What did you do in the garden today?

[littledog]

Cut more dahlias, and there are still so many more blooming and getting ready to bloom outside! Big dinner-plates of magenta and purple, medium-size pink, tiny ones that look like daisies but with various colors in the centers and petals, medium-sized ones with perfect, concentrated petal shapes - How do I love these, I can't even count the ways....

I guess I shouldn't be that disappointed that my luffas, beans, basil and cabbage failed, because the things that did produce, are producing a ton, and I have time to fill my cans and freezer with them. I processed more butternuts that were ripe, still have many more to go, been making several gallons of applesauce every week, with more to go, and processed lots of cukes - I froze many containers of cuke soup, then made 7 quarts of sweet&sour pickles out of the cukes that were big and seedy.
I brought one to work today to test on my pickle-loving coworker, and we both agreed that the flavor was delicious, but they were too soft.
Still have a bunch of small cukes on the vines, that I left to grow, but I doubt they will get much bigger. This weekend I'm going to strip them, and pickle all the tiny cukes sweet&sour like I did the oversize ones, leaving them whole. I bet they will turn out great. Also need to dig potatoes, carrots, strip the rest of the tomatoes and start winterizing the garden.
My freezer is getting close to full, and so are my canning jars.

Anybody else follow baseball? As a Mariners fan (and Detroit Tigers still, from my childhood there and my Grandpa) I'm disappointed and have lots of opinions, but it's interesting that every wild-card matchup was decided 2-0, and I think it will make for very exciting playoffs.

 

[Dadanga]

I've never grown tiny toms or tiny tims. I found descriptions of tiny tims; they sound quite different.

Current tomatoes grow as big as a cm, 3 grams. Many are smaller. This seems to be about half as big as the tinies. Also, the vines are finer, longer, lankier in the currents. And far, far, far more numerous but that might be because the pictures I could find of the tinies are pruned - I couldn't tell how much they are pruned - maybe also young.

Tiny Tim
View attachment 3650340

Currant

View attachment 3650348
The fruit grows under the mass of leaves and vines, and less sparce than the above picture shows. More like the picture of a hand holding them (not my hand - the picture is from a search).

The first year, I tried picking them from the top and sides - through the mass of vines and leaves. It works better to lift the whole mass up like a curtain or skirt. Then the fruit pretty much hangs free and clear of most of the mass of greens.

Almost forgot about this post! I did have the opportunity the get a currant mix but passed on it. As I was seeding today I almost scoffed at the sungold F1 seed amounts. Each packet has 5 seeds...luckily they had 8 LOL. Curious to see how big the sungolds will grow compared to the cherry varieties. I actually have orange cherry tomatoes so that'll be an interesting comparison to the sungolds.

I make it with plain Greek yogurt instead of cream, and it freezes fine and thaws deliciously.

Your WHAT?? Who Flung Dung?? (might have been me, I fling plenty of dung...)

Haha, it's this stinky mulch down under that bunnings sell. Smell goes away after a week or so but it's kinda nice that it feeds the soil. I'll even go over that with some of the jungle mulch. Speaking of. That's another task for tomorrow since there's one more bed I have to mulch.

Today I decided to get some gamebird breeder instead of starter to try and put the adults on. After that I spent sixty bucks on 3 drums I'll use for those wicking beds. One may be used as a NFT res while the other two will be cut in the middle. I've watched a video from rob bobs aquaponics and he just puts in slotted and socked ag pipe while going over the top with coarse river sand.

Started a whole heap of leafy green seeds. Funny. The gourmet mesclun packet from DT brown had like 3 different satchels labeled spinach, rocket, lettuce while mild mesclun mix from select organics was mixed and definitely had some other things in it. I ended up planting golden nugget pumpkin seeds directly in the bed since it seems to advise that on the packet.

There's a smattering of seedlings left over and most will go on kratky or in the NFT. I'll also be putting together a box of NFT rails I bought off gumtree cheap. My only problem is that it needs a particular sized pipe to link it all together and bunnings don't sell it.

 

[saysfaa]

Anybody else follow baseball? As a Mariners fan (and Detroit Tigers still, from my childhood there and my Grandpa)..

They lost me with the strike in 1994-95. I haven't watched or listened to more than a few innings since then.

 

[WthrLady]

Closer yet.

 

[WthrLady]

And we're skipping frost and going straight to freeze tomorrow night. LOL.
Typical. There are no seasons between summer and winter.
Die Bugs DIE! Is all I care about

 

[saysfaa]

Most of the rest of the potatoes are dug - much, much better to do it in the 70's and dry than the 40's and wet (yep, last year).

I'm still picking a few tomatoes from our gardens but I couldn't get a half bushel from the fruit stand yesterday- they are wrapping up the last of their tomatoes. The half bushel of roma I bought last week was wonderful fresh, dried, and I have most of them in the freezer to can after the cold sets in.

My sister shared a peck or so of grape tomatoes for me to try dehydrating.

I tried drying apples from SweeTango trees from the fruit market and we like the Honeycrisp's better. One fruit market had a few but they looked pretty bad; the other one I checked were too pricey. There weren't any more half bushels in varieties I wanted. I ended up with a half bushel of mixed variety apples with cosmetic issues (but still good - not deer apple quality). I meant to make applesauce with them but dd asked for more dried apples so I'll try them that way. They aren't labeled by variety but it looks like mostly MacIntosh, some Jonamacs, Empires and Cortlands, maybe. I didn't see Galas but I didn't look at each apple.

The grapes looked better than the available apples. The vanessas make absolutely wonderful tasting raisins but are a bit small to use (I don't have a screen in the dehydrator). The mars are a little bigger but I strongly prefer the vanessa taste. I tried to get a half bushel of vanessas but took all they had (maybe a peck and a half). I also took a quart of concords to try.

Our butternuts didn't do as well as last year, and we had only two vines. So, I picked up several squashes too. Buttercups. I like butternut better because we like their taste and texture as much as other types and they are so much easier to cut up but I think the buttercups will make better pies - they are drier fleshed.

 

[saysfaa]

This year, all of the debris from the home garden has been going into the burn barrel. And I'm going to leave the soil bare. I heard these can both may help with the virus and insect issues we've had so much trouble with. We need to try something different than we've been doing.

I'll dig as much compost into the soil as I can before the ground freezes. It will be nice to have the compost pile smaller, too. The pile has two-three years of tree leaves, lawn clippings, some peelings from the other garden, and chicken contributions so should be a good feed for the garden.

 

[jerryse]

Picked the pumpkins and a pink banana squash. Also picked a yellow squash for seed. Pollinated by a black beauty zucchini. No svb on these this year and last and were grown from volunteers. Decided to do some intentional breeding this year. These yellow SVB resistant

squash just keep producing summer squash.

 

[gtaus]

Is it possible to buy exterior polyurethane in gallon cans? Like people use when they refinish hardwood floors. Then you could just dip your labels, let the extra drip back into the can, and not waste any, unlike spraying that wastes a lot because random droplets go everywhere.

I considered that, but even a quart of polyurethane was expensive - for what I wanted to do. I ended up ordering some Sharpie Oil-Based Paint Markers from Amazon. They were recommended by a number of people who also use those old vinyl blinds cut up for plant labels. I have 100's of plastic labels cut up from old blinds that I want to use up.

Previously, I used regular Sharpie markers to write on the plant labels. They worked great inside the house for my plant starts, but the ink faded outside in the sun. From what everyone is telling me, the oil-based Sharpie paint markers will not fade outside in the sun and rain. I hope they work. These three markers, used only to write on plastic plant labels, will probably last me my lifetime.

 

[gtaus]

Rain and thunderstorms today and tomorrow. I need a rest anyway.

Same here, with rain expected for the better part of the weekend.

Cleaning out the garage to keep busy.