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Anyone doing a garden?

My peppers are in a raised bed so any excess water will just go into the ground, I hope :dunno: The tomatoes are in large pots so the liquid sunshine should be able to drain away. Same thing with the strawberries but I'll tip over the planters to get rid of excess water.

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Its getting and staying a bit too cold here so I pulled everything off that is usable today. Even the poblano's are getting black spots now. I know I said I wasn't going to bother with the smaller stuff anymore but my dad drove the "don't waste" too deep into me. There's some that are decent size though and it will give me a couple more pounds that I wont need to buy at the store. Still a lot of small fruits and buds on the plants but with the forecast I don't think there will be another pickin.

Ironically the biggest Anaheim's on the right are the 2021 seeds that didnt do much of anything through the heatwave...and the little ones are the Big Jims. The Salsa's on the left have a lot of small fruits on them but they get black the fastest due to the size I guess.

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FOR SALE CHEAP...110 GALLONS OF RAIN WATER...PICK UP ONLY!! :rflmao:
 
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Yesterday between showers I checked on my tomatoes and I plucked the last ones that were blushing so they wouldn't split. Too much water in too short of a time and two tomatoes couldn't take it.

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My cukes were pulled out 2 weeks ago. We have plenty of tomatoes still on the plant that won't turn red, but the plants can't last much longer. Basil is all gone...it gets gross so quickly.
Chard and Arugula still doing well...they should hold on a while until snow.
 
BillyTheKid said:
My cukes were pulled out 2 weeks ago. We have plenty of tomatoes still on the plant that won't turn red, but the plants can't last much longer. Basil is all gone...it gets gross so quickly.
Chard and Arugula still doing well...they should hold on a while until snow.
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If you wait until just before the first frost and pluck those tomatoes they will given time ripen indoors.
 
Now with the cooler temps I am working on cleaning out the greenhouse and getting the plastic back up and shade cloth down. My wife since she is retired has planted all the winter crops in our raised beds so far we have collards and turnip greens and some lettuce and carrots and spinach and cabbage growing and we hope that it all makes. Plus we going to try some tomato plants in the greenhouse this year.
 
I'll be trying to grow broccoli and lettuce as winter crops in the raised bed. Will I need to turn the raised bed into a hoop house setup?
 
Funny thing today my wife was so excited that her lettuce was coming up and she finally realized that she had planted tomato seeds, So we have about 100 small tomato plants free and local pick up only LOL!
 
Well that was painful...temps started hitting around freezing with frost warnings last night. It was 34° this morning so I went out and pulled everything and salvaged what I could. There was hundreds of buds wanting to grow...sad. Lots of little peppers that I didnt take that were under 2" or so too. I'm not going to even try and process these. I'll just smoke and powder them for ancho/paprika flavoring. Peppers 2022 out!

One pepper leaf was sending me a signal..dunno what the 8 means though lol.

This is just two branches of one plant...
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We pulled the tomato plants out on Sunday afternoon. They just didn't ripen well this year. The ones that did start getting red were often snacked on by squirrels or chipmunks. Most of them split.
We salvaged what we could and have them on trays in the kitchen.

I had one small plant with only 2 tomatoes on it, so in the middle of the summer I cut down around it with a shovel to sever the roots, and the fruit ripened in a week.
I'm wishing i'd done that with all the plants now. I would have been slammed with fruit, but better than looking at green tomatoes for months.
 
Soon I'll be harvesting all the green tomatoes on the plants so the frost doesn't get them. The green ones will slowly ripen giving me ripe tomatoes possibly into December, maybe beyond.
 
A trick that my mother taught me years ago was to get a apple box and wrap green tomatoes in news paper and layer just like apples with the paper dividers and put in a closet and wait. We did that before and had ripe tomatoes all winter.
 
Got me some supplies and containers for the hydroponics grow. I took the lettuce seedlings from the bed outside and put them in net pots in water along with the chili pepper seedlings I started indoors. Now I need to find a spot in doors to set it all up.
 
Late last spring I sowed some broccoli seeds just for the heck of it. I probably did everything wrong. I sowed multiple seeds into pots and really didn't keep after it knowing broccoli isn't a hot weather crop, watering it infrequently, sometimes putting the pots in shade, other time leaving them in full sun. Late summer I got around to thinning the plants and I put the best two into the raised bed. Once in the raised bed, watered and fed well those two plant seem to be doing well but I have zero experience with growing this vegetable. In the hyronic set up I'm putting together I'll try growing some there too.

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Off to the side back there is my lone surviving Bell pepper plant. You can't see it in that pic but the rest of the plant has lots of peppers on it. I'll probably keep it in-ground through next week.
 
The 2022 finale...soil in the water barrels..pots cleaned and sterilized...and the last of the peppers smoked and dried. This powder is a little bitter due to the unripe peppers but will still give my chili some smokey, earthy flavor along with the sweet smokey paprika.

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I even found an easier way to get the membrane and seeds out. I took a spoon and sharpened the edges from the bottom side up. I can use it just like plowing soil...at any angle it cuts and plops everything out of the pepper. Now as long as I dont use it to eat with I have a new kitchen utensil.

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RickeyM said:
Late last spring I sowed some broccoli seeds just for the heck of it. I probably did everything wrong. I sowed multiple seeds into pots and really didn't keep after it knowing broccoli isn't a hot weather crop, watering it infrequently, sometimes putting the pots in shade, other time leaving them in full sun. Late summer I got around to thinning the plants and I put the best two into the raised bed. Once in the raised bed, watered and fed well those two plant seem to be doing well but I have zero experience with growing this vegetable. In the hyronic set up I'm putting together I'll try growing some there too.

IMG_20221021_085933-L.jpg


Off to the side back there is my lone surviving Bell pepper plant. You can't see it in that pic but the rest of the plant has lots of peppers on it. I'll probably keep it in-ground through next week.
Click to expand...

Broccoli loves the cold. I used to cut out the center head early and then have tons of side shoots until snowfall.
 
This is what I've harvested the last two weeks or so. Most were just blushing when plucked, only a couple were ripe. With frigid temps on the forecast I'll pluck the rest by Saturday. I'll cut down the plants, cut them up and in the compost they go. I'll add a bunch of compost to the pots then top that with a heavy layer of mulch and let them rest until Spring.

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