Gardeners of AW, unite

[mrsmig]

I don't have an issue with kill traps. At least they're quick.

 

[SWest]

...net off part of the food trees...

Consider tulle fabric...it won't last as long (it's not meant to be nature or UV resistant), but it is more visible as a barrier to birds, etc..

It's still pretty cheap by the yard, and it's actually easier to handle than bird netting (darned stuff tangles itself).

You have to wait until pollinators are done with a plant, but large bees also get stuck in bird netting.

 

[mrsmig]

Bracing for a "record high" day tomorrow in my area. I've got the sprinkler going in the perennial garden, to give it a good soak before the heat hits, and I'll probably put the shade cloths up in a bit. Autumn, please hurry up.

This morning I found a little corner of the garden where I could plant beets, so I sowed a few each of my two varieties. I'll be planting more in the spaces that free up as the determinate tomatoes die back. I've got about a dozen Plum Regals that should be ready to harvest in the next three days or so, and then I think the plants will be done for the season. Before I plant anything in that section, though, I want to put down some compost, lay black plastic over that and let everything solarize for a couple weeks.

I went ahead and planted two containers of turnips, although it may be to late in the season for them to form roots. That's okay; I like turnip greens.

 

[SWest]

Our forecast for tomorrow has been wildly variable...up to 100*F (38*C), now back down to 92*F (33*C).

For certain, it will be dry, so I've watered today, and will again tomorrow. No rain expected for at least another week...

Maypop vines are overloaded with blossoms today...starting to see several species of bee on them, so I'll be letting the women do their work.

The Passiflora Cerulea has some small buds, but overall are not doing well. They may not last the winter, but I'll mound them up with leaves and see.

Chocolate Vines are still single stems, barely a foot long. I'm considering putting them in the ground when they die back, but I don't look forward to the potential regular battle with an invasive growth.

Thinking about starting a patch of native Eastern Prickly Pear next spring in the problematic front yard. The entire Opuntia plant is way-nutritious. Watching a lot of vids about managing glochid hair spines...

 

[mrsmig]

You grow the most interesting things, SWest. Do you have a background in botany?

 

[SWest]

...Do you have a background in botany?

Not really. lol BA in Neurophysiology & Animal Behavior

I'm not getting younger, and I want to experience all the plants I'm interested in. Especially if they are perennial, disease-resistant, bee-feeding (not bunny-feeding) food.

It's a tiny property, but my survey last year indicated that there's a lot of potential for diverse growing. Things are failing (the Cornus Mas and Whortleberry have had all their leaves eaten off...the Medlars took off, but are suddenly looking a bit sickly...the Baby Shipova is struggling with the high humidity...the front yard is a mess-in-progress); things are succeeding (Quince is looking like My tree, which is lucky, I like quince a whole big bunch...cultivated PawPaws are doing well, but they take so long to grow...the Turkish Rocket took its time, but is making itself at home under the backyard Maple shade...Figs seem like they'll make it to next year...if I can avoid the Weed Police, there's all the chicories and violets I can stand); things are so-so (Elderberry, Chokeberry, Honeyberry, English Hawthorn all in holding patterns, maybe they'll creep/leap next year).

When something checks out of the Westie hotel, I switch over to Short-Attention-Span mode, let it go, and try something Else. In the wings: Hardy Citrus, American Mtn Ash, Linden, Dwarf Yaupon, edible Milkweed.... I've given up on adding any more cherry species (Japanese Beetle staple and waaay too many fungal diseases), but the resident ornamental sour cherry is a rock star and does have babies sprouting up from seed all over, so I'll choose some select individuals to carry on at a better height for harvesting. Ditto the Toringo Malus crabapple (which I think is the mother of all those odd Mystery plants...apparently Malus will make those palmate leaves before they start fruiting).

If not now, when?

 

[SWest]

The fig video...

 

[lorna_w]

whew! I just got done digging up my big community garden bed (8 x 8 feet) and burying hardware cloth. I'm going to plant tomorrow and then cover with more hardware cloth, and grow my fall root veg there. One thing you can say about southern AZ is that it's a 12-month veg gardening place. I'm trying out onion seeds to harvest next June, if that works. The hardware cloth is because of the rats. If they tunnel in from below, steel meets them. (I might end up with some crooked carrots because of this, but so be it! If they try to get in up top, good luck with that. I'm going to staple down half of the hardware cloth on top, for the stuff I don't plan to harvest until maybe March-April, in a big batch. The rest of the fencing goes on with rocks to weigh it down, removable, so I can pull two carrots, one beet, one big radish at a time. If they get in that section, well, damn. But the other section I'm building like a maximum security beet prison.

Cost: $45. It should last five years, though, so I'm not harvesting $1 beets when I do!

I found 12 gold potatoes I missed, including one the size of my fist. oops!

I love getting dirty. I think eventually we'll find out that it's super-good for our mental health to roll around in it and sniff up bits of fungi or something like that. I sat in the middle and pushed soil around with bare hands and feet. It makes me so happy. I of course had to turn the garden hose on myself before I was willing to step inside to shower! But I had fun.

Going in tomorrow:

• Detroit Golden beets
• 3 kinds of carrots, all orange
• Chinese white winter radishes
• 2 varieties of onion they swear are bred for the high desert
• lacinato/dinosaur kale
• snap peas

Going in first week of September outside my door, when I pull my last tomatoes and get those pots free:

• black seeded Simpson lettuce
• my favorite, speckled leaf lettuce (the only place I've ever seen it is here, and they don't have it every year, so I save seeds on this one.)
• three kinds of spinach, including a new one to me, Viroflay, which allegedly gets ten-inch leaves, but I'll believe that when I see it

Going in mid-September (which might be too late; we'll find out) when I empty out my bonus bed in the community garden, 4 x 8? Not sure. Possibly all lacinato kale.

Oh yes, and I discovered how to thwart the birds! Tulle bags in white or green, like you'd get for making wedding favors. A friend on Temu got me 300 for $9, so I think I'm set for next year. Because of the little drawstrings, they're easy to put on and take off. I now have too many tomatoes every day, which is how it should go.

And I'm harvesting a big watermelon every two days. Giving away watermelon to anyone who doesn't walk away fast enough.

 

[mrsmig]

Two big jobs dealt with this afternoon, and all I have to say is thank God for my husband, who did most of the grunt work.

First, we emptied the compost bin, which has been percolating since last fall. Gotta say, except for the top three inches which hadn't rotted completely, the compost was beautiful stuff and free of any creepy crawlies, i.e. jumping worms, hurrah, hurrah. We put those top three inches aside, and I spread the rest along one side of my smaller tomato enclosure (where nothing is currently growing), covered it with black plastic and weighed it down with boards and bricks. I'll leave that to solarize for a couple of weeks, then spread it a bit more thinly throughout the enclosure - by that time, the remaining tomato plants in there should be spent and ready to pull up.

We shifted the compost bin down the yard a couple of feet and put those top three inches into the bottom to get things going. Now I can start composting kitchen waste again! (My other compost pile, which is only enclosed by fencing, is strictly for yard waste.)

In the space where the compost bin was, we set up my two 50-gallon stock tank planters. After some discussion, we weeded and leveled out an area just outside my main vegetable garden fence, used some old pavers to create a walkway alongside and between the two planters, then put down a thick layer of mulch on either side of the walkway, to discourage weeds. We put two wooden pallets (curbside freebies!) on top of the mulch, to get the planters a bit higher and off the ground, leveled them, then put the planters on top and filled them with a mix of garden soil and composted manure. Here's what it looks like:

I needed to mix in some perlite to loosen up the soil a bit, but we were losing daylight. John had to mow the lawn and I needed to start dinner, so we put a tarp over everything to keep the chipmunks and squirrels out, and called it done. I'll dig in the perlite later. I'm really pleased with the way the planters turned out - $50 well spent - and am eager to get my broccoli seedlings installed in the next week or so. One planter is going to be dedicated strictly to garlic, which will get planted in early November, or as soon as the seed garlic shipment gets here.

 

[lorna_w]

Nice tank planters! Moving soil around is so satisfying. Especially for those of us who do intellectual work. The soil was over there. Now's it over here! A reward just to see it done, and nothing as amorphous as "I line-edited my novel," which you can hardly point to and impress the neighbors.

I was given some old geraniums a month ago and the person said "I'm killing them! Please save them." She came by yesterday and said "They look so good! What are you doing?" Me: "Er, nothing. Watering three times a week." They're putting up new blooms. I suspect I have them in a shadier spot than she did, is all. Often the solutions are simple. Move them. Quit overwatering. Let them be until dormant season and then maybe trim a little off. Let nature take Her course.

A hornworm ate most of a pepper plant since last time I posted. They are fast eaters!

I made refrigerator, no-sugar sweet relish yesterday with a small squash, a couple of peppers, two kinds of cucumbers, and my sweetener of choice. One of the peppers was an Anaheim, so it'll have the tiniest bit of bite to it as well. Often I put green tomatoes into the mix at the end of the season.

Three quart bags of tomatoes crammed into the freezer now. It's a tiny freezer. That's the limit. So I'm not going to feel bad about pulling up all but four of my tomatoes this weekend. They're pretty blight-y, so it's time.

Garden happily, all.

 

[mrsmig]

Ever since I got the stock tank planters set up, I've been aching to dig in some of the cooler weather crops I've got in the germination station downstairs. The Waltham broccoli plants in particular are so tall that I've had to move them under higher lights. Most of the planting info for fall broccoli in my zone advises transplanting in late August/early September, but damn! I just looked at my forecast for the first week of September and it's supposed to be in the high 90s F for at least five days straight. So my bad broccy boys are just going to have to stay in the basement for now.

Since this warm weather is holding, I am going sow more turnips. I had some teeny little spouts come up in the grow bags I planted a week or two back, but didn't realize they'd grown right through the netting I'd put over the bags to keep digging pests out. Consequently, when I took off the netting, I yanked up or otherwise destroyed all but one baby seedling.

Speaking of plants growing through things, I decided to move the potted comfrey out of the vegetable garden to the back of the yard. I'd had them outside the garden fence in the spring, but moved them inside because the deer were nibbling them. (I thought they were deer-resistant, but apparently the plants don't develop the deer-repellent hairy leaves until they're more mature.) I put the pots on boards and sheets of cardboard to discourage the comfrey trying to root into the ground through the drainage holes, but some of them had still managed to do so. Fortunately they were very small thin roots, but I'm kicking myself for not paying closer attention. I'll have to keep an eye out for little seedlings, since the last thing I need is comfrey trying to take over the garden.

The peas and carrots are coming along. I need to thin the carrot seedlings. The late-summer cukes I planted in grow bags are putting out vines and flowers like mad, but no baby cukes yet. The cukes planted at the base of the cherry tree died back this week; I don't know if it was cucumber beetles or what, but it seemed like one or two leaves went yellow and spotty, then all the plants abruptly failed. Still getting a few tomatoes here and there, and a handful of beans every day or so.

 

[SWest]

...I'll have to keep an eye out for little seedlings, since the last thing I need is comfrey trying to take over the garden. ...

While the spot is still marked from the pot being there, weight several large sheets of cardboard over it to stop light from getting to any rootlets in the ground.

No kicks needed!

Our weather is not to be believed either, foreseeable. Nineties and no rain.

I've started bunging more Kniphofia into the front yard (have I said I'd like to try native Northeaster Prickly Pear out there? I would. 'Have my eye on an in-state supplier, so should contact them to get advice to plant this fall or wait until spring...). A Russian sage I planted 2 weeks ago smelled so nice after this morning's downpour (which only wet the greedy grass, and did not wet a single grain of sand below), so Lavender, Sage, Kniphofia, and a hole-punched shortish cultivated Amaranth. Getting there...

 

[mrsmig]

Thanks for the advice. It so happens that I'd just broken up a big cardboard box to recycle, so I got those pieces down pronto. I have still another box to knock apart (I have to strip off the tape and labels first), so adding that to the mix will give me an extra thick layer.

Still kicking myself, though. Once I harvest the comfrey leaves, I may be putting the roots in the trash. I'd been warned how invasive they can be, and even though the back of the property is kind of a wilderness (and I'd still like to see which would win in a cage match between comfrey and my neighbor's bamboo), I just don't need any more invasives.

 

[SWest]

It's wild how vigorously the roots grow! And the size of the mature plants is intimidating.

The Bocking 14 variety has sterile flowers. All other - or unidentified - flowers should be removed before they fade.

Look for planter pots that don't have holes in the bottom (the ones with the reservoir-tray style bottom so the roots stay fully enclosed). Or keep pots on concrete, plastic sheeting, or decks.

Very large plants can probably do runners, but small plants will smother easily with a thick, solid barrier treatment.

 

[mrsmig]

It's an absolutely spectacular day here: low humidity, temps in the uppers 70s F, a light breeze. I sat in the sunshine and cleaned out/organized my two potting bench bins, where I keep hand tools, gloves, cloches, twine, shade cloth, etc. By Sunday we'll be back to sweltering heat again. The forecast is for six solid days in the 90s, so I guess the shade cloths are going to get one more airing before the end of the season.

I took your advice, @SWest, and shifted four of the six comfrey pots onto the deck, and two back into the garden, only this time on a double layer of plastic plant trays. I gave them all a much needed haircut first, and have the chopped leaves in a trug, wilting back before I spread them in the garden. The deer had a go at them last night, when they were still at the back of the yard. I have a half-dozen regular deer visitors, and it looks like all of them had a mouthful or two, but no more. There were a couple of partially-chewed leaves on the ground - the deer equivalent of ptooey, I guess. Probably too hairy for them. I use long gloves when I handle them, myself.

 

[SWest]

..gloves when I handle them...

They sting me (for hours) as well. 'Can't find any info about whether they have formic (or other) acids in the hairs, or about contact allergy.

For all that preppers feed it to their rabbits, I don't find any evidence they've been used by any of the wild batches hatching out all over the yard. Some large insect holes on a few isolated leaves, but that's all.

Large groups of deer are known for damaging and even killing trees and other plants because they each take a leaf or two, even if they don't want to eat any more. lol

 

[mrsmig]

The beets I direct-sowed in the garden about two weeks back have only put up one or two little sprouts, so I'm following the advice of a local gardener I follow on Instagram, and starting some indoors where I'll have more control over them. I'm cutting it pretty close insofar as time to harvest goes, but the weather's been so weird these days, who knows? I might get lucky.

If I don't get actual beets, at least I'll get some tasty greens.

 

[SWest]

I'm betting temperate temps hold through October.

This garden in VA not very far along beet-wise either:

 

[mrsmig]

In anticipation of our heat wave (which starts today), I went out this morning, filled the bird baths, water dishes, fountain and bee stations, shifted the deck plants into the shade, then gave everything in the vegetable garden a good soak. My husband helped me put up the shade cloths afterward. I gave the burgeoning pea patch additional shade with a floating row cover (the cabbages already have theirs), and am thanking my lucky stars that I held off transplanting the rest of my brassica. In the 1.5 hours I was outside, the temperature rose from 75F degrees to 87F. We're supposed to have a high of 95F today, and 99F tomorrow.

I had originally planned to grill pork ribs for our Labor Day dinner, but I'm rethinking that.

 

[SWest]

We're beginning 6 (last?) days of nearly-100s here as well. Next week should resume September! lol The squishy-faced dogs are so done with being taken indoors asap. But they do go belly-first onto the cold stone kitchen floor before they even go for water.

Watering - check
pulled 3 Knot Weed - check
hold off pollinating Maypops until iridescent bees are done working the nectar - check (the patch will be shaded at 4.30 anyway)

 

[mrsmig]

Once the deck was in shade this afternoon, I tackled one of my last late summer jobs: emptying the huuuuge pot that housed last year's bulb garden. I sieved the contents, salvaging what bulbs I could find. The hyacinth bulbs popped out looking great, so I saved those in a paper bag, but the allium bulbs were nowhere to be found. I guess they rotted - they never bloomed, so maybe they rotted before that could happen. The little crocus bulbs looked sort of suspect and there weren't many of them, so I tossed those into a bed at the very back of the yard. The squirrels or deer might take them or they might root. I'm going to let nature take its course. I'll plant the hyacinth bulbs in the cherry tree garden in a few months.

I got enough soil out of the big pot to fill four 3-gallon grow bags, so those will be my lettuce planters for the fall. I moved those into one of the tomato enclosures so the squirrels and chippies will stay out of them, amended them with some organic slow-release fertilizer, and will let them percolate for a week or so before sowing lettuce in them.

I was glad to get that giant pot of soil off my deck. Not sure what I'm going to do with the pot itself. It sure is big.

 

[SWest]

None of the dogs gave me pouty-lip about getting done and coming in (even first thing am). Humidity pushing up...which I have to appreciate because it holds some water in place overnight and wets leaves for a few hours before the sun hits.

So. It is actually September. Leaves are starting to finish and come down. Time to think about what seeds to put out in November to stratify...

Feeling a bit better about the front hot zone...baby Kniphofia are doing great...Russian Sage looks good...medicinal Sage competing well enough with the runner grass...so we'll add a bunch more sage next year.

Groundhog is back, bigger than ever. Eating my dandelions. But not the Turkish Rocket...so #1 pick to pop some seeds in to spend the winter. Really need to get rid of the ROUS before it takes an interest in my baby trees...

 

[mrsmig]

Fall seedlings are popping up everywhere! Outdoors, the second sowing of turnips sprouted this morning. I squealed a bit over them (they were so cute!), then heartlessly thinned them. Indoors, both varieties of beets had popped as well, but I won't thin them until after I've transplanted them into the garden and they're 3-4 inches tall.

The shade cloth + additional row cover for heat-sensitive plants seem to be working well against the oppressively hot weather. Looks like we'll have stormy weather to follow the heat wave, so I'll probably leave the coverings up, at least until the threat of strong winds/hail has passed. Really really really hoping to get my Waltham broccoli planted next week; the seedlings are about eight inches tall and nearly brushing against their grow lights. The other brassica seedlings are not far behind.

My last Bread & Salt tomato vine died back, leaving two clusters of nice-looking but green fruit still hanging on. I cut off the clusters, leaving their section of the vine intact, and brought them inside to ripen on the window sill. Fingers crossed.

 

[Brigid Barry]

I am ashamed to admit it, I'll show myself to my stocks, but my garden got so effing crazy that I let it go. I have a bajillion pumpkins, my tomatoes are 5' tall and keep growing, and everything is just everywhere. I could barely find a path to walk to rescue the sprinkler.

Memo to me: I need way, way, WAY more room between rows next year.

 

[SWest]

Gardens are works-in-progress. Each season/year you get to refine your techniques and relationship to your unique land/soil/interests.

Dry your excess pumpkins as critter fodder!