^ I planted 2 borage near my tomato plants which is supposed to make them sweeter and repel the hornworm.



They attract bees which cross pollinate with the tomotoes.

6/12/2010 11:54:06 AM

I am going to try my hand at bee keeping next year, so I am sure I will have no shortage of pollinators. Not that I have a shortage now, but yeah

6/12/2010 1:08:32 PM

oooh, i'm going to add bees to the list of what I want on my farm.

6/12/2010 1:13:29 PM

pigs are next on my list for our farm, but the GF isn't a fan.

6/12/2010 1:21:30 PM

I want a cow, a donkey/mule, chickens, maybe a few goats, and now, bees

6/12/2010 1:31:36 PM

We have 7 acres, but all we have so far is the garden and 2 dogs. our neighbor has all the cool animals though: chickens, goats, sheep, a mini horse, a mini donkey, and they just recently got ducks.

This is their donkey, Eli. He's my buddy:



[Edited on June 12, 2010 at 1:39 PM. Reason : a]

6/12/2010 1:37:30 PM

He's cute. And I will have ducks, too, if I have a pond.

6/12/2010 1:40:26 PM

Yeah, we share a fence with them. Every time I come out on the front porch of the house he brays at me. Most likely because I feed him apples from the apple trees.

And LOL, they don't have a pond. They just have a kiddie pool that they set up out there. I think my neighbor is planning on digging one though.

6/12/2010 1:47:06 PM

nice! but in my experience, ducks fuck like rabbits, I think our population at the mine tripled one year at the least, so it had better be a big kiddie pool

6/12/2010 3:21:04 PM

my grandparents have ducks, but the little ones always seem do get eaten or run over...

6/12/2010 9:07:22 PM

yeah, my neighbors are kinda animal crazy right now for some reason. but their chickens keep getting killed by some sort of cat, so I doubt the ducks will last very long.

6/12/2010 9:10:20 PM

So I watered for an hour last night (soaker hoses) because I didn't expect rain. Then around midnight a thunderstorm popped up and DUMPED rain on us. I have VERY happy veggies right now, I just hope they aren't over watered at this point.

6/13/2010 9:23:02 AM

where do you live? 4 acres is pretty badass.

6/14/2010 5:41:42 AM

My "Large Lucky Red" tomato isn't seeming so lucky right now--it's doing very poorly. I spoke to the grower we bought it from and sent him some photos and he said it looks like it might be tomato spotted wilt or fusarium (sp?) virus, and might need to be pulled out. Giving it a little while to see if it can recover (part of the plant looks ok, I've been removing leaves showing any browning/yellowing/spotting) but it doesn't look good.

However he's offered to give me a replacement plant, at no charge, which is pretty awesome since the plant was totally healthy when we got it and whatever malady has befallen it only recently cropped up. Thanks again to modlin for pointing me toward this guy--Craig Lehoullier, aka "NC Tomato Man". Highly recommended, we'll definitely be buying our tomato and pepper seedlings from him again next year.

6/14/2010 9:44:41 AM

^^ 7 actually, but a solid 3 of it is wooded. I live in Whitsett, between Greensboro and Burlington.

We got a really good rain again yesterday afternoon into the evening. My cantaloupes have about 10 fruits on them as of this morning. And all of my green bell peppers are flowering now.

I am concerned about the spaghetti squash though. The plants are HUGE and healthy, but no fruit yet. My brother-in-law is a garden guru, and he said that they may never fruit. Mainly because we got the seeds from a spaghetti squash we bought at the grocery store, and he said a lot of those are engineered to not reproduce.

[Edited on June 14, 2010 at 9:54 AM. Reason : a]

6/14/2010 9:51:35 AM

We got a little more than a bushel of green beans today and a little less than a bushel of squash

6/15/2010 1:45:54 AM

Found one of these on the a tomato plant last night:



About as big as my first finger. I seem to have a lot of critter issues this year. Too many little kids around to break out the sevin dust, so I'm just spiking them out into the street. There's a little herd of smooshed caterpillars, slugs, and snails growing out there on the asphalt.

6/15/2010 11:34:50 AM

I am going to start my first attempt at making pickles this afternoon. I'm just going to do basic refrigerator pickles to see how they turn out. I'll probably try the hardcore pickling toward the end of the summer.

6/15/2010 12:36:02 PM

all this rain is killing my pepper plants

6/15/2010 3:18:15 PM

^^^ ha ha ha, I found one of those on my friend's tomato plant. The caterpillar had these white things sticking off it's back ... wasp eggs! I told him not to kill it, because it deserves the slow death from the wasps for daring to eat your tomatoes

6/15/2010 4:20:27 PM

I decided to til up another row. I already have tomatoes, pumpkins, squash pepper and some melon plants what would you guys suggest to add not real sure what else I want to grow.

6/15/2010 10:46:15 PM

Here are my cucumbers getting their pickle on. This smells AMAZING btw...well, if you like pickles that is.



lol, it was just brought to my attention that one of the cucumbers looks like it has peppercorn eyes. So I broke out the photoshop:



[Edited on June 16, 2010 at 9:30 AM. Reason : shop]

6/16/2010 9:04:20 AM

Pickles in the jar:



Also started harvesting jalapenos and banana peppers yesterday. I have 2 cantaloupes that should be ready in about a week.

[Edited on June 18, 2010 at 8:24 AM. Reason : "]

6/18/2010 8:23:15 AM

My tomatoes are now over 6ft tall with TONs of green tomatoes.

I am about 3 weeks behind where i should be due to weather delays in planting..but things are catching up quickly!

6/18/2010 9:14:16 AM

I've got a bush full of golden cayennes that are taunting me by not being ripe yet...but soon. First couple jalapenos are about ready too. We've had one monster bell pepper so far, which we pulled before ripening to give the 7 or so others that had formed on the plant a bit of a better shot, but even green it was quite tasty.

Tomatoes are coming into their own also. We've had a few sungolds already with loads more on the plants, the cherokee chocolate is full of small tomatoes and a few getting bigger, and the brandywine and orange strawberry (which is probably almost 7 feet tall at this point) are finally starting to develop fruit. The big lucky red has mostly succumbed to whatever ailment was afflicting it, but I have a replacement plant so it should be "better late than never" on those.

All lettuces have been eaten so I'm going to plant some seeds for replacements. Arugula and chard going strong. Eggplant is flowering nicely and I think a couple may yield fruit but it remains to be seen at this point.

6/18/2010 9:25:56 AM

^ how tall are your bell pepper plants? Ours are healthy and flowering, but they seem really short to me.

6/18/2010 11:09:34 AM

We only have one, a "karma" red bell which is only about 2 feet tall. However it's fairly bushy and that first bell pepper that came off it was legitimately supermarket-sized, so there may not be a direct correlation between size of plant and size of pepper here.

6/18/2010 11:41:55 AM

Oh ok, that makes me feel better then. Ours are probably about that same height and also bushy. I guess for some reason I just expected it to get taller.

6/18/2010 11:51:40 AM

We have about a dozen California bell peppers, and we have grown them many years in the past. about 2Ft. tall and bushy is about all they are going to do other than put on peppers. We have picked 5 this year and will get several more tomorrow....

6/18/2010 7:07:12 PM

We got ours in the ground pretty late, but I expect to have some ready to be picked in a couple weeks.

6/19/2010 10:28:09 AM

Got a bell pepper plant and a habenero plant for a dollar apiece at the farmers market today tomorrow I am on the prowl for a blueberry plant.

6/20/2010 12:32:25 AM

I need to try making pickles. Anyone have a recipe they'd like to share?

6/20/2010 1:10:45 AM

Yes! Please post pickle recipes! I am going to try making some next week maybe?! I cannot wait to get back to Raleigh to check on the garden and all my herbs. I hope zorthage has been a good plant sitter! (and has not eaten all the cukes)

6/20/2010 1:16:03 PM

Just cut 4 trays of basil for my food dehydrator. MMmmmm the kitchen smells awesome!

6/20/2010 1:18:12 PM

This is my recipe for pickles:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/kinda-sorta-sours-recipe/index.html


Also, [user]nerdchick's[/user] grubs from page 6 found their way into my giant pumpkin and squash. I replanted some standard pumpkin seeds and some winter squash in the now empty spot, just to see what happens.

6/20/2010 2:35:00 PM

Making pickles is soooooo easy and the result is sooooo delicious. I couldn't believe I'd walked this earth for 24 years and never knew the joys of a fresh, homemade pickle.

Alton Brown's recipe is good and you can modify it to your taste/budget. I would only use 1/4 cup of sugar, which makes very vinegar-ey pickles that are too strong to eat plain but EXCELLENT on sandwiches. I've also found that you can use the dirt cheap white vinegar with no ill effect. (you can buy white vinegar in gallon jugs, perfect for someone with a high volume of cukes like djeternal) Also buying all those spices to match Alton's recipe could get expensive. I just use "pickling spice," fresh dill from the garden, garlic, onions, and crushed red pepper if you like spicy pickles.

Depending on how thick you slice your cukes, you could have pickles in 4-5 hours! Also with this simple method they last for about 1 month in the fridge. If you want to store extras for winter or something, you need a different method where you boil the jars and whatnot.

6/20/2010 4:00:11 PM

thanks! now, i keep reading about how to harvest basil, but i can't find pictures. my head hurts really bad and it is hard to think, so, can someone show my a picture of where I'm supposed to harvest from? I understand the two tiny leaves things, but dangit, these basil plants are ginormous and I think I missed the point at which the leaves were supposed to be tiny. please help out a new/dumb/infirmed gardener!

6/20/2010 6:25:11 PM

I just cut the bigger leaves off at the stem. Leaving the smaller ones to grow some more. The food dehydrator has the whole house smelling like basil now

6/20/2010 7:50:42 PM

same here!

6/20/2010 8:04:48 PM

heh I just lop off stems from my basil plant whenever I need some and make sure to trim the flowers when it starts to bud. Every year I have monster basil plants that taste great

6/20/2010 8:20:57 PM

ok, maybe i am putting way too much thought into it

6/20/2010 9:06:44 PM

I bring out scissors and a bowl. I cut the stems off about halfway down the plant. make sure there's enough leaves for the plant to come back. I don't bother to pick individual leaves, it takes much longer. just pick the leaves off the stems when you get inside.

PS I've made 2 batches of pesto so far!

6/20/2010 9:36:54 PM

I have not gotten the knack on when to pick my zucchini. they are so small that I wait for them to get bigger...but they don't, so then they rot. bleh.

just gonna have to have really small zucchini i s'pose.


tomatoes and jalapenos are doing great though i've got two maters ripening on my counter and one ripening on the vine. prolly gonna pick the one off the vine tomorrow. jalapenos are getting bigger and will be ready to start picking some off in another week or two.

6/20/2010 10:55:42 PM

Nerdchick, so when they say harvest half the plant I can literally just cut off the top half and it won't seriously damage my plant?

6/20/2010 11:10:12 PM

yeah as long as there are about 10 or so leaves left it'll bounce right back (I cut the stem right above a pair of leaves)

I've done it twice this year and my basil is coming back a 3rd time. BUT it wasn't that tall ... maybe 1.5 ft when I cut it each time.

Quote :

"I have not gotten the knack on when to pick my zucchini. they are so small that I wait for them to get bigger...but they don't, so then they rot. bleh."

how small are they? If they never get bigger than 3-4 inches, it may be that your flowers are not getting pollinated. When an un-pollinated female flower falls off, instead of growing the baby squash behind the flower will just die.

6/21/2010 5:50:36 AM

Quote :

"just gonna have to have really small zucchini i s'pose."

Zucchini flowers taste awesome btw and are $texas at markets so I recommend trying some out!

6/21/2010 6:15:58 AM

Quote :

"how small are they? If they never get bigger than 3-4 inches, it may be that your flowers are not getting pollinated. When an un-pollinated female flower falls off, instead of growing the baby squash behind the flower will just die. "

yep! that's exactly my problem. I don't have time this am, but I will try to hand pollinate tomorrow

i'll try the flowers as well

6/21/2010 7:08:09 AM

So yeah, my GF decided to pull up the spaghetti squash because the plants are getting so big they are taking over the neighboring tomatoes. Plus, we THOUGHT they weren't going to fruit. But AFTER she got them cut down, I noticed that 1 of the plants had 3 little spaghetti squashes on them.

6/21/2010 9:20:51 AM

I snapped the stalk of one of my sunflower plants the other day trying to break off a dead leaf

I put my medic background to use and put a splint on the stalk and then tied it off to a nearby tree. I doubt it'll make it but its hanging on so far.

6/21/2010 10:06:00 AM

Our sunflowers are about 6' tall right now. Last year we had several that got taller than the house.

6/21/2010 10:09:21 AM