^^ do you live in the city limits? if not, I would recommend just shooting them.

PS. I am LOVING all this rain. Well, at least for the garden's sake. Hating the fact that I am going to have to mow my ass off tomorrow.

7/17/2010 3:16:07 PM

rabbits will eat the tomatoes if they can reach them

so will turtles

7/17/2010 3:30:59 PM

Quote :

"I just found a cucumber soup crockpot recipe I want to try this weekend"

I'd be interested in how this turned out. I've never heard of cooking cucumbers before. Good looking garden, btw.

7/17/2010 3:52:00 PM

speaking of cucumbers, this is what happens when I miss a cucumber under the leaves for a few days.

7/17/2010 4:05:23 PM

I would feed that one to the horses. Once they get that big they lose a lot of flavor, imo

7/17/2010 4:15:13 PM

yeah I normally pick them much smaller, that one was just hiding. It's going in the compost, you're right about the size it's too tough to be any good in a salad.

Here's some food I've made with my tomatoes! a burger and one of my WORLD FAMOUS tomato sammies, starring homemade pesto mayonnaise and homegrown pickles

7/17/2010 4:30:23 PM

Damn, now I am REALLY hungry. I am making a burger tonight that will definitely have a fresh tomato on it.

And I feel you on the hiding cucumbers. Pretty much every day I find one that I missed the day before, and it is HUGE. The farm animals love them though, so it's all good.

7/17/2010 4:52:02 PM

^^ wow nerdchick! that looks incredible!

7/17/2010 4:55:10 PM

so jealous...all my cucumber seedlings died, but I gave one to my mother-in-law and it is doing wonderful! she's picked her 6th cucumber this week.

hope she saves some for me

7/17/2010 5:25:11 PM

I will give you a whole damn grocery bag full if you want. I am running out of ideas of things to do with all of them. I get a grocery bag full every 2 days.

7/17/2010 6:08:51 PM

DAMN YOU NERDCHICK! Here is my dinner tonight. Fresh tomatoes on the burger, and homemade pickle from the garden cucumbers. The fries will also be homemade once the potatoes are ready

7/17/2010 10:25:54 PM

you haven't dug your taters yet? when did you plant them?

7/17/2010 10:52:31 PM

April.

It's the first time I have done them so I don't know how to tell when they are ready.

[Edited on July 17, 2010 at 10:55 PM. Reason : a]

7/17/2010 10:54:23 PM

taters are generally planted in late february or in march

pick a couple hills and pull them up and check the size of the taters. an average of baseball size is just about right. don't let them get too big. the golf ball sized ones are my favorites.

[Edited on July 17, 2010 at 11:16 PM. Reason : i would plant them in march up there where you live]

7/17/2010 11:15:06 PM

they can't get too big....we got a lot last week bigger than softballs......

7/17/2010 11:56:24 PM

too big imo but whatever

7/18/2010 12:27:05 AM

Here are a few pics I just took. Mostly flowers, but one of a HUGE cantaloupe I picked. The funny thing is that the butterflies LOVE these flowers, but don't go anywhere near the Butterfly Bushes. lol

Flower and Butterfly


Different flower, different Butterfly


2 of the Sunflowers:


HUGE Cantaloupe (with football for size reference):

7/19/2010 10:02:22 AM

This morning's harvest:

7/21/2010 8:47:07 AM

DAYUM I'm so jealous of you hauls, djeternal. My tomatoes are smaller now and they're splitting big time.

BUT I had enough small tomatoes to make some heirloom salsa with homegrown jalapenos and an SC peach!!

might do fajitas tonight with this delicious salsa.



here's what I picked today!!

7/22/2010 5:58:03 PM

holy god that looks delicious

7/22/2010 5:59:59 PM

^

Unfortunately I have some SAD garden news ... about a month ago I planted pumpkin seeds and the plant was doing great!! But now it has the same vine borers than killed my yellow squash I tried cutting the stem to get the grubs out but I can't find them all and I think the plant is done for

7/22/2010 6:23:09 PM

my tomatoes are splitting like crazy too. getting to the point that I am picking them when they are barely pink and letting them ripen inside

your jalapenos look a better than mine though. mine are really small this year for some reason, but still taste awesome. you should consider doing banana peppers next year. they are REALLY easy, and add awesome sweet/hot flavor to salsa.

and yeah, that salsa looks pretty badass. i made smoothies today with cantaloupe out of the garden and gave samples to my customers. i swear i could have made an easy $100 today if i charged for that shit.

[Edited on July 22, 2010 at 7:45 PM. Reason : a]

7/22/2010 7:42:30 PM

i, too, have small jalapenos

and my tomatoes started late, just begun harvesting them last week.

oh the sweet sweet shaded backyards of Oakwood

7/23/2010 12:01:02 AM

+1 to the small jalapenos roll call, but they're tasty and the plant is producing acceptably. Not as prolific as our golden cayenne or purple peruvian, which are producing quite a lot.

I'm also having some problems with tomato splitting on my brandywines and even a few of the sungolds, but the bigger problem I'm having is with something eating my damn brandywines. The plant is caged and has bird netting around it, but so far something keeps finding every weakness to get in. The suspects include mockingbirds (there is a nest nearby), rabbits (I know there are one adult and several small ones in the area), squirrels (where are they not) and a cat (someone's outdoor cat that roams the entire neighborhood) but I don't know which it is. The suspect has probably devoured as many near-ripe tomatoes off that plant as I've picked ripe ones and it's getting extremely old, but other than continuing to better secure the netting, I'm not sure what to do.

7/26/2010 10:53:07 AM

This is what you get when you go out of town for a weekend:

7/26/2010 11:00:48 AM

Nice, both my squash plants and pumpkin plant died this past week damn squash bugs drilled in all of them

7/27/2010 8:28:54 PM

We have tons of those squash bugs too, but they haven't really done all that much damage. That being said, our yellow squash has pretty much run it's course. Still getting green squash too.

Cut up one of the watermelons last night and it is AWESOME! I have another one out there that is ready, but I am saving it for a birthday party this weekend. Fucker is HUUUUUUUGE.

7/28/2010 4:40:22 PM

it doesnt matter what size i pick them
cucumbers
they aren't turning green
some of them are staying white, some are yellowing



copied from a gchat


any ideas?

7/28/2010 7:13:04 PM

Thes epictures are making me SO homesick, and SO jealous.

Assholes.

DJE, I may well drive out to GSO for some produce

7/28/2010 7:18:33 PM

so i took every cucumber off the vine, small and large, pulled off bad parts of the vine and all the blossoms. zorthage trimmed back the morning glories and i weeded the garden ferociously. it seems that we have some cucumbers growing again and they are GREEN! woot!

[Edited on August 2, 2010 at 6:34 PM. Reason : ...]

8/2/2010 6:11:13 PM

Picked this one Saturday:

8/2/2010 6:15:57 PM

im jealous. mine are still small, but getting bigger!

8/2/2010 6:35:10 PM

Well then I am jealous. I got 2 big ass watermelons and now nothing. The plant still looks great though, so fingers crossed that I get at least 1 more.

8/2/2010 6:36:28 PM

i think i'm going to have 6 or 7 total

my largest, i planted late, dont expect harvest until the end of august at the earliest




[Edited on August 2, 2010 at 7:07 PM. Reason : ...]

8/2/2010 6:49:29 PM

Very nice!

8/2/2010 7:21:28 PM

pumpkins?

10/1/2010 6:46:10 PM

Didn't do pumpkins. We are going to save seeds this year for next year, though.

10/4/2010 2:05:01 PM

I had several vines, including some giant varieties, and teh vine borers got 'em all back in June.

My garden story this year has been critters and more critters. Borers got the pumpkins, squash, and zucchini. Aphids ate the okra. Stinkbugs and caterpillars got into the maters. Rabbits ate the cucumbers and bell peppers. slugs got into everything. Squirrels ate all the peaches.

10/4/2010 2:20:43 PM

last night I pulled up my last basil plant and just composted it. There was a crapton of leaves on it but I didn't have the inclination to pull em all off and do something with them.

Still getting cherry tomatos on teh reg, though.

10/12/2010 4:17:04 PM

^ we still have basil and dill. We will probably just let it grow until it dies on its own

last year I pulled all the basil leaves and let them dry in our spare bedroom. Then I chopped it up and bottled it in an old spice bottle. It's not the same thing as fresh, but it beats buying expensive spices during the winter.

We are also still getting peppers (green, red, jalapeno, banana, cheyenne). They are all tiny, but still pretty tasty. We are going to let them run their courses as well. After that, we'll turn the garden with the tractor and relax until spring.

[Edited on October 12, 2010 at 7:20 PM. Reason : a]

10/12/2010 7:18:59 PM

basil's fairly easy to grow in a pot indoors over the winter. we are starting to get hard frost on the car, but the garden is hanging on. I've got to harvest all the basil and green tomatoes. I think I'm gonna make a giant jar of pesto. I think I'll dig up a plant and try to propagate it though. Just don't tell anyone, it's patented!

10/13/2010 12:24:44 PM

haha...wrong thread.

[Edited on October 25, 2010 at 8:57 PM. Reason : ...]

10/25/2010 8:56:26 PM

Randomly walked out to the garden yesterday to discover that my Bell Peppers, Jalapenos, and Banana Peppers are still producing. I got 8 really good sized bells, and dozens of jalapenos and banana peppers. That should about do it for this year though, although there are still several small bell peppers on the plants.

10/26/2010 9:50:05 AM

Did the same thing, and found an okra plant hiding out there with a few left on it. They might grow enough to pick in a few days.

And like twenty tomato and basil sprouts. And a few other tomato sprouts randomly in the middle of my backyard.

10/28/2010 12:29:42 PM

I just stumbled across pics of the grass I grew this spring.
It did marginally better inside than it did outside.

12/27/2010 12:33:16 AM