It is
to post these pics after what I had last year but such is life. This year all I have is two grow boxes, in the second pic you can see what happened to my garden from last year, it was lost to a development project, it's that big pile of dirt behind the grow box[
]. I do have a back up plan, I'm building a big green house up in Idaho, on my son's property. I'll get some pics of that, the next time I go up. What you see in these pics are what came up the first time i planted, last month. I just replanted again in the spots where it is bare, hopefully the rows will fill in better, when it starts coming up.
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[quote wiperhunter2]
...in the second pic you can see what happened to my garden from last year, it was lost to a development project, it's that big pile of dirt behind the grow box[frown]. I do have a back up plan, I'm building a big green house up in Idaho, on my son's property.
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Have you been planting your garden on your neighbor's property and now they decided to build on it? I trust your son will be doing most of the watering and care of your green house.
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Yes, about 7 years ago my neighbor that owned the 2 acre lot behind my house, let a guy rent the property to grow monster pumpkins. Turned out the guy broke the state record for pumpkins 5 or those 7 years and the two years that he did not break the record he took the year off and did not grow any[crazy]. Anyway, I took the fact that my neighbor was renting the property as a sign that maybe he would let me grow a garden there, so I ask him and he said sure, as long as the pumpkin growers were ok with it. I put the garden up against my property, so I could use my secondary water to water it. You can see from my previous years post that my garden was a success, so it was quite a let down, when I found out last Fall that that would be the last year I could use the land. The good thing was that the guy growing the pumpkins, had to move too, so he sold me one of those big green houses. My son won't need to water the garden up there because I took most of my drip irrigation system up there and installed it last month. Hopefully they will at least weed it but we will see.
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Here are some new pics of my garden boxes and the Greenhouse up in Idaho.
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Took these pics yesterday. With the sun staying out more comes growth, so I'm finally going to start getting some zucchini later this week. Butternut starting to vine out and produce some too. Snow peas have been blossoming in the last week but no pods yet.
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Sure looks like it! We got down to 48.7* last night, much cooler than the forecasted 55* so that was surprising. It cools house to 61 before we shut the house back up this morning.
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We've collected 2 large batches of pea pods so far, divided it into 4ths- vacuum packed 2 bags for the freezer, ate one raw, and used one in a yummy stir fry.
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Amazing your garden is producing so well, guess I got a late start and having to plant twice did not help. I think next year I'll be making some small greenhouse covers like yours, they really seem to help.
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Since we bought our first greenhouse/cold frame we plan to use it as a pattern for making some more of them. We can't really easily duplicate the two areas tht allow you to open them, but we rarely opened it and with the two of us we figure we can lift it off if we needed to get under it for any reason. Making them will give us something to do this winter.
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I might need to drop by your place later this year and take a look at them, maybe I can make a few the Winter too.
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sure, I'll let you know when we've built one - [laugh]
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We finally got some snow pea pods out of the garden today and it looks like there are several zucchini, that will be ready to pick in a couple of days.
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Really nice, its funny when you finally see one all of sudden you see there are lot more of them than you thought.
Our squash isn't very close to being picked yet. Hopefully in couple weeks though.
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Wow, I would have thought that yellow squash you posted a pic of would be full sized by now. You are so right, when see one all of sudden you see there are lot more of them.
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New pics from my garden, taken today. Buttercup squash plant vines are going nuts, you can hardly see the zucchini plants and snow peas from all the BC vines. Also my watermelon plants and crenshaw plants are finally taken off. Finally getting yellow squash and kale and cucumber plants are finally starting to grow[crazy].
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That BC is going nuts for sure, soon you won't be able to mow [
]
Your watermelon look about like ours, and hasn't even bloomed yet, but the cantaloupe has really taken off and has tons of blooms.
Cabbages are so happy healthy this year, and maybe they are beginning to form heads. So much so that my row shelters to keep the cabbage moths off are getting harder and harder to open to check on the plants then to put back on for their protection.
I'm about to make the rounds around garden. My squash seems really happy and it is funny one day it'll have all male flowers the next day only female flowers so I think I may have problems pollinating them myself. I did get one pollinated for sure and it is growing nicely. Perhaps next year if I plant two of the plants I could have higher probability of getting male and female flowers at the same time. Then again, being the only one who will be eating them I'd hate to have too many of them. [crazy]
Update - Pics added , also had deer get spooked as I made way around the house to take the pics, scared both of us a bit - me mainly because the sweet potatoes box hasn't been deer proofed yet, and it got too out of sight into the trees to see if a buck or doe. No damage to SPs but one of the SPs that had some signs of some damage to the main stem a couple weeks ago is starting to wilt badly, so I'm going to check if any more of own slips can be placed out there if it has enough roots.
The cabbages are so healthy and strong, almost 24 inches wide, with a head just beginning in the middle. I do need to harvest some broccoli though its growing so much better than ever under those shelters its even poking up into the tops of the covers! But no cabbage moths. Oh and one of the SPs in my bales that is located under the shelters just because of spacing has vined nicely compared to all the others, its vines are 2-3 ft long under the shelter, so it is happy. My fingers are crossed that we get some harvest from all my SP experiments this year. But I'll be more ready for growing them next year depending on what turns out to best way to get them to grow here. It's been enjoyable to track them throughout this year.
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When I mowed last week I had to lift the vines up to mow, going to be harder this time for sure. It's even growing up the fence that is suppose to be for my green beans and snow peas.
Male and female flowers on your squash? I've never heard of that. I've got several yellow squash plants but only one has started to bloom and I've got two squash from it so far. When we start getting too much squash, we just give it to our neighbors, there is always one that will take some, I'm sure yours will take some too and it's a good way to get to know them, if you don't already.[
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Great pics, amazing how good your garden is doing, wish my pole beans were doing as good as yours. I like your idea of growing the cukes up the fence, bet they are much easier to pick that way. Cabbages look good too, how many do you get a year?
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squash flowers - you can see the female ones, they have fruit forming the males won't have a fruit behind them, so you pick the male flower remove the flower's outer leaves leaving the center, then that center is touched indie the female flower - and wahllah 'magic' happens.... [
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Think I can pick my first squash any day now.
Of course we know all our neighbors, some better than others and most of them won't even attempt growing a garden here, they all love getting garden produce (as well as fish [
])
Yes harvesting from raised bed and trellis is sure better than kneeling on the ground or bending toward the ground. Plus when you don't have a lot of space to garden in anything that can trellis keeps space and trellis can also make for some shade for cooler plants like lettuce or peas. Our trellis is on the bales and it is one of those cattle panels you get at farm stores. Since we have T posts already we just tie them to the posts using last year's baling twine (although our huge spool of twine is enough for our lifetime why not reuse some for other purposes) Sure makes for some colorful gardening [laugh]
Cabbages - I've only planted one 6 pack of them - we love it fried .
We picked our first 2 cherry tomatoes - that is the best thing that so much better than a store bought one for flavor!
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I had seen that before but never knew there were male or female flowers, thanks for enlightening me[
].
I think my snow peas are about done, I was picking 10 to 14 pods every couple of days earlier in the week but today, I only got 4[
].Usually when that happening it isn't long before the plants start to die. The good thing is my green beans are starting to blossom, so it won't be long before I'm getting some of those. Also started to see some blossoms on my watermelon plants today, with any luck I'll get a few before the season is over. I have some fence from an old dog run I use to have, so maybe that will work in place of cattle panels for growing cucumbers, at this point I'll feel lucky to get any this year, [
] but we will see.
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Yeah haven't seen any beans on our vines as of yet [crazy] even though they've been flowering for couple weeks now [
] Yes once the peas stop flowering you know it won't be long till they are over.
Picked and cooked up my first squash. I sautéed it in little butter with sprinkling of nutmeg keeping it more crisp so it didn't get too mushy and of all things even Jeff said it was the best he'd ever eaten (shh don't tell[
]). Of course that's not saying too much but still he also thought having two plants would increase our pollination opportunities. I ended up needed to open flowers that had barely closed up - in fact one flower I opened actually had 2 honey bees inside of it - that was shocking when I first started seeing their legs till I saw what they were [laugh].
That section of fence you have should work just fine.
Its just been an odd summer this year, seems every year has some oddness to it. Kind of like farmers when they either get too much rain then too little of rain, they still keep planting every year.
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