Re: New to SFG

kristinz 6/20/2012, 7:40 pm

Gilly - your garden is something to be envied! okay

Thank you for sharing your pictures and information! I have yet to set up my garden - just need to get everything for my Mel's Mix - but hope to have it all set up for a fall garden! Hope mine looks as good as yours! It's beautiful!

givvmistamps 6/21/2012, 2:02 am

Looks great Gilly21! Your first year looks like it's going a lot better than ours is. Thanks for sharing your photos!

GWN 6/21/2012, 9:23 am

WOW Those tomatoes look great.
I learned a great way to ripen them last year.

Put a banana under the plants, preferably one that is starting to blacken.
There is a gas given off that causes other fruits to ripen.
And once some tomatoes start to ripen it seems to just spread. Only took me 2 bananas...... rock on

ramarks 6/21/2012, 9:37 am

I never heard of using bananas like that before.

Gilly21 6/21/2012, 5:35 pm

I will give that a try tomorrow if they are not started yet. Thanks for the heads up idea.

Gilly21 6/25/2012, 12:55 pm

Got back from my trip to NY and found some good and some bad happening over the week. First off I dont think my father in law watered one time over the whole week so my cucumbers are a bit in distress. Not dead but not thriving as well as they were. I can bring them back. My squash plants in the front garden are infested with squash bugs. See photo below. This morning I cut off all the leaves that showed signs of damage. Did a quick look at the others but will need to do a better job tonight and the rest of the week to keep up. After two days of good watering my carrots are bouncing back. I transplanted my strawberrys because they were overtaking a big section of my box. I put them in their own box's, but they are not looking so hot rith now. If they survive ok if not I wont be heart broken.

My watermellon seeds sprouted, as well as the rest of the beens I planted. My corn is looking ok still but not fantastic. I might hit them with some more fertilzer if they dont perk up in the next day or two. The two sunflowers I stuck in the garden are growing what seems like 6" a day. The best was coming home to a ripe tomato. I ate my first tomato from the garden yesterday and pulled the second today. The wierd part is that I only planted Black Krim, supersweet 100's, and one beefsteak. One of the three Black Krim plants looked different since it was about a foot tall. Leaves were shaped differently, vine was different, etc. And this one was the first to ripen. It is not a Black Krim. I have no idea what it it. It is pink with some green blotches. I will snap a photo tonight. Anyway, it is a good tomato, just dont know what the heck it is. It is only about 2" in dia. and much more rounded then the typical heirloom. Lastly I planted 9 sweet potato slips/starts in a 30gal. tub full of MM. They look very good after only two days of sucking up the nutrients.

Anyway here are some photos. Maybe someone can identify the large bug I had on one of my zuc leaves. He looked like a bug eater so I left him alone. When I was pruning the dead leaves off this morning I had tiny white moths/flies or something all over the place. Hundreds of them. I have no idea what they were. Any guesses, and good or bad. They were only 1/32 or so big. They were tiny.

Hopefully a preditor

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Squash bug infestation. All the leaves I cut had atleast this many on it.

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ramarks 6/25/2012, 12:56 pm

It's hard to count on someone else to look after your garden. Sorry about that.

Gilly21 6/26/2012, 11:57 am

Starting to blush.

Black Krim

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Second cluster

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Mystery tomato. This one came from the Black Krim Pack and is planted between the two BK plants

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Garden overall after some clean up

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quiltbea 6/26/2012, 12:18 pm

Maybe he watered, but not enough. If must have gotten quite warm in your area.

Your garden is looking good despite the bugs and lack of water. It looks like you are getting it back in good shape.

Congrats on your first tomato. Sometimes we get an unknown tomato in our seed packets. It happens. At least its a nice size and tasty.

Gilly21 6/26/2012, 12:36 pm

It did get warm last weekend. It had bene mild up to Thursday when we spiked to 96 and stayed in that range all weekend. Just got a break today. Going to be 100 Saturday though. The squash plants out front got a lot of trimming and hit with 7 last night. Hopefully I can get them back into shape. After a couple days of deep watering things are bouncing back.

The mystery tomato is quite dense. It doesnt have much seed in it and doesnt have as strong a flavor as I would expect. But oh well still better then store bought.

efirvin 6/26/2012, 3:49 pm

Gilly21 wrote:Well it has been a month and a half since dropping in the first bed and have since added another 4x4 and a little table top for my 3 yr old to play in. Here are the results so far.

I have in the long bed south side:
Snap peas
English peas
Broccoli
Carrots
Lettuce
Spinach
Sweet peppers
Jalapeno peppers
Strawberries
onions

The north side of the long bed is all Silverqueen 84 plants that are doing awesome. I have a yellow squash tucked in there to see how it will do. I have other yellow squash and Zucs in the front garden/flower bed I transplanted out of the north side.

In my 4x4 I have:
Cucumbers
Bush beans
onions
1 Mortgage Lifter plant
1 Beef Steak
2 Cherry Tomato plants
3 Black Krim plants
Jalapeno peppers
and Lettuce tucked between the Cucumbers and the beans

Everything was growing very slowly through the middle of March so I added some MG shake and feed 10-10-10. It along with the bit of rain we got really kick started the the beds. Being impatient as I am I did not start out the beds with the right blend of MM and can see where the sections I actually am close to perfect MM I have much better growth. On the south side of the long bed I am more like 80% municipal compose, 10% peat and 10% vermiculite.
On the north side I have municipal compost 50%, black cow 10%, Black Hen 10%, 30% peat and 30% vermiculite. In the 4x4 I have about the same but more black cow and less municipal. So only 3 different composts and one being municipal compost.

I will be redoing the beds this fall after harvesting for the year and adding another 4x8 bed north of the 4x4. definitely going to have full MM and a strong backbone for next year.

I am not pleased with the progress of my broccoli. I know it is in mostly municipal compost but it is very slow and about 1" above ground level there is a ring, below the ring is more brown and about half the size of the rest of the stem. Two plants fell over and I dug them up to put them in deeper. I don't know what could have caused them to do that though. Any thoughts?
Strawberry plants were put in on 2;28 but just started to produce flowers and a couple buds. I didn't know they were perennials and so slow the first year until recently. I think I will pull them and make a strawberry tower. It has been a great experience for my son and he loves checking the garden. We will probably eat our first salad this weekend. Learning is a process that has disappointments along the way but every year I hope to get better.

Your garden is looking good Gilly!

efirvin 6/26/2012, 4:02 pm

Gilly21 wrote:Starting to blush.

Black Krim

Second cluster

Mystery tomato. This one came from the Black Krim Pack and is planted between the two BK plants

Garden overall after some clean up

Gilly I think you can call your first year to sfg a resounding success! And thanks for all the great pixs. I have enjoyed watching the progression of your plants over the growing season.

It is so much fun to grow and eat your own food!

Evelyn from zone 4 Wyoming

Gilly21 6/28/2012, 10:41 am

So now I am thoroughly confused. so I only purchased A pack of Black Krim, A pack of Supersweet 100's, and a pack of beefsteaks. I started the supersweets and Black Krims inside and transplanted them in the garden. Of the three Black Krim plants I started I got 3 different looking Tom's. See below. Only one of the three actually look like a Krim. There is no way I mixed the Beefsteak with the Krim because I only started the beefsteak weeks after the Krim;s were already growing. I did eat the one that looked like a Krim last night and was very pleased with teh flavor. Not blown away but good. Going to try the red one for lunch today. I am just surprised that there would be such a difference from a seed pack from Ferry Morse. Now I am curious to what my friend will get from the two plants I gave him.

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efirvin 7/1/2012, 4:05 pm

Gilly21 wrote:So now I am thoroughly confused. so I only purchased A pack of Black Krim, A pack of Supersweet 100's, and a pack of beefsteaks. I started the supersweets and Black Krims inside and transplanted them in the garden. Of the three Black Krim plants I started I got 3 different looking Tom's. See below. Only one of the three actually look like a Krim. There is no way I mixed the Beefsteak with the Krim because I only started the beefsteak weeks after the Krim;s were already growing. I did eat the one that looked like a Krim last night and was very pleased with teh flavor. Not blown away but good. Going to try the red one for lunch today. I am just surprised that there would be such a difference from a seed pack from Ferry Morse. Now I am curious to what my friend will get from the two plants I gave him.

Wow! Those 2 tomatoes defintely look different! Will be interested in your taste test results.

Evelyn

Gilly21 7/1/2012, 5:31 pm

Taste test= None of the tomatoes I have eaten to date are what I was expecting. I really was expecting that home grown full flavor you get from a GOOD tomato. What I got was fairly land and just slightly better then grocery store. I think I might be watering too much. Washing out the flavor. I am not giving up but I am going to cut back on the water. Maybe to three times a week instead of every day.

On a seperate note, I have had some possible disasters hit me this wekend. I woke up on Saturday morning to find the stom we had through the night blew over my tomato and cucumber trellis. The wood supports just stapped at the bottom. Two of my main vines suffered severe damage 6 inches up from the ground. Nearly snapped in half. I pounded in some conduit supported the trellis and cut the damage out. Re-fastened and supported all the vines I have running up. Did my best to mend the damage at the bottom where the stems split, watered and crossed my fingers. I am hoping for the best but expecting the worst. so far not much has changed. There are some good looking leaf shoots, but mostly they are looking sad Sad

. Top all that with record heat we are getting. Been over 100 for three days now and expecting that another day atleast.

Pepper plants are loving the heat, corn is looking crappy, squash is doing better this week than last (after some serious TLC managing the Squash bugs and trimming the dieing branches. Cantalope, watermelon, lima beans, and various other stuff is looking ok.

Goosegirl 7/1/2012, 9:45 pm

Gilly21 wrote:Taste test= None of the tomatoes I have eaten to date are what I was expecting. I really was expecting that home grown full flavor you get from a GOOD tomato. What I got was fairly land and just slightly better then grocery store. I think I might be watering too much.

Gilly - it could just be the variety you are growing. I was talking to a friend today about tomatoes and what she really loves is the good old-fashioned heavy tomatoey taste. Not all varieties have that. Black Krim (that you mentioned earlier) is one of the ones she has tried and just did not like because it wasn't a strong enough tomato taste for her.

GG

**walshevak** 7/1/2012, 11:00 pm

I had some yellow pears and some sungold cherries today. Yellow pear did not appeal, sungold were great.

So variety does make a difference.

Kay

Gilly21 7/2/2012, 9:35 am

Here is what I ended up with after the damage.

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**camprn** 7/2/2012, 9:41 am

Oh dear...I have to say, it could have been much worse. The tomato stems will probably heal, it looks like there may be enough of the stem attached that the plants sap will continue to flow. And all the other damaged plants will probably come back strong, just a little set back for now. Very Happy

Gilly21 7/2/2012, 9:45 am

camprn wrote:Oh dear...I have to say, it could have been much worse. The tomato stems will probably heal, it looks like there may be enough of the stem attached that the plants sap will continue to flow. And all the other damaged plants will probably come back strong, just a little set back for now.

I was expecting much worse when I woke up to the trellis down. Luckilly the Fence behind the box held it up just enough to not snap the vines completely. I trimmed off a ton of branches, and moved the cucumbers off the main trellis. (They are secondary to me, the toms are what I really want) This morning things did not look any worse, so I hope that is a good sign. We had another terrible wind storm last night and things held up. One thing I can say is I have learned a lot this year. Next year will be even better.

Gilly21 7/11/2012, 10:50 am

Well I have lost my squash plants. I was not staying on top of them over a few days and they have sucomed to SVB. I pulled them yesterday and replanted new seeds. Hopefully I have time to get another nice growth. I cant say I am happy about it but I got probably 20-30zuccini and yellow squash from 5 plants over the last couple months, so I am not dissapointed either.

My tomatos have survived the storms but have semed to slow down production. Most likely from the heat as well as trying to repair the damage left by the trellis falure. I have stuck to watering less and it has changed the flavor profile of all the toms. Much richer then they were to start. I pulled my corn. Got about 50 ears but most were short and fat. Ate some the day we picked it and they were great! I planted another batch to see if I can get two harvests in one year. Only did 2 per square and only half the box this time. I am leaving the rest of the squares for winter squash I will start the first week of Aug.
Peppers are just starting to produce. I am not sure why they are so slow to get going. The bell peppers are about golf ball size on two plants. One plant never flowered and just looks sick. The Jalapeno's are flowering but not yet showing pepper buds. My cucumber plants really took the failed trellis hard. I was getting about 5-6 cukes a week but have not gotten any since. I did some serious trimming yesterday and pulled 3 of the 6 and replanted. The ones I left have some lush greenery growing at the end of the vine and a couple flowers popped out yesterday so I left them alone in hopes.
I planted my whole pack of Dragon Tongue beans and they are taking off like crazy. I was surprised at how good they were. I put a seed in any empty space I had and took up 6 or 7 empty squares w/ 9 per. Oh and one of my cantalope plants is flowering. I got to get that trellis up quick. I will fire off some photos tonight if the ain lets up enough.

**walshevak** 7/11/2012, 12:36 pm

Sounds like you are doing good in spite of weather and bugs. SVB and beetles are bad this year. Keep spraying BT every week and get a hyperdermic syringe from the drug store and innoculate the lower stems with BT. Seems to be working for my son. (wilmington nc) He lost his first squash as well. We got some starts and replanted about 3 weeks ago.

Kay

Gilly21 7/11/2012, 12:56 pm

I am going to try the needle approach. Just read it yesterday. I learned a lot so far this year. I definately feel as though I was successful to a degree and expect to expand on what I have learned for this fall and next year as well.

ramarks 7/11/2012, 1:14 pm

Sorry to hear this, Gilly - better luck with your next batch.

Gilly21 7/12/2012, 11:12 am

So here are my photo updates.
Tomato tower North side
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Tomato tower South Side
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West garden minus corn and loaded with beans and misc stuff. Notice round 2 of the corn sprouting in the front. Going to try the soaker hose for the fall planting.
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Purple peppers finally growing up
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Garden over view with Chicken tractor
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