So, three or four pages back I mentioned having problems with growing squash here because of vine borers. My plan was to try a solid vine variety that you can eat while small, the trombocina. I did a test planting, and I have to say, so far so good. It is actually a lovely plant, pretty enough to be an ornamental. Let's hope that it also produces good things to eat!
I got the seed online, from Henry Fields. https://www.henryfields.com/product/tromboncino-summer-squash I will definitely let you know on the flavor. Fingers crossed .
It's shaping up to be a cooler, wet year here. And things having been coming up like they should be. I've planted pole beans twice and believe it was a bad batch of seeds. The spuds took their time coming up bit seem to be doing better. Several people I know have simply said "fuck it" and not bothering this year. I guess I'm just too pig headed.
Walt, if the green beans are not sprouting well, soak the seed in water overnight before planting. That will change the game!
I hear ya... which is why I'm glad I did the seedlings I did. Despite the past couple of weeks being very cold and wet, they've taken to the transplanting quite well so far. Today is the first real day of some serious heat, so I'm hoping that will really kick things into overdrive, like the tomatoes. They were smaller than they were last year because I didn't start them as early, but here's hoping they start to go nuts with the "good" weather we're getting. My garden is right beneath a big old tree, too, that drops insane amounts of seed/key flying thingies, which is a real pain in the ass to clean up. For now, though, I've got the automatic watering happening for everything that needs it, so I'm optimistic that everything will still be alive when I get back from my 2 weeks in Japan. (Hell, even the birdbath gets filled automatically every morning).
I have some peppers with buds about to produce, but in general my peppers are pitiful this year. Eggplants are small but catching up. The tomatoes, zucchini, beans, peas, okra are all looking OK to good. I have a heat wave type of lettuce starting in some flats, plus plenty of fresh herbs around. I just cleaned out the coop and put the poopy straw in the garden. It's already working to keep the garden more uniformly moist during the day. My neighbor taught me how to cook up irrigation drop lines and that has been a great time saver for me. I am still setting it up in different places around the yard but the potted beans, peas, and tomatoes are getting watered without my help. There was a lot of new stuff to set up the way I wanted this year, plus the 6 weeks of snow starting in February that set me back. This summer I'll be working on a proper indoor shelf and light setup so I can kick off next year earlier. I have enough visqueen to make a low PVC frame/garden cover in the spring while we have our frequent nightly cold snaps. So, it isn't everything I envisioned yet but it is coming along and I should start getting some veggies in the next few weeks. PVC hoop house almost finished, just need a couple connection pieces from the Home Depot today. Also need to pick up some dark green or black paint to paint the PVC -- UV protection for less brittleness, and less of an eyesore. Hubs helped me move the last cinder blocks and tub around so now I just need to attached the drains and pipes on the tub, and she can get filled up with water for the ducks and they can get their bathtime in. They are constantly covered in food. Some of my other plants are doing well, too. I have a yoga corner on the deck with shade/part shade plants. The succulents and wandering jew were grown from pieces I picked up on the ground at Home Depot and Walmart and everything else except the bleeding heart I bought on clearance is from seeds or cuttings. We're getting there! I am having so much fun this year. Spoiler
This is the first year I have a garden. I started it around mother's day and take a look at it now!! I had no idea the tomato plants would get so tall!! Behind the left gate, there are two sweet 100s plants on the right, one striped dragon tomato plant on the front left, and a beefsteak tomato plant behind that. The beefsteak plant has one tomato that's been green for a long time, and the plant itself is smaller than the rest. I think it's because the other three are blocking all the sunlight, so we'll see how that little guy will end up. I also have a corinto cucumber plant that produced one cuke already, and then died when it got pelted by hail. At least I thought it died. It's growing again and attaching itself to the trellis, which is just really cool to watch. A few buds are turning into cukes at this point too! In front of the cucumber, I have one banana pepper plant, and one bell pepper plant. I've gotten two banana peppers so far, both of which were kind of dry because I think I left them on too long. There's one green bell pepper on the plant that's been the same size for a while now, and I thought it was supposed to turn orange, so I don't know what's going on with that. The strawberries are coming in strong, and then I have some herbs...more than I know what to do with! I would hate to see any of this go to waste so what do you do with so many herbs? Am I just going to be making pesto for days?? Overall, I'm loving watching everything grow. Any suggestions, tips or tricks would be appreciated! My kids are really excited about it too, so next year I might start a mini garden for them.
Trickysista, I think that it is outstanding that you and your family planted and are enjoying your excellent garden! They get to understand how things grow, how food happens, and you all get to enjoy each other out in the sunshine. Your tomatoes will want some support, especially the beefsteak varieties. They are basically vines that we force up with a cage or enclosure, otherwise they flop over and spread. Last year I let some black cherry tomatoes go that way, the plant was maybe 10 feet wide by the end of the season. I recently saw a video that would be easy to adapt to your bed, let me find and link it for you. If your pepper plants get too heavy with peppers, or if it is windy there, they might need a large stake or two for support. I never use all the herbs either, I just enjoy them while they last!
https://youtu.be/9w-7RoH_uic Lots of info here, but his method of stringing the plant upwards would be easy to do on your bed, Tricky. Hope it helps.
@Trickysista Pesto is my go to way of using basil. It doesn't dry out well. Normally Ill do a couple of cuttings a year and process it with walnuts and garlic and freeze each batch until the end of the season and then finish the whole amount with cheese. Take the time to pluck all the leaves off of the stems it makes the pesto so much more smoother. Just depends on what you got. Sage dried and hit a few pulses in a spice mill makes amazing rubbed sage. Thyme is fairly hardy I'll let it get bushy and just pluck the youngest fresh growth year round. Same goes with chives.
@Trickysista your garden is looking fabulous! As the season goes on you'll definitely need some support for your tomatoes and probably the peppers. If your peppers get size on them (such as a bell pepper) they can split the branches. Smaller peppers like jalapenos are usually ok without support (in my experience). I second what @Improper suggested with the string trellis. I bought a bag of string trellis clips on Amazon, I think I got 150ct for $5 or so, and you can reuse them from year to year. I have used these clips in various trellis situations this year for tomatoes, corn, and cucumbers. If you have cages on hand, those are usually good for pepper plants (more compact size) or determinate tomatoes. Indeterminate (vining type) will easily grow 10' in a season so my solution is to go up. Letting them vine on the ground can lead to mildew issues, rotten fruit, more bugs. I have a simple frame set up with electrical conduit (was super cheap, maybe $3 for one piece of 10' conduit?) with strings tied to the top and clips at the bottom. I was also able to clip a tomato plant directly to vinyl coated garden fencing without the use of a string. Here's my garden, if you look closely you can see the string trellises rigged up. Spoiler Fertilizer is your friend. Just do it routinely. The fruiting plants are heavy feeders. Most of my issues in the past were ignoring the need for fertilizer and blaming something else. When in doubt, just fertilize it. Even and routine waterings will prevent your bigger tomatoes from cracking. I don't know about you guys, but I never have enough basil. I have a big window box full of it now upstairs that I just trimmed heavily for dinner last night. It'll be ready for another haircut in a week or two. I have a few pots down in the garden with basil seedlings too, to be ready when the basil upstairs is done. I use it in Italian food sometimes (onions and peppers with sausage over pasta? yeah? Anybody?) but more routinely, I make a dish called Thai Basil Turkey. There's a million variations online. My ingredients are usually lean ground turkey, yellow onions, tons of fresh garlic added towards the end, fish sauce, a lime, green beans, salmbal oelek chili sauce. And basil. A metric fuckton of basil. We eat it like that, but you can also serve it over rice or in a lettuce wrap. It's good shit. Edit: Oh, also, something I didn't take seriously in the past but have been committed to this year: Suckering you tomato plant. A sucker is a new vine that grows from the growth node at a leaf. Basically you have a new vine trying to start from the crotch of your main stem and a leaf. Pinch it off or trim with scissors if it's too big. I've been doing the style where you leave the 2 leaves from the sucker and pinch off the new stem only. This causes more growth in that same sucker resulting in crazy bushiness and lots of green growth. Also shade, which can help prevent sunscald of the fruit. Just be careful.... I accidentally "suckered" the main stem on one of my tomatoes, basically topping it, so I'll have to let a couple suckers grow out to make up for that. With suckering you get slightly fewer overall fruits, but they have more mass on them. Bigger fruits. And less of a jungle to deal with. Cherry tomatoes especially with turn into a goddamn jungle. If you ever have to spray for bugs or do any kind of maintenance in or around the tomato, suckering will help keep the plant a little more orderly.
All I did was fertilize the crap out of it and set it up to self-water every morning. I guess it worked.
Just went through and suckered the tomatoes... it should be interesting. I learned this year that you should try and bury tomato plants as deep as you can, because all the little hairs on the stalk of a "baby" tomato plant can grow to be roots underground. The plant pro at the local greenhouse told me a common fault is people planting them too early, and not deep enough... let the seedlings grow as much as you can, then bury them as deep as you can. I did that, and holy shit those stalks are now like bushes... very thick, very strong. Never mind all of that growth in the previous pics happened in TWO WEEKS. I trimmed everything way back with the expectation that everything else will kick into high gear. All that is left is to get the supports up over the next few days. I have a hanging vine setup I want to make which will take a bit of work in the shop, but should do nicely I think. Before: After:
I planted some Brussel sprouts in the spring and holy shit they’re huge now. At least a foot tall and no end in site for harvesting, haven’t even bloomed yet. I imagine they’re going to get as large as corn before they’re due.
Nice and deep, that's the way. Tomatoes will form Roots even on horizontal branches. They love to put out new roots, which is another reason why it's staking or trellising them is important. I like to let my plants get to be a decent size before I plant them in the ground. This year I think they were at least a foot tall. Then, about a week before I want to plant I lay the pots on their side in the general location of planting. To plant, I dig a trench, hopefully at least a foot deep. The tomatoes in just a few days will Orient their crowns to the sky so you will have a horizontal Branch with a vertical crown. Then you can plant them in the trench and bury that entire horizontal stem nice and deep. That will all become Roots. Plus, the soil in that trench will be a little bit more loosened up and be better for your new plant.
You people are some fine gardeners! Ok, so, hey, as a follow up to a solid vine squash that I could grow here, consider this your official tromboncino update. I harvested a few, steamed about a pound, sauteed about a half pound with butter, salt and pepper. Both were good, but sauteed was way better. The flavor is kind of a cross beltween yellow squash and zucchini, pretty mild. Maybe a hint of peppery? I will continue to experiment, including growing a few to full winter squash size just to see what that is all about... The vine is about 16 feet of fence now, and I have been pulling the smaller fruits to use. The one in the pic needs to fatten up a but before I take it. Probably 50 such squash on the vines atm.
I was taught to plant your tomatoes sideways so that the bottom of stem grows out more roots. You can just dig a deeper hole up to the first set of leaves too. A combination of not mulching and a solid two weeks straight rain the past month have hampered my tomatoes taking off. Without mulch the ground would dry out faster when it wasn't raining left most stunted so far. The rain let early blight take a good chunk out of a lot of them. I lost one plant completely and two others are very poorly. Still a good number of decent looking plants. Might have to get some shade cloth over them as the blistering heat is here to stay and that kills tomato setting.