I thought I’d share with you all today an update on our garden. First though, I have to make someone salivate! He and I have talked about eating tomato sandwiches, from our childhood up to today, and I’d like to share something with just Craig for a minute.
Hey Craig…I ate my first fresh, vine-ripe, right out of the garden tomato sandwich just a couple days back!! Oh man…it was soooo good. Miracle Whip, salt, and heavy black pepper, I gotta tell you I was thinking about how you’d love to have one of these!
I swear, it was so juicy that when I finished it, it was all over the front of my shirt! I’ve always said, “It ain’t good unless you get it all over you!” Okay, I got that outta my system!
The garden. Although we’re dry again, but have a 40% chance for rain today, the rain we have had has jump started our garden for us. The corn is even doing much better now, to the point of beginning to tassel some. (Picture 1)
It looks so much better than it has all spring, and using Kunoichi’s advice, we’re now putting grass clipping from the yard between each row of corn.
In picture 2 the outside rows are cucumbers and squash, all from seed, with the squash ending half way down row two, and speckled butter beans, finishing out the other half of that row. The next three rows, though growing together now are Blue Lake bush beans.
The Blue Lake beans are a string bean and have 5-6 inch pods, and are one of the favorite “canning beans.” Their maturity date is 58 days, and are said to yield 120 pounds per 100’ row.
Those guys have little beans all over them now, and were our first beans to bloom. Deb loves them, and I might eat em once in a while myself!
The speckled butter beans mature in 88 days, and are said to yield 25 pounds per 100’ row.
The three rows centered in picture 3 are Henderson Limas.
These beans come in about 65 days after planting the seed. They’re a real tender lima, or baby lima, and are supposedly the earliest of all the lima beans. They also are supposed to yield 25 pounds of beans (shelled) per 100’ row, which is the length of all our rows.
Picture 4 is eight rows of the Fordhook Limas. These beans have a maturity date of 65 days, and make a large bean, with heavy yields.
Now we don’t have any of these beans, but they’re called “Big Mama’s. Looking at the picture I’m wondering how they came to have this name?
Hey Kunoichi…these are our Florida variety of a sweet pea!! Kinda like your backyard grasshoppers!! LOL!!
http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/beans/lima/bean-lima-big-mama-prod000574.html
Bonnie…two Cowhorn okra, and two of these dern lima pods and you and Steve got a full meal!!
Picture 5 is a few of our eggplants. If you can believe it, I’m the only one in our family, besides Mom and Dad, who eats these. Oh well, just more for us!
We always plant the Back beauty variety. Burpee Seed introduced this variety in 1902. They mature in 74 days, and have become the common market eggplant of choice.
Picture 6 is of some of our squash plants. They are the common yellow crookneck squash. These squash mature in 53 days, and I love them. If you haven’t tried them this way, but I’m sure most have, fry em up!
Picture 7 is tomatoes in our garden.
Picture 8 is a tomato plant in our raised bed garden, as is picture 9. Look at the difference! Picture 9 is a good example of Fusarium Wilt in tomatoes, and it just makes me sick.
This Wilt is a soil borne fungus and we brought this soil in. It was good soil we found, so we picked up 4-5 truckloads for the raised beds. Well, by doing so, we brought this fungus in, and now are paying the price.
I have sprayed with a fungicide, but I’m not so sure at this point it doesn’t get into every one of them in this bed. There are a total of 16 in this one bed.
Here’s a little better description of Fusarium Wilt. http://ridinouttherecession.com/?p=402
Picture 10 is some of our Onions and Bell Peppers. All are doing pretty good at this point.
Well, that’s our garden update for now. We hope all you guys are doing super!
God Bless.
Dub and Deb
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Oh, wow! I love your gardens. You’ve got me pining away. People are just starting to plant things out here, though traditionally a lot of people wait until the May long weekend to finish putting in their gardens. This year, it falls on the 21st -23rd, though the first year I tried to put in our balcony garden, we couldn’t plant until June.
Those poor, sad, little fungus ridden tomatoes in picture 9. *sniff*
I just found this blog yesterday when a friend pointed it out you article on canning. I then went to your article about the Update on garden. I was blown away.. You have a amazing garden. I forgot to notice when the article was posted so I do not know if this is 2011 garden or a 2010.
A co-worker that has been growing gardens for years, suggested that I should grow a garden. Well one thing let to another and he and I decided to grow a large garden this year. He still has his garden at his home but since I have more space we are growing the bigger plants, and lots and lots of the smaller plants.
I have questions..
How do you water the garden ? I have furrows in mine but we have taken the squashes and made them individual squares thus spreading them out so they have lots of room. We have watermelon , cantaloupe and cucumbers. These all take lots of room.
I have the garden spread out into different areas so it takes alot to water but having several people doing it helps.
I have gophers, chickens, squirrels and dogs that run thru the garden.. Needless to say I have had some problems with varmint damage. The biggest was when my large squash plant just wilted.. I knew instantly what it was. So far 6 gophers have been removed from this garden..
What about the other pests? Chickens just fly over a fence if we put one up and so would the squirrels.
I found a local dairy that sells manure and half of the price in the store. I bought a truck load and it has really helped my garden.