The Dawg Patch

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GoDawgs
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Re: The Dawg Patch

#641

Post: # 64413Unread post GoDawgs
Mon Feb 28, 2022 12:09 pm

The second pea bed was forked up Saturday and was a lot easier than the other one. This morning I put in the t-posts and extenders for trellis on both sides of each bed. The peas will be planted Wednesday.


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Meanwhile Spring is springing everywhere. Dandelions are popping up and there are some honeybees visiting them.


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The Ice King daffodils are usually the first to bloom. They're a fragrant variety so I keep a bud vase of them in the kitchen while they're around. Such a sweet scent.


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But spring also means other chores too. Honeysuckle started invading the grapes last summer but now is the time to cut it out before the grapes leaf out. It's a lot easier to see the actual honeysuckle vines and cut them out.


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MissS
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Re: The Dawg Patch

#642

Post: # 64465Unread post MissS
Tue Mar 01, 2022 11:54 am

It's so nice to see that it is Spring somewhere. I bet that it feel good to get out there and work that soil.
~ Patti ~

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#643

Post: # 64872Unread post GoDawgs
Mon Mar 07, 2022 11:48 am

Yesterday Pickles got it in gear and did the first mowing of the year. The spring "lawn lettuce", mainly henbit and chickweed, were getting to the frowsy looking state. Before:

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And after:

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It's really dry around here and we need rain. None until maybe Wednesday. I've had to keep the newly planted seeds moist but it's paid off. The radishes and turnips were up yesterday. Today the potatoes are poking up; two are visible and then there are some evenly spaced humps of pushed up leaves. No sign of the peas yet.

I pulled four more leeks this morning to see how they're coming along and they're much nicer than the first ones I pulled on Feb 18th. These are headed for a leek, mushroom and potato gratin.

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I'm trying to get a handle on how long they can grow and how big they'll get before they bolt, at which point the quality will go south. Maybe this coming fall I will try another variety that gets bigger. And I'll plant them in a deeper trench so that they make a longer white part.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#644

Post: # 64996Unread post GoDawgs
Wed Mar 09, 2022 12:05 pm

We've had rain off and on all morning, 6/10" so far. There's more to come, says the radar and a tornado watch until later this afternoon.

It's the kind of morning that called for an indoor project. After looking at how many tomatoes I need to start on Saturday and then looking at the light shelves, it was evident that I needed to put the third light shelf into play. I haven't had to use that in a long time. Since other things were temporarily "stored" on it, those had to either go or be moved elsewhere. Then the two light fixtures over that shelf were cruddy from stuff falling on them from the two shelves above them. After testing to make sure they still work (they do) I removed them and gave them a thorough cleaning.

The extra shelf is ready and the tomato cups are all labelled. Ready to go for starting tomatoes Saturday. From my spreadsheet, one each of:

Tomato, Amana Orange (20) RL, indet, 80-90 days
Tomato, Aunt Ginny's Purple (19) PL. indet, mid
Tomato, Bella Rosa (19) RL det. 75 days
Tomato, Brandywine (Suddith) (19)PL indet late
Tomato, Costoluto Genovese (21) RL, indet 70 days
Tomato, Creole Original (18) RL indet. 78 days
Tomato, Ernie's Plump (21) RL, indet 60-80 days
Tomato, Estler's Mort. Lifter (21)RL, inet, 85-90 days
Tomato, Fish Lake Oxheart (19)RL, indet 75-85 days
Tomato, Gardener's Sweetheart (21)indet 70 days
Tomato, German Johnson, (16) RL indet 75 days
Tomato, Homestead (17) det. 80 days
Tomato, Honey Drop (20) RL, indet, 70 days
Tomato, Kosovo (18) RL, indet, 75-85 days
Tomato, Purple Russian (20) RL indet 76 days
Tomato, Rebel Yell (17) PL indet. 85 days
Tomato, Rio Grande (19) paste, RL det. ,80 days
Tomato, SOTW (20) lg pink, PL indet.,105 days
Tomato, Swoon (19) indet, PL, heart, mid
Tomato, Wisconsin 55 (21) RL, indet 80 days
Tomato, dwf, Adelaide Festival (21) RR, indet, 80 days
Tomato, dwf, EM-Champion (21) RL, det, 70 days
Tomato, dwf, Pink Passion (21) RR, det 65 days
Tomato, dwf, Rosella Crimson (15) RR, indet, 78 days
Tomato, dwf, Rosella Purple (321)RL, indet, 60-70 days
Tomato, dwf, Sleeping Lady (21) RL indet 60 days
Tomato, dwf, Sweet Scarlet (21) PL, indet, 75 days

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#645

Post: # 65289Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Mar 13, 2022 11:07 am

Well, it's not a bitter northern winter but after a spate of spring weather, a 24 degree low down here is enough to damage young and recent transplants. That's what we had this morning. Yesterday we had 15-20 mph winds all day with frequent gusts of 30-35 as a cold front moved through. 5th Gear and I waited until late afternoon to go out and cover things, hoping the wind would lay down a little and it did.

We decided to add more leaf mulch around the plants, cover them with three gallon nursery pots nestled down into the leaves and cover it all with old bed sheets folded in half lengthwise to provide a double thickness. They were anchored down with bricks. The peas and potatoes that were just starting to poke up got more leaves dumped on them. The leaves were wet from rain the day before so they stayed in place. I didn't cover the carrots, figuring since they were underground they'd be OK. As it turned out the tops came through with not a trace of damage.

These are the covered broccoli plants.

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Baby cabbages and kale got their covers.

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The leeks did just fine uncovered. The just-popped up radishes had wire hoops over them to support an old mattress cover. I'm glad I save things like this. They come in handy at times!

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The onions look rather droopy but they should be fine. The little scallions that were set out just about 10 days ago were OK too, better than the ready scallions.

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The garlic looks a little more droopy than it was but is basically OK.

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I'm wondering how much damage there was to the peach crop here in Georgia and across the river in South Carolina. If those trees were in bloom as much as the two here, they're toast. The Chinese Fringe (Loropetalum)here is now full of hanging frosted blooms which will drop but the tree-sized plant will put out a whole new set. You almost can't kill a Loro!

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#646

Post: # 65461Unread post GoDawgs
Tue Mar 15, 2022 6:17 pm

Here they come! Started on the 11th, the first tomatoes have popped up today. I'm glad I rearranged the shelves earlier today. 17 up, 12 to go.

Some stuff got booted out to the porch for hardening off. That needed to happen anyway. Pickles potted up her Chinese celery this afternoon, five white in one window box and five pink in another. They're out on the porch too. I'll transplant my Tango celery and parsley in other window boxes in a couple of days.

This afternoon I cut all the foliage off all of the cold burned onions and baby scallions. If the scallions don't make it I have another round ready to plant. If the onions don't make it they'll get used as scallions.

Pickles hung up two hummingbird feeders this afternoon as the hummers usually show up on the 20th or 21st every year. A check of the migration map shows them in Jacksonville and Tallahassee so far with one stray up in Myrtle Beach. It must have gone to Spring Break. Been there, did that many moons ago. Good memories. ;)

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#647

Post: # 65559Unread post GoDawgs
Thu Mar 17, 2022 11:26 am

The two tables on the front porch are starting to fill up. On the first table are a few cabbage and kohlrabi plants ready to go out tomorrow. The lettuce will be made into a salad tomorrow. I don't usually grow lettuce but someone gave me some seed so I thought I should. It never got transplanted so salad it is. There is mint for mojitos behind the kohlrabis and that big Mohamed (?) micro. Still no sign of buds. The hummer feeder is up. The first ones usually arrive around Mar 20-21.

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This is the second table, filling up.

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In front of the garlic bulbils is the Chinese White celery. Pickles just planted out that celery two days ago. It is quite different from the regular celery, 'Tango'.

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Next to the White is a 6-pack of Tango celery and one of parsley, both of which will go into window boxes tomorrow. This is the first time I've grown celery so I'm happy the plants look good. I chose Tango because it had the shortest DTM (I figured that would be good in this warm area) and it is self-blanching (one less thing to do).

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Then at the end is the Tuscan Blue rosemary which is hiding a window box of parsley that was planted last June. I've been cutting on it ever since but it will be going to seed this spring and the new will replace it.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#648

Post: # 65674Unread post MissS
Fri Mar 18, 2022 2:54 pm

It sure looks like you are off to a great start.
~ Patti ~

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#649

Post: # 65710Unread post GoDawgs
Fri Mar 18, 2022 8:54 pm

Thanks, Patti. Sometimes it seems like two steps forward, one step back. We've all been there and done that. Today I see the Wando peas still aren't up very much. That's like 144 row feet. Although I covered them with leaves against the recent freeze I think I lost some. We had a tad over a half inch of rain today and I will give them about two more days to come up and if there's no progress I'll have to reseed.

The Cascadia snaps and the Little Purple Snowpeas are up just fine. I'm beginning to wonder if it's the Wando seed but it's just two years old and I've successfully planted pea seed that was that and older. We'll see.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#650

Post: # 65764Unread post GoDawgs
Sat Mar 19, 2022 4:32 pm

The first 9' of turnips were sown on Feb 21 and yesterday I sowed the other 9' as I'm trying to avoid having a lot of turnips at once. However I think the first seedlings got toasted by the recent freeze since I forgot to cover them. Sooooo, in two weeks I'll have to resow.

I also planted out another 5' of Evergreen scallions. There's another round of seedlings that will be ready to go out in about 4 weeks.

In the afternoon we got another 0.6" of rain and I'm hoping that more peas will pop because of it. If not, there will be some re-sowing to do. The garden hasn't had such a problematic start in a long time.

Today I started four small sweet potatoes for growing slips. These are 'Jewel', a nematode resistant variety that pICKLES found in 2016 at a Publix supermarket. She bought one and we've been using its decendants every year since then!

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Planting them in a window box has worked very well. This year I used a 50/50 mix of used tomato potting soil from last year and some fresh regular Miracle Grow potting soil. The potatoes were set in about 3" below the final soil level and then covered.

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They'll stay indoors by a window until the vines start poking up. Then, weather permitting, they'll go out onto the porch to do their thing. I'm thinking about an April29th plant out

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This method had worked really well for me, much better than the old "potato in a jar of water" method and also produces more slips at once. I'm just planting 11 hills but when I've pulled the slips I let the potatoes make more and give them away.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#651

Post: # 65799Unread post Danny
Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:31 pm

I sure do envy your room there and the garden stuff all looks great. Doing it right there, dawg. Still so dry over here, but you have the green looking so fresh and springy.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#652

Post: # 65866Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Mar 20, 2022 6:14 pm

This afternoon I got the parsley transplanted to a window box. It will eventually replace the box of last year's parsley that will be going to seed this May. The old is in a box behind and to the left of the new.

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I also planted the 6-pack of 'Tango' celery into the garden. I've never grown celery before so we'll see! At least the starter plants came out nice. There wasn't a designated spot in the garden for it so it went in the middle of a bed that has kohlrabi and cabbage down one side and eventually turnips down the other side.

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I have some peas soaking for planting skips in the pea rows tomorrow. It's not the right moon day but oh well. They've got to get into the ground or finish in hotter weather.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#653

Post: # 65874Unread post pepperhead212
Sun Mar 20, 2022 8:05 pm

Something you might be interested in, @GoDawgs - my experience growing flatleaf parsley in my old windowsill boxes.

I transplanted 3 plants in a 28" box (pretty much the same width and depth as now). After just a little over a month (about 6 weeks old when transplanted), those things were huge, and regenerating themselves as fast as I cut stems from them. All of a sudden, all three were wilted. I'd never heard of a disease attacking parsley, so I wondered what could it be? Then, I realized the soil was dry! Duh!! But, they had all been watered the evening before, and everything else was very moist. I watered it, until it was totally soaked, and dripping, and the next afternoon they were dry again! Mind you, it's not even that hot yet, maybe early June, and parsley normally never wilted in my herb bed, even when dried out some. So I took the box onto a table, and when I tried to remove the plants, they were totally rootbound, in that short time! Solid roots! Chives and garlic chives do this too, but only by the end of the season, and they never wilt. The flatleaf also gets overgrown in my hydroponics. I tried several varieties of flatleaf, including one that said it was for container growing, but it did the same thing. In the Jr Earthboxes it wasn't much better, so I just plant that in the herb bed, and regular curly parsley doesn't do this in the boxes, or in the hydroponics. I prefer flatleaf, but I grow one of these on the deck, for convenience, as well as in hydro, for the off season.

If you grew some flatleaf in a box, and it didn't do this, I'd love to know the variety!
Woodbury, NJ zone 7a/7b

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#654

Post: # 65917Unread post GoDawgs
Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:33 pm

@pepperhead212 , my parsley does the same thing and after a while needs daily watering as do the two pots of mint. I do the
Gigante D'Italia flat leaf.

If you look at that parsley in the back box it's got really small leaves and that tells me it's ready to bolt. But it probably won't until the butterflies have come, laid their eggs and the caterpillars munch it down to the crowns. Since I don't cover them, the caterpillars will hit the new box too but they'll regenerate from the crown and grow back fast. It happens every year.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#655

Post: # 66356Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:23 am

Windy, windy, windy! Today will be the third straight day of it, gusting to 25mph again. It's been starting around 10-11:00 until a bit after sunset. They had forecasted a low of 38 for this morning and it was so I'm thankful it wasn't another freeze because any protection I could have put out might have been blown away! Warm weather is coming with some 80's around the corner.

On Friday Pickles and I rescued six nice heavy pallets from the to-be-burned pile where I used to work. They will replace some old ones in the line of pallets the tomato buckets sit on. We'll go get more tomorrow. We were also able to load up on those 8'x1"x1" sticks that are used to help stack plants in semi trucks. I use them for a ton of things but mainly for plant stakes and tied to t-posts so I can hang trellis fencing from them. Because of the nematodes in the soil, any plant stakes get tossed at the end of the season so they don't spread that mess. There's now a year's worth on hand.

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Things in the garden are doing well. The resown turnips are popping up and the celery transplants look good:

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One of the fall "toys" was 'Gigant Winter' kohlrabi, supposed to get huge but stay tender and not get woody. I just planted four for fun and here's the largest. It's about 8" tall and 6" across at the widest point. I think I'll pull it this week and see what the quality is like. Maybe shred some for slaw and steam some slices or chunks.

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I pulled five more King Sieg leeks yesterday and they'll go into a recipe today. They have really done well and are my first success with them. They sure beat the pathetic leeks at local groceries which have maybe an inch or wo of white on them. A waste of money. These really have a mess of roots and explains why they should be planted 4-6" apart. Next year I'll plant them in an even deeper trench to backfill for a longer white part. Two pics; fresh pulled and cleaned up:

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Nothing going on in the garden today due to the wind. More March Madness to watch.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#656

Post: # 66553Unread post GoDawgs
Tue Mar 29, 2022 12:55 pm

This morning several shoots have popped up from the sweet potatoes I planted in the planter box on 3/19.

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I started germination tests on the green pea seed as they've come up pretty spotty and I've resown. It could be the seed. It was last year's and should still be good. Six days after starting them in the wet napkin there are only three of 20 up. Hmmmm.....

A few months ago I ran across an article about pigeon peas. I want to try a few plants set out in various locations around the property and just let them fend for themselves once they get established. I could only find one seed source but wasn't willing to pay $5 postage for $2.50 worth of seed. None of the usual groceries carried them so since they're a thing in Caribbean areas I tried a Caribbean grocery. They had a 12 oz bag for $1.75. Bingo!

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However, the first germination test I ran showed a 20% success rate. I ran a second one and so far after six days, six of 20 seeds are starting to germinate so I potted those up today, two seeds per pot.

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They're supposed to be pretty drought tolerant should be able to take the summer heat so I guess we'll see how this experiment goes.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#657

Post: # 66724Unread post GoDawgs
Fri Apr 01, 2022 8:41 am

This morning pigeon peas have popped up in two of the three pots and are under the lights. I guess I can cook the rest of that bag. Or maybe wait until I'm sure I have viable plants. Yeah, I'll wait. ;)

The sweet potatoes just broke through the soil three days ago and they're moving fast! Somehow I think there might be way enough slips come April 29 planting day. :o

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Meanwhile I collected seeds yesterday from both the Monteka and Pigmy micros and they'll be fermenting 2-3 days. It looks like Baby may be the next micro to produce its first tomato.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#658

Post: # 66872Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Apr 03, 2022 11:28 am

Yesterday was the first day that the tomatoes went out on the front porch to start hardening off. I brought them in last night as ti was getting down to 45. But this morning , out they went for another day of play in the sun.


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The light shelves look rather empty with just peppers, eggplants and a few younger, smaller tomatoes on them.


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Quite a difference between the old parsley (back) and new parsley (front). The old is getting pretty ferny looking and ready to bolt. The new is ready for kitchen duty. :)


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Re: The Dawg Patch

#659

Post: # 67347Unread post GoDawgs
Sat Apr 09, 2022 10:20 am

One more cold snap! There's even a skiff of snow up in north Georgia and western NC. Last night the weather folks were talking about 30's for this morning and for 32 tomorrow morning. Just to be on the safe side I brought the tomato, eggplant and pepper plants inside last night and will do that again tonight. The low this morning was 35. They went back outside a little while ago for the day. The wind will be up again today 15-20 with gusts 25-30 but that's out of the west and the plants will be on the east side of the house and not bothered by stiff breezes.

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The pigeon peas are up. The few articles I've read say they will get to be shrub-like and maybe 6-12' tall. They do look different, not very pea-like and the stem is way more stiff than regular garden peas.

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Because of the weather we've delayed picking up the pickup load of potting mix for the tomato buckets until Tuesday. Then tomato planting can begin! I think I'll delay planting the peppers a while longer and eggplant even longer to make sure the weather warms up and settles.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#660

Post: # 67551Unread post goodloe
Mon Apr 11, 2022 7:52 pm

Lookin' good, Ms. Dawg! I've got peppers and tomatoes sittin' on the launch pad, ready to plant out, but April has been terribly screwy these last few years...I think I'm gonna wait til almost May...
I have 2 seasons: Tomato and pepper season, and BAMA Football season!

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