2016 SFG in Brooks, Ga

OH! I see...the 1st pot is butternut, 2nd pot is butterbush, 3rd is tromboncini.
Good thinking to divide the vines like that.


They are beautiful squash, Yolos! Growing squash like that is on my bucket list.
CC

Good news and bad news.

Good News - It rained last night.  3 inches.  I won't have to water for a while.

Bad News - Found a pickle worm had bored into one Tromboncino squash that was still green.  It is in the bulb at the bottom so I guess I will just harvest it and cut off the bulb.  Unfortunately, that was the one squash that I had decided to harvest the seeds because it was a long way away from my other squash and should not have cross pollinated. 

Bad News -  Some critter has started digging in my two corn beds.  I can't figure this out.  The old bed was completely harvested.  The new bed just started to tassel.  Whatever it was dug the dirt up all around the stalks.  Looked like someone had run a rottiller between the stalks.  Most of the stalks are lying on the ground.  The critter must have been looking for worms or something under the soil.  They did not try to damage the actual stalks other than uprooting and causing them to fall over.  Now I have to decide whether to try to straighten them up.  I see tassels but no ears forming so it may be a waste of time.

Yolos:   Critters can do so much harm without meaning to. What a sad sight to wake up to this morning.  Every time I read one of these accounts I think of the pioneers whose lives depended on their crops. What brave, hardy stock we descended from.

I'm so sorry

sanderson wrote:  I'm so sorry

Thanks Sanderson - you win some you lose some.  I have had many wins over this season, this is just a blip on the season.  My main problem remains the Southern Blight and how to get it all the way out of my garden.

Oh carnage, Yolos! Wonder what it was and if chicken wire or fishing line would keep it out...? It must have been kinda big...like racoon.

CC

Nice garden yolos!  I have grown tons of corn.  It gets blown down all the time.  I would tamp it down a bit around the roots and see if it rights itself.  Many times it does!  Silver Queen is the bomb, tender and sweet and worth the wait!

SR, it was definitely not wind.  All the dirt was dug up.  I even found some corn stalks that were ripped out of the dirt and the roots were sticking up.

As I was staking up what stalks I could salvage (24 stalks) I think I may have figured out why the critter attacked the soil in the corn beds.  Those were the only two beds that I added Blood Meal for extra nitrogen.  

CC - I hope I don't have to put up fencing.  That would be the end of me.  I think some hav-a-hart traps.  Small ones for those pesky chipmunks and one bigger one to catch the corn destroyer.

I usually do something like the following to keep the corn stalks vertical if we have strong wind but this corn patch that was destroyed was sheltered on four sides so I did not try to do any propping up as the stalks grew.  This was the patch that had the first planting.  The critter dug around in it but didn't do any real damage.

If I had done something like this in the later bed, it probably would not have been damaged with the stalks falling over.  The soil would still have been dug up but the stalks would not have fallen over resulting in half of them getting broken.

So sorry to hear about this, yolos... And I'm also guessing raccoon or maybe possum...

Today's Harvest

Rattlesnake Beans. - I cooked them (with ham hocks of course) and froze 2 packs in Food Saver Bags.  Just waiting to be reheated and served.


Harvested my first Butterbush Squash veggies.  For some reason the squash plant died so I harvested the squash that had not been attacked by pickle worms.  I thought pickle worms were not supposed to get into winter squash.  I don't understand why the squash had darker brown splotches on the skin.  The other Butterbush Squash that is still growing also has darker brown splotches on the skin also.  These are supposed to single serving size squash.  A few are probably just to small to mess with but there are a couple decent single size.


More Baby Persian Cucumbers.  They just keep on coming.  But, the pickle worms have found them.  I had to throw away 3 cucumbers because they were attacked by the pickle worms.  Oh well, I have gotten more cucumbers than I could possibly eat.  Have had to give away bags of them.

Today's harvest.
In the front another batch of Baby Persian Cucs.  A few New Big Dwarf Tomatoes.  On the left side, assorted cowpeas, in the middle lima beans, on the right another batch of Rattlesnake Beans.  So the Rattlesnake Beans and the Lima Beans keep on putting out even in this heat.  All my other pole beans are defunct except the Rattlesnake Beans and the Flamingo Beans.  

yolos wrote:Today's Harvest

More Baby Persian Cucumbers.  They just keep on coming.  But, the pickle worms have found them.  I had to throw away 3 cucumbers because they were attacked by the pickle worms.  Oh well, I have gotten more cucumbers than I could possibly eat.  Have had to give away bags of them.

What language are you speaking? I don't even understand what you're saying?

CC

CapeCoddess wrote: What language are you speaking? I don't even understand what you're saying?
CC

I agree, what language? Congrats!

sanderson wrote:

CapeCoddess wrote: What language are you speaking? I don't even understand what you're saying?
CC

I agree, what language?     Congrats!

Gardening 201 ???  Thanks !!

What is growing in my garden now 08/31/16

It is raining, it is pouring, the old man is snoring.  Yippee rain.

Buckwheat - as a cover/green manure crop.  I will let it grow until it is time to plant my Mustard to try to rid some of my beds of diseases.


Cowpeas - White Acre, Lady and Pinkeye Purple Hull



Sweet Potatoes - Growing in a 2 x 8 with an 8 foot trellis.  The vines reached the top of the trellis and are about halfway down.



Flamingo Pole Beans - now that the weather has moderated a little, they are starting to set on.



Rattlesnake Pole Beans and Lima Beans


Winter Squash - Butternut, Butterbush, Tromboncino  = the leaves look pretty ragged but I don't want to harvest them yet.



I also have Edamame, Tomatoes, and Cucumbers still growing.  Most everything else I have removed waiting to start trying to disinfect and sanitize to try to get rid of the Southern Blight.

What do you do with the buckwheat when you plant the mustard?

sanderson wrote:What do you do with the buckwheat when you plant the mustard?

Chop it up with a hoe and turn it under the soil.  If you do it a couple of weeks before you plant your next crop it will break down enough where it won't rob too much nitrogen.  Young buckwheat plants are very tender and break down easily.  Some cover crops take a long time to break down before you can plant over them.  You can also cut it down and rake it aside sow your seeds and then use it as mulch after your next crop germinates.

Or if it has too much top growth, I cut it and put part in my compost pile as a green and then dig in the remaining part.

Thank you!

Those flamingo beans are gorgeous! How do they taste? Do you use them like green beans or dry beans?

AtlantaMarie wrote:Those flamingo beans are gorgeous!  How do they taste?  Do you use them like green beans or dry beans?

Thank you, they are gorgeous!  I have no idea what they taste like because I am saving the first pods that set on to use for seed next year.  It is almost impossible to find the seeds.  I planted them so late that they were significantly affected by our heat and have produced very little to date.  They were pretty much grown this year for visual effect for the pool area.  A good talking point.  I read that when cooked they become a yellow wax bean type.  Also, they say the best way to eat them is as shellies.

I finally had to harvest my winter squash.  They were planted on 4/28 and harvested 8/28.  That is 4 months growing time waiting and fighting SVB, Squash Bugs and finally Pickle Worms.  One Butternut was attacked by SVB.  It entered the vine and I found frass but it either died or came back out because the stem was so tuff it did not kill the squash.  But it worried me for weeks.  Then the squash bugs found my squash bed.  I searched the vines daily but kept missing all of the eggs.  I finally put a spray bottle of insecticidal soap in the bed so every time I saw new baby squash bugs I was able to kill them with the insecticidal soap.  But the final straw were the Pickle Worms.  They actually started boring into the almost mature squash - Butternut, Butterbush and the Tromboncino.  So I gave up and harvested, hopefully they are mature enough to be stored for a while.


I also pulled all my cucumber plants.  I harvested 20 cucumbers this weekend.  14 were attacked by the pickle worms and I had to throw them away.  I know, I could have cut off the part where the worm entered, but yuk.

Yolos, those are beautiful squash! Are the necks solid meat? Mine are so, well, personal size.

sanderson wrote:Yolos, those are beautiful squash!  Are the necks solid meat?  Mine are so, well, personal size.

Yes, the necks on the tromboncino squash are solid meat.  Supposedly, all the seeds are in the bulb near the end.  I have not cut any yet.  

A pickleworm entered one of the squash near the very top.  That is when I decided to harvest all my winter squash.  I submerged the spot where the worm entered under water trying to get it to come out, but it either died inside the neck or is still in there eating away.  I do not see any more frass coming out so maybe I killed it.  The squash is so long that I could cut the end of the neck off and still get some good meat out of it.  I am going to let them cure for a while and then will test the one that had the pickleworm take up residence.

Frazz?  I had to look it up in my dictionary but it was not there.  I can guess what it means.

I think you meant Frass.