2020 Victory Gardens

[WhistlingBadger]

When we get blight up here it looks like frost hit the plants overnight. One year we saw it hit and removed all the tomatoes, red, green and in between. A few days later they all had started rotting, even the green one.

Sounds awful. I get fire blight on my plums some years, but never on my tomatoes.  I think they simply don't survive long enough around here for any diseases to take hold.

[HH~]

Very common in humid climates. I have none this year. Been wet but always had time to dry overnite before next rain.

Late blight generally will starts after crop is coming in on plants. So it does not affect yield to much. Early blight will travel on the wind in damp early summer/late spring and can kill every plant in the county. I have seen this in 2010 here in this area.

Shawn~

[Marc St Louis]

The only problem we usually have with tomatoes is blossom end rot but so far it's not much of a problem this year.  We've had a good crop of pole beans, tomatoes are just starting to ripen, a few parsnips and rutabaga. I trellised the squash this year and it works well.  There's lots of hanging spaghetti squash, already eaten one of those, and a few butternut.  It was a slow start with the cold snap and frost we had early on

[Eric Krewson]

An Anasazi bean update, here is the total output from a 16' row of Anasazi beans, 3 pints. I picked a couple of small meals from the patch and a handful of dried beans. I had tons of foliage but few beans, the beans were small and very stringy.

The first picture is the beans at their peak, the plants have since gone down hill, dried up and been removed.

[mullet]

I don't think I'll be planting those, Eric.

I gave up on tomatoes this year. We have had so much rain they just didn't have a chance between blight, powdery mildew and splitting. The good thing is the mushrooms I planted last week like it. They are popping up this morning.

[Pat B]

The late blight that affects our tomatoes is from a soil born fungi called Phytophthora which is the same fungus that caused the potato blight is Ireland. Some ways to help prevent it is by adding lime to the soil and mulching under the plants to keep soil from splashing on the leaves when it rains or you water. Removing the lower leaves from the plant as it grows helps too.

[Eric Krewson]

Yep I did all of those, lime and Epsom salts, planted through black plastic, put newspaper in the hole to only let the stem poke through and pruned the lower limbs.

[YosemiteBen]

We did not have great luck with tomatoes. Told my wife she planted too many in one spot. We had two nice maters and the damn deer snuck in and ate them as well as some beet greens. They use our back stairs as much as we do.

[Eric Krewson]

My neighbor has (had) a spectacular large garden, in spite of a deer fence the rascals  have managed to probe its week spots and have been decimating his garden, especially his purple hull peas.

An electric fence has worked well for me so he is installing one today about 3 feet out from his deer fence.

[bjrogg]

My wife has been working at Squash, Tomatoes, Peaches, Blackberry’s, Apples and green beans.

On the farming side. We clipped our clover cover crop. We let it grow up about a month after harvesting the winter wheat it was seeded into this spring. Then we cut it to help with weed control and promote rapid vegetative growth of the clover. We also spread our lime and potash for next years crop.
We leave the clippings and the clover grows up through them. In a another month or two we will till everything into the soil.

I love cover crops. So does my dirt and wildlife that call my farm home. The cover crops cut down soil erosion, trap nutrients, provide organic material and really promote a well textured soil profile.

Plus the many environmental benefits it provides.

Bjrogg

Here are some pictures of the clover growing back again. It will probably Greg about a knee high before we till it back into the ground.

[bjrogg]

Don’t see my picture. I’ll try again.

[bjrogg]

Guess that isn’t working for me anymore. Very strange

[Eric Krewson]

I bought seeds for my winter greens patch yesterday, for the first time in my gardening history (50 years) there is no Georgia Collard seed. The seed dealer said there was a crop failure and they were saving what little seed they got to plant next years crop for seeds.

I can buy a number of other types of collard seed online and found a few dealers selling Georgia collards. Searching through my junk stuff cabinet I found a Ziploc bag with enough collard seed to cover my needs for this year. I have been planting more and more kale every year. The health nuts at the gym will turn their noses up ad a bag of collards but take all the kale I can supply.

I like my greens patch, kale on the left, collards on the right.

[WhistlingBadger]

We got a bit of frost a couple nights ago, got the upper leaves of the pumpkins but nothing else.  Corn is drying out, and oats and buckwheat are almost ready to thresh out.  Need to plant some fall greens...

[mullet]

I plant the collards in the set trays. I was wondering why I can't find any.