Gardeners of AW, unite

Fenika

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PPS- Stew involved:
Boiling bones and some meat for 4 hours, with some celery, and tomatoes, and whatnots
Meat and bones were removed and most the meat was frozen and marked as 'stewed' for a doggie or desperate human ;)
Various cuts of goat were chopped into small bites (including some tenderloin, lol), browned with rice flour, and added. Celery ROOT, more tomatoes, carrots, sweet potato, squash, garlic, rosemary, and basil were added at the appropriate times.

This made for a very thick and rich stew, but being summer we froze most of it :)
 

icerose

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Just picked 8 ears of corn, six squash, two peppers, a bag of lettuce and herbs as well as two pounds of broccoli yesterday. From my MIL I thinned out two rows of her beets because she had big ones and ones that weren't ready as well as some cherry tomatoes. We have cantelope that are on the verge and I have three very gigantic banana squash growing in my garden. Makes me really wish I had a root cellar.

I have two really adorable little watermelons, the plant died then came back so it's only been growing well for about a month and a half. I hope they mature before the frost which looks like it's shaping up to be an early frost. Our water table is pretty low so they are shutting off water first of September. *grumble*

My potatoes are going nuts but I sure hope they form well without water. I have three pumpkins about the size of a large cantalope that are growing well. They are small pumpkins and are starting to mature. My kids are thrilled. My onions are doing well and I have seven lettiuce plants that finally decided to sprout three months after planting. My three beet plants are finally starting to develop as well.

I've given away probably two tablefuls of squash and still have tons more on the plants. The squash bugs sure are loving them though so we've had to watch them closely and do bug control. My corn is shaping up nicely and my pepper plants are producing like crazy.
 

Fenika

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That's awesome, Rose :)

Can you collect rain water from the gutters? And can you cover some of your plants against a light frost, when it comes?
 

icerose

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We simply don't get enough rain to collect it. Around here we're lucky if we get 12 inches of rain/snow a year. Though it has been wetter this late summer than it usually is, so maybe we'll get lucky and have a wet fall, at least enough to limp the plants along. As for covering it I just don't have the money to do it, not this year. I'm hoping eventually to have my own place where I can have a permanent green house as well as several modular ones. This year though I'm at the mercy of nature.
 

Fenika

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Utah sounds more evil than Oklahoma. But then again, I left a day before the mass floods...
 

icerose

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Well Utah was declared uninhabitable by famous settlers before the Mormons came here. For good reason too. The alkaline in the soil will destroy any crops if you don't counteract it with lots of fertilizer and compost. The lack of rain will top it off along with the scorching heat if you don't have sufficient irrigation and if you don't water at night or early morning. And then there's the wacky weather where it'll be 70 one day snowing the next then 90 the day after. Often years will be coupled with both a late spring deep frost and an early killer fall frost.

I'm so going green house when I get the chance.
 

Fenika

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I think Utah is the apocalypse, warming up.

(to anyone reading, no religious offense was intended by my bad joke)

Maybe I will call about that job in the Poconos. PA has nothing on Utah.
 

writerjoy

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We're not happy this morning. Deer ate my husband's tropical lily. Up until a couple of weeks ago, we thought we didn't have deer on our property (we've lived here almost four years). This is not a good development for budding gardeners finalizing their landscaping plans! I need to go out to check if they did any damage to the vegetable garden.
 

Fenika

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Oh, that sucks. One thing I've learned about deer (and possum and just about everything) is they'll wander through anywhere and stop for snacks on the way.

I've found possum on my property when I had baby guinea fowl, and we live in the corner of a neighborhood with water on two sides!

We also had a deer swim over one day, oddly enough.
 

icerose

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Take either some human or dog hair and snag it on your fence line and/or trees. Staple it if you have to. The smell will keep them away. It works much like preditor urine only longer. You only have to do it once a year as long as the hair stays put. It's also a heck of a lot cheaper than putting in a ten foot fence.

Another option is put in a thick set of bushes a few feet from your fence. Far enough away that they can't jump both but close enough that they can't jump between. They won't risk landing in the bushes, but you'll still have the vulnerablility of your driveway.

The deer thought the corn in our garden tasted mighty good, the hair took care of that but we still get raccoons. I don't know of anything to stop raccoons other than maybe buried chicken wire that also stretches up the height of the fence with no trees overhanging either way.
 
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Fenika

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Still waiting on that massive crop of peppers to ripen. The two in ground banana peppers are also going crazy...
 

Fenika

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The other day I picked all the old basil that (luckily) refused to go to seed and made almond pesto.

I had enough to freeze two small containers of it. The rest I can enjoy and wonder why I'm not losing weight. :D

In a bold move I have planted some beets and will hope for the best during the fall season. They like cool weather anyways...
 

icerose

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Good luck to your beets. I'm worried about the weather around here. It already feels like fall every morning. It's in the wind. We're getting down to the low 40's every night this week. I still have things growing dang it! My three little pumpkins are already turning orange. They can feel it too, my three giant banana squash are about ready. I'll try to remember the camera this time and take some pictures of my banana squash plant that took over a quarter of my garden.
 

Fenika

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Well I'm glad some'one' was there to fill in at your poor garden :)

And thank you for the well wishes on my new beets. The old ones aren't worth anything from the look of them.

My peppers are taking their sweet time getting ripe. The sickly one is still sickly but has some fresh leaves and small peppers. It's just not putting much effort into them.

I need a bigger garden next year.
 

Fenika

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The beets have sprouted! About half have come up and they look nice and strong :D

I collected a ton of seeds today off the basil, and there will be plenty more later. I'm going to do well next year with so many seeds off so many varieties.

I have to remember to prop up the in ground peppers before Earl gets here- They are already about to fall over from the weight without a hurricane harassing them.
 

Fenika

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Also, anyone know when beets will go to seed? The old ones might give me some seeds if I'm lucky, but most can't even grow new leaves so I'm not holding my breath. Would be nice though...
 

Fenika

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*crickets*

Anyone still out there?

Tomorrow I'm going to a friend's farm to weed, gather cherry tomatoes, and see if any other butternut squash need to be saved from rotten vines. Then I get to collect squash bugs by hand until I can't take it anymore and set out newspapers or boards for the rest. Should be fun :D
 

icerose

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I'm here.

I went out to check on the garden today. Raccoons have destroyed the rest of my corn. They peeled at least twenty cobs and ate them. Deer trampled a few of the stalks as well and squirrels are eating on the squash. As long as they stay out of the pumpkins I'll be fine. I can spare a few squash.

The frost has already nipped at the garden. A few trees have blackened tops, my corn is turning red and my squash leaves look pretty tattered. My peppers were on the south more protected end of the garden so they stayed safe and my potato plants are still growing pretty vigorously except the two outside plants froze and are starting to wilt but they were big enough they should have a decent load of potatoes.

I knew it was going to freeze early but I was hoping it would wait awhile. At least I know now why my pumpkins have been going orange like crazy and why my watermelon stopped getting any bigger and instead ripened up. The cantelope have been coming off the vines like crazy and so have the tomatoes all because of the early frost. I helped my MIL trim back her tomatoes and expose the fruit so they'd ripen and they are by the bowlfuls.

She finished off her beets and is now waiting for the lettuce to finish going to seed so she can gather for next year. I have three new lettuce plants for a total of thirteen. Definitely late bloomers but they are delicious. My broccoli and banana squash are also still doing well. The banana squash are approaching two and a half feet long now with a sizeable girth.
 

Fenika

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Wow, Rose, that's still an impressive yield. I hope the frost backs off and leaves your garden alone. Otherwise, I'm showing up before dusk with some old comforters!
 

Fenika

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Wow. So I spent two hours in the friend's garden before heat hunger and thirst drove me away.

I picked a small bowl full of cherry tomatoes

I weeded a little and found some unknown type of squash vines in the mass of overgrowth.

Then I found a massive watermelon (big enough to be a helmet and fit loosely) that was perfectly ripe but it's vine was almost completely rotted through. This was buried by grass. They let me keep it!

I picked about 10 more butternut squash that were on dead vines from the squash bugs.

I picked up (or shook off) and drown a LOT of squash bugs and knew I wasn't even making a dent. Then I realized stomping them was funner and much more rewarding. Then I laid out some news paper 'traps' which I'll go check on later.

Hopefully the damn squash bugs will DIE soon but there's a bunch of young ones and some eggs (I assume it's their eggs).

There's new squash plants coming in and I wonder if they'll yield something before the frost...
 

AngelicaRJackson

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I just had to share these sweet potatoes

And they said it couldn't be done! I read not to bother trying to grow from supermarket sweet potatoes, and that they weren't a reliable crop in our area. As an experiment, I put 2 small potatoes, whole, in one end of the strawberry bed back in February.

I thought they got killed by frost,but about the end of March they started sending up leaves. By today when I harvested them, the vines had completely overtaken that corner of the garden. I got about 2 dozen potatoes of various size (including a whopper that is 11 inches long and about 3 pounds) and I'm not sure if I even found all of them. We'll see if more leaves come up from escapees.

Totally makes up for the lackluster tomato crop this year! Beans are doing well and so are lemon cucumbers, and I've got some nice watermelons on the vine.

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Fenika

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Ohhhhhhhh, lovely. I'm going to have to stick some sweet potatoes in the earth now. Any tips? I assume I wait till spring or is winter better so they can 'settle in'?

Also, anyone have any recipes calling for lots of butternut squash? I cut two more free of the fence today :D Sadly, I was too late to save the rest, but there's enough squash that's nearly mature to provide plenty for the garden's owners. And they have some watermelon coming in strong. And those young squash plants that might yield something yet...
 

AngelicaRJackson

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My books did say to wait until the frost, but we're going on holiday and I didn't want to come back to them and find them damaged (it also said they suffer from sitting in soil below 50 degrees). Last year we went away this time of year and we had a whopper of a storm: hail, rain, and winds. We lost a maple tree in that one, and two more in the unseasonable snow later that year.

I garden mainly by benign neglect and that worked well for the sweet potatoes. The vines were truly lovely, though, I think next year I'll plant them somewhere that they can be more like edible landscaping. I did put them in a little earlier than the russets (around St. Patty's day is good for my area) but they survived a few frosts.

For butternut squash recipes, this is my favorite
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/1216
 

CatSlave

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I picked up (or shook off) and drown a LOT of squash bugs and knew I wasn't even making a dent. Then I realized stomping them was funner and much more rewarding. Then I laid out some news paper 'traps' which I'll go check on later.

Hopefully the damn squash bugs will DIE soon but there's a bunch of young ones and some eggs (I assume it's their eggs).
Next year get yourself a chicken or two, to control the bug population, fertilize the garden and lay eggs. :)