Garden 2020

[BobMc]

I had a cayenne pepper in a pot that I kept for three years,brought it inside every winter and put it out in the spring. Threw some fertilizer in the pot now and then and had a banger harvest every year.

Still scoring a decent amount every day.



Grilled up and sealed a gang of anchos last night.

[gravitylover]

I left 3 broccoli plants to flower and go to seed. They flowered and had all sortsa cool pollinators around them but they didn't go to seed, instead they started putting on new heads, like a whole second round with small and med sized florets all over with 18" long flowery stems sticking up. It's pretty cool.

I like fall gardens, fewer bugs.

[CascadeLuke]

What are you seeing for autumn? Have been enjoying this tiger eye sumac recently

[tgapp]

What are you seeing for autumn? Have been enjoying this tiger eye sumac recently

wow, that's beautiful!! what a cool leaf shape.

we have fall greens coming up, tons of tomatoes on the vine, and cucumbers still strong. also more zucchini than we know what to do with.

our super hot peppers won't ripen - kinda bummed on that one; any tips for getting peppers to ripen?

i'll snap pics later today/tomorrow to share

[CascadeLuke]

wow, that's beautiful!! what a cool leaf shape.

we have fall greens coming up, tons of tomatoes on the vine, and cucumbers still strong. also more zucchini than we know what to do with.

our super hot peppers won't ripen - kinda bummed on that one; any tips for getting peppers to ripen?

i'll snap pics later today/tomorrow to share

Envious. We didn’t get much garden established at a new home, worked on landscape.
Props to Norseman though, went up thread and he’s rolling.

On these tiger eyes, warning that they have a reputation of aggressive offshoots. Found this out after placing 3 in ground in different spots as small specimen. Luckily found out through reading further and not irl. Look forward to one day planting them on a wide open property and watching what happens over time.

[skaredshtles]

Fucking sumac are WEEDS.

[BobMc]

Dug up some beets today, pretty good haul for a second harvest. Had one whopper, 2 pounds 7 ounces. Roasting them, chopping, sealing and freezing.









Cucumbers are still firing so I made 6 jars of pickles today. Water bathed 4 jars and left 2 for fridge pickles.







Carrot pulling and freezing is up next. Probably going to plant some radishes tomorrow.

[tgapp]

^^goddamn bobmc, that's a proper fucking beet!! what are you planning on doing with it?

Carolina Reapers are ripening finally!!

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[BobMc]

Umm...

[tgapp]

ha, sorry, I didn't realize you were just gonna eat 'em roasted.

we also roast (or parboil) beets to process them, but that's just the beginning. mrs tgapp, being a ruski, likes to shred them and then serve them with pickled herring and meat jello to make a dish whose name translated means 'herring in a fur coat' (worse than it sounds honestly), or we mix em with peas and mayonnaise and potatoes to make a cold salad or of course, borsch. the possibilities are endless, even if some of them are a little unappetizing.

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[Sharon Needles]

I don’t think I’ve had much - if any Russian cuisine. Sounds interesting.

Great stuff in this thread. Good job y’all.

[Boissal]

Bump for end of season stoke.

We have a hard freeze in the forecast for Sunday night with shitty weather before that so it's time to finally pull the plug on the garden for the year.
Yesterday night Ms Boissal and I gave thanks to the plants and to the earth goddess and started the great takedown. Dozens of micro squashes went to the chickens, the stupid plant spent the entire season growing vines and only started putting out fruits 3 weeks ago, I think we'll get 1 normal-sized winter squash out of it. I picked a ton of blossoms at least, gonna try to stuff them so the plant's efforts have not been in vain. There was a surprising amount of new peppers despite lows in the 40s at night lately. Shishito galore will continue for a few more weeks. Some hidden zucchs and cucs were harvested along with a few mini-melons. Another 20ish lbs of tomatoes were picked, most fully ripe with some stragglers that will catch up. The 20+ lbs left on the vine are fully green and will go to the compost after they freeze.

All in all it was a very solid season. It started early with the first tomatoes eaten before the end of June, the garden weathered the extreme heat and drought well, the massive wind storm didn't do as much damage as I feared, and the extended season really delivered, I think this might the latest we've kept things going.
Ms Boissal estimated the canning total to be around 160 lbs for tomatoes only which should take us through the next 8 months of fresh-veggie desert.

See you all in here next spring!

[climberevan]

Bump for end of season stoke.

We have a hard freeze in the forecast for Sunday night with shitty weather before that so it's time to finally pull the plug on the garden for the year.
Yesterday night Ms Boissal and I gave thanks to the plants and to the earth goddess and started the great takedown. Dozens of micro squashes went to the chickens, the stupid plant spent the entire season growing vines and only started putting out fruits 3 weeks ago, I think we'll get 1 normal-sized winter squash out of it. I picked a ton of blossoms at least, gonna try to stuff them so the plant's efforts have not been in vain. There was a surprising amount of new peppers despite lows in the 40s at night lately. Shishito galore will continue for a few more weeks. Some hidden zucchs and cucs were harvested along with a few mini-melons. Another 20ish lbs of tomatoes were picked, most fully ripe with some stragglers that will catch up. The 20+ lbs left on the vine are fully green and will go to the compost after they freeze.

All in all it was a very solid season. It started early with the first tomatoes eaten before the end of June, the garden weathered the extreme heat and drought well, the massive wind storm didn't do as much damage as I feared, and the extended season really delivered, I think this might the latest we've kept things going.
Ms Boissal estimated the canning total to be around 160 lbs for tomatoes only which should take us through the next 8 months of fresh-veggie desert.

See you all in here next spring!

Very nice haul. We're going to do the same thing in the next couple of days. We'll prob end up with 30# of green tomatoes, many of which will slowly ripen in the house. We didn't get any until August, though, so the early season cold really hurt our yield.

Luckily all of our peppers are in containers and will soon occupy the newly expanded sunroom, so they'll keep rolling until at least December. It's been a strange year, with some usual stars (okra, eggplant) being lame and some (melons, corn) doing really well.

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[BobMc]

I pulled everything I could find before the freeze, have a bunch of green tomatoes in the garage now.



After the killing freeze I went out and it was easy to find the hidden stuff.



It just looks sad out there now, I still have lettuce, parsley, green onions, rosemary, carrots, beets and chives that survived.



Made some cowboy candy today (candied jalapeños), most of the peppers were from recently so I figured they wouldn't be that hot. Figured that wrong, tried one after jarring them and hiccups and eyes watering occurred, Hopefully they chill out a bit after a week in the fridge.

[gravitylover]

Man, this warmth has been great for the stuff I still have going. Tomatoes popped and there's easily 40-50 of them on three plants, carrots are going bonkers and even though all the leaves turned and are falling off the strawberry plants they flowered and started setting fruit again and the potatoes, holy shit the potatoes are going crazy. The sweet potato vine went from maybe two feet tall to 5 in just a few days so hopefully we get some for Thanksgiving.

[climberevan]

We just called it on the tomatoes thanks to the forecast for 18 tonight.

~45# of green. They are delicious cooked as though they were squash or whatever, and many will ripen over the next month.

We also have a 5gal bucket full of mostly not ripe melons. We covered the butternut plants with double moving blankets in hopes that they will make it through and get a bit more maturation.

It was a weird garden year, for sure.

[AK47bp]

What do you guys do with your beds over winter?

Do you leave some of the scraps, leaves, roots, etc. to break down over the winter or do you clean up your beds?

My second year soil did way better than year one obviously.


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[BCMtnHound]

There has been some great hauls recorded here this season. Kudos.

Put everything to bed this weekend and last. Hoping the forecast plays out so I can get in the garlic. Primed compost is into the bed ready for it, frost chunks and all! Going to have to have a hot water dunk to hopefully kill off the white rot that attacked us this year. Only recovered 1/2 the yield this year And no softnecks, so begged some softneck replacements from Dad's harvest.

All the garden biomass sorted in their place. Lots of veg this season from the flower gardens contributing. Early snow took out a bit, including a nice sumac, but the plum and apple trees are ready for the forecast of a snowy year. Some carrots heeled to see how they tolerate the winter. Irrigation pulled and drained.

[climberevan]

What do you guys do with your beds over winter?

Do you leave some of the scraps, leaves, roots, etc. to break down over the winter or do you clean up your beds?

My second year soil did way better than year one obviously.


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We don't do much. Nothing will break down here anyway, since it's either bone dry or frozen. The GF still insists that we "compost" our kitchen scraps, but without watering it the pile just kind of sits there.

We buy a yard or two of compost from the local place and work it into the top few inches in each bed before planting each year. We rotate what goes in each bed, and try to rotate potato areas as well, but now that we have 3 sixteen foot rows of them, we're running out of places to leave fallow. Next year we might fence in a new area for corn and potatoes.

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[AK47bp]

Cool. Yea I did an early spring (marchish) compost mix in that seemed to really help. I’m in western WA so things turn to mush and break down pretty well.


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[Thaleia]

What do you guys do with your beds over winter?

Do you leave some of the scraps, leaves, roots, etc. to break down over the winter or do you clean up your beds?

My second year soil did way better than year one obviously.


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I'll echo this question as well.

I'm on crappy hard clay, so what I used to do each year is buy a couple yards of garden soil. About half mixed into my garden beds, and the other half used in containers. At the end of the season I would pull out the finished plants, and empty the used container soil into the garden. (since the container soils still looks pretty good I figured it was a simple year to help refresh the garden soil.

I'm trying something new this year. I'm leaving the containers intact since a/ I've started using some pretty large containers so it's obviously way less work to just leave them, and b/ I got into composting this year and will have some really nice stuff to amend the garden with.

I've also created a 4'x4'x4' temporary bulk composter in the garden for all the various dead flowers, herbs, leaves, vegetables etc that get pulled out this time of year. I put a about ten tomato vines in there (cut up) but I'm reading for my cold location they probably won't break down by spring so that was likely a mistake.

In my two raised beds I've planted garlic and onions for the spring, a first for me.

Really great season overall. Tomatoes had me worried at the beginning as they formed but stayed green for a few weeks but once they started it was nuts. Cucumbers were looking like the star of the show but all of them stopped producing then died quite suddenly mid August. At the time I figured it was just the life cycle of the plant but the more I think about it the more I think something external did them in. I did find two cucumber beetles on them, did a pretty thorough spray and never saw them again, but I know there could be larvae in the soil going after the roots. They also had some pm but I thought it was very minor.

Herbs were mainly great but I always struggle with cilantro, which happens of course to be the herb we use the most of. I was sowing new seeds every two or three weeks going for the successive thing but a ~three week heat spell in June really fucked with any seedlings I had going and germinating in general. Will move that operation back indoors when it's so hot I guess.

We're into hard frosts so the last week has been shutting everything down. Nice to get some crisp fall air but I sure enjoy the spring/ summer work over the fall stuff. There is some enjoyment in planning what to do differently next summer.

Things I want to improve:

Beans - nice steady batches but I never got a solid meals worth (for two people) per harvest. Also really bummed my Scarlet Runners that I heard so much about produced a total of one flower and one sad twisted 'bean'.

Cauliflower, brussels sprouts, broccoli etc. I've got to get these going waaaay sooner indoors in late winter I think. I've got the bok choy down at least.

Slugs. Fucking slugs destroyed so many greens. Things are going to be different next year you slimy pricks.

Besides obvious stuff like pulling out dead plants, weeding, cleaning, is there anything else I can be doing to the gardens or compost before the ground freezes?

[Flyoverland Captive]

What do you guys do with your beds over winter?

Do you leave some of the scraps, leaves, roots, etc. to break down over the winter or do you clean up your beds?

We clean everything up and toss it all in a pile to compost. We then plant a cover crop, and get rabbit poop from some friends that we scatter in the beds all winter, letting it break down. In spring we till it all under and plant.

[AK47bp]

We clean everything up and toss it all in a pile to compost. We then plant a cover crop, and get rabbit poop from some friends that we scatter in the beds all winter, letting it break down. In spring we till it all under and plant.

What’s a cover crop? Your in eastern WA right?


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[climberevan]

Here's where we stand.

[Norseman]

What’s a cover crop? Your in eastern WA right?


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http://pubs.cahnrs.wsu.edu/publications/pubs/fs111e/