2016 Spring/Summer Gardens Pt 2

We came from here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1422715/
and here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1412954/

I harvested some onions and garlic that had been blown over by the strong winds we've had recently. I'm kind of disappointed with both my onions and garlic, but that's how gardening goes when you're at the mercy of the weather. I also picked another basket of blackberries. They will go into a cobbler I'm making for church tomorrow. Lastly, the yard long beans are doing great!

got squash and dill seed planted today. i will be trying out white scallop squash for the first time this year

I planted dill ONCE. Now I get it every year! LOL I don't mind it because it's good for the bees and sprouts up when there's nothing else to plant.

We are getting so much rain that I'm concerned about fungus problems. The last year we had this much continous rain I lost many of my veggie plants....that was years ago.

i have had to rush out to cover some things up before a rain storm because some things just cant take much more, the beets for example have some pretty rough looking leaves and im constantly plucking out mushrooms. and my dwarf apple tree appears to be getting Cedar-Apple Rust.

My husband is drying dill today. My whole house smells like dill pickles! LOL

We've not had a lot of rain, but we've also not had enough warm days. All my stuff is stunted and we've not been able to dry out. When we harvested the garlic, the soil was muddy. We have rain forecasted for every day this week.

That's strange it seems like its been warm, for this time of year. Maybe it's the humidity. I do have all types of flowers blooming I don't remember them blooming all at the same time. We are getting rain showers daily and they are predicted for the next week, at least.

It was in the 50s a few nights ago with highs in the low 70s. I don't know how to garden in the mud or wet conditions, even after last springs deluge!

More rain here, too. Tomatoes have had it. Yellowing. I'll be pulling them, the green beans that WERE drying out before the rain, and the remaining beets.

TPPEPHPs and Okra going in next. The rain in the next week will get the beds nice and moist for these seeds. Then, hopefully, the sun'll come out. But, according to our weather guy, not tomorrow...or the next day....or the next day....

i dont think i have ever seen such a soggy spring

Linda! I'm so happy to see you posting! I was wondering if you'd grown webbed feet yet or had built an ark. LOL

I got 3 peppers planted today. I sowed 7 mounds of cucumber seeds last week. I have sprouts in all of the mounds, except one which has NO sprouts. I'm beginning to wonder if actually put seeds in it. Hahahahaha!

Pulled all my dill today. Harvested a few more onions and some garlic that was in the way of my planting. Found 2 tomato volunteers. No clue what variety, but they've got to be from last year's crop.

with all of this rain im pretty surprised that my garden hasnt been totally taken over by wilts and blights, lol. (although you can see where my container beets arent too happy looking with all those yellowed leaves). Although the rain has definitely been making the sweet corn grow by leaps and bounds. Also going to see about saving some parsley seed this year

One good sign is that im seeing the tomato and eggplant budding out. potatoes will be spilling over the side of their large container soon, and the melons still seem to be doing ok.

That looks great jmc1987
I just came back home after 10 amazing days in the sunshine state.
I had the best surprise.
My husband did harvest the tomatoes in the first picture while I was gone ! WOW !
Then I went outside and discovered that I have so many more.
Also tons of "huge" cucumbers and one zucchini !!
For same reason he didn't notice those cucumbers looking like watermelon ! They did taste really good though !
I already roasted the smaller tomatoes and froze them !
Ate a lot ! Today I am planning to process all the rest and make Marinara Sauce.I just have so many. This is going to be a great season.
Today I must harvest onions and garlic. The soil is just too wet !

Lots of tomatoes out there !

despite the excess rain water stress, the beet roots themselves are still developing pretty decently. my tickseed has gone absolutely berserk this spring

Things aren't going great in my garden. The temperature fluctuations haven't helped things grow at all! The soil mix that we put in our round bed this year is very low in nitrogen and all my plants are yellow. It's rained almost every weekend or been too wet to really dig in the garden. My garden plot is covered in weeds from all the rain.

The good news is that the beans are doing well. All my cucumbers, except for that one hill, sprouted even though the seeds were 2 years old. The tomatoes and some of the peppers have buds/blooms. We've been picking blackberries like crazy. I've made 2 cobblers for my church LifeGroup and came home with no leftovers. Still so much to plant!

I pulled all my tomatoes weekend before last. Too much rain, too little pollination. I pulled all the beets last weekend, too. More yield than the first harvest.

In place of the tomatoes, I sowed top pick Pink Eye Purple Hull Peas. As of yesterday, all 142 planter holes were up -- with 2-3 seeds in each hole!!! I have some thinning to do...

Also, the Betty's White Okra seeds I sowed are up. I planted 2-3 seeds in 8 holes, so there's thinning to be done there, too.

All the rain has seriously set the eggplants off and running, which is showing me just how MUCH water they like. Sheesh!!!

My cucumber experiment is like a science project gone wild. I just sowed a bunch of seeds in two patented Earthboxes and let them sprawl over into the grass. I'm seeing now that they do need trellising, yep, although, I have picked several cukes. Don't know how I kept missing one sitting right on top of the EB, but, it was quite robust when I found it, LOL!

Is it too late to start more cuke seeds?

PICTORIAL UPDATE.
#1 Pink Eye Purple Hull Peas, planted last Tuesday.
#2 Betty's White Okra, planted last Tuesday.
#3 Eggplants (6 of 13 plants)
#4 Sprawling, running cucumbers
#5 Cukes

planted mom's easter lily in her garden bed for her, now that the bulb has consumed the water and nutrients from the leaves back into the bulb. removed it from its container to discover that it had formed 3 tiny additional bulbs about the size of a marble.

things looking pretty good now. my yarrow plant has almost grown up past my nose, LOL! And that old saying about corn that goes "knee high by fourth of july"....well i think i will pretty much have that covered! after having the lawn mowed it apparently stirred up the motherlode of flea beetles, im picking them off of my eggplants, by what feels like the bucket fulls daily, but my diligence is keeping their damage to a minimum

very very nice and all so green and healthy

Everything is going well here
Tons of tomatoes. I have new exciting varieties this year ... but too early to report.
Following suggestion of a DG member I planted RATTLESNAKE BEANS early in April.
Last year I did plant them at the end of June and they did nothing. My friend suggested that these beans like the cooler weather. I planted in the area where the okra is supposed to grow.
I was very excited to see that they started to produce so many beans. They are delicious ! I am so glad I did try them.
Now the okra is growing too.
I harvested onions and I am very pleased of their size. Considering that I did plant them very closed and I was so lazy to thin them out !

I am a little disappointed by my garlic. I did try different varieties and half of them did not do so well.
I think I am going back to plant the COTSCO garlic next year. $4 gave me so much in the past !

Tons of tomatoes ... yeah ...
#2 Tycoon (my largest tomato so far)
#3 Helsing Junction Blues - this is a new variety I am trying this year. The plant had just a few tomatoes, but they are just gorgeous: deep purple and red !! http://store.tomatofest.com/Helsing_Junction_Blues_Tomato_Seeds_p/tf-0239cd.htm
#4 rattlesnake beans http://www.rareseeds.com/rattlesnake-pole-bean/?F_Keyword=rattlesnake

I also never harvested so many cucumbers.
Thanks to the DG member who suggested MUNCHER http://www.rareseeds.com/muncher-cucumber/

Also, huge Swiss Chard !

first tomatoes of the season starting to grow in, and on my fresno chili pepper also

excellent !

My daily harvest !
is anybody else harvesting vegetables yet?

did get a batch of small carrots today, although our spring times here in VA dont quite last long enough to grow full sized cooking carrots before it gets too hot for them, you can still get a few good small ones for snacking on, for us here autumn crops do the best.

Beautiful color carrots. The temps this spring have been really wonky.

Pretty carrots! I need to try growing carrots again.

my luck has always just been so-so with them, sometimes good, sometimes blah, lol

my sweet corn is now officially waist high! and my melon plants seemed to have grown a half foot overnight, im also seeing some production coming out of my potted ground cherry plant

Here are some pics of my veggies . . . I have pretty much given up on the main area, as the tiller is still in the shop, and a variety of "things" are growing in there . . . will get the weedwacker out and get that cut down, then will work on just covering with compost over the summer.

The first pic is so you can see the weeds/etc. that I have to combat in this area on a weekly basis. Ok, to be fair, it takes about 2 weeks to get to this point after I pull things out. Can you even see the pepper plants in there? Grr . . .

The second one is what I am doing in sections in this area now. I picked up some weed paper and pine bark chips. Section by section, as soon as I clear out all the weeds, I am going to put the paper and chips down, so the area will look a bit neater all the time.

Ok, on to more interesting things . . .

My son is behind the sunflowers, just so you can tell how tall they are. He is 5'9" tall.

The snap peas . . . we have 3. I hope to get one more, so we each can have our own. I didn't take a pic of the corn, as it is growing so slowly, I'm wondering if it is in a good enough spot. (sorry if this pic is sideways!)

How can you tell when is a good time to harvest yellow squash? Yellow squash and zucchini are planted in this oval . . .

The cucumbers are starting to climb! And they are so cute! I planted some shallots in there next to them, as the companion gardening says that onions would be ok next to cucumbers. There are three, and I only planted them last week, so you can see some green pop up in a triangle, if you look in between the weedlets . . .

These are the cherry tomatoes. The plants are growing every day!

I'll take pix of the roma and beefsteak tomato plants after I get the weeds pulled and the paper and bark down. Same with the jalapeno and bell pepper plants