Show me your gardening Progress

Papaya time :cool:
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Try adding some lime to the near by soil then water it in...works for tomatoes...worth a try...
That was my first suspicion. Checked soil, and yeah, it was on the acid side. So, I put 50 pounds of lime in that puny little garden two years ago, and still had bloom end rot on the squash, but everything else flourished. Pretty frustrating as much as both of us like squash. Before the lime, though, the cukes were also having troubles. Not now, though. 4 plants will make more cucumbers than we can possibly eat.
 
Harvested some Tumeric today and thought I'd dry it out in my dehydrator View attachment 25839
Gunna process this into some powder once it dries.

This way it'll last for longer than just storing it in a box.
This is how these turned out!
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That smell filled the whole house an earth thy mustard type aroma with hint of citrus.
 
I should do the same as I got much more than I can eat.
Got some lying on a shade cloth rack so they should dry nicely
 
I'm finally starting to get some things from the garden.
Peas, lettuce, spinach, green onion, beets, kale and garlic so far.
Cherry tomatoes and others are on and growing, but green. Yellow squash and beans are flowering, so maybe 2 weeks on those.
Also, the beds in the yard are all cleaned up, edged and mulched so those are looking good too.
Hopefully I can just enjoy the summer!
Cheers,
Brian
 
A photo from today. Foreground is 'old' garden, background is new Hugelbed garden.

We have eggplant (still seedlings), zucchini, green beans, yellow beans, cucumbers, red and green jalapenos, tomatoes, carrots, herbs and a castor bean plant, and in the back more cukes, beans and zukes. The Hugelbed is not yet ready for full production but is doing well anyway.
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Love me that black plastic! Interesting that the side of my garden that I loaded up with oak leaves is not doing as well as the side I didn't load as much. The only plant totally bucking that trend is my yellow pear cherry tomatoes.

I've been meaning to ask, does anyone else harvest their seeds?
 
Love me that black plastic! Interesting that the side of my garden that I loaded up with oak leaves is not doing as well as the side I didn't load as much. The only plant totally bucking that trend is my yellow pear cherry tomatoes.

I've been meaning to ask, does anyone else harvest their seeds?

Yeah, I harvest seeds from almost everything I grow.

As for your leaves: were they green or dry leaves?
Either way, initially they will need Nitrogen for the decomposting, which they will release later on
 
Love me that black plastic! Interesting that the side of my garden that I loaded up with oak leaves is not doing as well as the side I didn't load as much. The only plant totally bucking that trend is my yellow pear cherry tomatoes.

I've been meaning to ask, does anyone else harvest their seeds?
Depends. Usually not, but if I get a particularly robust plant, or the seeds are rare (real Persian cukes, for example) I will let a few fruits go to seed.

I have one kind if plant called Carduna, it it a weed in the Northeast with large leaves that look like skunk cabbage. You eat the young stems only, as they get tough once June comes. It is a tender perennial. You simply cannot buy seeds, much as you cannot buy dandelion or crabgrass seed, so here I do harvest them. They are an Italian favorite, look like celery stalks but taste like artichokes. I could tell pages of stories about this.
 
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They were dead, brown passed through the mower oak leaves @Zambezi Special so I considered their acid addiction as a benefit to the acid loving tomato..oh well..here's a look...the ones on the left are the leaf additions and the first and second row are '22 and 2021 seeds respectively and you can see the peppers are essentially in the same boat. Go figure!

Ok..next gardening item...any idea what bug left these on the underside of a pepper plant?
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View attachment 26033 They were dead, brown passed through the mower oak leaves @Zambezi Special so I considered their acid addiction as a benefit to the acid loving tomato..oh well..here's a look...the ones on the left are the leaf additions and the first and second row are '22 and 2021 seeds respectively and you can see the peppers are essentially in the same boat. Go figure!

Ok..next gardening item...any idea what bug left these on the underside of a pepper plant?
View attachment 26034
Not sure exactly what (a beetle of some kind), but those black things are its eggs. Depending on your tolerance fir pesticides, some (liquid) sevin, bonide eight, or some BT will help.
 
View attachment 26033 They were dead, brown passed through the mower oak leaves @Zambezi Special so I considered their acid addiction as a benefit to the acid loving tomato..oh well..here's a look...the ones on the left are the leaf additions and the first and second row are '22 and 2021 seeds respectively and you can see the peppers are essentially in the same boat. Go figure!

Ok..next gardening item...any idea what bug left these on the underside of a pepper plant?
View attachment 26034
What Don said, and get 'em QUICK. That many eggs hatch and you're likely to lose the plants. That's what I missed when the cabbage worms got us earlier this year, and they were hatched before i saw them. I sprayed with Sevin first to KILL KILL KILL, then the BT as a preventative. We spray every week for now with BT to keep ahead of the pests. BT works, but it works slowly. The caterpillars will do a lot of damage before BT finally kills them. BT did NOTHING to a hornworm that I sprayed directly and then left tomato leaves soaked in a plastic box. Plucking them and squashing them works, though. They don't infest as bad as cabbage worms.

We just cut our brussels sprouts and pulled the plants this morning. That's the cabbage worms tend to hit first for some reason. No spinach left, a couple red cabbages (which the worms supposedly don't like) and some kale are the end of the leafy greens. Nematodes (you were right Ben) took out our banana and bell peppers, but the chili pepper is crankin' 'em out. We're getting a dozen peppers a day off ONE plant. Glad I didn't plant more.Green beans are on the second blooming cycle. Should be picking peas (blackeyes) in the next few days.

Our veggie patch is so small, we grow enough for a few meals, but not enough to put much away, cucumbers and tomatoes excluded. Lemon cucumbers are making more than we can eat at the moment, and I wish I could e-mail cherry tomatoes. We got loads of those. The German Princess is popping right now, 3-5 tangerine size tomatoes per day from one plant. Two egg plant bushes have delivered 10 pretty good size pods (I guess that's what you call 'em). Can't say what I learned to call 'em in here, LOL.
 
That's the egg casings I'm seeing them black ones.

Easy just squash em with your fingers:p.

Just a heads up most chemicals we use in pest control DONT penetrate the egg capsule.
So spraying them will be two parts of useless until they hatch.

IPM use no chemicals if you can (funny comming from a guy who sprays chemicals on the daily...)

They might be Assassin bug eggs I've seen similar here but highly doubt it since I'm on the other side of the globe and the wrong hemisphere :p.

Another one may be your friendly stink beetle.

The large holes I've found are from slugs don't ya just love em.


Now who's had success with the beer traps for slugs?
 
Now who's had success with the beer traps for slugs?

I'd probably fight with a slug over my beer. Might be one of the few fights I could win. If I see a slug, I get the salt. We don't typically get them too bad until very late in the growing season. Usually find them under pumpkins and melons, and rarely do they bother those. Just kinda nasty to squish one when ya pick up a heavy melon.

My nemesis is millipedes in the strawberries. We can't seem to get a break on the strawberries. They grow to beautiful size, turn pink, then rot. Some have chewed places from the millipedes. I'm gonna douse the plants with Sevin this fall, and whatever else I can find to kill millipedes, and then fertilize the plants. Part of our rot problem may be fertilizing at the wrong time, according to some sources.

And now for the raspberries! We have three plants/bunches in pots about 10 foot spacing along the walkway next to our veggy patch. NONE of them bears when either of the other two do, and the berries are very deformed. Usually only one cluster of berries in each bunch. Watering isn't an issue. Fertilizer is there. They grow about 4 feet tall, then it looks like frost hits them (in the middle of summer?). I dare not put them in the ground because they're very invasive when they start growing. At least not until I learn a method to keep them from spreading.
 

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