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applestar
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Re: Tennessee 2021 Garden

Gary350 wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:10 pm
...a potato cutting and it still might land upside down.
Hi @Gary350 — I don’t know if you ever reached a conclusion about this thought, but I’ve been coming across mentions that cut seed potatoes that are planted upside down tend to spread out more as the new shoots grow, and also tend to end up growing MORE but smaller size tubers when compared to seed potatoes that are planted right-side up. So as you harvest, you will see larger sized tubers but less of them vs. more numerous smaller sized tubers from each clump that grew from the seed potato.

Some people INTENTIONALLY plant them upside down, preferring to harvest more, smaller sized ones.

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Gary350
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applestar wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 6:39 pm
Gary350 wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:10 pm
...a potato cutting and it still might land upside down.
Hi @Gary350 — I don’t know if you ever reached a conclusion about this thought, but I’ve been coming across mentions that cut seed potatoes that are planted upside down tend to spread out more as the new shoots grow, and also tend to end up growing MORE but smaller size tubers when compared to seed potatoes that are planted right-side up. So as you harvest, you will see larger sized tubers but less of them vs. more numerous smaller sized tubers from each clump that grew from the seed potato.

Some people INTENTIONALLY plant them upside down, preferring to harvest more, smaller sized ones.
I have watched 100s of videos and read a lot of information about potatoes, lots of people claim lots of things but I have learned each variety of potato grows different and each will grow better or worse according to soil & geographical location & weather. I have seen many YouTube videos where most people claim potatoes must be planted with the sprout eye up but there are also several videos that claim it makes no difference it the eye is on the bottom or on the side. I have planted potato cutting all 3 ways, eye up, eye down, eye to the side, when I dug up new potatoes there was no noticeable difference. Some people claim cuttings grow better than a whole potatoes. Some people claim cutting must be a certain size no larger than 1" square. I have thrown grocery store potatoes peelings in the garden like trash and have them grow better than seed potato cuttings & whole potatoes. Plant 10 identical potato cutting 9 will grow new potatoes & 1 grows nothing but a plant with no new potatoes. I have compared seed potatoes to grocery store organic potatoes and have organic potatoes do best. Grocery store potatoes that are treated with chemical will grow but they are slow starters often a month slower than seed potatoes but they produce a crop no different than seed potatoes. There are some interesting tricks for growing potatoes if you over crowd 15 potatoes eyes in a very small spot they compete for moisture & fertilizer then you harvest a whole basket of marble size potatoes. All seed potatoes are not the same and among each group there are differences in seed potatoes. Some seed potatoes have a cluster of eyes on 1 end of the potatoes with no eyes anywhere else. Some seed potatoes have several eyes on 1/3 of the potato. Some seed potatoes have eyes on 3/4 of the potato but only a few eyes near 1 end actually will grow. Some seed potatoes have eyes on the whole potato where eyes on the top 1/2 are the only eyes that grow. It is very hard to find a seed potato with more 5 to 7 eyes most potatoes only have 2 to 4 eyes. I think commercial growers keep the best potatoes. Commercial growers plant 20 acres of potatoes every day for 4 months they don't have time to make cuttings they throw 1000s of whole potatoes all over the field then a machine covers them up. Home gardeners have time to carefully make cuttings & plant each 1 the way they want. Another interesting thing about potatoes, a cutting with 1 eye will grow 1 lb of new potatoes. A cutting with 2 eyes will grow 1 lb crop of potatoes too that are smaller size potatoes. A cutting with 3 eyes will grow 1 lb of much smaller potatoes. If you want large baking potatoes make cuttings with 1 eye. If you want smaller potatoes plant cuttings with 2 eyes. If you want smaller potatoes plant 3 eyes. Commercial growers say the trick to a large crop of large potatoes is ,irrigation, lots of fertilizer & cool weather. I planted some potatoes under a shade tree this year so they get cool morning sun then shade 12 noon to dark hottest part of the day. Potatoes don't like hot weather, TN is to hot. Maybe people that plant cutting with the eyes down are planting them too close together & getting lots of small potatoes, then they think upside down is making small potatoes but over crowding is probably the real reason for small potatoes.

Picture shows what is typical for TN each cutting makes 1 lb of potatoes. It make no difference if each cutting has, 1 eye, 2 eyes, 3 eyes, 4 eyes, total crop from each cutting is 1 lb of potatoes. 1 eye cutting will make 1 big potato. 2 eye cutting make 2 smaller potatoes.
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Gary350
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I can't plant anything in the garden Quick Sand season is not over yet. Auto focus camera tries to focus on rain drops, I can't get a good photo of the daily flood. Every day swamp is under water & another week of this in the forecast. No problem for onions & garlic maybe they will grow big as watermelons. No problem for tomatoes & peppers either. 3 rows of potato cuttings have rotted in cold wet mud an everyone is sold out of seed potatoes.
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Today is fertilizer day for onions & garlic before the 3 pm rain. Onions get Ammonium Sulfate until plants have a minimum of 13 leaves. Garlic gets 15-15-15. Candy onions & long day Spanish onions have 6 leaves. Onion plants = starts have 5 leaves. Onion tops are getting too tall next week it will probably be time to cut off all the tops to promote new leaf growth for 13 leaves. We need to find something to cook tops in, some can be frozen.

I got the cilantro out of the garlic by bending it over away from the garlic bed. Garlic is all very large except for the garlic shaded by cilantro. I have a bushel basket of cilantro.

Seed onion is very tall I tied it to a metal stake so it does not blow over in todays storm. We are having 30 mph wind. Another flash flood storm with 60 mph wind will be here about 3 pm. I have 2 small seed onions in a different location that are small with a volunteer potato near 1 of the onions.

I transplanted 3 volunteer potatoes into a new row. No way to know what this is, Red Pontiac, Kennebec or Russet. I still need to transplant the volunteer next to the seed onion. There are 7 plants if a 50 plant row.

There are a few potato plants coming up in 1 row that I thought was lost. I dug into the rows about 2 weeks ago to find several rotted potato cuttings. It appears some of the cuttings have survived.

Tomatoes & peppers are doing good no amount of rain or mud is ever a problem for these plants.

I need to wrap fruit trees with something to keep cicadas off.

Still too cold & wet to plant G-90 bicolor sweet corn, another week of storms in the forecast. This will be a late corn crop I believe this is 85 day corn. Harvest won't be until about Aug 15 if I get it planted by May 15. I will experiment with, 5, 6, 7, 8, inch spacing in 9 rows 33 ft long each.
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Gary350
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I keep finding volunteer potato plants in the garden, I started a new 25 foot potato row with all volunteer plants. I'm not sure which of the 3 varieties volunteers could be, Kennebec, Russet or Red Pontiac. I am digging up a shovel full of soil and moving it, if I could see red roots I would know they are Red Pontiac. I have been tossing out kitchen potato peels in a certain area volunteers in that location will all be Russet. Potato peels seem to grow plants much easier than some seed potatoes I have tried. I have grown potatoes from potato peels in the past I always get a very good crop of potatoes. It has been cold every day in the 40s every morning and over cast it only warmed up to 55 yesterday. Still too cold and wet to plant corn. My son said he does not want 150 ears of corn all at once he only wants 5 ears every day. I guess maybe I will only plant 5 rows of corn instead of 9 but that leaves a big empty place in the garden. I bought a 4 pack of Tabasco peppers & a 4 pack of tomatillos, I planted 1 tabasco & 2 tomatillos, not sure what to do with unwanted plants. Every day I see 1 or 2 more potato plants in the flooded potato rows it would be nice if all the cutting grow plants but if not I don't care there will be too many potatoes as it is.
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I need to cut tops of all the onions off maybe tomorrow, they should keep in the freezer. Garden has 5 empty rows so I planted 14 tomato plants with seeds to use up 1 row. I covered soil with boards & rocks that holds moisture & usually makes seeds germinate in 3 to 4 days in warm weather but it is still cold 43° this morning & warmed up to 69. Monday we have another week of rain & still too cold & wet to plant sweet corn. I found 1 more volunteer potato plant today. I planted 3 different varieties of tomatoes from seeds. Corn will be very late this year 87 day corn won't be ready to harvest until almost Sept. I put the chicken in the garden, wife wants me to make more chickens from scrap construction site lumber.
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Today is onion topping day. I topped about 50% of the garden onions. I tear gassed the whole house cutting up tops. We have 2 one gallon bags of onion tops. Wife has plans to cook with onion tops for dinner this evening. Online says, when onions show signs of being ready to bulb the onion will have a very thick neck. Here is a photo of an onion with a thick neck it has 11 leaves. Next I am suppose to fertilize plants with lots of potassium & phosphorous to make plants grow large bulbs. My father use to say, bend over the tops to make plants grow large bulbs. Plants that were not topped with be a test to see how they turn out with the leaves bent over. It is interesting my long day onions look the best and several have thick necks that indicate they are ready to bulb. I don't see commercial growers topping 200 acre fields of onions. I found a video of oriental people bending onion tops over. People that grow competition onions top their onions to get 1 lb onions. North end on onion row nearest camera gets full shade from a large tree at 3 pm south end of row gets on shade until about 6 pm.
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Gary350
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We had 2 days of sunny 70° weather, garden soil tests 69 degrees in 15 different places so I decided to plant corn today even though we have 5 days of rain in the forecast Monday to Friday.

Row 1 only has 4 Tabasco pepper plants.

Row 2 to 9 is 500 corn.

Rows 10 to 11 are 100 Kennebec cuttings. After being under water for a month only 31 plants are growing.

Rows 12 is 150 Kennebec plants with about 80 dead.

Row 13 & 14 is a 23" wide onion bed with 480 onions. Long day yellow Spanish onions are growing lightning fast I guess they need to grow fast in places like Michigan with a 3 month growing season. Yellow onion sets were very small when planted they are still small. Candy onions are doing good but not as good as Spanish onions.

Row 15 is nothing.

Row 16 is 13 tomatoes planted from, Bradley, Rutgers, 1" Cherry, tomato seeds.

Row 17 is a potato row with 4 tomatillo plant.

Row 18 & 19 is a 100 potato row with only a few plants that survived the 4 week flood.

Row 20 is a potato row with 4 big bertha sweet bell peppers. 34 out of 110 potatoes survived the cold wet rain & mud in 4 rows.

Row 21 is 13 big beef tomatoes.

Garlic bed from last year has about 100 garlic plants.

Total of about 300 potatoes planted and about 97 live plants.

Fruit trees look good. 1 peach tree has 1 tiny peach. I dislike watering these 6 fruit trees all summer. I don't like watering onions & garlic for another month. I over planted enough if I water nothing all summer there will still be a good harvest in our hot dry as desert summer. TV weather said, we are 25" above average rain fall so far this year.

Garden is finished if corn does not get flooded out by next weeks flash floods forecast Monday to Fri..
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Gary350
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Today I made 40" diameter wooden 2 piece donuts to put around 6 fruit trees to kill weeds & grass and hold soil moisture. Free wood from the construction site trash dumpsters. Not sure what weed this is with these nice looking flowers.

Several onions have developed thick stems day length must be correct length for them to start making bulbs. We are 1 month and 6 days from the longest day of the year. Tomorrow I need to switch to high phosphorus high potassium fertilizer.
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Gary350
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I decided I need a cultivator like farm tractors have so I built a small 1 with, 2 wooden wheels, 2x4 board, screws, wooden dowel rod axle & handle from old junk wheel barrel. This thing actually works. LOL. Dry hard soil acts like a oil lamp wick, moisture goes to the surface and evaporates. Soft loose surface soil acts like mulch it keeps soil below moist. 9 screws hand down 1/2" below the wheels.
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Gary350
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Corn seeds are not germinating 5 days of rain never came. Jet stream moved west an dumped 4 feet of rain on TX. Garden soil is already very dry in 85° sunny weather so I have been watering the corn seeds and other plants every day. Soil will not stay wet very long in this hot sun.

Onion tops have grown 11" since I topped them wow that is amazing they can grow that fast. Some of the candy onions are going to seed I need to pull off seed tops.

Potatoes surprise me every day several new plants come up every day. I have to water plants to make new plants grow. I dug up a whole row of potatoes cuttings they are growing plants they just have not reached the surface yet.

Wife wanted more chickens so I found 2 pieces of free wood in construction site dumpsters to make 2 more chickens. Wind blows them over very easy 24" diameter base is too small. Wife wants chickens in the garden so I will mount them on posts 12" deep in the soil perpendicular to the wind. Maybe I can make chickens swivel in the wind like a weather vane.
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Gary350
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Sense plants in full sun are about 25°F hotter than the air temperature keeping plants in full shade under a big tree all day prevents them from bolting too soon. It is 87° today cilantro & fennel are doing good and probably will be for another month. I want cilantro for salsa & taco sauce when tomatoes get ripe. These plants grow very well in these 2 gallon size pots they only need a small amount of water 2 times a week. A tiny amount of sun light sneaks through the big trees leaves sometimes, I might need to do something about that TV weather says, 90° tomorrow & 94° Wed. Typical TN weather flash flood rain stopped, it has not rained in a week, now its hot & dry no rain in the forecast.
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Gary350
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It has been 9 days sense we had rain it is good I decided to water corn seed rows or nothing would have grown. It has been in the upper 80s and 90 today garden soil is very dry. The 1 long potato row had very large soil cracks yesterday not sure if that means new potatoes are making it crack or of dry soil is making cracks. I ran water on potato row water went down the cracks like water going down the bathtub drain until cracks finally filled up with water. Corn germination was spotty yesterday but today it looks better it appears to be about 98% germination. I am waiting for garlic to tell me it is ready to be harvested, probably 3 or 4 more weeks. Tomato plants are growing fast. Sweet bell peppers look good. 4 potato rows are very spotty not many plants came up. Onions keep getting larger it is amazing how fast the green tops grow. When I watered onions today I see 1 onion bulb not very large about golf ball size. When soil gets this dry there are no weeds or grass seeds do not germinate. If I am careful to water only the garden plants & not the whole garden I am not water weeds seeds so weeds & grass don't grow. I keep loose dry soil on the surface all the time it shades the soil below and acts like mulch. Top 1" of soil is very dry but moist below that. Soon as corn is about 6" tall they don't get anymore water from me. I won't be watering peppers very much more either. The only than that will get every days water is onions & garlic.
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Gary350
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I have learned something new about potatoes. I planted cuttings 6 weeks ago and several have not grown. I very carefully dug up a row of 29 cuttings they are all alive with 1/2" long roots and a 1" tall plant that is not growing. I decided maybe fertilizer will jump start these cuttings an make them grow. I dissolved 15-15-15 fertilizer in 5 gallons of water then I gave each plant about 1 pint of fertilizer water as I replanted them. I only covered up each cutting with 1/2" of soil so the plants does not need to grow very far to reach sunlight. Out of 29 cuttings 10 are growing plants already. If the other 19 cuttings grow there will be a row with 29 Russet potato plants. I have 1 more potato row that is not growing so I will dig them up before it gets any hotter, 91° is forecast for today, it is 69° now & high humidity makes it feel like 85°. I use to like hot weather but now it is no fun.

Tomato seeds I planted are growing.

I put a temporary fence around onions to keep dog from running throw them & now I learn fence holds up the green tops so they don't fall over break the neck at the bulb. Onion plants 5" spacing hold each other up. I need to use fence in other places so I need to figure out something else to use for fence or build more fence.
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Gary350
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It is very interesting how a small 1/4" of rain is many times better for garden plants than what I can do with a water hose. Corn plants were 3" tall yesterday even, this morning corn plants are 6" tall. More rain expected Thur & Fri after 14 days of no rain.

New strategy for growing tomatoes is working excellent, I learned a lesson from growing onions switch fertilizers after plants are tall as I want. Equal amounts of NPK + calcium until plants are 6' tall then, low nitrogen & lots of PK + calcium to get large quantities of big tomatoes. Plants are 2' tall with several blossoms.

Sweet bell peppers are slow growing so far but plants look good. It has been too hot for plants to grow any peppers until cooler weather.

Several garlic plants look dead so I will dig those up later today after we visit the strawberry patch we want 1 gallon of strawberries.
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Gary350
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This morning I looked closer at my garlic. The very small plants are laying on the soil with several dead brown color leaves. Several plants are completely dried up so I dug them up. Next I dug up all the small plants laying on the soil. Larger plants are still standing straight up they can stay until they dry & fall over too. These are all hard neck garlic. The only thing I did not do last year was to keep garlic cold in the refrigerator for 2 months before planting them in the garden.

4 plants were growing planted straight up.

33 plants were growing laying on their side.

1 plant was growing up side down.

2 plants growing on their side have cloves like garlic should.

I have no clue why so may garlic were growing on their side & covered with 3½ inches of soil??? Maybe fall flash flood rain washed garlic out of the soil? Maybe I covered garlic with a lot of soil so they not wash away? I don't remember?
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@Gary. What climate zone are you in - what are your winter temperatures? What month did you plant this garlic? Do you know the variety - according to what I read, rocambole types are not suited to warm climates. Maybe that's what you have.

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I picked a basket of strawberries this morning. Wife sliced berries up for short cake & ice cream later today. I sliced off strips of dark color seeds to dry on a paper plate. White color seeds don't grow. In a few days I can harvest seeds they roll off the dry skin like balls. Seeds take about 3 weeks to germinate & 3 months to grow 3" tall plants. I can't remember when to transplant these to the garden? I need to watch another video about when to transplant strawberry plants.

Watch strawberry seed recovery video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQaok3J2ihI
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Gary350
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Vanisle_BC wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 4:22 pm
@Gary. What climate zone are you in - what are your winter temperatures? What month did you plant this garlic? Do you know the variety - according to what I read, rocambole types are not suited to warm climates. Maybe that's what you have.
I think we are in zone 7. We are 34 miles south east of Nashville TN, we are 37129. 50 miles east of us elevation is 1500 feet higher elevation they are in a different zone. I am in the zone that claims our winter low is usually 15°F. Temperatures were down to 15° this winter 3 times, 18 & 20 several times. I typically plant garlic 6 to 8 weeks before first frost. Our first frost is often about Nov 4 to 7. We had 2 weeks of 5° weather 3 years ago. I plant hard neck garlic, I have better luck with hard neck than soft neck. Soft neck is slow to grow it takes a whole month for them to grow tops. Hard neck are quicker to grow it takes 2 weeks for them to grow tops. Our winter weather is often crazy snow only about every 5 years, we had snow this year & last year, snow melts quick usually gone in 1 or 2 days. We had 80° weather 5 days in February. Nov & Dec are often in the 60° during the day 28°at night. Winter was slow coming this year it did not get cold until about mid Jan. We had warmer weather last 2 weeks of March than we had April 1st to May 15. We had 35" of rain April to May 15. We sometimes have 15° weather mid Nov with snow then 70° weather until Dec 30. Spring is typically lots of rain, this year rain broke records lots of flash flooding over & over. Summer is dry as desert June to Oct with 1" of rain per month. Our typical winter temperature are 25° at night & 55° during the day. Zip code here is 37129 you might be able to find weather conditions using zip code. I found an online graph once that shows our average monthly temperatures are 10° colder each month until lowest temperature are last 2 weeks of Feb then weather gets warmer 10° each month every month.
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pepperhead212
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I was going to suggest the possibility that heavy rains, which you have gotten a lot of, loosened the cloves, causing them to grow on the sides. Last year, I had one totally upside-down head - obviously my own mistake, of planting it upside-down!

Vanisle_BC
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@Gary, if you get nights below freezing, I don't think you should need to refrigerate garlic before planting. I'm 'officially' in zone 7 like you but I think it's more like 7-1/2. It's a few years since we had 'serious' frost - only an occasional night lower than about 25F; but my Sep/Oct planted garlic grows well. I'm just trying to say I don't think the problems you've had are for want of cold - must be something else.

All my varieties are hardneck too. The softnecks I used to grow had too many too-small cloves for my liking.

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...I just wanted to jump in to acknowledge the giant chickens- They are wonderful!! :-()

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Intermediate onion plants that I bought in a bunch were small they seem to be doing best when it comes to making large bulbs. The plants look small and puny with some plants that have 9 leaves. When I bought these they were marked generic intermediate yellow onions. Only the plants with 9 leaves are starting to grow bulbs. So far so good. When smaller plants with less leaves get to 9 leaves maybe they will grow large bulbs too.

Candy onions on the south side of the garden get full sun all day plants are growing very large some plants have 10 leaves. Only a few onions are starting to grow bulbs. Smaller plants with less that 10 leaves are not growing bulbs yet.

Candy onions north side of the garden is shaded by a tree second 1/2 of the day so plants are much smaller, fewer leaves, and no bulbs yet. Next year I need to remember to keep onions away from shade trees. These will probably become green onions not large slicing onions.

Long day onions are growing very large with 11 leaves. Some plants are 3 ft tall with most of the tops falling over. 1/2 of this row gets shade from a tree so they will probably never be big slicing onions. If June 21 longest day of the year does not make onions bulb then they never will. Online shows our day length 14 hrs but 60 ft trees east of garden blocks sun until 8:30 am. Neighbors trees blocks sun about 6 pm. Onions can get 14 hours for sun but only 9½ hours of direct sunlight.

Summer is not over yet wait see what happens.

Bottom right corner is a grocery store onion gone bad so I planted it now it is growing seeds. This seemed like a good idea at the time but now not so sure. These are probably long day onions.

From what I see so far I need to plant intermediate onion seeds about Oct on south side of garden 1/2 way between shade tall trees and maybe we will have some big slicer onions by July 2022.
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Gary350
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Rain, over cast, cooler weather, has made several more corn seeds germinate. Garden hose in 93° hot sunny weather is not as good as rain & cooler cloudy weather. 500 seeds planted and 13 never grew that = 97.4% germination. Sweet G 90 bicolor corn germinates better than Peaches & Cream. G 90 has a 2 week longer growing season, plants, ears, kernels, will all be larger. I found a YouTube video about History of Corn, yellow dent field corn is a much stronger plant than sweet corn. I was expecting 50% to 60% germination from G 90 because that is what I got with the other 3 sweet corns I tried. White color Silver Queen corn is much better germination than the 3 bicolor corns I tested.

1 potato row is dying soil is too dry. I planted 1 row 4" deep where there is good moisture, the other row is 1" deep soil is too dry. I have to water the shallow row to keep plants looking good. More experiments. Our desert season is June to Oct.
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Love the look of those onions and the corn! Must be a monumental task to process all that.

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Taiji wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 9:48 pm
Love the look of those onions and the corn! Must be a monumental task to process all that.
Yes this would be a lot of work if we get an excellent harvest for every crop and had to keep all these vegetables. Some of this is a learning process to learn how to grow a better garden next year with less plants for a 1 year food supply for pantry & freezer. I was expecting 50% corn germination and we often have big summer storms with 65 mph wind that destroy 1/2 the corn. I plan for worse possible weather & hope we get enough or too much. Super sweet corn that is 72 day crop are small ears it takes a dozer ears to fill a 20 ounce bag with corn kernels for the freezer, last year we froze about 30 bags of corn & only 2 bags left in the freezer today. We hope the G90 corn is large enough ears that maybe we only need 125 ears next year. If I could learn to get a good potato crop with less plants that will be good. I learned starting potato cutting in pots a month early inside the house is a very good idea, I will do that again next year. Tomatoes often get blight July 20 then die a few weeks later. Wife wants 20 quarts of tomatoes for pantry we have 2 weeks to do that before plants die. I think 100 intermediate onions will be a much better crop next year planted from seeds about Oct. My 2 sons will get some of these vegetables.

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Gary350
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Copper sulfate spray is not helping the granny smith apple tree. Directions say, spray once a week. Tree is getting worse so I spray every day. Tree is still getting worse. This tiny $21 bottle of copper mix will get expensive for a 10 foot tall tree it will take 5 gallons of spray every week. Cost of saving the tree out weights cost of buying grocery store apples $1 each. I am going to pour 1 gallon of this copper mix on the roots let the roots suck copper up into the tree. Tree better get healthy soon or it will get replaced with a different tree. Tiny fungus spots have become bigger thicker fungus spots. TN is the, mold, mildew, fungus, capitol of the world. None of the sprays stop tomato blight either.
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Gary350
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We got 2½" of rain in 2 days. Wife wanted onion tops for potato salad & sandwiches for lunch so I picked some. I noticed several garlic tops turned brown & fell over so I dug up 23 more garlic. I don't usually cut off garlic roots & tops until after they dry but all this rain caused roots & tops to be brown color mush. The large garlic have cloves, small garlic are round like small onions. There are several more garlic standing straight & tall. I planted ¼ of the saved strawberry seeds in the 2 gallon pot on the right. I have tomato seeds in the 2 gallon pot of the left. I got about 300 saved seeds from strawberries that I picked. The other 2 pots to the left have cilantro & fennel.
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Gary350
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I am about to choke to death and go blind cutting up all these onion tops, I need a military gas mask. I dried 1 paper plate of tops already it worked good in the house in AC. I gave up trying to bend onion tops over they tangle on each other and won't bend over.

2" of rain made onions grow fast. Mud finally dried up enough this evening to walk in the garden without loosing both shoes in the mud. I cut off about 1/4 of all garden onions tops. Wife wants to freeze the rest of the onion tops but that will completely fill up both freezers. We have been eating onion tops in every food we eat they are very good.

Several onion bulbs are getting big about 2" average size. Candy onions in full sun all day & onion plants are doing best so far. Candy onions in 6 hours of shade & long day onions are all tops, no bulbs yet.

Wife froze about 3 lbs of our strawberries, I ate the last of the not frozen strawberries this evening with pound cake & ice cream.
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TomatoNut95
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I don't believe I've ever seen so many onion greens in all my life! My onion tops are browning and falling over, I think because of the rain. I'm harvesting the bulbs, and having to give most away. How long will an unopened onion last in or out of the refrigerator? Unless I make soup, I don't have a use for so many onions at once. But I do have future pizzas planned, and perhaps some pasta.

I gave some bulbs to my aunt and she froze them. I suppose I could do the same, but I don't like to do that because they lose their best flavor.

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Gary350
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TomatoNut95 wrote:
Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:13 pm
I don't believe I've ever seen so many onion greens in all my life! My onion tops are browning and falling over, I think because of the rain. I'm harvesting the bulbs, and having to give most away. How long will an unopened onion last in or out of the refrigerator? Unless I make soup, I don't have a use for so many onions at once. But I do have future pizzas planned, and perhaps some pasta.

I gave some bulbs to my aunt and she froze them. I suppose I could do the same, but I don't like to do that because they lose their best flavor.
You should cut onion tops short about 8" so tops are not heavy so they can't fall over. No tops causes the plant to grow larger bulbs & more tops. Have you seen the price of dry chives & dry onion tops in the grocery store. We have been making up ways to eat every thing we can with onion tops, egg omelet, salad, stir fly, Mexican, meat balls, chili, pizza, BBQ bake beans, soup, sausage, sandwiches, potato salad, coleslaw, baked potato, cheese dip, Pico de Gallo, sauté onion tops. Now we have too many tops to eat an 2 gallons in the freezer, so we need to make dry tops. We are going to have more than we know what to do with so we will need to give some away. We will have too many onions also, maybe, storage on some of these are 3 to 4 months.

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It is interesting 9 more garden corn seeds germinated 3 weeks late because of all the rain. I lost 1 corn plant to moles the whole plant fell into the mole tunnel. Storms will be here in a few more hours TV claims 3" of rain today. Humidity is so bad fogged camera lens has to be cleaned before every picture. 9 late corn plants will probably be too late to pollinate. I took pics of all 9 tiny plants but decided not to waste forum space with all 9 pictures.
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3 Kennebec potato plants died so I dug them up to see what I could learn. 2 plants each grew about 4 oz of new potatoes each, the other plant grew 3 oz of new potatoes. Cuttings were started in pots in the house about April 1. Plants almost died when we had no rain for 15 days so I watered plants then we had 2" of rain then plants died. Go figure? Potatoes are a 4 month crop not 2 months. 3 potato cuttings grew almost 11 oz of new potatoes. I typically get 1 lb of new potatoes per plant from a 4 month crop. I typically plant cutting in the garden April 1 and we don't usually get 6 weeks of flash floods dumping 35" of rain in 6 weeks. Plants were getting full sun 90% of each day except full sun was very dark gray over cast sky for 6 weeks.

Left to right plant grew 1 large potato + 3 tiny potatoes
Center plant grew 3 potatoes very near equal size
Right side this plant grew several small potatoes.
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I dug up the rest of my hard neck garlic today leaves were drown & dry and most stalks had falling over. We have 38 more garlic for the pantry. 38 + 22 + 33 = 93 total this year.
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We have been in a drought & brush fire alert watch for a week. I have not been watering anything in the garden except small tomato plants started from seeds & onions. It rained almost 1/2" last night. I found 1 more garlic hiding among the cilantro. All the cilantro that grew for 9 months all winter is going to seed.

Left to right, 4' tall tomato plants, 4 sweet bell pepper plants, 3 rows of Russet potatoes, 4 tomatillo plants, 11 tomato plants started from seeds, 480 onions, 3 rows of Kennebec potato plants, 8 rows of corn.
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Last edited by Gary350 on Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

imafan26
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Your garden looks great!

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Gary350
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imafan26 wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 12:40 am
Your garden looks great!
Thank you. It seems like more work than it was 10 years ago. I feel like I aged 10 years after setting inside the house watching it rain for 6 months.

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Gary350
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I checked the Black Raspberry plants today the new plants I started 3 years ago are loaded with berries. Old plants are loaded too. I picked 10 gallons from old plants last year in 2 months, I hope to get 10 gallons from each berry patch this year. Lots of new plants coming up everywhere in the yard we need to be careful not to mow new plants down. There are plants coming up all over the whole yard maybe birds have dropped seeds. I'm not sure if these seeds grow does anyone know ????? If seeds grow and YOU want seeds I will have about 3 gallons to throw out, I can mail you seeds to start your own plants. Cumberland Black Raspberries wild & native to south/east USA. Berries are big as quarters with about 50% less seeds than most other berries. I like to tell people these plants have hybrid thorns they are very BIG thorns but berry picking is very easy just move slow and don't jerk away if you feel a thorn touching your arm. I pick berries with short sleeve shirt and short pants it keeps me from getting snagged and can't get away. Berries are often ripe about June 20 usually about 2 weeks before blackberries. Berries are ripe for about 2 months only as long as berries continue to be picked. Stop picking berries & plants stop making berries. One year about 20 years ago I picked berries until mid Sept. These berries make excellent, Jam, Jelly, Pancake syrup, cobbler & WINE. Raspberries are the same family as Blackberries, flavor is the same, only difference is stem pulls off of the raspberry but not the blackberry. I like to call them Blackberries most people don't know what raspberries are. Every time we move to a new house I dig up raspberry plants for the new house. Plants like full sun all day.

First picture is last years 2020 berries.
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Gary350
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I put all those diced onion tops on pans, inside my Honda vehicle, parked in the very dark over cast sun. Sun barely heats car to 140°F onions were about 80% dry after 1st day & completely dry 2nd day. All that volume is now about 5 cups, LOL. Dry onion tops taste like little green pieces of paper. LMFAO
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Gary350
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This morning I notice a man 3 blocks up the road has a very nice garden in his back yard. This evening I returned at 6:30 pm to find him in the garden. I never met this man before we had fun talking for a while. He has a nice 20 ft row of lettuce & 20 ft row of cabbage. I have never been able to grow cabbage or lettuce in hot weather it gets bitter and milky. He has 22 tomato plants he said blight is never a problem. What am I doing wrong my tomatoes always die from blight about Aug. He has red sweet potatoes & red Pontiac potatoes in hills. He plants white potatoes in late Feb or March 1st. He said, potatoes have no plants frost keep killing the tops, potatoes will grow plants after last frost about May then dig up potatoes crop about June 15. He plants things I don't know that I can grow. North side of his garden is a border line of 40 ft row of asparagus 1 long row that is 3 ft tall he harvested it 2 months ago. He has peppers & melons too. His strawberry patch is 3 ft wide 20 ft long it has been growing the same plants for 40 years. He has a 20 ft row of blackberries on a fence. He has an oregano plant that has been growing back every year for 20 years. He has a 20 ft row of onions & harvested his garlic a week ago. He has a 6 ft tall Tarragon plant that grows back every year. My tarragon died last year. He has 20 sweet bell pepper plants they put all the peppers in the freezer. I have 4 sweet bell peppers that is almost to many for us. He did not plant corn this year he said, corn is getting to be too much work at my age. His favorite fertilizer is 6-12-12 just throw it around plants you don't have to worry about burning the plants. They don't can in mason jars anymore. I sold 115 of my pint mason jars a few days ago. Only thing we will can in mason jars this year is tomatoes. He has no problem with his garden being under water like I do. I learned several new things to do in my garden. We had a lot of fun talking.



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