2024 garden season

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Looked a little on the internet and I'm still a little confused. Do you start just male seeds, if there's such a thing? Do you remove the female plants?

The seeds are already 99.94% male.

Then after they are planted and mature enough to show male or female one may 'weed out' the females. Asparagus can get weedy with it's own seedlings as it reduces the quality of the spears.
 
Yukon Gold potatoes. Two fifty ft. rows, whole small potatoes planted whole on one ft centers, rows on five ft. centers.

"

Seed (KEY practices)​

For best stand, small whole seed ("single-drops") should be used due to uneven distribution of eyes which are mostly at the bud end. For cutting to seed pieces, small to medium size tubers need to be use to avoid "blind" pieces. Cutting and then planting immediately is very strongly discouraged, clearly not a recommended practice which results in poor stands, uneven emergence and seed decay by bacterial soft rot (Erwinia carotovora). Cut pieces need to be warmed, treated with a fungicide dust and allowed to heal; 7-10 days at 65F or two weeks at 60F before planting are recommended."

https://cropwatch.unl.edu/potato/yukongold_management#:~:text=Yukon Gold matures in 80,get over 500 cwt/acre.

Vegetable Garden 011 Potato 'Yukon Gold'.JPG
 
Our vegetable garden this morning. The black pots are for rocks and debris we find in the soil. We have A, B and C vegetable gardens of 6, 17 and 7 beds respecetivly. All dug 14 inches deep by hand using a Meadow Creature broad fork. I till shallowly with a 1984 Troy Bilt horse. Cultivate with a 100 year old Planet Jr. wheel hoe and a 1984 Troy Bilt 'Cultivar Plus' 3 hp. The Cultivar is a quite rare piece and so is the Planet Jr. high arch wheel hoe. We also use a dozen or so various hand held hoes and implements.

 
Messing with some grow bags in the greenhouse this year. 2 Red Duece tomatoes and 4 bags of some red potatoes that had started to sprout. Picking about 10 lbs of asparagus every day.
I just had a thought... would used dog/cat food bags make good grow bags?
I'm guessing you'd need to punch drain holes in the bottom.
 
Our vegetable garden this morning. The black pots are for rocks and debris we find in the soil. We have A, B and C vegetable gardens of 6, 17 and 7 beds respecetivly. All dug 14 inches deep by hand using a Meadow Creature broad fork. I till shallowly with a 1984 Troy Bilt horse. Cultivate with a 100 year old Planet Jr. wheel hoe and a 1984 Troy Bilt 'Cultivar Plus' 3 hp. The Cultivar is a quite rare piece and so is the Planet Jr. high arch wheel hoe. We also use a dozen or so various hand held hoes and implements.


Fabulous!
Love the trampoline trellis. Someone around here made one out of an old huge satellite dish.
 
Good solid rain last night into this morning. I've been waiting for that so I could dig up and transplant volunteer trees and whatnot.
Still working on that, but I did get my veggie garden planted first thing this morning:
2 Purple Cherokee maters
3 hills yellow beans, three seeds each
2 hills butternut squash, three seeds each
2 hills each of zucchini and yellow squash, three seeds each.

A couple days ago, I got the garden ready, fluffed up the soil, made three rows, not counting the end row with taters, raked out the soil between rows and mounded up on the planting rows and then put down cypress mulch in the walking paths. It looks beautiful. :heart:
I'm still having camera issues, but I have a "new" Sony camera coming in the mail sometime this week.
 
I just had a thought... would used dog/cat food bags make good grow bags?
I'm guessing you'd need to punch drain holes in the bottom.
Glad you brought this up. My wife is also wanting to try the bags with old chicken feed sacks. I have my doubts simply because of watering issues. I bought a bunch of grow bags a few years ago and they required heavy watering at least twice a day to keep the bags from drying out. I sort of solved the water problem by placing those thin plastic watering trays like you would use on potted house plants, under the bags. I would water the bags until the water seeped thru the bags and filled the trays. I was still watering twice a day, but I managed to grow a small crop of taters. I have also taken bags and filled with soil and just laid the bags flat on the ground. I would split the bags and plant my seeds in the soil. The bags would hold the rain water enough so that the dirt didnt dry out completely. It worked, but not the production I wanted to see.
 
My indoor tomato plants are getting big and some are flowering early. Went to a neighbors farm and got two loads of 2 year old horse manure and some older cow manure. In trade I took three loads of fresh horse manure And dumped off to the side and will use it two years later.
Planted snow peas, green beans and potato's so far, tomato's to come when we are out of frost danger. I used 30 gallon grow bags for tomato's last year and I got a ton of grape tomato's. So I am getting more bags this year. Last year the rain was bad and killed lots of tomato's.
tomato plants end April.jpg
 
Our vegetable garden this morning. The black pots are for rocks and debris we find in the soil. We have A, B and C vegetable gardens of 6, 17 and 7 beds respecetivly. All dug 14 inches deep by hand using a Meadow Creature broad fork. I till shallowly with a 1984 Troy Bilt horse. Cultivate with a 100 year old Planet Jr. wheel hoe and a 1984 Troy Bilt 'Cultivar Plus' 3 hp. The Cultivar is a quite rare piece and so is the Planet Jr. high arch wheel hoe. We also use a dozen or so various hand held hoes and implements.


Looks fantastic Del. What zone are you in??
 
Glad you brought this up. My wife is also wanting to try the bags with old chicken feed sacks. I have my doubts simply because of watering issues. I bought a bunch of grow bags a few years ago and they required heavy watering at least twice a day to keep the bags from drying out. I sort of solved the water problem by placing those thin plastic watering trays like you would use on potted house plants, under the bags. I would water the bags until the water seeped thru the bags and filled the trays. I was still watering twice a day, but I managed to grow a small crop of taters. I have also taken bags and filled with soil and just laid the bags flat on the ground. I would split the bags and plant my seeds in the soil. The bags would hold the rain water enough so that the dirt didnt dry out completely. It worked, but not the production I wanted to see.
I thought the bags I got might dry out fast in the greenhouse but so far I'm good at watering every 2 days. Temps over 100* the last few days in there. Theses bags are filled with coconut coir.
 
When my neighbor plants his plants, he puts a 6" length of corrugated 4" drain pipe around them. He says that works against rabbits. He also said, once the plants get larger, rabbits won't bother them. Don't know if that works.
They will walk my okra all the way down to eat the tops. 4-5 foot plants.
 
They will walk my okra all the way down to eat the tops. 4-5 foot plants.
Deer are my biggest plant eaters. They will eat okra down to the ground. I plant okra at my sons house, garden is in a fenced in field that has free run of my sons dogs, Catahoula Leopards, deer dont stand a chance, nether do coons or groundhogs. This year squirrels eat my broccoli and started on my cabbage. Since it is planted in a single row bed. I wrapped plastic netting around the bed and that put a stop to the squirrel problem. My cabbage is almost ready to start heading and I have removed the netting, no sign of the squirrels so I assume they only like it when its small.
 
Deer are my biggest plant eaters. They will eat okra down to the ground. I plant okra at my sons house, garden is in a fenced in field that has free run of my sons dogs, Catahoula Leopards, deer dont stand a chance, nether do coons or groundhogs. This year squirrels eat my broccoli and started on my cabbage. Since it is planted in a single row bed. I wrapped plastic netting around the bed and that put a stop to the squirrel problem. My cabbage is almost ready to start heading and I have removed the netting, no sign of the squirrels so I assume they only like it when its small.
Do you have any nut trees on your property?
I have lots of pecans and walnut trees, and lots of squirrels, too.
They like to go after the sunflower seeds I put in the bird feeders, but haven't seen them in the garden.
Maybe if you provided another source of food for them, they'd stay out of your garden?
 
Need Some Advice

Last Spring I planted 20 Jersey Knight Asparagus plants into trenches. When only 15 came up, I back-filled with a mixture of topsoil and compost. This March, I replanted 10 Jersey Knight and 10 Jersey Supreme plants that I ordered. We had tons of dry weather and trenching wasn't too bad (3rd row). After planting, I noticed the roots of some plants seemed to migrate out of the soil. Some had dried out so I recovered. Well now we're getting inches of rain at a time and this is what's happening:
IMG_2873.JPG IMG_2872.JPG
My trenches are flooding. If I could back-fill now without the plants sprouting, that would solve the problem. Some (1st pic) have sprouted but the majority has not. Once the trenches drain (I have a clay base), I'll recover the roots that have floated to the top with even more dirt. I just wonder if they'll survive.

P.S. Yes I know, my garden is weedy. I got distracted with Spring hunting and fishing. when it dries out this week?, I weed whip and spray the weeds. I've got to contend with the volunteer locust trees that has sprouted. Last year, I cut them back and spread the fresh cuts with herbicide (can't remember which one, Stump Gone?) and retreat them.
 
Do you have any nut trees on your property?
I have lots of pecans and walnut trees, and lots of squirrels, too.
They like to go after the sunflower seeds I put in the bird feeders, but haven't seen them in the garden.
Maybe if you provided another source of food for them, they'd stay out of your garden?
What do you do to protect your trees from the squirrels?
 
What do you do to protect your trees from the squirrels?
Nothing! There's enough for all of us. :drinkingcoffee:
Seriously. I'm more concerned with the crows. In fact that's how I can tell it's time to get out there and pick them up - I hear the crows in the trees.
 
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