Gardeners Update

[laughing lioness]

what are you growing/harvesting?

 

We've had a great crop of basil, and just harvested broccoli, cabbage and more basil; pics here. The Swiss Chard has been non-stop this year and it looks like our tomatoes will be terrific. Only one zuchhini so far and the grasshoppers are doing their best to wipe out the potatoes.

We might still have greeen beans, despite the pestiliance and drought.

 

Tell me about your garden!

[TravelingChris]

WE have been having cherry tomatoes since May and in the last month, lots of hot peppers. Too many hot peppers since most of us don't eat them. I think my older dd has a small watermelon growing. Our herbs are doing well too. We can only plant vegetables in containers although we have more than a half acre of land but most of that is wooded. So the only sunny areas are a small part of my front border and the patios and by the pool. I reserve the front border for flowers and the patios get the vegetables in containers.

[jrn]

This year I did all my plants in containers. I have yet to get anything out of them, but the tomatoes are showing promise as well as the cucumbers. The stinkin' squirrels keep taking my strawberries. I've learned that my zucchini and cucumbers will need a bigger pot next year, and that I need to watch how much I water my big tomato plant. It's getting brown spots on the bottoms of the tomatoes. We also have barrels filled with potatoes. This is the first year we've done potatoes, so we'll see how it goes. The yellow pepper is finally blooming so my youngest will be happy.

I never did find a white eggplant this year.

I do plan to expand and build a plant table off the deck so the plants get the optimum sunshine time.

[FaithManor]

We've had dill, some radishes, and peas. Dad has had to water A LOT. Some of the plants, such as broccoli, cauliflower, and green beans are really struggling with the excessive heat despite watering. But, the peppers are loving it so maybe there will be a bumper crop of sweet bell peppers. I didn't dehydrate enough last year and ran out.

 

Not much else. The crops are definitely struggling in this area and the bulk of the corn crops aren't going to be worth anything. I doubt there will even be a third cutting of hay and the second cut was pathetic. I would expect hay prices to hit $8.00 a bale this winter.

 

Oh, wait, we've had blueberries and raspberries, but they were planted in the shade and that helped so much with the heat intensity. I've lost the blackberries though. :sad:

 

Faith

[Carrie12345]

We lost most of our strawberries to chipmunks, which was pretty upsetting.

 

We had a great crop of snap peas, green beans, and purple beans last week, but ds left the fence open the other night and the deer tore up quite a few pea plants, ate the leaves off a few sqft of bean plants, and completely pulled out 4 pepper plants (that weren't doing so hot, anyway.)

 

I have a lot of cherry tomatoes growing and a few slicing tomatoes, though the stupid deer did manage to catch a few leaves that were sticking out of *that* fence and bit the ends off. :glare: Cucumber flowers seem to be plentiful. I should go take the first two cukes today.

 

My potted pepper plant looks to be doing great!

[Live2Ride]

We've harvested one canteloupe, one pumpkin, some okra, an eggplant, a few batches of beans to eat fresh, squash and zucchini in various amounts and a few tomatoes so far. I got a later start this year, but everything that is growing out there is pretty and maturing nicely. Watermelons are growing and I see a few out there that are the size of a large canteloupe. The kids are excited about those. Unfortunately it's been raining and cloudy so much that many of my plants don't want to bloom and produce and my poor canteloupe are just rotting out there before they can ripen...totally stinks.

[I talk to the trees]

Our strawberries and raspberries have been fantastic this year. We have also had great luck with our lettuce, and we have teeny-tiny cucumbers just starting to grow right now.

 

And if she doesn't leave our cucumber plants and lettuce alone, we're going to have a freezer full of venison pretty soon!:glare::tongue_smilie:

[Miss Marple]

Oh, this is really my first year to do much. And I only planted things that would grow quickly and fill in space so that the wedding in June would look nice. But to my surprise I have a bumper crop of squash! I'm killing squash bugs daily and pulling eggs off the leaves, but I'm so pleased because I love squash. I had 2 wonderful tomato plants (grape size), but it has gotten too hot for them so I'm just hoping to keep them alive until it cools down again and maybe they'll come back.

 

I am enjoying my "table top" variety of egg plant. They are rather small, but the plant is a prolific producer! If nothing else, it is a pretty garden specimen :)

 

I have done well with red and orange bell peppers - if I can keep the deer away. I found several half-eaten peppers in the lawn a few days ago. The deer are getting hungry for some good greens because it has been so dry around here. My garden is the only thing that is getting watered.

 

My peas and green beans did not do well - I think it got too hot and dry too early. My dill, basil, cilantro, and rosemary have been wonderful. I love going outside and picking it fresh off the plant. The cilantro is pretty much dead, now, though. I have a hanging strawberry plant that came back from the dead this spring :) It is producing quite well. I had left it outside all winter without doing anything to it and it looked absolutely awful. I cannot put it in the ground, though, because the deer LOVE strawberries.

 

The flowers are lovely, still.

[Onceuponatime]

We had peas, spinach, and green beans, they are past. We are now getting tomatoes every day, regular and cherry. I harvested the onions 2 weeks ago. The green peppers are doing well, the cucumber plants look great but they have no fruit. Eggplant is sporadic. I have a volunteer Japanese melon that appears to be happy.

[Kelly1730]

The only thing that is showing any promise at all are the tomatoes. The heat got to everything else. And the bunnies ate the green pepper plants. There's always next year.:glare:

[LostSurprise]

Raspberries and blackberries *might* be okay.

 

The 2 replacement tomato plants look good. Basil is fine. One pepper is producing and the others aren't dead yet.

 

Everything else (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, beans, lettuce, radish, cucumber, zucchini & squash) has either been eaten by baby bunnies or dried up in the sun.

 

Oh, and some kind of bug ate my currant and gooseberry bushes again.

[cjzimmer1]

My cucumbers have all dried up in the heat. They looked fantastic a month ago but today is the first day in a full month we had any rain and with the hot hot summer even daily and twice daily watering couldn't save them. I might just pull them out and see if I can get a second planting going. We are having serious cucumber withdrawal.

 

My tomatoes look good but are slow producing. We've only had a few actually make it into the house because my kids eat them all while they are out watering.

 

My peppers are coming along nicely. I have a couple of colored ones ready to pick.

 

Eggplant is huge but has only set a few small fruit so far.

 

A mouse got in my garden and ate all the peas and brussel sprouts. Fortunately I also had brussel sprouts planted along the side of my house and those look good.

 

Lettuce dried up in the heat before it got big enough to pick.

 

We have a few ground cherries but they have the same problem as the tomatoes (kids eat them all).

 

I just planted a cherry tree and red and black raspberry bushes last year. They are too small to produce this year but I'm just hoping they survive the drought or else I'll have to start over again next year.

[laughing lioness]

We've lost a lot between the early warm/freeze, extreme heat and grasshoppers- hardly any strawberries and no mulberries. The tomatos look good but the grasshoppers cont to devastate the potatoes, despite our guinea hens- guess they can handle just so many hoppers at a time.

[OrganicAnn]

We've had the best garden in several years despite the whether. Lots of cucumbers (we usually have cucumber beetles so this year is a surprise). We have about 30 tomatoes sitting on the counter. We had an early crop of green/red peppers but they fallen off from the heat. We harvested potatoes yum. Our beans have been slow (rabbits and heat). Zucchini slow. Someone gave us lots of eggplants. We were lazy and didn't plant onions this year. We have carrots going. Herbs going great.

[laughing lioness]

My zuchhini shrivelled up and died last week. It was really weird- each of the 4 plants had many flowers and a couple had fruit forming. The only thing I can attribute it to is the intense heat.

 

Eggplant and basil are going GREAT!

[Wheres Toto]

I think we must be in one of the few areas of the country not having drought conditions. We've had some high temperatures but we've also had a lot of overnight thunderstorms.

 

We put in a new raised bed garden this year so we ended up getting a late start. It's completely surrounded by fencing, including most of the top, to keep out deer. So far the deer aren't bothering it at all but we do have a lot of other greenery around our yard. We actually have a doe with triplet fawns that beds down on our property every night.

 

So far we are getting a TON of yellow squash, zucchini and green beans.

We just started picking basil and cucumbers but it looks like we'll be overrun with cukes pretty soon too.

We have lots of green tomatoes and lots of flowers on cantaloupe and pumpkins.

Our corn (which I just threw out there for ds but didn't expect much) is growing well but no ears yet.

The carrots look very healthy above ground but when I picked one it was a little tiny bent thing, so we're waiting longer on those.

Our sweet peppers and hot peppers are just starting to flower.

The watermelon looks pathetic and the broccoli was chewed to bits by caterpillars that didn't bother anything else.

 

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the harvest we're getting considering it was our first year with such a big project and we started late. Dh pointed out we better not calculate return on investment but I look at it more as an investment in healthy eating. :D

[Wheres Toto]

We've lost a lot between the early warm/freeze, extreme heat and grasshoppers- hardly any strawberries and no mulberries. The tomatos look good but the grasshoppers cont to devastate the potatoes, despite our guinea hens- guess they can handle just so many hoppers at a time.

 

This is interesting - we've had a million grasshoppers all over the yard this year. They aren't bothering the garden but you can see them jumping away whenever you walk in the yard. Is this due to the weather? It's been really hot here but we get almost nightly thunderstorms that drop the temperature about 10 degrees during the storm, then it goes right back up again.

[KrissiK]

My tomatoes are wonderful. We've been eating, canning and salsa-ing them like crazy. There is something wrong with my zucchini and summer squash. The yellow squash gets only a couple inches long and then rots. My zucchini just isn't producing. I've gotten 2 fruits all summer. My cucumbers are doing well, as are my cantaloupe. We're doing cantaloupes on trellises this year and it's going well. My green onions are still going stong. My bell peppers are not healthy and the fruit is getting very sun-burned, but my jalapeños are doing well. My green beans are not growing.

Edited August 4, 2012 by KrissiK

[myfunnybunch]

Already harvested:

Snap peas

Spinach

Time to plant some more in hopes of a long sunny fall.

 

Harvesting:

Kale, bunches of kale

Swiss chard

Basil

A few small onions

Carrots

Cucumbers--traditional, lemon, and the twisty Asian ones

We're starting to get a few tomatoes--cherry, yellow, and red

 

Growing:

Pumpkins and squash are going mad. We're going to have TONS this fall.

Cherry tomatoes are also going mad.

Tomatoes

Beans for drying

Green beans

Edamame

Peppers

Tomatillos, which I've never grown before

Beets

Leeks

Onions, sweet and yellow and red

Shallots

Oh, and ds11 has an eggplant in the front garden

 

:)

 

Cat

[chepyl]

We have been picking more tomatoes than we can eat daily. DH just took a delivery to family :). We have at least 20 varieties. He was just trying stuff out to see what we like. DD has been in heaven! She eats a bowl of cherry tomato varieties daily.

 

Basil, oregano, epazote, parsley, cilantro, and thyme are all plentiful.

 

The corn is not ready yet. One squash plant died and another is doing okay.

 

We have a tin of peppers in.different varieties.

 

For our first full garden, it is pretty good.

 

Cucumbers and beans have been slow.

[laughing lioness]

This is interesting - we've had a million grasshoppers all over the yard this year. They aren't bothering the garden but you can see them jumping away whenever you walk in the yard. Is this due to the weather? It's been really hot here but we get almost nightly thunderstorms that drop the temperature about 10 degrees during the storm, then it goes right back up again.

 

It's been a drought. We had a ton of grasshoppers last year, too- our friends north of town didn't. But this year they were eating everything! It was like On The Banks of Plum Creek- we'd walk outside of our back door and step on them, they would fly in our face- ew and ew! It's been terribly hot with almost NO rain so I'm thinking that's why?

 

We got guinea fowl and they are eating those hoppers by the boatload!

[lovemykids]

Cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, habanero peppers, lettuce, spinach, watermelon, strawberries, and green beans. The cucumbers got too much rain, something nibbled on it, and so they are on their way out. We did get quite a few nice cukes already though. Same thing with the spinach and the green beans..I think I may plant some broccoli rabe for the fall. Very soon we are going to have a ton of ripe tomatoes. The peppers and the lettuce have been producing very well. The strawberries were excellent, and the watermelon is coming along nicely as well.

 

Herbs: basil, thyme, parsley, mint and oregano.