Quarantine Vegetable Gardens

Ok that makes me feel better, I thought I was watering too much. It’s been in the 90s here for awhile and I watering at least once a day, sometimes twice because the soil gets so dry.

 

Um, yeah, this is my first real garden. So, I really don't know what the heck I am doing...

 

I'm in Idaho and it's hot here too. To supplement my regular garden I did a lot of grow bags and large pots too and I used raised bed soil for the bags and it seems to hold water a little better than potting soil does. I was watering every other day but this upper 90's weather has me watering every day now. If you stick a finger in and it's dry as far down as your finger goes you have to water. Kind of a pain but worth it in the end I guess.

 

Same here! I’m truly winging it and learning from my rookie mistakes.

I stick my finger in the soil every evening and typically it’s pretty dry. I mulched half my garden and it seems to be helping a bit.

We have a couple of days of 100’s in our forecast so I’ll get out and throw up my shade on those days.

 

I can never seem to get the watering perfect either.

Watering tips for your garden to survive the hot weather

 

Me too...it seems like if I water my guta plants too much, then the blossoms shrivel up.
I'm watering good, every 2-3 days. Not over 100* this week.

 

I've been working my butt off since this weekend and have canned well over a 100 jars of stuff. It's keeping me occupied. Today is a beef chili. Yesterday was pulled pork bbq, pork and black beans and the day before white bean chicken chili. Lots of jams and pickles and salsas this past weekend. We bought a bushel of peaches and needed to put things up right away. I also got jars of okra and tomatoes up from our garden. I have more green beans from the garden to put up now too.

And I'm starting more greens for this fall and winter. I hope I finally time things right. I always end up starting things later than I should because it feels so wrong starting cool weather veg in the heat. But I never factor in everything needing more days to maturity in the fall.

Anyone else just using this in large part as a distraction? It's one of the few things I can control right now with things as crazy as they are. I'm worried about food supply chain this fall too. Apparently China is storing grains in a major way. They recently purchased their largest purchase of corn from the US ever and the 4th largest we've ever sold.

Phase one trade deal, food security behind China’s record corn purchase

 

got our first bounty!
one huge zucchini and one regular size zucchini which are both bigger than my store-bought ones
now I gotta figure out how to use them lol

 

and I was tagged in this five minutes after I posted my zucchini picture to FB lol

 

BWAHAHA!

 

I was asked about sharing about winter gardening in this thread. This is my favorite book about it. It's a really easy to understand book and the author gardens in Canada. I live in the SE with a very different climate but adapt her ideas to where I live and just have to do less to have a great winter garden.
https://www.amazon.com/Year-Round-V...1595538564&sprefix=year+round+,aps,172&sr=8-2

This blog below, Mother of a Hubbard, though now inactive is awesome with loads of winter gardening advice.

The New Year’s Garden and Winter Gardening Tips

The Winter Garden: 250 Varieties of Cold Hardy Plants, Growing Strong!

I grow foods we like, choose varieties shown to do better in winter and we usually have several thousand square feet of green veg outside all winter with little to no effort. Plus root crops like carrots, radish and turnips. Gardening in winter is so easy once your garden is set. No weeding and the plants just sit there waiting for you to harvest them.

This post below is specifically regarding determining when you need to plant for a fall/winter garden. You need to allow a longer period of growth before the cold really hits due to shorter day length. I'm happy to answer any questions based on my experience. I'm no expert by any means but I plod along each year getting a little bit better at this each time. And I also just really love gardening and love to see others take up gardening more.

"What’s the most important factor that limits growth of vegetables in winter? You’d be right if you said colder temperatures, but shorter winter days are a close second. Plant growth slows down dramatically in winter, even when temperatures are mild, because most plants require at least 10 hours of daylight for active growth. Winter gardening guru, Eliot Coleman (see below), describes this time period as the “Persephone Days,” after the vegetation goddess whose annual return to Hades in winter caused the earth to become barren. But even though plant growth may slow dramatically in winter, your garden doesn’t have to be empty."

Calculating Your Garden’s Persephone Days

 

Interesting. I live in Northern Montana, do plants really live when it is 20 below zero outside?

The carrots and radishes didn't turn out so good. Too small, woody. That is okay.

 

thanks for posting! I'm gonna peruse those links

 

I don't even want to think about winter gardening. Too much shade in our yard in the fall and not so fun, outside in rain and cold... Also will be so busy with the kids home, making sure all remote learning gets done. I always think I should winter garden but it never happens. Enough of a chore to fertilize and cover all the beds and get things ready for spring again. Sigh.

 

I love roasted fennel I hope there is a way to grow it !

 

My cousin in southeast Maine gardens to some extent all the way through the winter. She has raised beds with PVC hoops and covers the beds in plastic.

 

This is my second year gardening and I have made way more mistakes this year than I did last year. My first batch of courgettes died and it’s my fault, because I didn’t take into account how much space they would need. Ditto the peas. The strawberries are delicious but there are so few of them, because I had no idea lack of space affects yield. Plus, I have zillions of new runners and no idea what to do with them. I need to google, I suppose.
Bah. On a positive note, the cucumbers are doing well, and I have so many tomatoes - all green at the moment, but I seem to recall they didn’t ripen until late August/into September last year.
My garden is a sun trap, so I’m watering every day - and even if my crops fail now and then, the garden has become my happy place - one that’s keeping me calm and focussed (on something other than the unrelentingly grim wider world).

 

Gardening for me is always trial and error. I get lots of compliments on my gardens and landscaping but have more than my share of failures also. Doesn't bother me much to have to dig up a sad planting and replace with newer or different variety. Way in the past, I was an avid gardener with full in ground garden, canning and freezing lots of veggies. In recent years, I've only sneaked in a few tomato and pepper plants among the shrubs and flowers. This year, I went full speed ahead with containers, which have been hit and miss. I started lots of seeds, zucchini and squash seedlings were beautiful and so many I shared them with friends. Now my friends are harvesting from their plants I gave them and none of my plants I kept are producing. Have to admit, that stings just a little. I am getting cucumbers. Have a ton of tomatoes on the plants. I have small peppers on the plants. Carrots are lovely foliage, not certain how well they've developed. All my herb plants are thriving and helping to keep evening bugs at bay and oh, how wonderful a smell when I sit in my back porch garden late in the evenings. My baby spinach plants I raised from seeds started beautifully but the sun soon took their toll. I did have romaine and leaf lettuce for about 2 1/2 months this spring.
However, the true success of this year's garden for me is same as for many of you - it's my happy place and has served me well.

 

Good Morning all, I had to take an internet break, I but wanted to pop back in to this thread to say my garden is keeping my so busy these days and I'm loving it! I'm picking about 5 to 10 tomatoes and 5 or 6 pickling size cucumbers per day. And my tomatoes are just getting started producing-- there are at least 200 green tomatoes on the plants. We've made every combination of cucumber and tomato salad imaginable the last couple weeks. We are almost sick of it, but weather in the 90's keeps us thankful for an abundance of cool salads to eat. My favorite is to make a Greek-style salad with tomatoes, cucumber, onion, feta cheese, black olives and a marinade with 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon olive oil, a couple sprigs of chopped fresh oregano, and salt and pepper to taste. This marinated salad keeps in the fridge for up to 4 days (although it's best if consumed the first or 2nd day).

I made my first couple jars of fridge pickles last week and we are going to try them this weekend before I make more. Unfortunately the weather got too hot for my dill plants, so I had to use dried instead of fresh dill. I've got 20 cucumbers on my dining room table right now that will go into making a 2nd batch of pickles if these are good. I'm also attempted to sprout some more fresh dill inside under a grow light and hoping it grows before I need to make another batch of pickles. I refuse to go to the store for ingredients I can grow myself right now, lol.

I'm getting around 3 or 4 jalapenos per week off of only 2 jalapeno plants and the plants are loaded with tiny jalapenos that will be ready soon. Many tiny sweet peppers are growing too. I've made fresh salsa twice now and it's so amazing. The best method I have found is to quarter and roast the tomatoes, onions and peppers on a baking sheet in the oven so the skins slip right off. Then when the veggies cool I pulse them in my food processor with a little lemon or lime juice, fresh cilantro OR 1 teaspoon of cumin powder (depending on which I have), 1 teaspoon of minced garlic and salt and pepper to taste. We make our own corn chips from corn tortillas baked in the oven with a little oil brushed on them and sometimes that is all we have for dinner, homemade chips and fresh salsa from the garden. We also have been eating tacos on occasion but I'm not buying much meat these days so... We're eating more corn chips and salsa, bean burritos with salsa, eggs cooked in salsa, etc.

My onions only got as big as golf balls this year because I planted late and it got too hot too fast. I have been harvesting them as I need them and it's so nice to have fresh onions from the garden that I don't mind that they are small. Most are the size of shallots or pearl onions so I have been using them whole. I'm planning to start more onions for fall. Same for garlic- I planted it way too late (in the spring) but I will for sure be planting my garlic this November for a harvest next spring/summer.

My zucchini plants gave us about 5 or 6 large zucchinis and then died from vine borers. I pulled the dead plants out this week, put a dusting of diatomaceous earth on the soil to kill any remaining vine borer larvae and then I sowed a second wave of yellow summer squash in their place. I made a couple loaves of zucchini bread, some zucchini stir-fry and a zucchini quiche before the plants died so it wasn't a total loss. I was really looking forward to making some zucchini/squash relish and zucchini latkes though. We will try again and hope the pests don't get to the second round. My second round of cucumbers and a second round of tomato plants are all around a foot tall now and starting to put off flowers. I'm planning to do a lot of canning of sauce, salsa and pickles this year.

Soon I will be planting my fall garden with carrots, radish, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, kale, bok choy, leeks, multiple kinds of lettuce and arugula, and more beans and peas. I succession planted my beans every 2 weeks and my 1st round produced only a couple handfuls before they were done, leaving us really with only enough to snack on and not quite enough for a meal. The 2nd round and third rounds were producing at the same time and that gave me more to work with, which I liked better. So for fall I'm letting the succession planted plants grow out and then planting more peas and beans all at once for a bigger harvest. Beans and peas are so easy to freeze if I have too many. I was hoping to like the succession planting strategy of sowing every couple weeks but it didn't work for me. That's the great thing about gardening-- if you try something new and it doesn't work for you there is always next year/next season to do it differently.

Hope you all are finding as much solace in gardening this year as I am.