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Old May 7, 2018   #31
Adenn1
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About 90% of my bush beans sprouted. Snap peas and snow peas coming along pretty good. Planted a couple of Stupice tomato plants yesterday and some peppers. Lettuce going great and has provided a few meals already. Putting rest of the tomatoes and peppers in tomorrow...along with cucumbers.
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Old May 7, 2018   #32
Nan_PA_6b
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Yesterday planted another 11 toms. Snap peas are coming along, have some bok choi & mustard greens up.

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Old May 7, 2018   #33
JRinPA
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You might stay a little warmer right on the river. It was windy and cold. The pear tree was just about to start budding, and then the cold left and the tree came in perfectly.

For lunch I cut some lettuce for the first time. Spring is now officially here - finished off the butternut yesterday and eating fresh lettuce today. Now that we got some rain I need to get pea trellis up, but I'm taking my nephew fishing instead. It is hard to believe how short the peas are a week into May.

edit also I don't shoot for this early with tomatoes and they look like they will be fine in a couple or three weeks. Last year I put some out fairly early for me, but first tomatoes came in 2nd week of july like it always seems to be.

I put up a ag19 tunnel today for all the seedlings that are overflowing my table and light. It will be nice to be able to leave them there and not have to shuffle them. 4 flats of peppers, 1 of eggplant, 2 sweet corn, and one set of tomatoes that were leftover starts from an aunt. They're at least four weeks old now but mine have already surpassed them at two weeks so I doubt I'll use any. They were window starts.

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Old May 7, 2018   #34
kath
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JRinPA View Post
You might stay a little warmer right on the river. It was windy and cold. The pear tree was just about to start budding, and then the cold left and the tree came in perfectly.

For lunch I cut some lettuce for the first time. Spring is now officially here - finished off the butternut yesterday and eating fresh lettuce today. Now that we got some rain I need to get pea trellis up, but I'm taking my nephew fishing instead. It is hard to believe how short the peas are a week into May.

edit also I don't shoot for this early with tomatoes and they look like they will be fine in a couple or three weeks. Last year I put some out fairly early for me, but first tomatoes came in 2nd week of july like it always seems to be.

I put up a ag19 tunnel today for all the seedlings that are overflowing my table and light. It will be nice to be able to leave them there and not have to shuffle them. 4 flats of peppers, 1 of eggplant, 2 sweet corn, and one set of tomatoes that were leftover starts from an aunt. They're at least four weeks old now but mine have already surpassed them at two weeks so I doubt I'll use any. They were window starts.
You might be right about the river's influence. The apple blossoms are starting to drop. The 3/31 sown peas are 12"+ today and beginning to grab the trellis. Eating asparagus for about a week. Provider bush beans popping up. Had to hill the potatoes today. I transplanted the sweet potatoes today, too- hey, if the peppers are out already, they'll have to cope, too! Seems too early for much of that to be in the ground, but the forecast is holding nicely for warm weather.

The tunnel will surely make your life easier. I still have ag19 over the peppers but I took the tunnel down and just move the 5 remaining trays into the greenhouse at night.

Taking notes and next year will definitely be starting some things much later so they don't need to be babied so much and I'm not tempted to plant too early just so I don't have to care for the transplants any more.

Given the cold spring we had, I never thought things would be this far along before mid-May.

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Old May 16, 2018   #35
JRinPA
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2 1/2" of rain here and I saw a quote by a gardening writer in a local newspaper. He said that PA has "Too Weather" meaning that it is always too windy, too cold, too hot, too wet or too dry.

It is never perfect and isn't that too true!
Hmmmm. Too much hail, yesterday. That's not a nice sight, nickel and quarter size crashing into the raised beds. I'm off to work at the other garden and I'm wondering if I'll find my Agribon has now aged prematurely to become Swiss Agribon.
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Old May 16, 2018   #36
brownrexx
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I was happy not to have the hail but we had too much wind. Steady wind of 26 mph and gusts of 53 mph. Some of my tomato plants were almost laying flat but I propped them back up and today they are standing straight. None of them broke off thankfully. Peppers have not been planted out yet.
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Old May 17, 2018   #37
JRinPA
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I didn't notice much damage from the hail. Some red beet tops were knocked over. It always looks funny bouncing through the yard.

I put out 10 doz corn Sun evening and some eggplant this evening. I checked under the cover and the corn looks like it took right off and no ill effect from the storm.

Seems to me I prefer weather like this for transplanting. My prepared beds are slightly moist under the black bio mulch but not soaked. The roots should have no problem reaching down a few inches and getting as much as they want without risk of rot. For most of my life I thought a raised bed meant a wooden box with dirt in it. I am glad to know different now.
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Old May 31, 2018   #38
JRinPA
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I did not have any luck with beans last year. Direct sown - birds just kept pickering and peckering away. Whatever growth did happen, instead of beans for breakfast, they had bean salad leafs.
I put up my bean trellis last week at my comm garden spot and yesterday what do I see? Flock of black birds on it. European starlings. A bunch up top on lookout, the rest underneath picking through the bed that has beans sprouting through it...I didn't check the damage yet, but I am concerned. Not a big deal but I may have to replant those pole beans today. I should have put some agribon down over the seed I guess. I was warned! I have never seen that in my backyard, just the cardinals, wrens, finches, catbirds, etc.

Yesterday I turned off the growlight and fan timer for the first time since mid March. Take that, MetEd! Pretty much all my stuff is in. Sarah's Choice melons transplanted a few days back. Also the rest of the peppers. Got the butternut and some cucumbers and basil in yesterday. Need to seed parsnips/parsley root. Second round of corn just went outside. I will turn on lights again for maybe 5 days for third corn to get started. I just don't trust direct seeding it. I tried a bit of row last year, 3 doz seed, and germination was very spotty.

I want to get a nice stand of okra a little earlier this year and so far the starts look good. I am currently upgrading them to 4" soil blocks, using mostly compost for the big block. My scheme was to lay them in where the peas are when the peas slow down in late June. We'll see...with this current weather maybe the peas will last through August?
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Old May 31, 2018   #39
mobiledynamics
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I feel your pain JR. I love fresh beans a sm1gen more than the tomatoes ;-0
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Old June 1, 2018   #40
JRinPA
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Well I just lost a couple paragraphs that I don't have time to rewrite. Not much damage if any, but soaked and planted more (more beans is more good lol) and I pulled and replaced 3 eggplant. Might be ant damage? Damped off some? Miniature beavers? They were upright but small yet due to chokepoint stem. I had similar on the broccolli and cauliflower and there were ants. Lots of wood chips over at that comm garden.
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Old June 1, 2018   #41
mobiledynamics
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cutworm ?

Ants IMO exist everywhere. I see more in my areas where I don't have mulch but I'm sure where I have heavily mulched areas, they are there ...
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Old June 1, 2018   #42
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Strange damage. With all this wet weather, my eggplants are being shredded by slugs. Just went out and removed some, then refilled the beer traps!
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Old June 2, 2018   #43
JRinPA
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That's weird, I thought I answered MD a few minutes after he posted. It might be cutworm I guess; I have seen a few there, but not a whole lot of them. The eggplant were under ag19 hoops, planted through bio mulch, and I think this is the second time I took the cover off since I put them out.

Flea beetle damage, but no slugs on eggplants. Slugs are on peas and were on spinach before I pulled them. Spinach did nothing this year.

I am getting the owl decoys out of my crow hunting bags and putting them up on those bean trellises tomorrow. Those should keep away the starlings for a while.
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Old July 24, 2018   #44
JRinPA
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Follow up now that it is almost August...
The broccoli transplants at that time did okay. Put in about 10-12? Some had a rough time and I filled back in with the 3rd string. Now, they are huge, we have been eating brocolli for what seems a long time, so I have to say it was okay to transplant that week. I stuck some okra in the gaps where some didn't make it and some of those okra are decent and should be okay when I decide to pull the broccoli. But I can't decide whether I should pull it or let it play out the string.

Cauliflower, I had 7 to start. That did not last. It got cold and I have to think the cold hurt them more than it hurt the broccoli. Eventually it was down to two that got nice and big, and finally, after it was 90-95 for a while, decided to put on heads. One was okay, the other was badly eaten up by worms. I planted cayenne and okra in the holes so space was not wasted, but I have doubts about trying cauliflower again. Lot of space for little return.

The peas that went in the ground in mid-late March did fine and put out well. The peas that went in the raised beds within a week later had significant rot. I have to think the wet peas were freezing at night in the raised beds. Weather was just too crazy for them. Filling in later did not work well; it was too late and got really dry then, so they didn't germinate quickly. Hopefully I learned something. First time I have lost pea output.

Lettuce was fine, both three week transplants and direct sowed under glass. I also tried really young transplants under window/coldframe, which seemed to work, then after a couple weeks they suddenly damped off. I think it got hot/moist under the glass for a few hours and that was it - a few wilted outright, and the rest damped off that week. The direct sowed seeds were sprouted by then but did not die off the same way.

Spinach did nothing. Really terrible, every which way. It bolted right away as soon as it got hot and dry, even though most were small yet. Direct sowed was terrible. I now know I absolutely need to have large healthy transplants for spinach. Then at least I can fight over them with the slugs for a month.

Swiss chard I started under cold frame and it did..spotty, okay. I moved some down the bed to spread them out, but it was just so dry they haven't done much. Perhaps swiss chard is something I should consider as a long season crop and wait a bit. It kind of an afterthought for me.

Brussels sprouts were later for me, but they are looking pretty good. Though now I see a lot of cabbage moths and sulfurs down there. The best ones I put in the raised bed under pear tree for partial shade. I pushed down a trench by standing on a 4x4, put down rubber mat, and cut holes through that for planting. This makes it very easy to irrigate. Later, I put some brussel sprouts in double buckets with bottom watering (like rain gutter system) and right alongside the others, but in the walkway. Will be a nice comparison, but of course I forgot any fertilizer regimen. Maybe next year I start them earlier. I'm still intrigued by kath's plants.

That's about it for my spring crops. I have many lettuce that went to seed that I want to grab soon. A couple days back I got one bag of each type before sky opened up. This rain is really starting to annoy me. This rain from the south is not respecting the valley and we are getting hammered at random like everyone else.

Last edited by JRinPA; July 24, 2018 at 01:39 AM.
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