Tennessee 2019 Garden

[Gary350]

I almost did not pick blackberries today, I am tired of picking berries. Berries are slowing down only 3 cups today. I have another 1 gallon zip lock bag of berries in the freezer. We had 2 cobblers and I made wine, I was going to make Jam or Preserves but changed my mind so we wait. We might want a blackberry cobbler for Christmas dinner. Blackberry pancake syrup is always good.

I think it is time to harvest potatoes some leaves are dying. Online says, Kinnebec is a short season hybrid but it does not say how many months most potatoes are 3 or 4 months. It has been 3 months and we have been eating a lot of them early. I am going to start canning tomatoes there are several ripe in the kitchen and several more ripe in the garden. More beans to pick tomorrow.

[Gary350]

We have too many yellow squash, we are experimenting with different ways to cook them. I made Pico de Gallo for dinner to eat like tomato salad. I picked another 1/2 bucket of beans, more onions, more potatoes, more tomatoes. Thin slicked squash coated in fish beer batter baked 450 F in oven 15 min turned out very good. We are loving these Kennebec baked potatoes every night for dinner. This pick is almost as many beans as I picked a few days ago. Roma Flat Pod beans do not reproduce as quick as Blue Lake Bush beans after first harvest. Blue Lake first harvest is about 65% of total summer crop, Roma is about 90% on first harvest. So far Blue Lake has produce 2 times more beans than Roma & I have 50% more Roma bean plants. If this years crop is like last years crop it will be better to pull up all the Roma plants then plant new ones its not worth waiting for another 10% harvest, but we will see.

[applestar]

Do you have a dehydrator? I’ve made dehydrated sliced vegetable chips with summer squash that tasted good. Experiment with simply salted, allowed to sweat, then pat dry and dehydrate, or then coated with some kind of dressing and dehydrate.

[Gary350]

I finally tied up the tomato plants today and found several ripe tomatoes hiding in there. I canned 8 pints of green beans that cooked all night in 2 crock pots. 19 pints of beans will be enough. 9 pint canner had 1 empty space so I canned 1 pint of tomatoes. I picked another pint of blackberries.

[Gary350]

Corn is looking good especially after all the trouble I had 2 months ago with the soil ph being too high. Water melon plants have 2 melons largest one is soccer ball size. Tomato plants are loaded with tomatoes. Onions are ready to harvest I pulled up several to use today. Potato plants keep giving me mixed signals water shortage seems to be the problem maybe they will look better after tomorrows big storm. Bean plants are loaded with tiny beans after tomorrows rain beans will be larger and time to harvest. I have lots of cucumbers, don't need anymore pickles but will make more anyway next summer I won't need to plant cucumbers if we have 30 or 40 quarts of pickles in pantry this summer. Pickles will all be relish for, potato salad, hot dogs, chicken salad, etc.

[applestar]

You really have a big garden! Are the unplanted areas waiting for succession planting something else, or are you letting the space lay fallow for this season so you can rotate crops over next year?

[Gary350]

You really have a big garden! Are the unplanted areas waiting for succession planting something else, or are you letting the space lay fallow for this season so you can rotate crops over next year?

The unplanted area in first picture gets no direct sunlight because of 50 ft tall trees on the south border of the yard. About Sept 1st the row closest to the unplanted area will be in full shade too. By Dec 21 about 90% of the garden will be in full shade. I hope these trees don't grow much faster than they have been or they could become a shade problem for the garden. So far so good some plants can use afternoon shade in the hot summer weather. Plants all seem to do good with 7 hours of cool morning sun. About 2 more weeks okra should be ready to pick.

[applestar]

Maybe you could use the shady area for growing covercrops like clover or maybe something you can mow and then use for mulching or tilling into the growing area — “green manure” is the term I’m looking for.

I have the same problem — most of my garden beds are in full shade during the shorter days from fall to spring. Garlic won’t grow well where it’s in full shade too long.... and DH won’t let me expand out to the front yard where it gets full sun....

[Gary350]

We started canning tomatoes this morning. Wife wants to make stewed tomatoes so I pulled up a bunch of onions for her to slice and dice with celery while I cut up tomatoes and start cooking. Then I decided I better slice a squash for dinner. Tomatoes came to a boil quick I used potato masker to crush them when strained out the juice and pulp. Wife pureed skins & seeds then mixed them back into the tomato juice to make it thicker. We added a large bowl of chopped onions & celery. Stir well then filled 4 quart jars almost full. The canner holds 7 quart jars so we have to wait for 3 more quarts to cook them.

[TomatoNut95]

Awesome garden and gorgeous produce, @Gary350!

[Gary350]

6 am before it got hot I removed lower dead leaves on tomato plants so they get more sun, I hope this helps tomatoes get ripe quicker.

I notice onions need to be harvested. I was hoping to leave onions in soil all summer and eat them as we need them but onions are no longer attached to the soil by roots.

I had barely enough Amish Paste tomatoes to make 1 pint jar of tomato sauce. This turned out good.

I had a lot of cucumbers piling up in the kitchen so I decided to make more Bread & Butter pickles plus 1 quart jar of mixed vegetables, onions, yellow squash, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, green beans.

Wife made Taco Salad for dinner. Ripe tomatoes & garden onions sure make it good.

TomatoNut95, removed leaves won't be a problem that is the north side of the plants no direct sun on that side. The south side is shaded by 5 ft tall pepper plants and 8 ft tall corn. About 3 more weeks corn will be gone.

[TomatoNut95]

Love those tomatoes....and that Taco Salad!!! Thanks for making me drool!
I hope by removing those leaves your fruits won't get sunscald.

[lakngulf]

Great looking tomatoes, Gary. Loaded plants!! What varieties have you planted?

[TomatoNut95]

Five foot pepper plants?????!!! Oh. Wow!!! Mine NEVER get that big! My garden stinks.

Yeah, what kind of tomatoes are those? Beautiful!

[Gary350]

Great looking tomatoes, Gary. Loaded plants!! What varieties have you planted?

I planted 12 Big Beef these grow very well, tomatoes are large and plants produce lots of very good flavor tomatoes. They usually do good all summer, they slow down a bit in 99 degree weather and do better in fall when day temperatures are in the 70s again. Frost will kill them about Nov 7 I pick all the green tomatoes to ripen in the kitchen we sometimes still have 2 tomatoes left for Christmas dinner.

There are 4 Big Boy tomatoes it is hard to tell these from Big Beef they are good.

I have 4 Brandywine tomatoes flavor is about the same as Big Beef but these are very slow produces about 75% less than Big Beef.

There are 4 Beef Master that are having a deformity problem plus all the tomatoes rot before they get ripe. This is why I plant varieties if 1 or 2 variety of tomatoes do bad I can pull up the plants and still have a good crop of tomatoes and put 60 pints and 20 quarts in the pantry.

There are 3 cherry tomatoes 1" diameter these do very well in 99 degree weather and taste good too.

4 Amish Paste is something we have never tried so far flavor is good but they only get rip on the bottom 50% in the garden then bugs eating them up. I have been picking them earlier so they can ripen in the kitchen. Maybe we get lucky and get enough of these to Can 20 pints of tomato sauce & pizza sauce for the pantry.

[Gary350]

Five foot pepper plants?????!!! Oh. Wow!!! Mine NEVER get that big! My garden stinks.

Yeah, what kind of tomatoes are those? Beautiful!

Big Beef, Big Boy, Brandy wine, Beef Master, Cherry, Amish Paste.

I dig an 8" diameter flower pot size hole in the garden then throw in about 1/4 cup of 15-15-15 fertilizer, 1 cup of wood ash, and a hand full of rusty nails or old rusty food can from kitchen in the hole. Stir fertilizer and wood ash into to a quart of loose soil in bottom of hole then fill hole with water. Hour later when water goes down put 1" of soil in the hole then plant your tomato plants deep. Cover bottom 50% of tomato with soil tomato plants have the ability to grow roots any place soil touches them so the whole bottom 1/2 of the plant becomes roots. All those roots give the plants a good water supply in hot weather only time I water is about the first 7 days after planting then mother nature is in charge of keeping them alive. My plants are 6ft tall now. Never give tomatoes nitrogen unless they have yellow leaves you will get very large plants and not many tomatoes. Wood ash is 20% to 30% calcium this is good for BER. Wood ash is also very high potash = potassium this produces lots of very large tomatoes. It is not too late to plant tomatoes I planted 2 Roma and 2 cherry tomatoes 6 days ago from seeds they are coming up already. Today I pull up the smallest plants and leave the largest 1 to grow. If your careful use a kitchen spoon to transplant these time tomato plants.

[Gary350]

Today we are going to Can more tomatoes. We hope to have 7 quarts in the canner today. About 6 am I picked tomatoes & few other things. I only got 1/2 of a Beef Master that is not rotten all the others are deformed and rotten like last year. I'm not planting Beef Master tomatoes again.

[applestar]

I believe your deformed fruits are due to fasciated blossoms Subject: Megabloom/Fasciated blossom and fruits

If fused fruits in this variety is NOT typical, you may be able to find other sources that have selected for less or no tendency to form the fasciated blossoms.

[TomatoNut95]

My Black Beauty here looks like two tomatoes fused together. I think it was born on a megablossom.

[applestar]

Based on this official photo at Bonnie Plants, I think they selected for tendency to grow smooth doubles/megablossoms that would evenly grow to produce the fused beefsteak typically called “boat-shape” but maybe under heat stress, the fasciation/fusion is not uniform and pollination is uneven, ending up with the lumpy-looking fruits.

https://bonnieplants.com/product/beefmaster-tomato/

[TomatoNut95]

Heat stress is probably what's wrong with my oxheart. I'm fixing to just remove the plant. Is it too late to start tomato seeds now? I could try another one for the fall.

[Gary350]

Heat stress is probably what's wrong with my oxheart. I'm fixing to just remove the plant. Is it too late to start tomato seeds now? I could try another one for the fall.

No it is not too late to plant tomato seeds they germinate very quick 3 days in hot weather and grow faster than buying plants that are already 6" tall. I am going to pull up these Beef Master tomato plants today then replant Roma tomato seeds. I should have ripe tomatoes Sept 23. Cooler 80 deg weather should produce a lot more tomatoes than hot weather. My Brandywine tomatoes have only produced 2 tomatoes so far they are slow produces I should pull them up too and plant more Roma seeds. Roma make good pizza sauce.

[Gary350]

7 quart jars of stewed tomatoes with celery & onion ready for the pantry. I have been using pressure cooker 30 min at 15 psi it is boiling water out of the tomatoes. Maybe I do water bath canner next time.

Taco salad was so good last night we had taco salad again today only bigger with more tomatoes & more cilantro.

[Gary350]

It finally rained yesterday evening about 6 pm both rain gauges show it rained 2" in 30 minutes. Cucumbers were 1" diameter at 5 pm too small to pick. It is amazing cucumbers can grow 3 times larger in only 13 hours. I am not making any more pickles and have no clue what a person does with cucumbers besides pickles. I guess I throw 9 cucumbers in the compose pile.

I dumped the onions on kitchen country to inspect them and let them dry a few hours. They need to dry a few day on the table in the garage so I took them there. I forget 130 garlic has been drying on the garage table for over a month it is time to cut off tops and put garlic in the kitchen. Oriental lady told me, "No remove skin, you eat."

[applestar]

Subject: Infused water

I had some at a hospital when waiting for my wife to get checked out. So I found some recipes on the net. This one is lemon, lime. cucumber and ginger cut up in slices. You just let what you add seep into the water, you can keep adding water to it when you drink some. It gives the water a nice flavor and adds vitamins and good things to the water with out much calories, some recipes say no calories. It is a way of getting us to drink more water and less juice. The cucumber in it is good, who would have thought.

Also
Subject: Recipes for Cucumbers? How Do You Eat them?

[Gary350]

5 gallons of Roma Flat pod beans today.

[TomatoNut95]

Oh wow! Beautiful beans!

[imafan26]

That is a hill of beans. My sister likes beans. Depending on the type and age of plants and where they are grown, I have gotten pepper plants to grow 4-5 ft tall and one got up to 8 ft tall because it was reaching for light between the citrus trees.

You can make pickles out of cucumbers, but not all of them work well. Some will lose their crunch fast. You can make a cold cucumber soup, add cucumbers to vegetable smoothies, namasu (japanese pickle), add cucumbers to sandwiches, gazpacho, cucumber raita, cucumber sticks, cucumber dips and salad dressing. cucumber appetizers, Hollow out cucumber and fill cucumber cups with filling, banh mi sandwiches. Serve a a side with Thai food, it has a cooling effect after the hot and spicy foods, cucumber bread ( similar to adding zucchini to bread). I admit, sometimes I have too many cucumbers too. They don't end up in the compost, usually they liquify in the bottom drawer of the frig.

[TomatoNut95]

I would probably faint if one of my pepper plants got 8ft tall!!!! What kind of pepper was it, @imafan26?

[imafan26]

A Hawaiian tabasco chile. It resembles tabasco or super chili. It is long lived especially in the ground. The longest I had one was about 10 years.

[TomatoNut95]

Is there a way I can get my pepper plants to come back? Like cutting them down and mulch them before the first frost?

[Gary350]

Is there a way I can get my pepper plants to come back? Like cutting them down and mulch them before the first frost?

I would try putting a Harbor Freight Blue tarp over them in 6ft tall poles, use ropes on each corner to hold it up like you would a tent. I did this when I lived in Arizona plants are much cooler than direct sun and do much better in hot summer weather and fall too.

[Gary350]

This morning I picked all the tomatoes that look ripe enough to eat right now. After washing them I cut them into small pieces then cooked them in a 3 gallon pot. I strained out the skins then puree the skin and mix it back into the cooked tomatoes for extra flavor and thickness. This made 5 quart jars and there are several tomatoes left over.

I had several Amish Paste tomatoes they had to be sliced into 6 pieces right through each seed section so I could push out the seeds and jelly stuff into the trash. I saved only the pulp with the skin after cooking skins were puree into the tomatoes for added flavor and to make tomato sauce thicker.

I had 1 quart jar extra from yesterday that will go into the cooker today with these other 6 jars the canner holds 7 jars.

I decided not to pull up the Beef Master tomatoes yet they have ripe tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes are such a waste of time about 60% of it is green stuff in the middle and there are several rotten places in several of the tomatoes. It takes a lot of time cutting tomatoes into lots of pieces to save only the good part of the tomato.

I found a place to plant several Roma tomato seeds where potatoes use to be so Beef Steak can stay a few more weeks before I pull them up.

[Gary350]

More ripe tomatoes, I only have 10 empty quart jars left. Marconi peppers are big 9" long. Big Bertha pepper plants are loaded with too many peppers to count. We want Red color peppers but never get those until cooler Oct weather not sure why?

[TomatoNut95]

Nice tomatoes! Beautiful pepper! Ah, Big Bertha! Love that bell pepper! Too bad it's a hybrid or I'd save seeds from it.

I know peppers take forever to turn their colors, but I've never had to wait until October 'til they do. Must be the weather?

[Gary350]

5 more quarts of tomatoes for the pantry.

[Gary350]

We arrived home today from a week vacation in Michigan, unloaded the vehicle then ordered a pizza. After pizza I checked the garden we had storms that blew limbs out of the tree and kicked 2 bell peppers from a plant. I picked up peppers, picked squash & several cucumber. I just started picking tomatoes when a storm came then after the storm I picked more tomatoes leaving them on the ground to be picked up later. Another bigger storm came now rain gauges both show 6" of total rain for a week. Rain had not completely stopped so I picked up tomatoes in the rain. Rain is warm an feels very good. I rinsed dirt from tomatoes in 3 buckets then rinsed them again on the patio table. Tomorrows delima is what to do first we only have 1 quart mason jar left & no seals, we need to make a trip to grocery store for food. Tomorrow first order of the day will be, drink coffee on patio, listen to birds, feed cats, feed dog, & feed birds, relax a while. We might not go to store until after lunch. Blackberry bush has more berries maybe I pick those early or maybe not? Wife is already asleep on sofa.

[TomatoNut95]

Hope you had a great vacation! Ah, pizza! Thanks for making me drool! Nice tomatoes, cukes, squash, peppers, cookies and chips!

[Gary350]

This year we are targeting certain grocery store produces to can in mason jars. We have already canned about 15 quarts of stewed tomatoes with celery, onions, garlic. We also canned about 15 quarts of whole tomatoes. Today we are canning tomato sauce in quarts. Cut tomatoes in 1/2 like an orange or lemon then slightly squeeze to squirt out the seeds, jell & juice. Cut off the top to get ride of stem and any bad tomato and anything that looks, clear, green, yellow or white color. There are too many tomatoes to be fooling around with trying to salvage 1/4 or 1/2 of a bad tomato. First I tried the preferred way to cut tomatoes in 1/2 to remove seeds & jell then I tried holding stem end up then cut off 4 slices around the stem. Stem & core are not wanted core is usually green and white. I can push out jell with seeds with my fingers then dip tomato pieces in a water pan to wash out remaining seeds. Pulp & skin is all we save after cooking to a boil then puree in food processor color is blood red it looks and tastes exactly like grocery store tomato sauce. There is 1 quart is Amish Paste tomatoes the other jars are all mixed tomatoes, big beef, big boy, beef master, brandywine. Fill each jars then put in 4 fresh picked basil leaves before putting seal & ring to can in water bath canner.

Today we are having very good garden dinner, corn on the cob, fried squash, sliced tomatoes, fried okra, hamburger on BBQ grill. Why can't we eat like this year round, last time we ate like this was about Oct about 9 months ago. Maybe I freeze okra this year. Probably can't freeze or can squash. I need to make another blackberry cobbler. Wow dinner was good.

[Gary350]

Chinese stir fly for dinner with garden, corn, green beans, peppers, onions, garlic. Also broccoli, carrots, chicken. I found a zipper spider in front yard bushes, I was going to move it to garden then changed my mine. There are no bugs in garden, only bugs I saw all summer was first week of May. Birds are doing a good job keeping bugs gone.