The Dawg Patch

[PlainJane]

My word you 2 work hard.

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday I dug the garlic and today got it cleaned up a bit and onto screens to start curing. After a week or so they'll get bundled and hung in the shed with a fan blowing air around them for about two weeks. 62 bulbs total plus a couple of bulbs already in the kitchen and some small rinky dink bulbs/rounds that came from that clump.

This is Lorz Italian in the front and Siberian in the back.



This is Russian Inferno:



Not as much as I had hoped for as there were a few cloves that never came up. We ran out of garlic about three or four weeks ago and had to buy (gasp!) some at the grocery. I have my eye on some Polish garlic to order to augment the fall planting. One should never run out of garlic!

Sometimes things just don't go as planned. I planted a spaghetti squash plant I had started from seed and set it under a trellis to see how it would climb. The plant just kept sitting there and last week I thought it was looking more bushy than climby. Look what I found today.... a zucchini! Go figure... I need to check my seed packs. Oh well, what's one more squash?



I have some Yancheng Asian long bean seed (thank you, MMMM!) and I will plant some under the trellis on either side of the squash. No need to waste good trellis space!

And finally, the Bodacious corn tassels are starting to drop pollen onto the silks. Woo Hoo! NOW... we'll see if any old squirrels left over from last year's murderous hordes have passed on their thieving habits to this year's crop of young'uns!

[GoDawgs]

The Bodacious corn silks have pushed out and the tassels are doing their thing so corn isn't far away... maybe.



Yesterday at one corner of the bed I found the first evidence of squirrel mischief. I'm going to have to try putting a netting fence around the bed. It didn't work last year but I gotta try to make it better this year.



I also got started on that 3x30' strip next to the fence where I'll be putting in as many of the replacement tomato plants as I can. Phase 1. It will extend down to where the cedar tree shadow starts. Got it tilled yesterday. You know how when you rake a freshly tilled area, the more you rake the more weeds appear so I started shoveling the top 3" into my homemade soil sifter to get the danged Bermuda etc out. Phase 2. That will be finished today.



Meanwhile the sweet potato vines are just long enough that I can start guiding them up the trellis. It sure is a space saver!

[GoDawgs]

It took a few hours this morning and a couple more this afternoon and the new Tomato Row is done. Tilled yesterday; today was weed removal using my homemade compost sifter to remove the trash from the top 3-4" of soil. Shovel soil into sifter, dump sifted soil back into bed, rinse and repeat down the 30' bed.





After a final raking, I got 13 cages placed and that's about as close to each other as I dare put them.



Now I gotta choose which four of the 17 newbies don't go here tomorrow and then figure out a new home for them. Maybe they'll be sacrificial lambs and get planted somewhere in the garden to see if that bacterial wilt is still around. It's been about four or five years since I last tried that and it was still there back then.

We're supposed to have storms tomorrow morning around 6am and then another line of bangers in the evening. That will wet down the soil, give good time for transplanting and then water them in.

Right now my body is getting stiff and is telling me it wants a good hot shower and that will happen.... right after I finish this ice cold brew. The fruits of the labor.

[PlainJane]

Love your sifter. I still have mine, also homemade.

[GoDawgs]

It was starting to get dry in the garden so a week or so ago I put up my ladder sprinkler so that the water doesn't beat up against the corn but goes over and rains down.. Elevation! Well, the next day we finally got rain and have been getting some showers on and off since then so the sprinkler hasn't been used yet! That's OK with me.



The bean harvest continues. On Tuesday we picked another 4.8 lbs so Pickles canned up 12 half pints of bean salad. We love the stuff and were getting low. Maybe one more batch will be enough.



Yesterday morning I got the new Tomato Row mulched and after lunch started planting tomatoes. It's taking a little time due to amending the planting holes. The soil is so sandy I'm taking some of it out of the hole and into a bucket, then adding some leaf compost and a scoop each of two different potting mixes (Kellogg's and Miracle Grow) and dumping it all back in the hole. It's an effort to get some organic matter and water holding capacity into that soil. I got four plants in the ground when the rain started and that was the end of that. I can probably finish up this morning before more rain comes again later this afternoon.

[GoDawgs]

OK, Tomato Row is finished. I did mulch it good but didn't bother with the cardboard as I didn't have time and the gal I usually get it from is on vacation. Into the ground the plants went! I made the name tags from the old mini blind slats I keep for the purpose, punched a hole in the end and used a big paper clip to hang the tag. Names were written with grease pencil so they won't fade.




Yesterday afternoon I found the first big fat tomato hornworm of the season on a jalapeno! He had munched one side of the pepper top to bottom. Never had one on a pepper before. Time to put out some bT as there are also some leaf roller caterpillars munching leaves in the beans.

So far so good on the squashes. This is good old Ferry Morse seed for Straightneck squash and it seems to do better than most any other yellow squash I've tried. Very productive! Sure beats that new hybrid Smooth Criminal. I'm not impressed with that yet. So far I've got the first plants producing, a newer one of each maybe a foot tall, and the seeds I just planted for a third one of each popped up yesterday. Trying to avoid an avalanche!



The first flower bed is starting to bloom. Zinnias on the near end, Salvia and Jewels of Opar on the other end. I need to run some twine down both sides of each zinnia row to prevent later flopping.



Those experimental native American tepary beans have popped up.



And there was a little more mischief in the Bodacious corn by the same plant that was messed with before. OK, they can have that one plant... just stay away from the rest!



The Silver Queen is just starting to push a tassel here and there so it's time for the last fertilizing. Something's going on as the plants are only about 4-5' tall and at this stage they should be at least 6'. Otherwise the plants look great. I recently read something about that and the cause but can't remember. Something to look up again today.

[GoDawgs]

It's a bright and shiny new day, one of two we'll have before the rain comes back but that's OK because we need the rain. I've got most of the week's garden chores out of the way and 5th Gear got the place mowed yesterday so it will be an easy day. Bean picking is the only chore on the to-do list.

Every year the field peas get puckery leaves right off the bat. They eventually grow out of it but this year it took longer than usual but once they do they start to take off. I showed them to the Extension Agent when she was here last week and she thought perhaps it was aphid damage or a touch of the virus they can spread. I have my doubts about that because I check pea and bean stems religiously for aphids when they're young. I think the aphid invasion isn't here yet.

Here are the plants now and they're putting on new clean foliage. You can see some of the puckery stuff near the bottom.



These are the garlic plants I started from little 3/8" bulbils two years ago, pulled up last year and replanted this past fall. They're getting near time to pull.



They're starting to make bulbils of their own and those are w whole lot bigger than the 3/8" ones I started with! I think I'll harvest these later and replant them this fall.



Yesterday I fertilized the Silver Queen as tassels are showing. I mentioned in my last post that the corn is shorter than usual at tassel time. I went searching for a reason and the main ones I found were early cold damage, nutritional problems or drought. A check of my weather data for the corn's planting time showed no problems there. It was fertilized the same way I always do and they got good watering so go figure. A closer look at the leaves showed what could be a need for some sulfur but the ammonium sulfate they just got will hopefully take care of that.

It's bean picking time again this morning. The Jumbos and Blue Lakes seem to be slowing down but the Providers look like they're ready to keep providing! This afternoon might see some more canning.

[rxkeith]

regarding the carrot question on another thread.
i don't recall what varieties they were. i didn't write them down.
they were all from sandhill preservation, all were orange, so figure there are
nantes type, and imperator type in the mix. i can never grow just one kind of
anything. i am waiting to learn the results of the seeds. you are the first to mention
growing them. i have a bunch of seeds still that will either go in the freezer for later
growing or get pitched depending on results.



keith

[GoDawgs]

@rxkeith, your carrots were planted on 3/16 the same day as my others but in a separate location. They seem to be slower than the others but that could be because they get a little morning shade and shade starting around 5pm whereas the others don't. That might be the reason.

I'm already harvesting nice carrots from the other bed. I've pulled a few of yours but they're still small and have realized that although I did a good thinning earlier in their life, more seeds popped up when I wasn't looking so they're crowded again. That can be another cause. My bad! I need to be ruthless and go thinning through the row again and then we'll see what happens.

To be continued.....

[GoDawgs]

Rain! We had a very short line of it come through around 7am but a bigger blob is almost here. Once that's through no more until maybe 4pm. That means it will be a good time to set out two more eggplants and possibly the last three tomatoes.

Pickles got another 16 pints of beans canned yesterday using the new Presto digital canner. It's a "set it and forget it" as it heats to the proper temp, maintains it for the proper length of time and depressurizes by itself. No sitting around monitoring toggle rattles, etc. You can get a lot of other things done while the canner is doing its thing.



A few drawbacks. One is that it is electric so if the SHTF it will be back to the good old All-American regular canner but right now it's saving a lot of wasted time. The other drawback is that while the old canner only takes about 30 minutes to depressurize, this new one takes an hour and a half! Again, you can be doing other stuff. And the canner can't be set under an overhanging cabinet due to the amount of steam it generates so Pickles got out a folding table and set up a canning station along a counter top. Works really well.

Yep, I confirmed that there are golden tortoise beetles on the sweet potatoes. I thought I had maybe seen the glitter of one flying away but on close inspection of the plants I found one. They first showed up last year.



They feed specifically on sweet potatoes and other members of that family to include bindweed and morning glory. They do real damage so no need to spray anything. Here's a real good close up. It's amazing how very metallic and shiny they are!

https://www.insectidentification.org/in ... ise-Beetle

Here's a pic of the corn leaves. Possible sulfur deficiency. We'll see if that changes after that ammonium sulfate fert kicks in with the rain.



Since I can't plant this morning it will be a good time to bake bread. And the beans need to be picked but that will happen this afternoon before the next rain moves in. Yeah, the plants will be wet and so picking is usually a no-no but so be it. They're winding down anyway. We've about canned enough that it's almost "give away" time.

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday saw a few light showers in the morning, just a third of an inch and the afternoon mess "slotted" us, breaking in half with the halves passing north and south of us. Probably more of the same this afternoon.

But the garden is liking the cooler weather! I finally got the two fall eggplants set out in a small area I found by the fence. A Chinese String on the left, Millionaire on the right. They'll have about four nice cooler, cloudy days to adjust to their new world.



About mid afternoon a nice breeze had dried the rain off the bean plants so it was picking time again along with a few more cukes and squash. Left to right, that's Blue Lake, Jumbo and Provider. Bean canning is done with 41 pints put up plus pickled beans and three bean salad. There were three pounds of Providers so this morning I'll divide them in half and take the to some folks. I think Pickles is going to add some to the veggie soup she wants to can tomorrow.



The Jumbos are almost done but they were ready first and had several pickings under their belt before the others. This is the first time I've ever tried these thanks to the recent MMMM. Huge but tender and stringless! A winner and will be added to the A Team list.



I looked online to see who sells them. Apparently it's an open pollinated exclusive at Johnny's Seeds. I still have a few seeds left and will plant some late summer to get some dried down and collect them for planting next year.

This morning I will bake another two loaves of English Muffin bread. It's great for breakfast toast.

There's nothing left to plant but there's a long list of small maintenance tasks to do. And it's time work on plans for the fall garden.

[PlainJane]

Fall garden plans! My head is spinning.

[GoDawgs]

Yeah, it makes my head spin too. I try to keep a three year rotation among the plant families in the beds. So in order to determine what goes where this fall, I really need to do a basic assignment of family groups to the next spring garden first. It's trying to avoid having something fall planted that will run long into spring in an area where I want to plant something real early like peas or early brassicas.

I like to plant leeks, onions, scallions and carrots along the edges of beds and grow later stuff down the middle to maximize use of space. But those middle plantings can't be legumes if alliums are along the sides. Over time I'm finding stuff that seems to go well together every year, like carrots on the sides and peppers in the middle. Or garlic down the sides in the fall and squash down the middle in spring.

Sometimes it's a roll of the dice. This spring I planted cukes down the middle of a bed that had carrots down the sides. The theory was that the carrots would be about done before the cuke vines started running. Oops! I now have cuke vine tendrils grabbing handfuls of carrot greens.

[DMF]

Oh yeah. Hornworms love peppers. It;s amazing how much one can eat in a night. It's even more amazing how the plant bounces back.

I'm always conflicted about what to do with them. My gardener side wants to compost the pieces. The aesthete in me knows what gorgeous big moths they will become.

[GoDawgs]

Oh yeah. Hornworms love peppers. It;s amazing how much one can eat in a night. It's even more amazing how the plant bounces back.

I'm always conflicted about what to do with them. My gardener side wants to compost the pieces. The aesthete in me knows what gorgeous big moths they will become.

Wow, I've never had a hornworm eat on a pepper plant let alone on the pepper.. But I figure there are plenty of those moths around so one hornworm won't be missed.

We've had drizzle and passing splash and dash showers every day so there hasn't been a time to put out the bT yet.

[karstopography]

Hornworms will attack my peppers at times.

[rdback]

...Wow, I've never had a hornworm eat on a pepper plant let alone on the pepper..

Here ya go @GoDawgs. One I caught a while back.

Tobacco Hornworm - 1.JPG

[GoDawgs]

Oooh, that's a nice big fat one, @rdback. Dang, after all that pepper he's gotta have heartburn. LOL!

It's a rainy afternoon. I need to save the next round of seeds from Fat Frog and Curley Kaley seeds. Those Curley Kaley seeds are small and there's very little juice in the tomatoes. Then either fall planning or starting an inventory of my seed box, whichever I feel like doing. Then again, I might just take a nap.

[Wildcat82]

Oh yeah. Hornworms love peppers. It;s amazing how much one can eat in a night. It's even more amazing how the plant bounces back.

I'm always conflicted about what to do with them. My gardener side wants to compost the pieces. The aesthete in me knows what gorgeous big moths they will become.

Wow, I've never had a hornworm eat on a pepper plant let alone on the pepper.. But I figure there are plenty of those moths around so one hornworm won't be missed.

We've had drizzle and passing splash and dash showers every day so there hasn't been a time to put out the bT yet.

Over the years I've pulled dozens of hormworms off tomatoes but I've never seen a hormworm on a pepper plant either. Maybe my hormworms are just picky eaters here.