New England June 2014

Okay, thanks. Good to know. I'll let them keep their space then.

We got great rain last night--over an inch. Hope all your gardens were equally blessed!

cpl100 wrote:We got great rain last night--over an inch.  Hope all your gardens were equally blessed!

My garden was blessed with 3.7 inches of rain...  

Not quite 1/2 inch here...I watered the SFG during my lunch break. 

CC

PS  Sugar snap peas and strawberries are bumper crops here this year.  You too?

CapeCoddess wrote:Not quite 1/2 inch here...I watered the SFG during my lunch break. 

CC

1/2" sounds wonderful. Just read that California is the #1 state for severe drought, covering 100% of the state.   

I don't know how much it rained here, but it was sorely needed, and now I see no rain in the forecast. As far as weather goes, you really can't beat this summer - but we gardeners might not object to a little more rain.

I didn't get a bumper crop of peas this year and I'm not sure why. I hate to harp on the slug issue, but I really think they are impacting my place very negatively. I have already put my 3 ducklings to work, but I still have to pick the slugs for them, they just dispose of them. I picked another hundred yesterday.

Someone I spoke with yesterday had 12" high bed boxes, and they were around 2" thick, and it seemed to help against slugs, and she said chipmunks too, she's seen them scurrying around the boxes, so that's a thought for some areas.

NHGardener, I don't want to discourage you, but I have 12" boxes and the chipmunks ate all my sweet peppers.  Not the hot, just the sweet ones.  Luckily I had some in pots in my flower bed and 3 sweets in the flower bed itself.

I got an inch of rain the other nite and it sure helped.  The crops look like they jumped in growth, as did the weeds.

Today I harvested my 2nd batch of sugar snap peas, radishes and leaf lettuces.  I see baby green tomatoes on some of my tomato plants and the Fuji dwarf apple has lots of little apples forming.  Too bad the bad weather prevented any blossoms on the Honey Crisp apple and the peach tree this year, darn it.  The birds have already pretty much cleaned out the cherries on my cherry tree.  They get them every year.  I netted it last year and those little smarties flew up from the bottom and got the cherries.  I'm willing to share things with some of the wildlife, so that's part of my community effort for keeping the birds healthy around our 7 acres.

We're going to have some dry, sunny weather the next few days.  A nice weekend for my family to go to the lake camp.  Then they tell us we have some 90* days coming next week.  I'm not pleased with that.  I have my lettuce covered but I might have to harvest the last of them next week before they bolt in the heat.

The hummers are happy outside my living room window.  I call them when I refill with fresh sugar water, 'hummer, hummer, hummer' a few times and darn it if they don't respond and come to the feeders for fresh feeding once I go indoors.  I only have a couple but its so nice to see them back year after year.

I'm off to cut some parsley for my lunchtime salad.  Have a good day.

My lettuce is nearing done (and so is the spinach) and I'm wondering about the possibility of growing both indoors, or on the deck in pots.

Scapes are coming in!!

The volunteer tomatoes that took over my onion bed last year are again rearing their heads again in the potato onion bed this year. I'm wondering how aggressively I want to pull the volunteers out, they usually outdo the tomatoes I so painstakingly put out there. But I don't want to cramp the potato onions. Can tomatoes and onions grow peacefully together, or should I rip those tomatoes out?

The onions will probably be done before the volunteer tomatoes can cause difficulties. Have you thought about just transplanting a few of the volunteers?

Suddenly I am not getting email notice of the forum replies. It appears I am still subscribed so haven't a clue what's happening!

cpl100 wrote:Suddenly I am not getting email notice of the forum replies.  It appears I am still subscribed so haven't a clue what's happening!

Check your preference in your profile.

NHGardener wrote:The volunteer tomatoes that took over my onion bed last year are again rearing their heads again in the potato onion bed this year. I'm wondering how aggressively I want to pull the volunteers out, they usually outdo the tomatoes I so painstakingly put out there.

Volunteers rock! I have a girlfriend down the road that composted her beds in the spring and now has volunteer tomatoes growing in them. She's leaving them exactly where they came up and only watering - no pruning or fertilizing. They are crowded but gorgeous, two times taller/fuller/greener than mine started from seed in winter, and loaded with flowers! It'll be interesting to see what happens. We are both keeping a close eye on them.

CC you wanted a video on trellising?

camprn wrote:Friday evening cocktails and trellis weaving.

yes please, this one.

My good goodness, its nearing the end of June already.  My, time flies.
I picked sugar snap peas and strawberries today.  Yippee.  The strawberries are doing well even tho they were pretty much buried in weeds earlier this month.  That weeding helped enormously.   Nothing like sweet berries fresh from the garden.


In the 80s here today but low humidity which sure makes a big difference.

Quiltbea I'm jealous because my strawberries are gone, so I'm drowning my sorrows in green beans. 

Tonight's harvest


I am amazed at how the garden has taken off in the past week. You can see the plants growing like crazy. I look at the garden in the evening and really see a big change from that morning. It's so exciting.  

Oh good, thanks, I'm going to keep those volunteer tomato plants in there with the onions then. One thing I've noticed about volunteer tomatoes is they are hardy! My trellised tomato plants continue to get spotted yellow leaves which I'm pulling off, but they don't look extremely healthy. From now on instead of planting tomatoes, I may just toss old tomatoes in this volunteer tomato bed (4x8) and let it do its thing with no competition. The volunteers, even with a late start, seem to catch up and surpass the planted ones (or at least that's what happened last summer). That's gratitude for ya!

As a tip, if you want volunteer tomatoes, just toss your unwanted or food scrap tomatoes into a bed in the fall and wait until late June to see if they germinate. I also cover my beds in the fall with mulch, so that might help.

How many things can we actually seed in the fall?

I was so happy this morning to find tiny tomatoes growing on four of my eight plants. 

Now to fight off the Japanese beetles that have invaded and the ants that just seem determined to keep building mounds around and in my beds regardless of what I use to get rid of them. This morning I covered the mounds with mints leaves again. Activity stopped, but we shall see.

I sprinkle fine corn grits around for the small ants. Come to think of it the larger ones also. And the ants disappear.

NHG.....On this forum some have said that cinnamon sprinkled on the ant mounds gets rid of them.  I haven't used it myself but bought a big bottle at the dollar store the other day just in case.

A few boric acid crystals at the top of ant colony hole. Do not use Japanese beetele traps. It bring more of them to the yard.

Hi, thanks for the replies. I've sprinkled cinnamon, used mint leaves, diatomaceous earth, water, boric/sugar mix, boric/peanut butter mix. They plant themselves right in the middle of my seedlings and start mounting away. 

I haven't mulched yet, because I still have seedlings that I don't want to crush (baby lettuc and new carrots. So, it could be the bed is getting too dry and they like it that way. I've seen them using my drip irrigation tubing to get back and forth between their mounds. Smart *^%$&!!!

Baby powder? The ants like to harvest the squash pollen so I lightly sprinkle the vines.

GardenGroupie wrote:Hi, thanks for the replies. I've sprinkled cinnamon, used mint leaves, diatomaceous earth, water, boric/sugar mix, boric/peanut butter mix. They plant themselves right in the middle of my seedlings and start mounting away. 

I haven't mulched yet, because I still have seedlings that I don't want to crush (baby lettuc and new carrots. So, it could be the bed is getting too dry and they like it that way. I've seen them using my drip irrigation tubing to get back and forth between their mounds. Smart *^%$&!!!

The ants, are they doing anything other than building their nests in your SFG?  If they're not causing any obvious damage, why not try to coexist with them? 

I, personally like having ants in the garden because they get into everything and it's alot easier to spot pests (aphids for one) by following the trail of ants than it is to spot the aphids themselves oftentimes.  I believe that they can actually help with pollination, in some cases.

That being said, if they're the biting kind, or and you'd rather not have a nest right among the plants you're tending to, I've found success by disrupting the nest with a twig and a "surprise" rain-shower every day or so.  They decide for themselves that their digs aren't the best and move on.