Gardening Thread- Show me your gardens!

pinch the top and make them branch out more

 

I just found this thread...everyone has some real fine looking gardens & bountiful harvests. I used to have a garden for years and had mixed results...but with Texas heat..everything goes to crap by July. I tried a little fall/winter gardening with lettuce and had pretty good results.
But I have just settled on my trees since they have gotten good size and consistently produce nice yields.

These are Satsuma Oranges.


Meyer Lemons(these are actually 3 separate trees that grew out of one original tree):


Quite a few grow to grapefruit size...they are sweet enough to eat like an orange. They are all super juicey.


These are Keifer Pear - they are very ugly and look like potatoes but super sweet and make perfect quick-canned pears with sugar water and cinnamon.




I have a few blackberry vines and they produce a few berries, but nothing worthy of a photo yet. I also have some Choctaw Pecan trees....but they need about another 10 years

 

^^^ Nice fruit trees, they are loaded....

 

Thos are awesome primo. I know about the heat. I'm up in hill country.

 

A coon or a fox got a cantaloupe night before so I set a box trap and harvested this 28lb black diamond. Theres no way they were going to get it.

 

A while back, some of you fellas posted some real nice pics of your rain capture and storage systems.
Unfortunately down here in South Texas, we get very little rain to make system like that worth its while...but we do run our central unit air conditioners non-stop and that produces a surprising amount of "free" pure water from the condensation drain.
A while back I heard on the local radio that a central a/c unit in Texas will make 10 gallons of water a day! I found that hard to believe until I started capturing mine...mine makes 8-10 gallons every 24 hours depending on the humidity. Unfortunately down here, most of the drains for the A/C condensation is mounted very low to the ground in the foundation, although some newer homes with units in the attic have them mounted higher, so that make using a gravity storage tank difficult.

Anyway, I just put this 12 gallon tote I got at big lots...half buried in the ground and I just manually draw water from from it with milk jugs. I used this to water my fruit trees every day in the hottest months of the year Putting a gallon or 2 on every tree keep the leaves from wilting and keeps that fruit going till it cools down. It usually overflows, so there are never any issues with mosquitos..and I see plenty of wild critters drinking from it. This water source helps me out a lot, since we have strict watering restrictions and our rates get surcharged if we go over certain usage.

My ultimate goal is to bury a smaller IBC containter, but I need to figure out an efficient system to get the water from a low storage container to a higher storage tank with a hose that works off gravity. This works for me now, but a lot of the water goes to waste, because I have no long term storage

I was thinking either working up a small aquarium pump that works off a float switch or even a custom made Archimedes' Screw that works off a solar panel.

Anybody got any ideas? Anybody else harvest water this way. I imagine those of you in the dryer states.....this probably doesn't work.

 

Good idea there primo. I'd go with a panel and a dc pump. Look in rv area at walmart.
My ac drains in septic. I could only have a reservoir pump and pipe it overhead to an outside barrel. Due to ac unit location.

 

Lol...
I've pinched most of the plants twice already this year. For some reason they've got it into their little plant brains to grow up rather than out this time around.
Shrug. I'll have to use the stepladder to harvest them, at this rate!

Damn! Those are some stellar-looking citrus trees! Puts my dinky little "Lemon tree in a bucket" to shame, haha!

Wow. That is an impressive-looking melon. 28lbs?!

I'd suggest something like this:

PonicsPumps PP12005: 120 GPH Submersible Pump with 5' Cord - 6W. for Fountains, Statuary, Aquariums & More. Comes with 1 Year Limited Warranty.

http://www.amazon.com/PP12005-Submersible-Hydroponics-Fountain-Statuary/dp/B006M6MSL0/ref=sr_1_1?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1405342138&sr=1-1&keywords=fish+tank+pump

I'd say go solar, but most of cheap solar pumps are going to try and run whenever the sun's out, whether there's water in the bucket or not (obviously not great for the pump)

You'll have to take into account how much lift you've got, though (height between the pump and where you're discharging to). This pump's only rated for 3 feet of lift, so anything more than that and you'd want a more powerful pump.

 

Speaking of pinching... my supposed compact tomato plants have grown to 6+ feet tall and show no signs of slowing down. I want to prune them like you would a bush but I was under the impression that tomatos only bare fruit on new growth, is that true?

Wow, never heard or thought of this... I'm now curious how much water I can collect as I have 2 AC units. I have a pump (w/float actuator) in my basement for the main floor air handler that pumps the condensation up out of the basement to outside. Not sure that it's weather proof but it does a great job and would work perfect for your application.

 

It's a tomato. Assuming you planted it this spring, the entire plant is new growth.
Pruning the top will discourage vertical growth and promote "filling out" of the plant. While you're at it you should prune off any yellowed leaves and any suckers (the little mini-branch that grows out of the crotch of the main stem and a branch) to encourage fruit growth.
Make sure you prune when it's dry out, though. Pruning when the leaves on the plant are wet encourages disease.

 

Berry house I built for a client about 10 years ago

 

Thats cool.

 

Cut up 2 from garden. Got the rind chopped a pealed and soaking overnight.
Going to make some jam and rind candy tomorrow.
Both canned.

 

I'm assuming bird netting over the trellis?

How do you do Watermelon Jam? Just boil it until it falls apart and add some sugar & pectin, or do you blend it first or something? Never had Watermelon jam before, so you've piqued my curiosity...


Ate our first beets fresh from the garden this weekend. I also froze up 15lbs of snap peas and just under 10lbs of green beans on Sunday. Friday-Sunday pickings. The peas are starting to slow down a little, but the beans seem like they’re still going strong. Should have enough by this coming weekend for a batch of dilly beans, if I don’t eat everything I pick
We've been doing fresh veggies on the grill so often lately that I'm finding it difficult to save enough to store, haha!

 

I just did a search of watermelon preserves. I smashed them up and picked out seeds. Boiled up and followed recipe. I added too much pectin and have glue now

 

It's 1/2"x1/2" galvanized hardware cloth , which is basically a 3' wide roll of wire in 1/2" x 1/2" square grids , it's on all the walls and the roof , birds can't get in , but the bees can

 

At least it's tasty glue...

Gotcha. I used hardware cloth for the run for the henhouse. Stronger than chicken wire, and the holes are too small for weasels to fit through.

 

Pretty cool. What are it's dimensions?

 

22'x22' , 7' headroom at the door end about 10' at the far end