2017 SFG in Brooks, Ga

I really enjoyed reading and looking at your pictures since the start of the year.  I always love your garden.

love reading about your gardening adventures. Thanks for all the pictures.

Another harvest of Aqua Dulce Fava Beans.  Planted last Nov 9.  This harvest was 7.5 lbs before any shucking/shelling was done (last week's harvest was 6.5 lbs).  This particular harvest came from approx 2 feet by 6 feet area.


After the outer shell was removed, this is what I got.  It took one hour of shelling to get this far.


Then I blanched them and removed the casing around each bean.  That took another hour.  But this is what I ended up with.  1 lb 8 oz of usable beans.  This should be enough for two side dish meals.


Laid out on a cookie sheet in preparation for flash freezing and then I will seal them in Food Saver bags for later consumption.

Yummo! I could eat those as a snack!

Those look great!

Things are really starting to grow now.  Started harvesting my broccoli this week.  So far I have harvested 6 heads and have about 8 more that will be ready to harvest in the next week or so.  The Summer Purple Sprouting broccoli is not producing anything.  I planted it because I was sure it would be ready before the heat set in but it is only growing to the sky.  I had to replace the hoops with taller hoops to keep everything contained in the bed.  This head looks anemic but it is mostly the result of the sun shining, but I would still like it to be a bit greener.  In the last picture, the left side of the bed is a bit bare because the Bok Choy and the spinach bolted.




My corn experiment.  I started seeds inside and then transplanted the corn seedlings within a few days of them sprouting.  I have three 3x8 beds this year dedicated to silver queen corn.  I planted one half of a bed each week for six weeks for succession planting.  The first 4 plantings I had to use season extension methods because we still had freezing weather.

Beautiful, Yolos!  It will be at least a week before my corn bed will be ready so I think I'll use your idea of planting the seeds in the house. That will take the pressure off getting that bed ready. Thanks for the idea.

Silver Queen is the BEST!
Yolos, I see you have a kind of fencing around your corn. What kind of critters do you have that would otherwise take your corn?
CC

countrynaturals wrote:Beautiful, Yolos!  It will be at least a week before my corn bed will be ready so I think I'll use your idea of planting the seeds in the house. That will take the pressure off getting that bed ready. Thanks for the idea.

This is the first time I have tried starting in cups.  Usually I direct sow.  But I wanted to start them real early (2/28) and do season extension and succession planting.  We don't normally direct sow until about late April or early May.  So I do not know how they will actually work out.  One word of caution, they have long tap roots that grow fast.  I seeded them in the cups and transplanted 7 days later.  The tap root had already hit the bottom and started to curl around.  If I had waited much longer, the tap root would have been poking out the drain holes and would have been impossible to kept intact.

CapeCoddess wrote:Silver Queen is the BEST!
Yolos, I see you have a kind of fencing around your corn.  What kind of critters do you have that would otherwise take your corn?
CC

I don't know what kind of critter we had last year that dug up a patch of corn.  It was only digging in the ground and not eating any corn or stalk.  I think it was looking for worms or grubs.  I can see where it has been digging all over the yard, even in the grass.  So to keep this critter from ruining a crop and also to keep the new puppy from jumping around in the beds, I started using this fencing just around each bed.  It is pretty easy to take down when I need to do some serious work in the beds.  Otherwise, it is low enough for me to just bend over and do minor work in the beds without removing the fence.

Newest addition to my garden.  A small raised bed for sweet potatoes.  Just set  up and planted today.


And my next project will be to fix this 2 x 9 foot bed.  It is rotting and my grandson stepped on one side and it collapsed.  I will be trying to just repair the one side with some new boards and wait until the fall to completely replace the bed.  This is the bed that I use to grow my pole beans so I have to get it fixed ASAP.

Yolos, That sound you hear? That's me sobbing. I so want your garden.

sanderson wrote:Yolos,  That sound you hear?  That's me sobbing.    I so want your garden.

Thanks Sanderson, but it is pretty much a full time job.  I think I am beginning to get a little tired of working all day every day.

I spent all day today repairing my 2x9 foot bed that my grandson stepped on and the rotten board broke loose.  I probably could have built a whole new bed faster than temporarily repairing this one.  I had a problem because I could not screw the new side into the rest of the bed because the rest of the bed was rotten and the screws would not hold the new side up.  So I thought I could drive rebar on the outside of the repaired side to hold it up but I forgot that the electric dog fence runs right along the side of the bed.  So I had to get a little creative and put in braces and then rebar pounded into the ground to hold the braces.  It is now ready to plant my pole beans.  I will have to put up the trellis netting but at least the trellis poles are still standing.

I bet you wonder how you ever managed the garden when you were working full time (and more at tax time). Get through this planting (guaranteed I would trip on the supports) and then you can rebuild it correctly. How long did the wood last? Just as a reference point for the rest of us.

sanderson wrote:... guaranteed I would trip on the supports ...

That would be me. I can picture myself tripping over one of the supports and landing head first on the next support with the rebar finishing me off. 

I would have to put some safety measures in place. Maybe box in the supports so they are higher and cover the rebar. Just a thought. Overall a good repair job.

trolleydriver wrote:

sanderson wrote:... guaranteed I would trip on the supports ...

That would be me. I can picture myself tripping over one of the supports and landing head first on the next support with the rebar finishing me off. 

I would have to put some safety measures in place. Maybe box in the supports so they are higher and cover the rebar. Just a thought. Overall a good repair job.

I did purchase some neon orange paint today to spray on the supports.  I also thought about covering the rebar with tennis balls.  I could pound the rebar in so that it is level with the wood supports but then I would have a heck of a time getting the rebar out of the hard clay at the end of the season.

sanderson wrote:I bet you wonder how you ever managed the garden when you were working full time (and more at tax time).  Get through this planting (guaranteed I would trip on the supports) and then you can rebuild it correctly.  How long did the wood last?  Just as a reference point for the rest of us.

I don't know why this bed deteriorated so fast.  I built it in the spring of 2014.  So it only lasted 3 years.  All my other beds are at least 5 years old but they are on the verge of being unusable next year.  Maybe the raw linseed oil I put on the earlier built beds actually made them last a little longer.  All the boards I use for my SFG beds are untreated pine.

Paint and tennis balls! Great idea.

Harvested my Strike English Peas today.  Planted 3/11.


I am so excited.  This is my third year trying to grow decent sized onions.  Look.  They are bulbing up.  The first time they have bulbed up like this.  They still have a while before they should be harvested so maybe they will actually get fairly big.  I planted seeds inside on 12/18 - Texas 1015 and Yellow Granex and transplanted into the garden on 2/11.

yolos wrote:I am so excited.  This is my third year trying to grow decent sized onions.  Look.  They are bulbing up.  The first time they have bulbed up like this.  They still have a while before they should be harvested so maybe they will actually get fairly big.  I planted seeds inside on 12/18 - Texas 1015 and Yellow Granex and transplanted into the garden on 2/11.

Nice!

Look at that onion grow!!! I've never had any luck with onions from seed either...or much luck with any bulb onion for that matter. Maybe 3rd year's a charm. Got my fingers crossed.

Ok, got the repaired bed redone to keep me from tripping over the braces.  Also planted rattlesnake beans on both sides of the bed.  Now I just need to add some mulch and put up a trellis.

Yolos, That is a righteous-looking onion! Question: What critter are you trying to exclude with the netting?

sanderson wrote:Yolos,  That is a righteous-looking onion!  Question: What critter are you trying to exclude with the netting?  

This is something I devised a few years ago.  Something was eating my corn seeds and pea seeds before they sprouted and just after they sprouted.  Probably birds.  So this is deer netting attached to 1x2" boards on each side.  It is 4 feet wide and 8 feet long because that is my biggest bed.  If I use it on a narrower bed, I just roll it up a little bit so it fits.  So I use this or burlap when I plant my seeds until they sprout.