Gardening - Growing Your Own.

When I was growing up with 5 kids in the family we always had a big garden .About 3/4 of a acre .Almost everything you could imagine .I hated working in it .

Now with only about 50 feet of raised bed it's only a 15-20 minute job once a week to weed it etc .It's just fresh stuff while it's in season .That's all I want .
 
Some plants like some shade during the day, like lettuce and some other greens. Without a partially shady spot, it might be good to put some tight weave netting over them to diffuse some of the intensity of the heat, plus being well watered, the soil best never drying out. Heat can make for things running to seed. All I'm getting so far is lettuce and radishes, other things coming along. I plant leaf lettuce, not head lettuce, pull off leaves ai it grows and the plant replenishes them. Nice and fresh. Too much heat makes for some bitter taste too. Other plants love the heat, tomatoes and peppers....thinking bring it!
 
Very true Jay, we have intense UV's at our altitude. Certain things like broccoli and spinach are very tough to grow here without them bolting. We have a bunch of sunflowers growing with the broccoli this year, it should hold off the bolt effect...
 
I've got and old shade tarp from my bosses green house. I'll cut a chunk out and put over my radishes and lettuce and hopefully that helps. Thanks for the advice.
 
Corn is digging this hundred degree weather.
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Looks good, Willie. I had a problem with pigeons eating the new corn seedlings after first coming up, at least people tell me it was pigeons, but I didn't see one. Trying again, I bought a package of clear plastic cups and stuck one over where I put a seed. Acts like a little greenhouse too, the seeds sprouted quick. I'm leaving them on until the sprout gets to be about two inches tall, the birds don't seem to be interested in them when they grow a bit. I knocked a hole in the bottom of the cup after the seeds sprouted, probably too hot in there otherwise. After initially planting and watering, I don't think i needed to water again with the cups on, the soil stayed moist, or maybe once. Seems like a good method, and though i thought it an original idea, i see folks on the internet doing it too. Pressing the cup edge into the damp soil, they stayed in place. Probably would work for germinating a lot of things.
 
Good trick Jay. My dad taught me to cut the bottom off of a milk jug and put the top over young plants with the cap off.
 
My tomatoes got the late blight disease. Only one plant so far but the spores can really spread, the websites say. A fungal thing, not surprising when we get a lot of rain and high humidity during the growing season. Some sites say to quickly pull the infected plants, others offer solutions that may work, but no guarantee. Best cure is a preventative one, apparently. I'm trying the baking soda spray solution that you make yourself, change the plant's pH to make the fungus unhappy. Going for broke, lots of green tomatoes coming up. Got a feeling it won't work.
 
Bummer!

I got an 8x4 raised bed set up about 3 weeks ago, it was a lot of work!! It wasn't getting enough sun so I cut a couple of trees yesterday, much better sun now, but I hate cutting my own trees. Hope I stay clear of the blight

Nice cup/bottle trick!
 
I had some Yew trees I had to top for my garden to get more light. It took like years to get to it.

Hope you stay clear of the blight too. Good to remove leaves close to the ground with tomatoes, air passage is good they say. I've been doing aerial spraying with a compost tea mix, I might have caused the problem myself. Those plant pathogens can sure show up quick and catch you off guard.

What are you growing, Cory. Lettuce is sure easy to grow, How much lettuce can one eat?
 
Watermelon, cukes, peppers, eggplant, green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, arugula.

Should be rather crowded later in the season.
 
I planted some Kale, said to be the most nutritious of all vegetables. Cabbage family I believe. Never grew it before or have ever eaten it. Maybe not too tasty? I couldn't even find seeds around, had to order over the net. It sure grows slow, a number of weeks and barely two inches tall.
 
Ah so.... if you look on the net, there seems to be what people claim are a tasty way to eat anything. Some even say that about those hot peppers that are like a nuclear detonation in your mouth.
 
Kale ain't too bad, especially if you mix it with other greens in a salad or the like.
 
FireFighterZero said:
You can live off it, but it tastes like shit.

Stig will probably scold me and come up with a mouth watering recipe for Kale.
Click to expand...


Here you go: http://cookieandkate.com/2013/west-african-peanut-soup/

One of my favourite winter eats.

In fact, anything where you'd use collard greens, Kale will work just as good.

It has been grown here since forever, primarily because it is frost tolerant, so it'll survive the winter.

Ever since the Vikings and ending with my parent's generation, the " Kålgård" or Cabbage garden that was planted by every farm or country home, has been where people got their winter vitamins from.

Brussel sprouts can tolerate a bit of frost, but Kale is totally impervious.

It is a coarse, strong tasting plant, so i perefer chopping it really fine. Goes great in soups, stews etc.

Jim, that brussel sprout recipe where you use beer to cook it in, that I posted, will work just as well with Kale.
 
Take kale and put it on a cookie sheet. Brush some olive oil on and season with salt, pepper, chipotle, what ever you like, throw it in the oven for a few minutes till crispy. Yummy kale chips!
 
Maybe I don't offer the best conditions for growing kale, but does slow growing have anything to do with high nutritional count? I mean lettuce grows fast. So far the bugs are leaving it alone too, different from cabbage.
 
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