The Dawg Patch

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GoDawgs
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Re: The Dawg Patch

#761

Post: # 78586Unread post GoDawgs
Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:45 am

Yesterday I got the rest of another bed forked and planted some daikon radishes along the side. I've already planted some beets along 1/3 of the other side in yet another effort to grow them. This time I soaked the seed overnight. The other two thirds of that side will be sown at different times as I'm trying to find a temperature sweet spot in an effort to get beets to grow. This is... what? the umptieth time trying? It's gotten to be a standing spring and fall joke between Pickles and me.

I got some Blue Ribbon snap bean seeds in the MMMM so I decided to put them one of the buckets of soil remaining after its tomato was pulled. They're flowering so I'll let them grow for seed saving.

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Yesterday I also planted French Breakfast radishes in two other former tomato buckets. Might as well not let those buckets stand idle!

The Blue Lake beans were pushing up on the netting so I put extenders on the hoop anchors to raise up the hoops and netting. That meant the netting fell short on the sides and ends, tempting the deer to munch. NOT again! I attached the last two bed-end trellis panels one to each end to close those off. Then I had two rolled up fencing strips about 2' wide from a different project and they perfectly closed that gap between netting and bed edge down the sides. You make it up as you go along. ;)

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Yesterday I picked watermelon #3. It was another Stone Mountain, a 18.5 pounder and just as seedy as the last one. But it's cut up, de-seeded and chilled in the refrigerator. In the photo this melon is the round green one at the bottom. The cages are anti-theft protection against the thieving coyotes who love ripe melons. There was a pile of coyote scat near the watermelon patch a few days ago so the cages were immediately deployed!

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Tomorrow morning I will have the cataract in the other eye removed so I might not get in here as the screen will be way too bright to look at. With those real dark sunglasses they give you I can't see the keys right either. LOL! So today I just need to turn the soil along another pre-forked bed as I'll be planting the first row of carrots on Monday.

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PlainJane
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Re: The Dawg Patch

#762

Post: # 78590Unread post PlainJane
Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:57 am

Good luck tomorrow and we’ll be looking for you back online soon!
“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
- Robert A. Heinlein

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#763

Post: # 79316Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Sep 25, 2022 8:03 am

I got some new-to-me bush bean seed in the MMMM and decided to grow each kind in a pot to make a larger amount of seed for spring planting. They are Blue Ribbon and Jumbo. I'm hoping the cooler temps will keep the bean beetles from ruining the pods of fresh beans and later the seeds once they dry down. That's what makes it hard to collect legume seed here.

Blue Ribbon, ready at about 5" long:

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Jumbo, ready at about 6" long:

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Yesterday I reforked the leek bed and made deep furrows for planting leeks today. I'm hoping that by planting more deeply I'll have leeks with a longer white part. This is the leek bed with adjacent radish/rutabaga bed and two brassica beds all hooped up against the deer.

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I made the furrows using an old tiller furrow attachment welded to a metal handle. It has a nut and bolt allowing me to change the angle of the furrow part. I love repurposing stuff. :)

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#764

Post: # 79327Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Sep 25, 2022 10:27 am

This year for the first time, instead of dumping the buckets of old tomato soil into the garden beds, I've been trying out growing other late stuff in them. Well, duh. They're just sitting there so might as well put them to good use, right?

This is 'Bushy' cucumber (45-50 days), something new to me but something I bought in the spring just for fall trial. The Pinetree catalog says, "Originally from Russia, this is one of our shortest maturing cucumbers. Ideal for pickling or fresh eating, this variety has the ability to produce a bumper crop, even in cooler climates. Vines grow to 5 feet". Sounds fallish to me! This one was sown on Aug 18. Within the past two days after having just two flowers, it has bust out all of a sudden with a bunch of them!

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Having never grown radishes in a bucket before and in keeping with the bucket theme, I sowed some French Breakfast and D'Avignon on Sep 14.

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Then there's Pizza Pepper from some seed given to me. I can't find much about this one online. It varies in heat with the green being a bit more hot than when red. I think it's just a tad milder than a regular jalapeno. Seed will be saved.

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And finally, this is a 'Daniel Burson' that I got in the MMMM. It's gotten a lot of positive comments in here so when it was time to start another tomato for fall, I started this one from seed on June 1 and planted out Jul 5. It didn't put out many flower at all until it got tall and now it's been setting them near the top of the 7' plant! I hope they ripen before frost. Daniel will get another go in the spring.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#765

Post: # 79332Unread post PlainJane
Sun Sep 25, 2022 11:32 am

Those DBs look pretty big so they should color break before you have frost.
They are so good!
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Re: The Dawg Patch

#766

Post: # 79333Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Sep 25, 2022 12:25 pm

PlainJane wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 11:32 am Those DBs look pretty big so they should color break before you have frost.
They are so good!
Thanks for that! I'll keep watch on them.

After I planted it out it grew really fast and compared to the other tomatoes it seemed to have a pretty open structure. Would you know if that's typical?

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#767

Post: # 79335Unread post PlainJane
Sun Sep 25, 2022 12:35 pm

Yes, they are not as dense as some other tomatoes, especially regular leaf types. Yours have normal growth as far as I can tell.
“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
- Robert A. Heinlein

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#768

Post: # 79578Unread post MissS
Fri Sep 30, 2022 6:33 am

Daniel Burson is usually a 5' tall plant and has a normal tomato structure with round tomatoes that have a belly buttons.
~ Patti ~

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#769

Post: # 79952Unread post GoDawgs
Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:39 am

Yesterday I pulled out the remaining zinnia plants. They were basically done with frumpy looking flowers and I was tired of deadheading. There are just a few butterflies and I apologized as now they have no flowers at all to visit. However the asters are all budded up and a few are cracking color so it won't be long until they bloom. Every year it seems that different butterflies visit in the fall, ones I don't see in spring and summer.

The arugula and baby bok choy were planted in their window boxes on the porch. I like the arugula in salads and the bok choy goes into stir fries. Today I'll start another six pack of bok choy so they'll be ready when the others are gone. I didn't do that last year so am playing with the timing.

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Every year there are a few "toys" in the garden. This year one of Pickles' fall toys is celtuce, some kind of weird looking vegetable described as a "massive stem lettuce". Planting instructions call for an eight hour soaking of the seeds, placing them in a wet paper towel and refrigerating for 24 hours before planting. That's all been done so this morning I will start some in a six pack and also plant some directly in a 15 gallon pot of used tomato soil and see which does best.

https://www.rareseeds.com/green-mountain-winter-celtuce

This week the first scallions of the late July planting were pulled along with the first few pods of field peas and just a handful of the first Provider beans. The beans are finiishing late as nights are now in the upper 40's but days in the low 80's with no frost in sight. That's my bad for planting them in a bed that is now not as sunny as it was earlier in the year. Lesson learned and so noted for future reference!

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#770

Post: # 80427Unread post GoDawgs
Thu Oct 13, 2022 9:20 am

On October 7th the deer got up under the netting and munched four mature kale plants down to about 1". They must not have eaten down to the growth points because look how they're coming back! I'm amazed. This is three of them yesterday:

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Last evening we FINALLY got rain as a front came through. A wonderful 2.8" with the possibility of more today! It's the first rain since Sep 12th and the soil was dry as a powder house at least two shovel loads deep.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#771

Post: # 80761Unread post GoDawgs
Mon Oct 17, 2022 4:10 pm

It started out at 60 this morning, just cool enough to wear jeans and a light jacket but by lunch we were up to 83. Off came the jeans and on went the shorts and sleeveless T! The front comes in tonight and tomorrow's high will be 63. Quite a change.

Because we're now supposed to have three frosty mornings in a row Wed-Fri, I spent the morning playing with row covers in the garden. Using wire hoops stuck in the ground is frustrating because they want to keep popping out. So I got two boards and drilled holes at 18" intervals so I could try inserting the ends of the hoops in the holes. It worked pretty good. No popping out. It got set up in a partially germinated carrot row.

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After that I laid a light row cover over the hoops and used clothes pins to clip the fabric to the hoops. That's the shorter of the two beds. The long one behind is a bed of beans the deer didn't get due to netting.

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Then Pickles and I messed with the row of bucket stuff up by the house. Pickles dismantled the eggplant and the last tomato plant, saving the last few fruits of each. Then we stripped the pepper plants and pushed the remaining buckets closer to each other. That little cucumber is just loaded with baby cukes and the bucket with four Jumbo bush bean plants (MMMM sample) is loaded too but the pods haven't started drying down yet. Then I pounded in four t-posts on each side and topped them with old tennis balls to protect the cover. There were only six balls left so two plastic cups were called to duty.

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Finally we laid two old bed sheets over the works and I tied them to the posts. It will be enough to keep the frost off the plants. An illustration of one of my favorite garden phrases.... "You make it up as you go along".

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Actually I did a larger version of this set up years ago when we were going through some serious streaks of 100+ temps and the tomatoes had to be shaded or else be roasted right on the vines! It saved the day and I saved the tennis balls. You never know when saved stuff will come in handy again some day. ;)

Tomorrow we'll lay some sheets over the field pea bed. The posts and tennis balls are already in place, having supported deer netting earlier.
There are also two buckets of jalapenos and one of Blue Ribbon bush bean plants that will get covered as well. Easy peasy.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#772

Post: # 81162Unread post GoDawgs
Mon Oct 24, 2022 7:38 am

I got some seeds of 'Blue Ribbon' and 'Jumbo' bush beans in last year's MMMM. About five or six of each were planted in buckets to see how they turn out and for seed saving. They grew really well and now I've pulled the plants, cut away the leaves so they don't make a mess and they're hanging indoors to dry out of harm's way. There are also two eggplants, millet and Daniel Burson seeds drying on the lower shelf.

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This is 'Blue Ribbon'. It has a pretty purplish mottling:

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The 'Jumbo' really are! Big fat pods which, if I were picking them for eating, would have been picked a lot earlier!

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I never did cook any to do a flavor check as I wanted all the pods to go to seed so I'm going to trust what I've read about them tasting good. It will be a "trust but verify" thing next spring. :D

MMMM beans Wyatt, Nano Marconi and Roma II bushies still await trial and that will happen in buckets this coming spring. I didn't have room for them this year but there will be some garden rearranging this next time around and there will be an area just for testing stuff.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#773

Post: # 81254Unread post GoDawgs
Tue Oct 25, 2022 4:55 pm

Yesterday was clean up day in the upper part of the garden. All old plants were pulled and toted back to Mt. Brushmore. The peppers were done so were left to get hit with the frost. The beans in the bed next to them had been left uncovered last week so that the deer could finish them off. They did. Nothing but twigs left.

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The field peas in the background also hit the road. They had been covered with shade cloth but looked like they hadn't been covered at all. All the leaves had that dark green greasy look.

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No need any more for the anti-deer fortress!

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Today I dismantled the trellises, rolled them up, pulled the posts out and put everything away. At least when I put the posts in I finally remembered not to pound them in too far so they pulled out easy today after a little rocking back and forth. Ta-daaaaaaa! Clean garden! There are turnips and scallions down the sides of that netted bed on the far side and and the recently planted garlic is in the bed to its left. Out of view on the far right in the front is a bed with scallions on one side and onions on the other.

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This is the south side of the garden. Everything's gone except the new fall stuff.

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And this is the north side. The Provider beans down at the far end are just about done and will probably be pulled out at the end of the week.

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Everything in the fall garden is in so now it's just a matter of maintenance and maybe playing with a few window boxes of stuff on the porch. Time to chill before the catalogs start arriving next month and get the juices flowing all over again! :lol:

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#774

Post: # 81267Unread post rxkeith
Tue Oct 25, 2022 10:33 pm

those jumbo, and blue ribbon beans will be pleasing to the palate.
i have grown them several years now. repeats don't make it back in the garden
if i don't like them. try the kantare beans next year. the church members doug, and kate
that gave me seeds are pretty set on growing what they like, and does well for them. kantare is a
smaller green bean, bigger than a filet type bean, but not by much. prolific as all get out, early, and
good tasting. you should be able to save seeds from without much problem. year two in my garden.


keith

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#775

Post: # 81281Unread post GoDawgs
Wed Oct 26, 2022 6:30 am

I've mentioned playing with window boxes. Right now I have four going. Two of these are arugula for salads and baby bok choy for stir frys.

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Off camera are two boxes of parsley; one is the current batch I'm using and the other is the previous batch which is making seed for collection. I should have started another bok choy earlier to be ready when this one is done and will be doing that today.

The last tomatoes of the season have been picked before something happens to them. The socks I put over them to deter squirrel theft worked fine both for that and for protecting the tomatoes from the recent frost. That one tomato at the top of the photo was left uncovered and yep, it was stolen!

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So here are the last tomatoes of the year, four Fish Lake Oxhearts I grew for the first time this year. They're dense like a paste tomato and will be done again next year. I think rather than wait for these to ripen I'll make fried green tomatoes and be done with them until next year.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#776

Post: # 81283Unread post PlainJane
Wed Oct 26, 2022 6:45 am

Did your Daniel Bursons ever ripen @GoDawgs?
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Re: The Dawg Patch

#777

Post: # 81285Unread post GoDawgs
Wed Oct 26, 2022 7:13 am

Yes! We did get some and Pickles made some green salsa out of the others. The Bursons were so tasty. They have definitely earned a place on the grow list for next year!

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#778

Post: # 81588Unread post GoDawgs
Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:29 am

Last year I planted garlic on Oct 15th and they started coming up on the 25th. Since I planted on the same day again this year, I went out to check on the 25th and yep, the Russian Inferno and the Lorz Italian were starting to pop up. Two days ago the Siberian and the bulbils had joined the party too so we're off and running. There are 9' of both Siberian and Russian, 18' of Lorz Italian and 20 Siberian bulbils.

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The bulbils were about 3/8" when planted out last fall, about the size of the field pea in the photo. When I harvested them with the rest of the garlic this May they had grown to 3/4-7/8" wide and that's what I planted on the 15th. I wonder how much larger they'll get this year.

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Some daikon radish seed was sown on Sep 14, both the F1 hybrid I bought and also some I collected last year from the same variety. They're both starting to bulk up a little. Then I sowed more down the row on 10/15. They really do need 6" between plants as the foliage gets big and if it's too thick, aphids like to come around. I like to stagger these out because, yes, one can have too many big daikon at once!

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It looks like this fall won't be a real colorful one. Mainly brown and dark reds so far. No golden yellow hickory leaves yet to lighten things up.

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#779

Post: # 82134Unread post GoDawgs
Fri Nov 04, 2022 9:55 am

Yesterday we started to get out of slug mode. Pickles got the bagging attachment installed on the riding mower so that's ready to go collect leaves for next year's mulch pile. I got some stuff planted out, did some weeding, fertilizing, etc.

These are the two brassica beds. The closest one has four broccoli, six cabbage and three collards on the near side with eight more broccoli and four kale on the other side. The second bed has cauliflower on one side, cabbages on the other and kohlrabi on the far end.

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Speaking of broccoli, four of those broccoli in the middle on the other side are Green Magic, one I'm trying for the first time next to my usual Packman. It was planted before the Packman in an effort to stagger the finish and they are starting to form heads. The largest one is about 3" wide so far with 1" small buttons on the others.

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Those four kale were the ones munched just about to the ground by the deer so I had started four more as replacements. Well, it took a while but the munched ones have recovered nicely and so I will have to give away the four extras. There's no room for them and there's no way we can eat eight plants worth of kale. There's no one around who likes it so no one to give it away to. I'll give the plants to a friend who lives a bit away from here.

I did plant two more collard plants at the far end of that first bed to replace several that didn't recover from munching. But when I removed a brick that was holding down the netting on the end of the bed I found a pile of fire ants under it. They were also building around the corner along the side board. So before I could safely plant the collards the ants got the Death From Above treatment; one gallon jug of water with 1/4 cup dishwashing liquid mixed in. One jug full for each of the two hot spots. Mission accomplished.

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And finally, wonder of wonders.... beets! After many failures to grow something just about anybody can grow, I finally have a few plants growing. The first 4' sown 8/23 never came up. Too hot? These were sown on 9/13 and there's another 4' sown on 10/10 that have sprouted up only recently, hit or miss with skips. We'll see if these live!

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Re: The Dawg Patch

#780

Post: # 82138Unread post PlainJane
Fri Nov 04, 2022 10:04 am

Exciting to see your beets pretty far along; mine are only just up.
I will confess. I am not planting any kale this year. There are just so many other cool weather things I like better and have been giving it all away for years.
“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
- Robert A. Heinlein

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