EastKnox Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 Finally got some plants in the ground yesterday...with a little help from my youngest. 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John1122 Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 10 hours ago, EastKnox said: Finally got some plants in the ground yesterday...with a little help from my youngest. She will remember days like this when she's with her future little ones. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastKnox Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 How are the forum gardens fairing? Here's a pic of my corn. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knoxtron Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Had a couple great looking cucumbers ready to go (got my garden started way to late this year). Woke up this morning to multiple bunnies merrily chomping away, somehow they broke/chewed thru the fencing Now I just get to tell tales of how amazing they would have been Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastKnox Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 17 minutes ago, Knoxtron said: Had a couple great looking cucumbers ready to go (got my garden started way to late this year). Woke up this morning to multiple bunnies merrily chomping away, somehow they broke/chewed thru the fencing Now I just get to tell tales of how amazing they would have been I haven't had trouble with pests yet, but I gave an evil eye to the bunny I spotted in the neighbor's yard - we'll see if he got the memo. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 1 hour ago, EastKnox said: How are the forum gardens fairing? Here's a pic of my corn. Great share. Your Hickory Cane corn is massive. As for how my garden is doing? Pretty much switched over to all summer stuff. This was a big year for potatoes and garlic. Summer stuff is about 2-3 weeks behind due to the late start, but it is going to hit in a wave pretty soon. Been a banner pepper year. I will try to get some pics uploaded later. My garden looks night and day to what it was two months ago. It has gone nuts. Copper spray has kept much of the disease away on my tomatoes - so far. Should be a really good garden year. Need more rain as this heat really sucks the moisture right out of the ground. No amount of humidity can slow moisture loss in 90+ degree heat. The soil just gets baked. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stovepipe Posted July 8, 2020 Author Share Posted July 8, 2020 My heirloom maters started surging this week. Some of the hemp is 6 feet high. Overall things are thriving over here although we're getting quite dry and the sprinkler is getting some use. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrgjeff Posted July 10, 2020 Share Posted July 10, 2020 Nice picture! Is she your daughter? Precious! It's funny I never know where in life forum members are. I've a daughter who loves the outdoors. She's a bit older, is every bit the explorer too! On 7/7/2020 at 10:41 AM, EastKnox said: How are the forum gardens fairing? Here's a pic of my corn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastKnox Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 On 7/10/2020 at 6:01 PM, nrgjeff said: Nice picture! Is she your daughter? Precious! It's funny I never know where in life forum members are. I've a daughter who loves the outdoors. She's a bit older, is every bit the explorer too! Yep, I have two daughters - they're about to turn 4 and 2. I married late and had kids later, so raising these young 'ens in my early 40s has been a good challenge. But I hope I can guide them to appreciate weather and gardening as they get older. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 @Stovepipe, man, planted some sorghum this year. Crushing it today, and going to boil it down into molasses - I hope! I bought a hand mile. It is kicking my butt. LOL. Doing a nice job of getting that green juice out of the cane, but whew....much respect to our ancestors who figure out a horse or mule was a better source of energy. About 30 minutes into this, I was wondering if I could convert the hand mill over, and just drive my mower around it in circles!!!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stovepipe Posted October 9, 2020 Author Share Posted October 9, 2020 10 hours ago, Carvers Gap said: @Stovepipe, man, planted some sorghum this year. Crushing it today, and going to boil it down into molasses - I hope! I bought a hand mile. It is kicking my butt. LOL. Doing a nice job of getting that green juice out of the cane, but whew....much respect to our ancestors who figure out a horse or mule was a better source of energy. About 30 minutes into this, I was wondering if I could convert the hand mill over, and just drive my mower around it in circles!!!! That's great man! It's nice to try different experiments every year. I'm with you, I've gained much respect for ancestors and how they lived with this gardening journey. I've had my hands full with my first outdoor hemp harvest the past few weeks. It has been laborious but satisfying and I've learned a lot. I still have several more plants to cut down and process, some of which I'm going to save until after first frost to see how that affects flower potency. Between harvesting, drying, trimming, and curing it's been some work but I believe I'll have some nice organic medicine to peddle soon. Pro tip: Composted chicken poop makes for great cannabis fertilizer! Some plants reached 8 feet high before leaning over from the weight of dense flowers. I'll get some pictures up soon. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastKnox Posted April 7, 2021 Share Posted April 7, 2021 Awaken all ye garden enthusiasts. What's happening in the local gardens this year? I'm waiting till the 15th to make a decision on planting warm season stuff. I'll feel safer at that point. I believe we had a cold shot in early May last year. David 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 16 hours ago, EastKnox said: Awaken all ye garden enthusiasts. What's happening in the local gardens this year? I'm waiting till the 15th to make a decision on planting warm season stuff. I'll feel safer at that point. I believe we had a cold shot in early May last year. David Monitoring a potential cold shot which could mature into another frost/freeze around the 19th. Appears to be a western ridge/eastern trough on both ensembles and operationals setting up shop. Can't tell if this is a long duration event or not. Heat is building in the Southwest at the same time which I would think would have a chance at coming eastward at some point. Would not be surprised a cool 10-14 time frame from April 14th-24th(maybe longer....just don't know). So holding off in NE TN right now until probably the Kentucky Derby weekend. All of the above info could change as modeling is especially fickle during shoulder season. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 16 hours ago, EastKnox said: Awaken all ye garden enthusiasts. What's happening in the local gardens this year? I'm waiting till the 15th to make a decision on planting warm season stuff. I'll feel safer at that point. I believe we had a cold shot in early May last year. David Tomatoes, basil, dill, and peppers....started those indoors a few weeks ago though! Have a smaller high tunnel which I use outside as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John1122 Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 I'm going to do some container gardening this year and plant more corn and sunflowers in my plowed areas. I'll probably get things in around May 10th. I never try before then. To many first week of May freezes hit my area. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John1122 Posted May 10, 2021 Share Posted May 10, 2021 Planted corn 8 days ago, still not up yet. The ground just isn't warming very fast with 60s/low 40s almost every day. Planted tomatoes and sunflowers today. Got the last in the ground about 5 minutes before the storm hit around 6pm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastKnox Posted May 18, 2021 Share Posted May 18, 2021 On 5/10/2021 at 1:09 AM, John1122 said: Planted corn 8 days ago, still not up yet. The ground just isn't warming very fast with 60s/low 40s almost every day. Planted tomatoes and sunflowers today. Got the last in the ground about 5 minutes before the storm hit around 6pm. I put mine in the ground Sunday evening. I aim for a 3-4 day stretch where it doesn't get below 50 at night. I don't think I'll have that problem this week. I planted cucumber seeds late last week and they have sprouted as of yesterday. Tomato and pepper transplants are going in the next few days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted May 19, 2021 Share Posted May 19, 2021 The peppers in my garden are hating these cold nights. Manage to coax up some beans despite the cold rains a few weeks ago. Dry summers actually work for my garden provided there is no sudden spike in humidity which summons all kinds of plant disease. I haven't planted corn yet. Will probably swap out some cool wx stuff next week and plant some sweet corn. Sweet potatoes are also due to be planted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted July 22, 2021 Share Posted July 22, 2021 We planted a fig tree this year. Found a great website which is documenting backyard gardens by Italian immigrants. I know we have some NE folks browse this thread from time to time. Would enjoy hearing your stories. Cool thing is they actually have been growing figs and lemons in areas of New York - thinking Long Island. The way they preserve their trees through cold NE winters is nothing short of genius. I have two neighbors who grow figs. One set of neighbors are expert gardeners. The other neighbor, a fine gardener in her own right, has a fig tree which was grown from a cutting by a coal miner in SW VA who was Italian. Growers in NE TN need to simply get a fig tree, and plant it on a south or southwest facing side of your residence, and then do some reading on taking care of it during winter. They are by no means a rarity, but they are also not found in abundance at this latitude. If you see a fig tree in NE TN or SW VA, those folks have either worked carefully to preserve their tree through winter, OR they chose a variety which overwinters well here. We are rookies in the fig tree hobby, but it is very rewarding. So far, deer will not touch the tree. I have heard that deer don't like the sap of established plants. Fresh figs taste incredible. https://www.theitaliangardenproject.com That fig tree, in its first year, decided to produce figs. Pretty cool. Additionally, we have been blessed with probably our best tomato crop ever. We are going to process those into spaghetti/marinara sauce. Despite limited rainfall in TRI, the garden has gone crazy. We installed an irrigation system this year, and it has been worth its weight in gold. The lack of consistent rainfall has actually mitigated disease. BTW, the ribbed tomatoes below are Marsalato Marmande which is a French variety. They are striking in appearance both on the vine and on the plate. Seeds are pricey, but the plants have been very disease resistant with plentiful production. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted July 22, 2021 Share Posted July 22, 2021 On 5/19/2021 at 1:53 PM, Carvers Gap said: The peppers in my garden are hating these cold nights. Manage to coax up some beans despite the cold rains a few weeks ago. Dry summers actually work for my garden provided there is no sudden spike in humidity which summons all kinds of plant disease. I haven't planted corn yet. Will probably swap out some cool wx stuff next week and plant some sweet corn. Sweet potatoes are also due to be planted. Update on peppers. With the increase in frequency of warm weather and warm nights, we have been blessed with an abundance of both giant Marconi sweet peppers and a poblano peppers(planted those in the hopes of making chile rellenos). The Marconi plant produced so many peppers that if fell over(and pulled the stake out of the ground). We also have had a better crop of cucumbers this year. Went with Spacemasters and Beit Alpha(an Israeli variety). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 Time to get this thread started...and yes, spring is FINALLY on modeling after the 20th. Onions are in the ground. We have about 170 planted - combo of two varieties of yellow(Vidalia variety) and one batch of red. We use a hoop house and cold frames. We used all of our onions from last year's garden. We have learned to dry and store them. Garlic from December is looking good. It was planted late due to a late delivery(labor shortage on the supplier end of things). Lettuce seedlings are up along with broccoli, chard, and cauliflower. Interestingly, I got a bad batch of lettuce seeds this year - I think or it was just user error! The were packaged for 2020 and then relabelled for 2022. Lettuce seeds don't keep as long which explains the 2% germination rate which I got first go around. Sadly, the bad seed was from a reputable supplier. I reordered from another supplier, and had about 98% germination rates by day 2 or 3. With grocery prices sky high, I might actually be able to compete with store prices this year. Though I doubt it, American farmers grow food in plentiful amounts and cheaply! It is truly amazing to walk into a grocery store. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastKnox Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 Most of my sweet corn got blown over by the storm last night. Luckily, I was planning on harvesting today anyways, but I'm gonna have to clean the stalks - I've presold them to people in my neighborhood. Turns out that corn stalks for decorations are more valuable than the corn itself. My hickory cane corn survived with only a few stalks blown over. They just started silking so hopefully I'll be wind free for a few more weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John1122 Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 2 hours ago, EastKnox said: Most of my sweet corn got blown over by the storm last night. Luckily, I was planning on harvesting today anyways, but I'm gonna have to clean the stalks - I've presold them to people in my neighborhood. Turns out that corn stalks for decorations are more valuable than the corn itself. My hickory cane corn survived with only a few stalks blown over. They just started silking so hopefully I'll be wind free for a few more weeks. Corn will usually stand back up on it's own, or in extreme cases you can stand it back up and it will usually be fine and keep growing/stay alive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now