Hello gardeners! I know most of you are getting your gardens going. I just shut mine down, after a VERY successful winter growing season in the desert. This year I tried something new, Japanese Eggplant, and it was wildly successful, getting about 40 eggplants from just one plant in a 24” pot! It was so easy to grow, just plenty of sun and water. The flowers are lovely and a joy to watch turn into edibles. My tomato plants were the largest I’ve ever achieved here and so fruitful, I was giving tomatoes away all season. I had a really large crop of beets and of course, plenty of leafy green. Everyone in the neighborhood agreed that the Burpee “Buttercrunch” was the best of the lettuces. I hope you all have as successful a growing season as I! I didn’t take any photos this year.
10
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I have the beginnings of beans, my tomatoes have set fruit, I've been getting squash for a little over a week, but my other plants are still reeling from our strange weather this year. The freeze in Feb. nearly wiped out my loquat and fig trees, and killed all my pomegranate trees.
glennlab
Level 10
May 6, 2021
5
So sorry you lost the pomegranates! I hope you will replace at least a couple. Hope the rest of what you plant does well. Our weather has been “too hot, too long”, so I couldn’t plant until mid-October, instead of first of September, and it got hot too soon to get any sweet potatoes this time...got too hot to grow. I will try planting regular potatoes for the first time next year, starting September 1, heat be damned...unless I decide to become a snowbird.
@MsKathleen I am probably just going to take them out. It takes 3-5 years to start getting fruit and thios was the second time they froze to the ground. Good luck on the potatoes, I am trying deep buckets for them this year to see if that will work. The Feb, freeze totally froze the first batch I had planted, so I lost a month of growing season.
@glennlab I understand. Fortunately, it never freezes here. We do get frost (38°-40°
mid-December to mid-January, but I use AgFabric on everything, which protects it all. I have grown sweet potatoes in a BIG plastic tub successfully, but had to plant too late this year, and then it got hot too soon, so they didn’t mature. They were long and skinny when I pulled them out yesterday...45 more days would have made the difference. It was no real loss, except for water, because they were planted from sprouted organic orange and purple sweet potatoes. I think that I should have gone ahead and let them establish during the late summer heat, because they wouldn’t have formed potatoes before cool weather anyway. It is all experimentation...
I have basil in pots on my deck. Last year it was in the raised bed in the yard and the bunnies got most of it. Not this year! I have my tomatoes in the raised beds. I have a few other herbs on the deck as well.
HippieChick58
Level 9
May 6, 2021
3
Mmmmmm...Basil. Keep the low branches of the tomatoes trimmed, or the bunnies will get the tomatoes.
@MsKathleen I have never had a problem with the bunnies and the tomatoes. When I had a golden he would pick the ripe tomatoes and eat them in the yard. He was more of a problem than the bunnies!
@HippieChick58 My lab and snauser both got my tomatoes, plus my son. It was frustrating to watch a tomato get almost perfect ripeness, then disappear. I never knew who to blame.
@HippieChick58 Oh yes, digs! When I was a kid, we had a Cocker Spaniel that would dig up a carrot, put it in his water bowl to wash it off, and eat it. It is best to cut off the low branches of tomato plants, anyway, because you should keep leaves dry. And gently shake your blossom limbs...you will get more fruit that way. Doing so doubled my cherry tomato yield this year!
@MsKathleen I've done the shaking of the branches, it helps the flowers to pollinate better. I usually stake or support the branches so they're not in the dirt.
I've got corn and peas sprouting , my chives were looking great , until the cat decided to roll around on them . Guess he prefers that onion scent to the mint he was previously rolling in . The aspargus I planted last year , didn't seem to winter well , so I stuck some more in . My Tennessee Ostrich ferns have definately made a surprising come back after our late season freeze as have the Mexican Petunias and the Eyes-so-blue .
Cast1es
Level 9
May 6, 2021
2
Cats! I have covered my high planters to keep them from frequenting them during summer.
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