Planted my peppers, tomatoes, and okra today. The only things left to plant are sweet potatoes, the last round of corn, and the second rounds of cantaloupe and watermelon.
There are so manny black berries are in my yard right now and I just don't feel like picking anymore.
On the last page. The garden's not that big, it's something like 33 x 45. My blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries are separate.
Checked in on the bees today. I found queen cells in 3 of the hives which means they are replacing their queens. I put supers on 2 new hives and the one star hive is doing really well packing away the honey. Below are pics of the various queen cells I found: Pictures of some of the brood frames from Hive D: Honey: And the hives overall now:
Got my first taste of bee handling this past weekend. Didn't get many pics, was more focused on technique and learning as much as I could. Here's a couple though.
It's a hot day out, gotta cool off the hive. In other garden news, my zucchini and cantaloupe has started to spread out.
We got a new water softener a few weeks ago, so we had the old salt bin sitting around. After a few drinks and a little imagination, I figured out how to turn it into a rain barrel. On Sunday, I combined my knack and imagination, a few beers, and $10 worth of parts from the hardware store and made my dream a reality. It rained Sunday night and when I went to check the barrel yesterday morning, it was overflowing. 35 gallons fills up fast.
Let me tell you guys about the problems I'm having with nutsedge and chickweed. It's rained NON-STOP here for two weeks and, given that it's so damn muddy, my garden looks like a hayfield.
Man, my garden is pretty much the same. Glad for the free water, but geeze there is so much growing i need to get in there with a freaking weedeater just to get started, but it wont dry out enough
I want in yesterday with a hoe. Hoping that turning the weeds over will take them out or at least thin them.
Update: It's growing in spots but not in others. Basically it's growing where I put additional potting soil. I'm pretty sure this winter I'm going to till it all up and put a bunch of additional topsoil. Should I spread a bunch of fertilizer? I really don't want to burn any of the grass but it seems like the seeds just aren't getting enough nutrients. I water this shit every day. Spoiler
So i tried to get in the garden to put some poison on an ant pile. Fucking rain, this is the result after i dug my flip flops back out Almost lost my class ring I did not spill my beer though You may have won this battle ants, but i am here to declare you will not win the war
I have four raised beds in my garden in sort of a square shape. The two on the right get a fair amount more sun than the two on the left due to the sun going around the house. In the planters on the right(pretty much full sun all day) I have tomatoes, several different peppers, squash, Okra, and strawberrys. The okra isn't growing worth shit, they looked pretty rough when I got them so I just think they are shitty in general. Everything else is turning a bit yellow, except for the strawberries, the strawberries are doing really well. Everything is growing fine but just starting to shade a little yellow on the leaves. I water every morning, basically till it starts to puddle. From my jugsian research it looks like the yellow could be a sign of under-watering or they need some fertilizer. I'll try to get a picture tonight to help. What do you guys think?
Keep the weeds out as much as you can, only water in the morning to make sure it's dried out by nighttime, and enjoy. Read the linked for other info. http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/plants/vegetables/crops/hgic1308.html
I think yellowing could be a sign of a lot of different things. I think that I might be over watering though.
weeds are a major problem the last few years, I have got this infestation somehow of these morning glory vines, I know they are a flower but to me they are a weed. I pull them but they just keep coming back and I have no idea where they come from. But thanks. For the whole garden I try to water it in the AM before I leave for work.
Could also be early blight, although that usually has brown/black spots that are a more telltale sign. If that's the case, trim the effected leaves immediately and put them in a sealed plastic bag and dispose of them far away from your garden. Treat the soil with a copper fungicide to try and kill the remaining spores.
When I come home I like to walk around and check on the garden and the bees. While I was looking, I saw a dark blob in one of my pear trees. When I got closer, it was a swarm of bees. This was my first swarm I've gotten. There a pretty good chance they just came from my hives, but none of mine looked like they lost a bunch of bees, so maybe I got lucky. I basically just took a box, leaned the tree over it and shook the bees into the box, then closed it up. In the last picture you can see some of the bees with their abdomen's up in the air. They release a pheromone and fan their wings to let the other bees know where the queen is. That's a good way to know if you got the queen or not. If I didn't get the queen, the bees would have gone right back to the tree.
I have the coolest garbage can on the block, got the blue def sticker along with a lot of others at the drag races. The deal has always been that we put stickers on the garbage can and not other places in the house and to this day we still do it.
Last year we put in a crape Myrtle, I live in the north east and so far the thing is doing nothing at all, looks dead but if I break off a twig it's still alive. When should I see buds on this?
I hate these things... have a few around my camp that I have to "trim" with a chainsaw every year because they grow so much. One in my front yard needs to be trimmed up, it's getting taller than my house... would like to get it out of there and plant a small magnolia instead Used to park under one and those little flowers would always be stuck to my truck. That doesn't answer your question at all though
When they're like that they're very gentle. They're full of honey so most of them couldn't sting even if they wanted to.
Went to a pick your own berries place today. Got 2 baskets full of strawberries, so much better than from the grocery store. This was half of their strawberries.
Update on my garden/fruits: Apples Plums Peaches Strawberries Blueberries Corn and green beans Cantaloupe and watermelon Peppers and tomatoes Zucchini and okra that hasn't come up yet
Checked in on the bees again today. The swarm was from one of my hives, they had queen cells everywhere. Of the two hives that were struggling, one finally grew a laying queen, the other one I'm going to have to go pick up a queen. The swarm is doing really well already though. I added another super to one of the hives and will probably add another in the next week to two others. Looks like I should be able to start extracting honey in a couple weeks. Some of the honey frames in the different hives The new queen raised in one of the hives. Queen cells Frame with eggs from the swarm
Looking good garden bros. All of my stuff is producing. Getting a lot of okra, green beans, bell peppers, and lettuce. Just started harvesting eggplant this week. My tomatoes and chili peppers are all big and green for what feels like months... Oh how they tease me so.
got in my garden for the first time yesterday and picked a few peppers Rained another inch last night, I really need it to dry out enough to get in and hoe the whole thing, looks like i am growing in the middle of my grass yard
Lettuce is coming up, and rabbits/deer aren't getting into it. Beets and radishes are starting to sprout. That was as of Monday, and we've had some rain and it's getting warmer - I'm interested to see what's coming up soon. Time to do some picking in the next few days to see what we have.
Planted the last of my cantaloupe, watermelon, and corn today. Will plant 25 sweet potatoes tomorrow. The rest of the garden is looking pretty good so far. Also got the first plums of the season today.
squirrel chewed through my screened in porch and destroyed my tomatoes over the weekend. pretty pissed. /tweet
Also, checked in on some of the bees. The swarm is doing well and may be moved to a full box at the end of the week. One of the hives that has been having queen issues finally seems to have a good laying queen. Included some pictures of eggs and larva of different ages. Also went and looked at my dad's bees since he's been out of town a lot. Turns out he messed up and never put the 10th frame back in when he installed a package of bees, so they built comb between some of the frames. It was a total mess. I was able to salvage some of it, and took some of the other comb home as really good comb honey. His other hive has filled up 3 supers (about 7-1/2 gallons worth of honey) so I added another. Will probably extract honey next weekend for the first time this year. Eggs Larva New homegrown queen Pollen packed into cells and a bee bringing pollen in Comb mess in my dad's hive Honey from the good hive Also, saw this stack of a hive on another forum. With 9 supers, that's like 25 gallons of honey from one hive.
Sounds like you need to go on a bb gun rampage. May not bring your tomatoes back but you can still get some gotdamn satisfaction. For real I hate squirrels. In college a squirrel literally grabbed my sausage burrito and tried stealing it from me. Uncivilized feral bastards is what they are.
I've been itching to break out my 22 because I know the squirrels are going to go after my blueberries. I haven't covered them yet, I probably should.
Last year I just waited until they looked right and we're a good size, the tested a small one to see if they looked good. This was sweet potatoes but I think it can still apply.
Got me curious about my potatoes (foliage died off last month) so I dug up what was closest to the surface, in the pic below. Also missed my weekend harvesting so I pulled a couple watermelon as well as the veggies in the pic. Tons of okra, some of it got too big over the weekend. Plus my tomatoes are finally turning red. Really excited. Only negative so far is I am having trouble with my 2 green zebra tomato plants. I got the seeds from a friend and either they were already diseased or they are just not very resistant. After each was about 3ft high they started wilting at various leaves, followed by stems attached to those leaves. Then the tomatoes on one plant started developing end rot while the other (more diseased) plant wasn't even producing blossoms. Uprooted the non producing plant and pruned off any sick stems from the other. Gave it a Epsom salt shower and some kelp fertilizer to help with the recovery and possibly get rid of the end rot. We'll see. Other than that though everything is awesome. Hope everyone else is doing well.
Looking good. I've just had tomatoes and zucchini starting to grow on the plants. My cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans are blooming.
Tomato plants went in on Sunday. 4 heirlooms and 2-3 Romas. Other seeds went in too, but I don't know which. Lettuce was phenomenal. Can't wait for the rest to come around.
Garden has been terrible this year. I don't know what the issue is but stuff that grew well last year isn't growing much at all this year. Had a bounty of lettuce, cabbage and kale last year and it barely grew this year. My parents about an hour a way in the same zone planted the same stuff with good results. Soil might be bad. Who knows.