Tennessee 2024 Garden

[Gary350]

I experimented with a 50 year old water sprayer it turns out that it works much better than dragging a 100 ft long hose up & down each row. The shower head sprayer is for up close watering so I have to drag the 100 ft hose every where. The old sprayer shoots a stream of rain drops 40 ft that makes it very easy to water my 32 ft long rows. I decided to start watering morning & evening, this morning was very easy 5 minute job to water 20 rows the 100 hose would have taken 15 minutes to keep stopping to drag the hose out of each row so not to damage plants. I wonder how many carrot plants die very day at 3 pm when soil is dry and its 90°?

So far carrot plants are looking good I expect to have some nice plants when first frost arrives Nov 1st. We have a lot of 50° & 60° day time weather Nov to Jan carrot plants should continue to grow until freezing weather arrives Jan 15 to March 1st.

Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage are looking good also. I ordered Romaine lettuce seeds they should arrive in a few days.

I can't remember if all these tiny plants are where I dumped all the Mexican chili seeds or this was a rotten tomato smashed into the soil. 1 more week I should know what these tiny plants are.

TV says another hot 90° day & no rain.

[applestar]

@Gary350 — watch the beginning of this video. I could totally see you making and using a tool like this for your rows. (He bought it from a hand-crafted farming tool shop that he said has been around since his childhood.)

It’s a little big for my garden, but I have my eyes on the triangular hoe he shows to compare, saying this is a little too small and would need multiple runs. (I have a 1/2 size triangle hoe like that which works great, but I could use a bigger one for some tasks)

[Gary350]

Slow rain makes it easy to do transplants seed germination was spotty. There are several, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, plants cut off at ground level and several brown color worms curled up that appear to be dead. Germination was not good maybe because of the 94° weather we had. 7 days of 73° rain might germinate more of the 200 seeds in each row. Plants are growing long stems like they are searching for sunlight ???

Apple,--- That cultivator device looks easy to build but my soil is too hard, if I was 30 years younger I could do that. His soil looks very good I want some of that. Rain has softened my garden soil that cultivator device might actually work for me today. It appears that man plants several seeds in the same location then removed the plants he did not want. I should have done that with my, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, I will do that with Romaine lettuce if seeds come tomorrow. A hate to kill good plants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEKJ2vrQRl0

[Gary350]

About 1:30 pm my $2 Romaine Lettuce seeds arrived in the mail. I already had soil raked flat and smooth and 32 ft string pulled between 2 stakes when it started to rain. Soil is now too wet to plant seeds. 2nd rain came & went, 3rd rain was harder & longer, 4th rain was much harder and longer, 5th rain was extremely hard with 60 mph gusty wind and 1" hail reported in some places. I sat in my rocking chair inside the screen porch watching & listening to the storm for 40 minutes. Garden looks like its under water I managed to take 1 picture then rain suddenly stopped. TV said, Nashville airport is closed all airplanes are grounded. No lightning the rain sounds so good. TV claims another week of this, I won't be able to plant lettuce seeds for 2 weeks. I wonder if carrot seeds on the hills were washed away. Now we have tornado warnings and more storms in our area.

Ebay has good prices 500 seeds for $2 free postage and they arrive at my front door in 3 days or sometimes 4 days.

[Gary350]

This morning carrot hills look like fuzzy green stuff on top of all the hills, that is 100s of tiny green carrot plant leaves. Rain gauge shows 3". I lost count how many times it rained yesterday radar showed many rain storm moving west to east across, TN, KY, AL. The last storm at 3am had lightning none of the other storms had lightning. There is too much mud to plant Romaine lettuce seeds yet. Iceberg lettuce & 8" round cabbage seeds never grew but maybe they will now. Every time we get extremely hard rain it kills more of the strawberry plants. Potato plants are looking good. This garden season has been extreme weather for 6 month, dry as desert then too much rain over and over.

[Gary350]

After lunch I decided to check see how muddy the garden is. As it turns out soil where I want to plant seeds has not been worked since I dug up new potatoes 3 months ago and soil is not muddy. I pulled a string for 2 rows then used a pencil to poke holes in the soil using the 6" template to plant 3 Romaine seeds every 6". That turned out to be much easier than I expected.

We have 8 Kennebec potatoes growing roots and 100s of French Fingerling potatoes growing roots also. I decided to plant seed potatoes in the other row this will be a 3 month Dec. 25 harvest. I placed seed potatoes on soil surface then covered them with about 2" of soil. French fingerling sprouts are spaced 3" apart. June harvest was 1 week early I expect this harvest will be early too.

[Gary350]

28 more ripe tomatoes. Plants are picking up speed not slowing down.

This morning I planted cilantro seeds before hurricane rain arrives at 4 pm. Cilantro grows very slow below 50°f in the past we got a few harvests then there were no more to get until April. I hope a 30 ft row will give us cilantro for 6 months. I use empty kitchen food cans for row markers.

[Gary350]

Carrot plants look good except many of the plants on hills have washed away. Plants that were washed into the valleys still might grow. Carrot plants look green & happy this must be the weather they like best. Most of the strawberry plants look dead. Rain has caused mole tunnels to cave in and more rain has filled in the tunnels. About 1/2 the garlic plants never grew tops. My rain gauge show 8¼" of total hurricane rain. Tomato plants are never hurt by too much rain plants are still producing more ripe tomatoes than we can eat. New potatoes plants are very green and look good. Weather forecast for today 62° dark over cast clouds and drizzle rain all day.

[Gary350]

Soil finally dried up enough to till, now it looks like a garden not a chick weed farm. Right to left, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, dead strawberry plants, potatoes, cilantro, garlic, carrot bed, more dead strawberry plants, 4 rows of carrot hills. This year we hope to have more than 1 meal of carrots for dinner. Carrot plants are 2" tall.

[Gary350]

I hilled up the, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Dutch Cabbage. I dug up 2 volunteer potato plants and found 2½ lbs. of new Red Norland potatoes. There are a lot of volunteer potato plants from tiny potatoes that were never found on harvest day, most of the time I pull the potato plants up then they grow back so I dug these up. There are probably more new potatoes hiding out there. Something ate all the leaves off of 1 tiny cabbage plant. We have a lot of butterflies now, more than we had all summer???

[Gary350]

27 tomatoes = 6½ lbs. Broccoli & Cauliflower looks like they grew 2" taller over night.

[Gary350]

I hilled up, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, again this morning I have never seen plants grow so fast. Broccoli measures 12" to 14" tall, cauliflower measures 8" to 10" tall, and cabbage is about 6" to 7" tall. About 50% of the Romaine lettuce did not grow so I ordered more seeds to fill in blank places. Tomato plants are looking mostly dead but they are still producing a lot of ripe tomatoes. Carrots are doing about what I expected about 1% of the 40,000. seeds I planted are growing. I don't intend to baby set any of these plants when it gets colder. First frost will kill tomatoes and kill potato tops but not kill potato plants. Potato tops will try to grow back. I think all these plants are good down to 25°f an some much lower. In the past carrots did good down to 2°. Last year cilantro did good when we had -7° for 2 nights.

[Gary350]

About an hour before dark I planted Napa seeds in the dead strawberry plant row. If we have more 80° temperatures after plants grow I will need to replant napa seeds. Broccoli is growing tall seed package says 75 day crop.

[Gary350]

Potatoes need to be colder so they stop sprouting. TV weather forecast says another week of 84°f above average temperatures. Potatoes need to be in the storage shed, maybe next week. The only way I can keep potatoes out of the heat is to keep them inside the house AC. I only need 60 seeds potatoes with 5+ eyes on each seed potato for each March 1st potato row. 60 seed potatoes x 5+ eyes should = 300+ lbs. of new potatoes if I can prevent moles from eating them. The trick seems to be plant more potatoes than moles can eat to have a good potato harvest. March 1st I will sprinkle 100s of caster beans with the seed potatoes to see if that prevents moles. I also need to plant a 30 ft row of caster beans to have another 5 gallon bucket of caster bean seeds.

[Gary350]

This morning wife said, you need to plant more lettuce TV said, grocery store vegetables are killing people, 10 people died from eating at McDonalds. I don't usually plant a winter garden rain 6 days a week makes it very hard to harvest anything I very often loose both shoes in 4" of mud. I have not been able to find size 14" men's rubber boots. The second picture is what our winter swamp looks like. Carrot plants are growing tall tops, no carrots yet. The past 3 winters were much less rain than what we typically have.

[imafan26]

You seem to either have desert dry soil or swamp, but everything grows so well. My soil is very different. I have red clay soil and I live in a relatively higher rainfall elevation. Although, I get less rain than in past years. It has to rain 2 inches per hour to cause anything to flood and that is mainly from the runoff from the roof. It does not puddle unless it rains for a few days. It has not rained, even overnight for a couple of weeks. If it were to rain, the soil will absorb most of the water. I have a raised bed garden and most of my plants are in containers so the garden doesn't really have standing water, although clay takes a long time to dry and it cannot be worked wet. I made that mistake more than once.

[greenstubbs]

I have not been able to find size 14" men's rubber boots.

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[Gary350]

I decided to take pics of the garden before it rains mother nature is 50 times better at watering plants than me. 4 rows of carrots are looking good but most of what I see is chickweed, there are about 1000 carrots in each row. We have been eating some of the cilantro. Cabbage is starting to form small heads. Seeds in plant trays are still not growing its been in the 80s during the day and 50s at night. I planted another row of lettuce seeds this morning the 1st row struggles to grow, I replanted lettuce seeds 3 times. Carrot bed is doing great chickweed is struggling. Garlic plants still looks small.

[Gary350]

I decided to take good pictures of Thai Basil before I start pulling off leaves and seeds. I am going to list free Thai Basil on market place then give people a whole plant to take home to pick off there own leaves and seeds. We have 80° weather & 3 days of rain forecast for next week Basil needs to be gone before it is frozen dead. I love to watch bees & butterflies on the purple flowers.

[Gary350]

I had about 150 small 1" diameter Kennebec potatoes too small to peal and too many for stew so I planted them yesterday in 1 row. If I save them until March 1st they will be swiveled up like raisins 4 months from now and might not grow. French fingerling potatoes have sprouts also, I'm not planting more FF I already have too many planted. French fingerling potatoes multiply faster than field mice. Wow I have all 20 garden rows planted I never did a winter garden like this before. 70°f forecast for another week. It needs to get colder so seed potatoes can be saved outside in the shed. We still have about 100 lbs. of potatoes to eat by June 1st or sooner. I have a short row of potatoes to dig up about Dec 15 and another row to dig up about Dec 30. Potatoes I planted yesterday will be ready to dig up about Feb 1st but if its too cold they may not be ready to dig up until March 1st. I hope to have enough Kennebec seed potatoes to plant 3 rows March 1st.

[Gary350]

Last year I grew several different lettuce to learn what grows best for us and what we like best. -7°f temperature did not kill Romaine and it grew large with easy to pick leaves that are great on, sandwiches, salads and Mexican food. My 30 ft row of Romaine was 50% germination, I replanted it is still 50% germination. Romaine is now growing faster than we can eat it. I put 10 Romaine leaves on this chicken and salami sandwich. 30 ft row of Cilantro is past the point of being able to eat it faster than it grows.

[imafan26]

Sounds like I should plant more romaine. Your garden looks great and so does the food.

[Gary350]

Sounds like I should plant more romaine. Your garden looks great and so does the food.

Romaine lettuce also does great when temperatures are 80°f. Cabbage seed package says its a 65 day crop, it looks like we will have cabbage for Christmas. I hope we have a lot of broccoli & Cauliflower. Cilantro is knee high I have been eating cilantro salads. We have about 4000 carrot plants but no carrots yet.

[applestar]

Carrots are fun because once they get big enough, you can start eating the culled thinnings between plants. I also like to use the greens as garnish and also the greens with skinny tiny carrots are great if you dip in very thin flour and corn starch batter (with just a bit of salt) and lightly deep fry (tempura style).

[Gary350]

Carrots are fun because once they get big enough, you can start eating the culled thinnings between plants. I also like to use the greens as garnish and also the greens with skinny tiny carrots are great if you dip in very thin flour and corn starch batter (with just a bit of salt) and lightly deep fry (tempura style).

I always pull up the largest carrots first to eat and makes room for the smaller carrots to grow larger. Today I only needed to pick 5 lettuce leaves they are so large now I can fold them in 1/4 to make a salad sandwich. It is 62° & sunny today, we are suppose to have freezing weather sometime next week.

[applestar]

Even though the carrots that are involved are no longer in the stores, with the latest announcement of RECALLS on carrots, you are in an envious situation for reliable carrots for the foreseeable future. And as long as there’s no serious freeze, they’ll keep in the ground.

And if there’s any danger, you could harvest and can or freeze, or deep mulch over them with leaves, etc.

My little patches of carrots are struggling…. I want to try giving them ash but I can’t / won’t burn anything until we are out of this drought.

[Gary350]

Even though the carrots that are involved are no longer in the stores, with the latest announcement of RECALLS on carrots, you are in an envious situation for reliable carrots for the foreseeable future. And as long as there’s no serious freeze, they’ll keep in the ground.

And if there’s any danger, you could harvest and can or freeze, or deep mulch over them with leaves, etc.

My little patches of carrots are struggling…. I want to try giving them ash but I can’t / won’t burn anything until we are out of this drought.

I don't remember how cold it has to be to freeze the tops off the carrots? About 30 years ago I had a carrot bed 3'x6' the soil froze about 1" deep that froze the tops off all 1000 carrots. With no tops I could not pull carrots. About 2 weeks later it warmed up enough that I could dig up all the carrots. The frozen carrot ends started to rot so I cut off all the froze ends that saved all the carrots and we only lost about 2" of each carrot. I hope most of these carrots can stay in the garden until about May 10 we want to pull them as we eat them. Factory frozen carrots can stay in the freezer a very long time I need to put a thermometer inside the freezer to see how cold it is.

We are still in a drought too everything is so wet every morning with due it looks like it rained. No hot weather soil stays wet.

I have about 5 gallons of wood ash I have been waiting until I see tiny orange carrots growing to start putting wood ash on my carrots. Wood ash makes a very noticeable difference in several different plants. I keep looking at my carrot plants and wonder why are there no tiny carrots yet? Maybe wood ash would cause carrots to start growing. I will do an experiment today.

[imafan26]

I can't keep carrots in the ground. They will get bigger but they will become too woody and bitter because it is so warm here. I was wondering why the carrots at the market were so thin and still so expensive. I was looking at your weather map. Our temperatures are very close My days are 79-81 degrees and the night lows are 65-69, and it has been back to the rain almost every day with a couple of days of sunshine in between. Our soil is very different as well as the hours of daylight. Clay soil is not good for things like carrots. Even after you get a deluge, your soil must have a lot of sand in it because it dries out fast. My soil absorbs water well , but it takes a while to dry out.

[Gary350]

I can't keep carrots in the ground. They will get bigger but they will become too woody and bitter because it is so warm here. I was wondering why the carrots at the market were so thin and still so expensive. I was looking at your weather map. Our temperatures are very close My days are 79-81 degrees and the night lows are 65-69, and it has been back to the rain almost every day with a couple of days of sunshine in between. Our soil is very different as well as the hours of daylight. Clay soil is not good for things like carrots. Even after you get a deluge, your soil must have a lot of sand in it because it dries out fast. My soil absorbs water well , but it takes a while to dry out.

Direct sun light is usually 20 degrees or more hotter that the air temperature, shade your carrot plants they will do better.

[Gary350]

I forgot to feed my plants Sunday. Today I feed, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots. It is very sunny 57 degrees wind gusting to 30 mph. I think its been 10 days sense I have been out to the garden. I see 9 small cabbage heads and 1 small broccoli. I gave away all my Thai basil and about 30 lbs. of French Fingerling potatoes. 1 woman that got free potatoes said, it takes her 4 month to get carrots large enough to eat. We might have carrots to eat Jan 1st. We have too much cilantro I might need to give some away. Some of my napa seeds are finally growing plants.

Google says, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage are good down to 25 degrees f. Napa 26 degrees. Carrots are good down to 15 degrees F.

[Gary350]

My Dutch cabbage is 4" diameter, is that full grown or does it get larger?
This is the first time I every grew cabbage that bugs did not eat first.

[applestar]

Everything looks great!

If it’s “Early Dutch” they’re supposed to get to 6” but understanding is if it feels solid and temperature has gotten too cold, they won’t grow any bigger.

You risk them splitting from too much rain if left unharvested.

Also, from the home garden, you don’t have to peel off as much of the outer and wrapper leaves so smaller heads still yield good eating harvest.

[Gary350]

I picked the largest Dutch cabbage if feels solid and when I cut it in 1/2 it is solid all the way through. I forgot to take a pic of the cabbage head. I pulled a hand full of small carrots they will never be missed there are 4000 more. I pulled 1 white carrot and 1 red carrot. White carrot taste same as orange. RED carrot flavor is amazing I have never tasted a carrot that good. I want to trade all the orange carrots for red. I have never seen red carrot seeds at farmers co-op in 2 oz seed packs of 40,000.seeds. We will have fried cabbage for dinner. We made coleslaw with cabbage and carrots.

[Gary350]

Sunday 1 hour before dark I walked through the garden for about 5 minutes to sprinkled 0-20-20 plant food on the carrots and nitrogen on the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. Heavy dew this morning is all the water the fertilizer needs to soak into the soil.

Wife watches TV and keeps notes which vegetables are contaminated. She bought 2 vegetables yesterday and this morning TV says, those 2 vegetables are contaminated. She already threw out other items, wasted money it is making her mad.

Nothing much happening in the garden plants just keep grow larger. It was 34° yesterday morning and 57° this morning, TV claims it will be in the 60s all week. My allergies are not making me dizzy today cold weather keeps, mold, mildew, pollen very low.

[applestar]

It’s sad. It’s like NOBODY cares anymore….

Your garden’s looking great!

[Gary350]

It’s sad. It’s like NOBODY cares anymore….

Your garden’s looking great!

Today we took a 90 mile road trip to a farm in east TN, 180 miles round trip, we bought 300 lbs of meat, chicken, pork, beef. Wife has it in the freezer now. Wife called and told them what we wants then we had to go get it. There won't be any contamination in this meat. I don't know the price but wife said, prices are less than any store. It was a very scenic 55 mph drive through the mountains and around the lakes and past 4 camp grounds to get there. We could have driven 70 mph on I-40 but that would have been a boring drive.

[Gary350]

It is 43° if anyone sees me watering the garden at 8:45 am they will probably think I am stupid. LOL. I am a pack rat it is time to clean up. I have 7 coffee containers full of wood ash and a 5 gallon bucket of wood ash that need to on the carrot plants. I put rusty bent nails in the rusty bent nail bucket. I sprinkled all the carrot plants with wood ash and charcoal pieces. Then I had to wash away wood ash laying on carrot plant leaves. P&K should be very good for carrots. Don't burn cardboard and plastic in your burn barrels, Amazon & Walmart boxes are covered with plastic and plastic tape.

[imafan26]

That's good deal. I can't do anything like that. The best I could do is get bulk meat from Costco or Sam's or go to Chinatown. Many farms here sell live animals and they don't process them until you buy them or only process one animal at a time, or you have to do the processing yourself.

[Gary350]

20°f hear this morning. My good thermometer says 20°f at 7 am, all 3 TV stations say 20°f but my new battery remote digital thermometer says 25°. Maybe there is a way to calibrate the battery thermometer??? High today is predicted to be 46°f.

Today is education day we will learn which plants live at 20° and which plants die at 20°f. Carrots should be good. Potato plants above the soil should die and grow back. Not sure about, broccoli, cauliflower, & cabbage.

[Gary350]

1:30 pm Frost damage update. Tomato, potato, and caster bean plants are dead.

Broccoli leaves are not growing straight up like yesterday, today leaves are bent like bananas but show no signs of frost damage. 3 plants have very small heads. I have seen plants that don't show frost damage until 4 or 5 days later.

Cauliflower & cabbage both look good so far. I was expecting cabbage frost damage, plants are hardier than I expected.

Small Napa cabbage plants scattered in several locations all look good. I took a pic of 3 of the largest napa plants.

Cilantro and carrots look good.

Low forecast tonight is 25°f.