Gardening Thread- Show me your gardens!

Jalapenos....

I normally pull the early blossoms as mentioned. When I did it last year, I had 3-4' tall plants with tons of fruit, I mean tons. Was picking 1-2 gallon bags every 2-3 days. Canned a bunch and gave a lot away. This year, planted earlier, didn't prune the early blossoms, plants are stunted 1.5-2' tall, with smaller and less fruits. We haven't had rain, and I've been watering as needed to keep them from dying out.

 

High elevation cucumbers are going nuts

 

Holy crap that's nuts.

 

Mine are similar right now. Absolutely loaded with blossoms and little 1" cukes. Not sure how the plants going to support all that, lol.

 

Went out and cut up the rest of my 4-foot firewood lengths this morning, early, before it got hot. Then went and puttered around in the garden. Trellised the tomatoes again and picked a hornworm off (first one this year) and did some picking. Turns out one of the hens has been laying in my pole bean patch

 

My pinto beans look good.

 

you got just a few bushels there

 

Picking by hand, I assume.

 

Yes. We are hiring if you need a job.

 

Pass. I'm allergic to manual labor.

 

My mother just bought a second home, it's actually my late grandfather's old home which is totally awesome to me. I plan on using the property as a hunting and fishing cabin since it's right off a lake and I have hunting land nearby. Since it's a vacation home it won't be habitted constantly.

Is there anything low maintenance I could grow out there since I don't have a ton of space on my current property? I'm wondering if I could do something like potatoes or onions. Don't those things take time and can be left for weeks at a time by themselves? The house is in zone 5.

 

Put a fence up around it and you can grow a lot of stuff unattended. Leave it unfenced and pretty much anything you can grow can be eaten by critters.

Root crops grow well with minimal maintenance, so Potatoes/carrots/beets/turnips are an option. Onions and garlic are both good low-maintenance crops.
Stay away from lettuce and spinach, kale, etc because they like regular waterings and they'll bolt in a hurry if you're not harvesting them.
Squash, pumpkins, zucchini and cukes are semi-low maintenance; the need regular watering until they get established, but after that you can pretty much ignore them. BUT, they are pest-susceptible, so if you get an outbreak of squash beetles or borers while you're away you'll come back to a decimated crop. And if you aren't there when cukes or zucchini come ripe then you'll have huge vinegary cukes with ginormous seeds, lol.
Tomatoes are the same way, once they're established you can more or less ignore them for a couple of weeks at a time, but prior to that they need regular watering. And once they start producing you'll need to be there to harvest them or they'll go bad on the vine.

 

water is going to be the biggest issue...if you are able to have a timer installed to run your water that would benefit you if not depending on where you are at its going to be hard to grow anything because garden plants need consistent and sufficient watering.

 

I have someone that might be willing to do some watering for me if it's really needed in the summer. But during those hot months I'm probably going to be out there constantly.

I won't leave water running on a timer, I'm too paranoid.

 

depends how long you would be leaving. The new timers work great and if you put the lithium energizer batteries in it they last a long time.

 

Been wondering where this thread is.. lol
Growing a veggie garden in Canada can be challenging and short.
Best year yet tho, tomatoes are nearly 7' tall!
All organic and heirloom too.

 

Looks fantastic. Beautiful backyard!

 

Very nice!!!

 

Gotta love the shorter growing season that comes with living in the North. Depending on what part of Alberta you're in your season is even shorter than mine!

 

Yeah, but you have to keep it refrigerated. 99% of my canned goods live on a shelf in the basement (the exception is lard; that gets put in mason jars and stuffed in the freezer) so that they don't take up valuable freezer space, and they have to be pressure canned or water bath canned (depending on the acid/sugar content) for that to be safe.

I do the vinegar/fridge method on some cukes during the summer for fresh 'fridge pickles' but not for anything I'm planning on storing.