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Anyone doing a garden?

It seems strawberries can be pretty tough customers. Some of the first bare root plants I had given up for dead but I put in pots anyway are showing signs of life. The replacement batch is mostly doing good. I ordered 10 but they sent 12. I've forgotten which are which but I've got 13 plants showing leaf growth. The bush beans and pole beans are young but doing great. Something's been munching on the leaves so I'll have to attend to that. Good news is that the Bell pepper seeds have begun to sprout. We going through a spell of Summer type heat and sunshine so I've been covering the raised bed with shade cloth. I'm growing Beefsteak and Sunny Boy Hybrid tomatoes. I got caught off guard by the aforementioned heat spell and I've only got about two seedlings of each. Because of space limitations I'm only growing two tomato plants this year. I'll be babying those seedlings to hopefully get one good plant of each.
By all that is green and growing next year I WILL START SEEDS EARLIER!
 
Yep...went from 30F one night to 85F with lows in the mid 50's in a matter of a couple days. Looks like they called the last frost date pretty accurate...so far I hope.

I transferred my 66 peppers outside today to start hardening off process. Now if the wind controls itself and doesn't shred them I can get them into pots and in back of the house in a few days. Went yesterday and bought more local compost and a bag of peat moss to revitalize last years soil. I already have the other stuff like blood and bone meal, azomite, perlite, humic DG and worm castings. Time to get the soil mixed so I can get my rain barrels up and running too...especially since they raised the water bill 23% this year.

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May 2nd, picked my first yellow squash, and 3 pickler cucs today! The start of the relatively long NC growing season.
The regular cucs are climbing the trellis, and the tomatoes are about 28” high. All the peppers in the fabric pots are doing well!
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I just got around to starting some seeds. 2 kinds of Marigolds, 2 kinds of spinach, and arugula.
The weather has finally warmed up.
 
I'm impressed that some of you started early and are already picking. I do a garden every year but not a big one. 4 tomato plants, cukes and pickles and a couple of different peppers. I don't have space for much more anyway. Plus I do quite a few herbs. Basil, Italian parsley, thyme, cilantro, My daughter is a chef so I started the herbs for her so she can grow them at her restaurant. Plants are ready, seeds started. It's been wet and still too cold to plant just yet. Maybe in a week or two.
 
I think this will be the last time I do this many plants. It took me 13 hours yesterday and another 3 today to get soil mixed and all the plants potted, located, staked and shadeclothed. I am so freaking sore with major leg cramping it unreal. And 4 hours of sleep due to the cramping and hip and back pain. Too old for this chit! :blah:

Not sure how they will do either. I had some major dampening off issues with the stems being undercut at the soil level. This batch of MG starter soil this year got really mud/paste like in the solo cups. I buried them up to the first leaves with last years soil so we'll see what happens.

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Our soil is full of a crazy amount of rocks. The garden still grew well last year, but I decided to derockify it this year. I bought a rock/soil separator, but it was too fine and took forever to shake out dirt, so I built my own. I was kind of thinking it was more work than it was worth, but I've used it on one area, and the number of rocks that came out was absolutely crazy. Looking forward to doing the rest. It will be interesting to see what impact it has on the garden this year.

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This is the stone separator in action. I had about 8 trays of stones from filtering just a 1.5 foot wide by 2 ft deep section of soil. In prior years I had picked out the large stones when planting, but I didn't realize there were tons still in there. What was removed from just that small section filled about half a soil bag :eek:.

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When we got our seeds going we were disappointed to find that we hadn't saved any Anaheim seeds. But surprise! Somehow we got four of em in our Champion tomato seeds and now we have four Anaheims shooting up. I I'll have to buy some starts pretty soon.
 
Everything is in, soaker hose laid out and deer fence up. Lettuce and Swiss Chard and Scallions all coming up. 10 tomato plants in, staked and basketed.

My Garlic is looking really good. I think I know what my problems have been over the last few years. I started with supermarket Chinese irradiated garlic previously. This time we used heirloom Amish Garlic from Lancaster PA. Can't wait to dig a few up and find a real head with a full husk.
 
Still too cold to plant anything here at the Jersey Shore. Tonight's temperature is forecast to be 42. Next week low temps are in the 50's so tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles and a few peppers will get planted. Seeds are started, mostly herbs. Garden is ready. Tilled, added compost and fertilizer and bone meal. Just need the weather to cooperate.
 
Snappahead said:
Still too cold to plant anything here at the Jersey Shore. Tonight's temperature is forecast to be 42. Next week low temps are in the 50's so tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles and a few peppers will get planted. Seeds are started, mostly herbs. Garden is ready. Tilled, added compost and fertilizer and bone meal. Just need the weather to cooperate.
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What beaches are you near?
 
peterp1 said:
This is the stone separator in action. I had about 8 trays of stones from filtering just a 1.5 foot wide by 2 ft deep section of soil. In prior years I had picked out the large stones when planting, but I didn't realize there were tons still in there. What was removed from just that small section filled about half a soil bag :eek:.

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Whoa...flashback to horrible memories. Back when I was about 11yo when dad built our house us kids had to pick stones out of the new yard that were over the size of a half dollar. Dad would plow and rake the whole yard over and over and we picked what the rake didnt get...over and over again. The "yard" was a former hay field and the fun fact...it was 3 1/2 acres!! :no:

My peppers are doing well considering it has been rainy with cold nights since they've been outside. It's been dropping down to low 40's and it hasnt done anything to them. Peppers dont like anything under 55 supposedly but they are in root growing stage right now. I try to take the 55% shadecloth off when the sun does pop out but within an hour they start to wilt...so they definitely arent ready for their vegetative growth spurt yet.
 
Do any of you gardeners know the name of the flower is below? They handed out these to mothers at our church on Mother's Day, and it was just a closed bulb. We put it in water, and the flower grew like crazy, kept blooming more and more each day. Never really seen anything like it. I assume it's a common flower, but I don't know anything about them.

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peterp1 said:
Our soil is full of a crazy amount of rocks. The garden still grew well last year, but I decided to derockify it this year. I bought a rock/soil separator, but it was too fine and took forever to shake out dirt, so I built my own. I was kind of thinking it was more work than it was worth, but I've used it on one area, and the number of rocks that came out was absolutely crazy. Looking forward to doing the rest. It will be interesting to see what impact it has on the garden this year.
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Holy flashbacks Batman. The soil in my yard was so full of rocks I swear they must have imported some when the cleared the land and built these houses. I "exported" the smaller ones and added the larger ones to a river rock feature at the foot of my yard. If I had known it was that bad when I started I would have done what you did.
 
Two weeks later pepper seedlings have stalled so I've given up on them and bought four plants. The ones I got were maybe a month ahead of the ones I planted and already hardened off. The biggest tomato seedling (Sunny Boy Hybrid) has a few sets of leaves and a thick stem so I transplanted it outside to it's pot. Another one (Beefsteak) isn't quite there yet. The peppers look well in their new home.

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LHorn said:
Whoa...flashback to horrible memories. Back when I was about 11yo when dad built our house us kids had to pick stones out of the new yard that were over the size of a half dollar. Dad would plow and rake the whole yard over and over and we picked what the rake didnt get...over and over again. The "yard" was a former hay field and the fun fact...it was 3 1/2 acres!! :no:
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RickeyM said:
Holy flashbacks Batman. The soil in my yard was so full of rocks I swear they must have imported some when the cleared the land and built these houses. I "exported" the smaller ones and added the larger ones to a river rock feature at the foot of my yard. If I had known it was that bad when I started I would have done what you did.
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Yeah, it's absolutely crazy, and not something you can appreciate at all until you've been through it :(. I don't know if there area is just naturally rocky or if some of the rocks were dumped in our yard 70 years ago when the neighborhood was developed, but it's just a crazy number of rocks. We had some very significant drainage put in the yard a few years ago, and the amount of rock unearthed was crazy -- from 1/2" to 10" -- most of them 3-6" or so. All of it is tan rock that is generally about 1" thick. My brother-in-law wanted the larger rocks for an area of his front yard, so we transferred at least 8,000 lbs of rocks from what came up from digging to his front yard. It was an insane effort, but worth it in the long run.

Never derockified the garden area, and it grew well last year, so I'm curious to see how this year turns out.
 
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