Gardening Thread - Show me your gardens!

What are you using to trap them? They have been wreaking havoc on my raised gardens, not actually eating much but digging through the whole box destroying the roots. They took out an entire crop of onions and I think the extra drainage is keeping my cukes from getting enough water to grow.

 

mouse traps, just need to get them in their path, haven't baited a single one.

 

4 years after planting it, my Cortland apple tree is finally producing fruit! (pardon the weeds; I haven't been in there with the grass whip lately)




I've also got a couple of old overgrown ones on the lower part of the property that I've discovered over the years, and I've opened up the tree cover around them and pruned them back pretty severely in hopes of getting them producing again, but no luck yet. I'm dying of curiosity about what sort of tree they are; half of them were really old (12"+ diameters!) with the proper limb development but a ton of overgrown suckers, or they were the 30-40 year old offspring of the older trees that grew vertically to compete with the other trees around them but didn't develop the right branch network to support fruit.

 

Peter piper picked a pack of........






















Purple peppers. Not sure where this plant came from, maybe a greenhouse mix up.

 

do you notice if they flower in the spring? the trees might need some fertilizer.

Theres and old abandoned apple orchard near me that still has a few apple trees, They provide a nice snack in the fall when hunting Ive thought of dumping some fruit tree fertilizer on them. I may do that this fall.

 

My grandson helped me pick Limelight beans this morning. They're a substitute for Lima beans. My wife loves Lima beans. I have tried lots of different varieties, but never found any that would grow in our short season. These were mentioned in a magazine article as a good substitute for lima beans. Looked hard to find seeds. Finally found two suppliers, both in Canada, and one wouldn't ship to the U.S. Got some seeds and planted for the first time last year. They grew great. Only had enough seeds for one 15' row. We ate one small meals worth (they tasted great) and saved all the rest for seed for this year. This year planted six 15' rows. Still going to save a bunch for seeds, but have plenty to eat.

 

They don't flower right now. At the moment they don't have any branches capable of producing flowers anyway; I've cut all of the large limbs on them back to the main trunks at this point (over the course of the last several years). So right now they're basically just trunks, with smaller branches that have sprouted and are now developing. Since those branches are only 1-3 years old I'm not expecting anything for blossoms for another couple of years.

The older trees I cut all of the suckers back, but they still aren't flowering, so they may need some fertilizer. They're still fairly closed in by canopy from other trees, though, so that might be part of the problem too.

 

doesnt hurt to fertilize. hit them up in the fall and in the spring. We had a tree when I was growing up that had little fruit, we hit it with fish fertilizer and the next year it had huge apples. Sometimes weather kills the flowers too in the spring...but if your other fruit trees have apples those may just need to catch up after pruning.

 

Yeah, we had our first blossoms on the younger trees (the ones that I planted the first and second year after we bought he house) last year, but they got frosted and we never saw any fruit.

 

I planted 4 trees. last year was their first full year in the ground and I got about 12 total apples. This is the second year and two didnt flower at all, one has about 11 apples and other one has 5 or 6... Hopefully they will settle down and all flower next year.

 

If you are getting apples just one year after planting I'm impressed.

I planted three apple trees back in 2010, one Macintosh, a Gala and a dwarf Honycrisp. They were cheep ones from Home Depot, all had trunks about one inch thick. The Honycrisp died the second year, but the other two are trudging along.

The Gala got broken at the graft joint in 2013. Half the trunk was intact but the tree was bent at a 90 degree angle. I gently stood it up and staked it. I wrapped the busted graft in rubber then painted it with paraffin. It healed and continued growing, but at a much slower rate. It had six apples in 2016, and none last year. It didn't have any blossoms this year, but is finally starting to grow with some vigor. It's trunk is now 3 inches thick.

The Macintosh has grown well since day one. The trunk is now 4.5 inches thick. We got about a dozen apples in 2016, and several dozen last year. This year it looks like we will have quite a few more. We got a pretty bad hail storm last week and it knocked a couple dozen apples off, but there is still a real good crop left.

 

Some of our tomato's are starting to split...heres some tips. I think our Jalapenos are starting to get a bit more spice to them. At least one plant is, I like them to have some spice otherwise Id just rather eat a bell pepper...
https://www.thespruce.com/why-do-tomatoes-split-2540002

 

couple places I could post this...but...wth...Thursday 106 sat 78?

 

Pass. It's 92 here and that's bad enough.

 

supposedly Sept is supposed to be cooler...we will see.

 

That looks like an Iowa forecast.

 

you can have it... I dont mind 80-90's but in the 100's yuck...lol

 

got to 106 in the shade by our garden...and still a few more hours of heat to go...yesterday Spokane got to 103 but we were showing 104-107...

 

106 in N Idaho and highs in the 80s forecasted for here in OK. Weirdness.

 

supposed to be 80's for the weekend...