New garden 2018

[PhilaGardener]

Everything in your garden looks great!

[Gerardo]

Crane shots were cool, that crisp clean lettuce must look like heaven to the critters, It sure does to me.

[bower]

My goodness, neglect does wonders in your garden. Nice to have a year with few pests, the brassicas look amazing and lettuce as well, for no treatment nor protection. Eat hearty!

[taboule]

Thank you all for your kind words.

Have a nice week.

[taboule]

We've had ideal weather lately, dry warm days, and cool nights. Tonight expected to be 53 degF, much cooler than at my previous property/previous town. Started to see progress on the other veggies.

Sugar snap peas, although started late, 2 varieties -these over 5 ft tall. I had to keep pushing and training them to the chain-link fence, as they flopped over. Then I put these bamboo sticks to push them. Problem solved. At their base bunches of celery, ready to harvest.
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These are shorter but loaded with pods, DW and I already tasted a few (although still little..) Suggary.

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[Worth1]

They look great and they never make it inside the house.
I eat them raw in the garden.

Worth

[taboule]

The first 2 cukes. Had company over for dinner, we couldn't resist tasting them with a Black Label on the rocks.
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You can begin to see some bug damage, still resisting any serious sparying. Maybe this weekend, will bite the bullet. (I earlier lost half a dozen of baby plants due to bugs.)

Ichiban eggplant. The earliest ever for me, by at least a full month.
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Here's some Greek zukinis.
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[taboule]

And of course, the main things we're here for (and my favorites): SOTW, BW pink and GGWT.
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[taboule]

Good Sunday to you,

I visited the old property yesterday, it had been a while. It's fully planted now, so spent much of the day tending it: weeding, propping up the plants that didn't have cages yet, and trimming all bottom leaves. Here's what it looked like before I left.
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Simple 16x30ft bed, with a gentle slope. Walkways of lumber and various stepping pavers remove or minimize soil compaction from walking around the plants. No till.

With a couple of small exceptions, this is all for tomatoes, ~60 or so. Here's SOO (Sweet Ozark Orange) ~3 weeks after going in the ground -blossom was already on it.

[taboule]

Back in February DW and I went shopping for bulbs for her flower garden. I found and bought some nice seed potatoes, before I had any idea what veggie garden we'd have this year. Finally decided they'd go in this very sunny corner.
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They're planted in bottomless, shallow plastic barrels, total of 6. I read about this idea a while back, and had some extra garbage barrels. I removed the bottom from 2x, then sliced them in 3x each, about a foot high. Prepped the small plot loosening up the soil, added some granular Espoma, planted the seed, then covered with the rings and filled with loose soil and more food. You can barely see the rings in the pic. Once the plants are done, it will be a simple matter of removing the rings, gently break up the soil and pick the potatoes -no digging.

Chives, a mother plant, having created new plants for many other gardens, for friends and family.
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And lastly, a volunteer Sylvia lettuce. I grew many last year, then shortly after transplating them, a pair of bunnies moved in and kept eating them. So I quickly assembled these cages of various sizes as emergency and protected as many as I could. Some plants bolted and threw seed. I only kept this one, pretty plant and tasty leaves.

I hope your gardens are doing well.

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[imp]

I love chives! Both your gardens look so good, too. I like chive flowers in my salads sometimes.

[taboule]

Greetings All,

We've had extremely hot weather here, hi 80's and 90s. That plus the usual life things that get in the way, I lost any desire or energy to spend much time in the garden. I did go out this past weekend and trim LOTS of bottom leaves on the tomatoes, as they kept growing bigger and thicker. Filled out ~3 wheel barrows of stems and greens, and barely put a dent in them -never mind the top growth. Also haven't had a chance to spray much of anything yet -and keep losing cukes o bugs (i need to show you a picture of the little suckers for ID).

Then finally took a break today after work, went out with a cold brewski, a cigar and sat in a beach chair to contemplate.

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In the foreground are some Portuguese bush beans (short).

It is one big jungle, many tomato plants are well over 6ft, this one close to 7ft (deduct the 9" of the raised bed.)

[taboule]

So I had to take a closer look at where it all matters, and finally saw the first color.

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That was a 4th of July, as expected, my only hybrid -specifically for that purpose. Not ready to eat yet, but a nice check off the list.

This one is even better, a SOTW.

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Not red yet, but a nice Brandywine, about 1 lb already and very immature. (I bruised it last week trying to wiggle it out of its surroundings.)

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cont...

[Koala Doug]

That's a great looking garden... I envy you!

[taboule]

I discovered a few things: in my attempt to limit more foliage growth, and diseases, I cut back on watering, and never saw any wilting. At closer inspection, I noticed some of the bigger fruit started to develop BER. I did also have to cut/pull various leaves and stems that definitely showed sickness, but still no spraying. I'll share another time a badly damaged plant for your help with ID.

For now, we'll keep it rosy and positive.

More greens than we can consume. The lettuce is spent but now we have this: a jungle of kale, co-habitating with the bush beans.
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Greek chicoree. The seeds were about 7 years old, i didn't think they'd germinate, so I over-seeded. No worries, we'll start picking/thinning the young one for saladettes.
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We picked, ate and vacuum-packed/froze a bunch of sugar snap peas over the weekend. This "mammoth" variety grew over 7ft tall, past the fence, before I had a chance to prop it up, then folded over. At the base are celery.

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cont...