Gardening Thread- Show me your gardens!

I am building more blackberry trellises this year. Got runners off the current plants potted and waiting for a new home. I did not prune my primacane to the ground last year, and it went bonkers. Leaving several branches unpinched, so I could bend and staple them to the ground, to get them rooted.

Blueberries and blackberries do really good here, and less work than fruit trees. Need to get 4 more blueberries into the ground this weekend. Need to start slips of beni-imos, will be planting them in large garden tubs.

Radishes are going crazy. Wife used last year's seeds, we were not sure how many would germinate. Looks like they all did. Need to thin them out and eat the little ones.

Building a new fence enclosing more of the back yard; figs, apples and pears will now be behind the fence, safer from the deer.

 

The Legacy Bush they started turning purple, the Duke they are still green, nothing yet on the Toro.

 

Are you going with different types of Blueberry or all the same?

 

I havent got into the blueberries yet. I may try if i dont get raspberries going. Theyve been having a tough time

 

If you decide to try them it's best to plan ahead and acidity the soil in that area. Made that mistake and had no production, moved them this year to a prepped area and they are doing much better.

 

We have several types. Most prevalent are Dukes (8, IIRC), but we have Lemonade, Jersey, Titan, Brightwell, Powder Blue, 4x Legacy. New 4 plants are Legacy also, since they bloom later than Dukes here. We have about 20 blueberry plants.

I have a quart container on the counter for the used coffee grinds, fill it up in a week, then dump it on the blackberries and blueberries, rotating where every week.

 

We have a graden, not much to look at yet this year. The big project being worked on is rehabbing our orchard area. When we bought the place it looked like it hadn't been cared for in at least 10 years. And its on 15-30 percent slopes. So started with the brush clearing and winter pruning. Doing a pretty hard prune to get things back under control amd down to size. Now I 'just' need to cut a trail and create a landing pad to get the chipper in to take care of all the cut brush and trees before the Himalayan blackberry takes over the piles.

We have a couple Bartlett looking pears that are pretty old, 5 unknown apples of various types that are maybe 40 years old, a couple green/yellow plums, and 30 or so Italian prunes of various ages - these things grow like weeds! Put in a Rainier cherry, Montmorency cherry, and a fruit cocktail Frankenstein this year elsewhere.

 

Orchard looks like dwarf trees? Nice, much easier to spray. I have tried cherries in GA for 10+ years. Can't get them going, just too hot. And vendor had sent me trees that were infected with the small cherry virus, that did not help.

 

Dwarf trees no, I wish! The orchard area I'm cleaning up are all full size. You can't tell from the pic but the land drops about 10 feet in about 5 feet of distance from where I took pic on my driveway to where most of the trees are. Apples and pear were topped down to about 20 feet from 30 plus. Plums and prunes topped down to 10-15 feet.

New cherries are semi-dwarf. Need enough height to on the trees to keep the deer army from destroying them when full grown. Right now they have fence circles for protection.

 

I dont know if ill ever get apples. This is 3rd year in ground.. Always something. Last year timing was off then the blossoms froze. This year only 2 flowered and i dont think they got pollinated. The crab apple has a few little ones.

 

Yeah, for all the apples at the grocery store its amazing any end up there at all considering all the stuff that seems to go wrong in the home orchard. Too wet of a spring, not enough cold hours, pests, storms, not enough water. Each year is fingers crossed.

 

And when I do get apples, worms and bugs get more than I do. We have big problems with firelight here as well. I am trying fireblight resistant pears and apples on the back of the property., no blooms yet.
It seems like blueberries, figs and blackberries are more certain crops for us. They will be my retirement side hustle.

 

I've never had luck with apple trees no matter where I plant them or how I care for them. The fire blight, bugs and worms always get to them first. It's hard to find good ones in the stores too. Cripps Pink are my favorite.

 

I put Liberty and Enterprise apples and Sunrise and Starkling Delicious pears in the ground 3 years ago. All supposed to be disease resistant. We'll see.

 

The neighbor behind me has a bee box so my berries definitely get pollinated, guessing that is probably fantastic honey.

 

Depending on how November works out……I may be expanding the garden.

 

Don't think I mentioned this in earlier post. Planted okra with everything else on 4/18/24. Had a rain that weekend then the temps dipped to 40-50s for several days. Then hit 80s a couple days and turned off dry. I watered set out plants daily and watered the rows twice trying to help the seed get started. I feared seed would rot in the ground as a result. Already reported everything pretty much coming up now except okra. My dentist had given me some long horn seed 3 years ago. Planted it one season and it did pretty well. Planted Clemson spineless last year and it did well but if it got longer than about 4" it was tough and fibrous. So I still had some of the long horn seed and planted a full 125' row with it, 1/4" deep like normal. Not a dang bit had sprouted as of 5/7/24. Went to a couple feed and seeds looking for more of the long horn seed but no one carried it, just the Clemson spineless. Talked to Mr. Stewart at the feed and seed here locally, he is 94 and a wealth of knowledge. Mr. Stewart told me Monday to give it a few more days since it had been so dry. So, when I replanted skips in beans and corn Wednesday evening I made my mind up to do the whole okra row in the Clemson spineless seed the next evening and get on with it. Went out there last evening with seed and low and behold, the long horn seeds had begun to sprout. Had rain last night and again today and everything is roaring out there now. So the moral of all that story is:
You can't beat rain.
Listen to the 94 year old farmer who runs the feed and seed.

Truth!

 

I grow apples in my yard here in upstate NY. I’ve been bagging them with great success. Slip the bags on when fruits are pea to marble sized. Used them on my asian pears too. Works awesome to keep critters out.

Using the

$16 Craft And Party, 108pcs 6x9"es Premium Organza Bags for Party Wedding Gift Favor Bags with drawstrings. (White)

gift organza mesh bags from amazon with the draw strings.

Now about the weather, ugh..last year a late frost killed every single fruit tree blossom with the exception of one Liberty apple, lol.

 

Legacy and Duke blueberries, oddly the Legacy formed before the Duke which is backwards. Unfortunately the wind was so bad this year that it took 90 percent of the buds and flowers off the Legacy.

 

Live in apartments but am MacGyvering a garden. Have starters for my shelf going and am currently working on drunk zip tying hanging flower pots.



And my veggies starters

Gotta add my sweet peppers but all my produce goes in that shelf. The hanging pots are gonna have regular mixed flowers in the middle and local wildflowers in the outer two