Showing posts with label onion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label onion. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2013

Recovered over $45: Dinner completely out of the garden and some garden pests and problems

After being out of town for four days, I returned to an abundance!  The growth in that little time was amazing.  The next two pictures are what I harvested Sunday night. So far, we have recouped over $45 dollars out of the garden!  Only going to get better!



For dinner tonight, I fried the okra in a milk batter and sauteed the onion, green bean, Thai chili, and squash. I also took some of the tomato's and made a pint of tomato sauce for use later.

This reminds me, I need to clean the stove top!  Ooops.

For the pests, came across a couple.  The dreaded squash bug and the corn earworm!  The squash bugs I killed by soaking the plant with water and waiting for them to crawl up away from the water.  Then spray them with a mixture of dawn soap and water.  They die pretty quickly.

I inspected the corn and found one ear with the silk dead and discolored.  Opened it up and low and behold, hello mister corn earworm!  Killed it and looked through the rest of the corn and didn't see anymore, but they are still out there.

I did have some blossom end rot using the grow bags.  The watering hasn't been consistent enough and when it isn't, calcium can't get to the fruit and thus the rot.  Probably about 10-12 tomato's.  I've since placed some of the bags in a kids pool and kept an inch or so of water with great results.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Garden Update....So far so good.

It's been a little while but I've been a bit busy lately!  The garden is doing well and I have a lot to update.

Some new developments:  I have two blueberry bushes to go in near a fence and some strawberry's to replenish my strawberry patch.

EDIT:  Just to note about the corn, I have two stalks coming up already.  Normal germination is 4-12 days.  I soaked the seeds for a day and a 1/2 and planted 7 days ago.

First, all the corn was planted on Feb 24.  Should be in good shape, no frost or overly good weather in the future.  Do have an 80+ predicted for tomorrow though.  The corn all went into the three sisters 5x5 garden.  Had some seeds left over and didn't want to waste them so I planted about 25 in each of the grow bags behind the bed.

To the right of the corn, you can see the Topsy turvey I mentioned in an earlier post.  I ended up planting 10 jalapeno seedlings into it.  Again, it shouldn't be too cold for them.

The potato's are growing well.  It is interesting that some are growing so much better than the others and the red potato's are growing the best.  I did have a little cold weather damage but the plants have pushed through and created new leaves.


The tomato's are doing pretty well.  I have lost a few, but those were the hot weather variety that I probably should have waited to put in.  The okra, on the bottom right, could have probably waited as well.  It's pretty sickly looking compared the the okra directly to the left that I just transplanted today.

The buds on all the cuttings look like they are going to produce leaves so I'm excited about the 42 that I planted in the quart containers.  There are buds on the vine that look about ready to say hi as well.  It was about this time last year the first growth appeared.


On the bottom left of the picture I planted four horseradish roots.  They were pretty well developed so they should do well.

So, on to the 4x4 garden.  As they say, a plan is not a plan until you run out of time for changes!  The asparagus roots just didn't seem to make it through the winter.  Might have been too wet as the roots were decomposing.  Had to change the plan.  So now there's celery, peas, lettuce, greens, beets, and radishes.  I am succession planting here.


In the grow bag is the cucumber and below that two other tomato plants.  

Succession planting can be very powerful.  I can't count how many times we had garden food rot because everything matured at the same time.  Decided to get smart this year.

l-------l--------l---------l---------l
  4 Cel   4 Cel    16 Pea
l-------l--------l---------l---------l
  5 Let   5 Let  5 Let   5 Let
l-------l--------l---------l---------l
  5 Grn 5 Grn  5 Grn   5 Grn
l-------l--------l---------l---------l
      32 Radish     16 Beets
l-------l--------l---------l---------l

The back left half will be 8 celery, planted 2 at a time every 10 days.  

The right half of the back is 16 pea's which all went in at once.  

The next row 3 lettuce planted today, then alternating 2/3 every 10 days.

The next row of greens done identical to the lettuce.

The radish is planted 4 at a time every 10 days.

The beets planted 8 a time with 20 days between.

Thanks for visiting.  If you have any tips or advice or questions don't hesitate to post them.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Seedling Update, Harvest of Onions

Seedlings are all doing well.  Trying an experiment, transplanted some tomato's and the okra into quart containers to see a difference in seedling growth from now until planting.  Since Phil is out and spring is early, thinking late February into the garden.

Pulled the onions today as I've got to prep the bed for the three sisters.


Post cleaning, 2 lbs 5.6 oz. in total.