continue to eat bugs. After a few days if bug situation is not looking better I will spray plants with milk. I need 40 more Blue Birds to eat this many bugs. Double click photo it gets larger. Every leaf on every tomato plant looks like this only on bottom side. I hope, 1 cup baking soda, 1/2 gallon warm water, 1 teaspoon dish soap, mixture sprayed on plants does not kill tomatoes plants.

[applestar]

Those red aphids are sometimes called “tomato” aphids, though they might be just taking on color pigments from what they drink.

You are in luck though — I see aphid mummies — bloated tan-colored hard-shelled aphid soon-to-be-carcasses. Those are aphids that have been used as host by predatory aphid mummy maker wasps. Later you will see a tiny hole where the wasp has matured and crawled out. One to each aphid. So you already have Garden Patrol troops on the job.

Aphid Parasitoids | University of Maryland Extension
https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/aphid-parasitoids

White flaky looking things are shed skin of aphids that have grown enough to move up to the next instar size.

[Gary350]

Cold rain finally stopped after 2 weeks, sun is out & it has warmed up to 70 degrees. Thermometer shows soil temperature 80 degrees near the surface. I decided to crawl through the garden an plant a few seeds in the blank places. Some bean plants are just stumps where a plant use to be. I also notice new bean plants are still coming up. I planted a few new seeds making sure they are all 1/2" deep where warm soil is.

Corn seed test in flower pots that are inside the warm sunny fish aquarium shows 90% germination. My poor corn germination 2 weeks ago in the garden must have been from sudden weather change 90 degrees in the day then 70 in the day and 50 degrees at night with 2 weeks of cold rain every day. I am very surprised, beans, okra, cucumbers did better than corn.

Wife is making authentic Spanish Chili with a pork roast. Cook meat until it falls apart like pulled pork, add onions, garlic, tomatoes, beans, spices. I pulled up 130 garlic that were planted in Nov they are very small and will never get any larger. I put 34 garlic bulbs into the chili including the dices tops. We made Chinese stir fly few days ago with about 30 garlic bulbs & dices tops. We both bragged how good stir fry is wonder if it is form all the fresh garlic. Garlic is a mix of soft & hard garlic planted together same time same place.

[Gary350]

Today I planted nitrogen fixed beans around, melons, squash, cucumbers, peppers, corn. I replanted corn with random spacing between seeds = about 360 seeds planted 6" to 7" apart.

[Gary350]

It was 93 degrees today an fills like 115 standing in full sun. It actually fells good setting in the shade with a glass of ice tea, it turned out to be a very windy day after lunch. For the next several days I need to keep corn rows wet for good germination. After seeds germination mother nature takes over.

[Gary350]

Something is eating the leaves off of my bean plants and leaving stumps. I am not seeing anything during the day, no butterflies, bugs, worms.. Squirrels don't eat leaves. It must be a night visitor. Dog will bark at any animals day or night. Dog & cats will catch small animals. I am putting replacement seeds in the soil as plants are eaten. Sooner or later there will be a crop of beans.

[Gary350]

I have been waiting for this mud hole to dry up so I can till the soil. Rain water runs off this metal roof and makes it look like a flash flood, even a sprinkle rain makes a lot of water for this spot. Potatoes were planted here last year now there are volunteer potatoes. I dug up volunteer potatoes 2 month ago now there are more volunteer potatoes. I dug up about 30 small potatoes with the shovel then I tilled the soil, I kept seeing more small potatoes but they were gone before I could stop the tiller an get them. Oh well we have plenty of potatoes for dinner tonight. Wife is going to cook, country fried steak and green beans for dinner these potatoes will be very tasty boiled an eaten with butter.

My Swiss chard finally came up it has been so long I had given up. I planted these 1st week of Sept that was 9 months ago. I like Red Swiss chard better than green, red is harder to grow, red usually dies before it gets large enough to eat.

Our yard use to be farm land soil here is very good even with no soil preparation. I am going to plant spaghetti squash and acorn squash here. This is not a large spot if I keep vines growing in a circle there is plenty of room, we should have plenty of squash to eat.

The wooden guards I put on the tiller works very well it keeps soil from being thrown out the sides into the grass where I am not going to till.

[Gary350]

I replanted my corn an watered the seeds every day at 7am, 1pm & 7pm for 6 days. Day 7 corn was coming up. Corn has continued to come up for 7 days and I continued to water while more seeds germinated. There are 340 corn plants. I dug down next to a few corn plants roots are 4" deep so plants need no more water from me. Mother nature is in charge now. As I predicted it has not rained in 2 weeks and no rain in the forecast for the next week. We were having 20 mph wind every day spin off from the storm that traveled across the USA, today was 93 degrees. I planted a bean seed between all the corn seeds to give corn nitrogen.

Something is still eating my beans, I replanted seeds again yesterday for the 3rd time.

I have been straying all my tomato plants with a quick hard 5 second blast of water from the garden hose every evening all the bugs have been knocked off and plants are looking good.

Onions are looking good several plants have 10 leaves. I talked to a man at farmers market yesterday his onions are 4" diameter with leaves 30" tall he fertilizes his onions once a week with wood ash, Urea & water. Yesterday evening I did the same thing I fertilized my onions with wood ash & urea then plenty of water.

Potato plants are making lots of white color blossoms.

Tomatoes have yellow blossoms and are getting taller most are 2 ft tall, some are 3 ft tall. Several have 1" green tomatoes.

Pepper plants have blossoms and a few plants have small peppers. Once temperatures are in the 90s I don't expect peppers to blossom or grow any more peppers until cooler weather late Sept. I am going to experiment with shade cloth to see if I can get peppers to blossom in hot weather.

3 water melon plants are doing good, 15 pickle cucumber plants are looking good, 3 yellow squash plants are growing larger, only 2 of the 3 zucchini seeds has germinated. Okra is growing good too. 75 garlic plants have made large green leaves with no bulbs so I gave them Urea, wood ash & water yesterday.

[Gary350]

It seems like it has not rained in 2 or 3 weeks but after reading through here it has been 15 days since it rained. Garden is very dry an could use a good hard 15 minute rain. Everything is looking good. Potato plants have had blossoms for several days. Some of the larger onion plants have 10 leaves. Some tomato plants have reached the top of the cage. 1 of the Big Bertha bell peppers has a 4" long pepper. Corn seems to finally have all come up. Not all the beans planted in with corn came up. Still having a problem with beans something ate some plants I replanted 3 times and keep watering the seeds to make them germinate. Most of the okra is up but not growing and that is how okra does it drives a person nuts just setting there then all of a sudden it decides to grow. 15 cucumber plants are finally all up. 3 melons are up. The new crop of squash I planted a few days ago is up that is amazing because I only need 4 plants and all 16 seeds germinated with no rain & no help from me. 5 rows of corn, 2 1/2 rows of beans, 1/2 row of okra. I ate 1 radish it was good.

[Gary350]

Cats caught more voles last night they usually leave their dead bodies at the back door and on the patio. In the past we never saw this many voles as we do now maybe it has something to do with construction behind the house. 10 acres of over age 50 retirement homes are being built south of us, land has been cleared food supply for voles is gone. 20 acres across the road east of us was cleared for houses too. 20 acres to the north sold 4 days ago that will be condos soon. So much for living in the country we won't be in the country much longer. Maybe I should experiment with sprinkling shelled corn around the edge of the garden that might keep voles out. I'm not sure voles are the problem something keeps eating the bean plants. No rain in 18 days.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/sear ... tion=click

[applestar]

Wow that’s going to really change the landscape and biology ... even micro-environment around your home. You are probably seeing effects from all the clearing they did already,

We went through that over the past 20 years — it used to be all farms and horse farms and wild wooded areas and the housing development we live in was one of the firsts — sounds like it’s all happening at once around you though?

Once the houses are built and occupied, traffic patterns will change, too ...especially during school and commute rush hours.

[Gary350]

Cats killed a baby rabbit last night. I have not seen a baby rabbit in about 30 years it did not occur to me there are any small rabbits around that can get through the fence, I know adult rabbits are too big to get through the fence. Baby Rabbit is probably what has been eating the beans. Where there is 1 baby rabbit there are probably more. I hate it cats killed this cute little rabbit.

Green tomatoes are 2" diameter it was only a few days ago tomatoes were 1" diameter. It has not rained in 3 weeks I am surprised tomatoes are doing so well and growing so large so soon we don't usually have ripe tomatoes until July but it appears we might have ripe tomatoes sooner this year.

There is 1 large bell pepper 4" long on 1 pepper plant, lots of blossoms, and several tiny marble size peppers forming on the other 16 plants.

I continue to blast all the tomato plants 1 by 1 every evening at sun down with about 5 seconds of water from the garden hose, there are no bug on the plants. I hate to spray water on the garden it makes grass and weeds grow but 5 seconds on each plant barely makes the soil surface wet no grass or weeds are growing. I remember once reading how plants take in sunlight all day in the hot sun when sun goes down and plants cool off the plants switch to grow mode about midnight where they do most of their growing after dark. Spraying plants with water cools them sooner so they switch to grow mode sooner this gives you larger better garden plants. I could have read that in college it has been too long, does anyone know anything about this.

Not much to do in the garden. Before dark I will sprinkle a little wood ash around each tomato plant, each squash, pepper & melon plant to prevent BER. Calcium does not seem to stay in the soil very long it needs to be replaced about every 2 weeks all summer. I will spray some water on each wood ash to wash it into the soil. Sometimes I put 1 quart jar of wood ash in 5 gallons of water then fill empty milk jugs to pour a squirt of water on each plant I think this method is easier.

[Gary350]

I harvested 132 garlic bulbs they did ok for being planted in full shade, in 4" deep mulch with no soil preparation. I think mulch has very low food value for plants. Last week garlic plants started dying, today plants were looking bad so I pulled them up. It is not the best crop of garlic but its better than nothing. Wife & I were joking about cooking garlic soup to eat some of this up. LOL. We cook a lot with garlic in winter but not much in summer. Summer time food recipes does not call for garlic. How about, garlic banana bread, garlic salad, garlic coleslaw, garlic potato salad, garlic squash, LOL. I will plant some garlic in July I want to see how well hard neck garlic grows in hot weather. I hope best time for me to plant garlic turns out to be last week of July so garlic can be harvested first week of Nov.

[Gary350]

Sunday evening pictures of the garden. Every thing is looking good nothing to do but wait. It is suppose to rain Friday. Yea right, wait an see. LOL. Potatoes blossomed last week. Onions tops are tall and falling over. Tomatoes are 4ft tall with several green tomatoes. Peppers have blossoms, 1 plant has a large pepper. Corn seems to be growing very slow. Beans are getting larger. Okra is getting too much shade. Melon & squash plants are finally starting to grow larger.

[Gary350]

The garden has chlorosis. 40+ years ago I killed my first garden when I put mulch on it that is why I never use mulch until now. I was hoping aged mulch will work fine but it is not aged enough. It is very interesting to notice plants that need the most nitrogen like corn is the most effected by low nitrogen = chlorosis. There is a lot of good information online about chlorosis, what causes it and the cure. When soil nitrogen goes low soil ph will often go higher. When ph gets above 8 ph minerals in the soil become locked up plants suffer from low iron and leaves turn yellow. Some plants will recover by adding nitrogen but some will not. By lowering soil ph it makes nutrients available to plants again.

Tomatoes & peppers are showing no signs of chlorosis. I gave pepper plant a tiny bit of nitrogen anyway but not the tomatoes. Both tomatoes and pepper are doing good plants are loaded with fruit.

Potatoes leaves were pale green this is a sign plants have a very mild chlorosis problem. I gave potato plants a very small amount of nitrogen just to see if it works or if they need more nitrogen. It turns out 1/4 cup Urea in 4 gallons of water poured on 2 rows 40 ft long each was all it needed leaves look greener. Online info says, nitrogen will not last it will be an every week battle to add more nitrogen to keep plants happy in soil with too much carbon.

Beans, squash, melons, were all showing yellow leaves. I am a surprised beans are having as much trouble with low nitrogen as squash and melons. I gave the plants a small sprinkle of Urea it was not enough so I gave them more Urea few days later. Now plants look good.

I can not tell by looking if onions need nitrogen or not but I am sure they do online says, onions need N & K and lots of it. Onions are tall and look good bulbs are starting to get larger. 25 days of no rain is not helping.

Corn has the biggest problem with chlorosis. Plants are very yellow and not growing. I gave them nitrogen a few plants went crazy and grew 8" taller but most plants are still not growing. I mixed a gallon of kitchen vinegar with enough water until PH paper said 4ph. I poured the 4 ph water directly on the corn plants roots making sure water soaks down into the root area of each corn plant plus added more nitrogen. Several plants color changed from yellow to green and grew taller. So far so good. Some plants changed from yellow to green but still will not grow. Some plants are still yellow. OH well looks like we will be lucky if we have 70 good corn plants that get big enough to make ears as long as I keep feeding them nitrogen all summer. One year I planted corn Aug 10 and had a very good crop of corn in Oct, I'm not sure I will do that again I would like to be finished with the garden by August. Dig down test shows a lot more mulch in soil near center of corn patch, near the end rows where there is less mulch plants have less problem with chlorosis.

Today I saw red head wood pecker in garden, I should have had my camera.

[applestar]

Tilling as much as you do, burying the mulch is probably unavoidable, and it would too much work to rake off the mulch, till, then put the mulch back... and doing that might negate one of the benefits of mulching.

f the mulch stays on top of the soil and develops the soil-mulch microbe zone in the interface, all kinds of good things happen.

[Gary350]

Tilling as much as you do, burying the mulch is probably unavoidable, and it would too much work to rake off the mulch, till, then put the mulch back... and doing that might negate one of the benefits of mulching.

f the mulch stays on top of the soil and develops the soil-mulch microbe zone in the interface, all kinds of good things happen.

80% of the mulch is saw dust it was intended to be tilled into the soil like compose. So far so good expect for low nitrogen problems. I sifted powder from the mulch and use it to sprout seeds it worked good in, pots, plant trays and the herb garden. Potatoes, tomatoes, onions, peppers are doing good. Squash, melons, cucumbers, beans, are having a slight problem with low nitrogen. Corn is nitrogen hungry it is the only crop doing bad. If I had given corn nitrogen first day I noticed light green color leaves corn would be doing good. If I had done what it says online and not hesitated and waited another week to see if corn will be ok on its own without my help corn would be doing good. Today I see about 50% of the corn crop has recovered compared to 15% few days ago. I am finished with garden for now. I like to plant then there is nothing to do for 2 months. Then harvest.

[Gary350]

We got our first ripe tomato today 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Wife & I cut it in 1/2 and ate it. Wow it tastes so good. More ripe tomatoes in a few weeks.

5 days ago we picked our first Big Bertha bell pepper. Wife made potato salad with part of it for lunch then made stir fly with part of it for dinner. Next day she used part of the pepper in chicken salad lunch. Today we made more potato salad with bell pepper. Pepper turned out to me a male with a mild pepper flavor. It does not have the strong bell pepper flavor like grocery store peppers or garden sweet bells peppers I have grown. I will definitely grow more Big Bertha peppers next year.

[Gary350]

Today I noticed a lot of bird activity at the Blackberry patch so I decided I better go look see what is going on. These plants are native to TN they are called Cumberland Blackberries. According to technical information these plants are actually Black Cumberland Raspberries, not Blackberries. The give away is, Raspberries are ripe 2 weeks sooner than blackberries. Raspberries are much larger than blackberries. Raspberries have few seeds vs blackberries. Raspberries pull off of the stem where stems usually break away from the plant and stick to the berries. Both fruits belong to the same genus ‘Rubus’ and the same family ‘Rosaceae’ that they are often confused with one another. This is also why these two fruits are called ‘brambles.’ Bramble fruits are characterized by the clustering of smaller fruits (druplets) to become one bigger clump of fruit. If you pick every berry on the plants they will continue to grow more fruit for many months, although fruit production slowly slows down most people get tired of harvesting fruit after 2 or 3 months and stop picking at which time plants stop producing berries. They make good, cobbler, pie, cake, jelly, jam, preserves, wine. All I care about is cobber and wine an not necessarily in that order. LOL. The first gallon of berries will be 1 gallon of Cabernet Sauvignon wine. If plants make 2 gallons of berries there will be 2 gallons of wine. If there is parts of a gallon of berries it will be cobbler. Todays harvest is 1 cup = 54 berries.

[Taiji]

Love the Big Bertha! I put in a few Big Bertha peppers this year after having read about them on this forum. Mine are way behind yours of course, but can't wait to get something like you have there!

I'm always envious when people in the south get tomatoes so soon! Took a chance and planted out some peppers and tomatoes a couple of weeks ago. Had to go out 2 times and cover with buckets to protect. I think I'm safe now at last.

[Gary350]

Love the Big Bertha! I put in a few Big Bertha peppers this year after having read about them on this forum. Mine are way behind yours of course, but can't wait to get something like you have there!

I'm always envious when people in the south get tomatoes so soon! Took a chance and planted out some peppers and tomatoes a couple of weeks ago. Had to go out 2 times and cover with buckets to protect. I think I'm safe now at last.

Taiji, what elevation are you? What AZ town are you near? I have always thought 7000 ft would be a good elevation for a summer garden in Arizona mountains. When I lived in Phoenix area only things that grew well in 114 degree summers was, melons, okra, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, grapes, garlic, onions. My best garden was planted Nov 1st everything grew excellent in 70 degree winter weather short days made no difference, tomatoes & greens did good. Napa cabbage was about 20 lbs each. Broccoli, chard, tomatoes, beans, squash, greens, potatoes, all grew good in winter. 3rd week of Feb sometimes it got below freezing and killed the garden. If no freeze that was good everything grew until heat killed it in May. If frost killed plants I planted new garden March 1. Corn grew tall an looked good but it would never pollinate humidity is too low tassels were not sticky. Shake corn tassels in 5 gallon bucket add some water & few drops of dish soap stir corn pollen into water stray water on corn silks to pollinate corn.

I have been picking blackberries every morning and every evening, I get 1/2 cup to 1 cup each time. I have a yellow squash that was growing larger and larger very fast then suddenly stopped growing. I though we would have squash for dinner this evening but no we have to wait maybe a few more days. Squash usually grows very fast not sure what happened it just stopped growing.

My camera takes good pictures on over cast days so I took several pics of the garden today. It is raining again today, it has rained for 4 days the garden loves it.

Potatoes are looking good, plants were tall now they have fallen over.

Onions looking good too. I hope we can CAN onions in 1/2 pint jars and freeze some in bags we don't eat as many onions in summer as winter. 300 onion is a bunch my 2 sons will need some.

Tomatoes are loaded with green tomatoes there will be a ripe tomato explosion soon.

Peppers are doing better now that we are having cooler wet weather. Plants will not blossom in hot weather.

Corn is doing much better most of the plants have survived the low nitrogen problem.

Squash plants have small squash. I planted more squash seeds in other places to keep a corp going.

Cucumbers are loaded with blossoms there might be a lot of pickle size squash sooner than I think.

Melon plants are starting to grow longer vines in all this rain, 4 days of rain, my rain gauge shows, 2, 3, 2, 1/2 inches of rain.

Bean plants are loaded with baby beans soon there will be beans to pick.

Okra has suddenly started to grow they were tiny things for several weeks.

[Gary350]

This is our first 2019 garden dinner. Wife made meat loaf and ask me, what do you want with it. I went to the garden and returned with a hand full of green beans, she said, go get some more. I said, I can probably dig up a few nice size potatoes so I did. We were not planning to eat this squash until tomorrow after it grow a bit larger but what the heck lets eat it now plants are loaded with more. Only thing that would made this better would be ripe tomatoes. I see 7 tomatoes that are mostly red they will be ready to eat soon.

[Gary350]

Has anyone ever thought of making a small meat loaf so you don't have to eat it very day for a week. When the kids lived at home meat loaf was gone fast if it was cooked in hamburger shapes or spaghetti meat ball shapes. We had meat loaf again tonight, I dug up 5 more potatoes 3 were 2 times larger than the ones I dug up yesterday. I picked several Roma flat pod beans to cook for dinner too. We had, bakes potatoes, meat load, beans for dinner. I see 8 very red tomatoes in the garden that will probably be ripe enough to eat for dinner tomorrow. I have 1 cucumber large enough to be sliced pickles but only 1 is not enough for a whole pint jar of pickles. We had a very hard 15 minute rain about 5 pm maybe the 6 smaller cucumbers will be much larger tomorrow. I have 5 pickle jars of blackberries, 4 are in the freezer. I am putting them all in a 1 gallon freezer bag. For some reason frozen berries turn red color. You can tell from looking which ones were picked a few minutes ago. Scales show 3 lbs 6 oz of blackberries that means I really have less than 1/2 gallon by weight. I need 8 lbs of juice to make 1 gallon of blackberry wine.

[Gary350]

We picked our first ripe tomatoes today, 1 brandwine, 1 Amish paste, the others are Big Beef.

I picked enough small green beans to eat like snow peas in stir fly.

I picked a Marconi pepper, New Mexico pepper & Big Bertha pepper to put in India Stir Fry. Wife cooked chicken, sliced onion, 3 garlic cloves then added, Red Cabbage, Green Cabbage, green beans, peppers. After it cooked a few minutes she added a jar of Takki Masala sauce. We cooked no rice, we ate this over 1 of the garden baked potatoes.

We ate the Brandywine, Amish paste, and 1 Big Beef tomato.

It was so good I wanted more but I am too full to eat more.

[Gary350]

After the big storm we decided to eat blackberry cobbler & French Vanilla Ice cream. Garden is loving all this rain every day for a week. BIG storm last night 2 pm, lightning, thunder, every 5 seconds, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, I loved it but it scared wife to death. LOL. Cucumbers are growing larger fast. Black berry cobbler is so good, recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of berries that needs to be changed to 3 1/2 cups. Oh well so much for home made blackberry wine. LOL