Gardening

Mary Stetler said:
If I buy them for next year it will be cold and wet next year.
; )
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Yeah, that is usually the way it goes. Here I try to balance things. I grow bush beans and I plant beans that doo better in cool soil but don't yield quite as well, and I plant other seeds that will do well should the summer be warmer. I do the same with cauliflower and broccoli, although this is easiest place to grow good cauliflower of any place I have ever lived. I just figured some people could buy some hot weather seeds, and plant a few plants in case you had another hot summer. From what I read, Phoenix is the most heat-tolerant variety of tomato and will set and hold fruit to 100 F. or even slightly above. I am only going on what I have read, since heat is not a problem we deal with here. I have gardened in very hot places, though, and it gets me when people claim they can't grow anything in the summer. Watermelons grow even if nothing else does in the heat, and we had a fantastic crop of watermelons in Georgia until a gopher tortoise took a bite out of each melon, thus ruining the entire crop.

We are successfully growing watermelons here for the first time this year. We have grown cantaloupes and other melons, but never watermelon; it just doesn't get warm enough here even in the greenhouses. I discovered a variety named Juicebox that is a small watermelon reportedly slightly larger than a softball, and we have a number of them set. We are using the old Covid masks as slings to hold the melon as we are growing them on a trellis.
 
I appreciate your info, @Don Alaska . I experiment a lot but tomatoes we need. It is one of the main food groups. This is the first year I have EVER had a problem with beans. Rabbits and smaller critters. I will keep on tryin'.
 
Mary Stetler said:
I appreciate your info, @Don Alaska . I experiment a lot but tomatoes we need. It is one of the main food groups. This is the first year I have EVER had a problem with beans. Rabbits and smaller critters. I will keep on tryin'.
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Rabbits and beans. I put a small 2-foot high fence around the beans, but in the larger gardens, I zip-tied 2-foot chicken wire to the main fences to keep the rabbits out.
 
Our peas were just ready to pick and the deer helped themselves to them.

I had that problem a few years ago and somebody told me to have my hubby go around the rows and pee every few feet. The deer smell the man scent and stay away. It works.

My son has been putting some old worn-out boots in the pea rows and peeing in them, but he got busy a week or so age and forgot. At least the deer left us enough for us to eat.
 
My sons planted late corn around July 1. My Y (youngest) son has raised beds and plants veggies all summer. As soon as one is finished, he plants another. My O (oldest) son saw that that worked so he planted late corn this year. I never knew that you could plant corn after April or so. The seeds won't set when the weather is hot. But apparently, they will if you keep it watered. So, I have been freezing corn for the last two days. It is not as big as early corn, but you can eat two ears instead of one. ☺️

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Shirley Martin said:
My sons planted late corn around July 1. My Y (youngest) son has raised beds and plants veggies all summer. As soon as one is finished, he plants another. My O (oldest) son saw that that worked so he planted late corn this year. I never knew that you could plant corn after April or so. The seeds won't set when the weather is hot. But apparently, they will if you keep it watered. So, I have been freezing corn for the last two days. It is not as big as early corn, but you can eat two ears instead of one. ☺️

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We always planted a second crop of sweet corn too. I froze corn all summer long; AKA freezer corn. 🌽 It sure tasted pretty good in the middle of winter.:)
 
We harvested our first cantaloupe in years a couple days ago. We have grown those before, but it is always a struggle. We harvested our first ever watermelon grown in Alaska yesterday. It was a small Juicebox watermelon, but a delight to the taste nonetheless. We also have corn forming ears, but whether they will mature or not we do not know. We have grown short0season corn quite a few times in the past, and, as I have posted before, when we had goats, a corn crop failure was not a big deal as it was fodder for the goats that they loved. Now, however, a failed crop would be compost unless the immature corn on the ears could be eaten by our few chickens.

We are eating fresh cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage salads every day and kohlrabi as a snack with dill dip. Tomatoes are also ripening now to serve with fresh cucumbers. Wife canned salmon and green beans yesterday as well. The storage cabbage is also heading now and the peppers of all kinds are ripening.
 
Don Alaska said:
We harvested our first cantaloupe in years a couple days ago. We have grown those before, but it is always a struggle. We harvested our first ever watermelon grown in Alaska yesterday. It was a small Juicebox watermelon, but a delight to the taste nonetheless. We also have corn forming ears, but whether they will mature or not we do not know. We have grown short0season corn quite a few times in the past, and, as I have posted before, when we had goats, a corn crop failure was not a big deal as it was fodder for the goats that they loved. Now, however, a failed crop would be compost unless the immature corn on the ears could be eaten by our few chickens.

We are eating fresh cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage salads every day and kohlrabi as a snack with dill dip. Tomatoes are also ripening now to serve with fresh cucumbers. Wife canned salmon and green beans yesterday as well. The storage cabbage is also heading now and the peppers of all kinds are ripening.
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We use to grow kohlrabi. I haven't had any in a long time. I like it raw, not cooked though.😬
 
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