The Dawg Patch

[GoDawgs]

It's been a long day. Pickles had a day surgery procedure this morning to try and get some relief from some bad sciatica. We got up at 4:15am to leave at 5am and be at the hospital before 6:00. She came back from the OR 25 minutes after they took her in. Quick! We were home by 8:30. I fell asleep in the recliner for a while and fell asleep again this afternoon.

Sooooooo, I weed whacked the watermelon patch area late this afternoon and scalped it down to soil. GOTTA get more cardboard SOON as the two melons are starting to run!! And don'tcha know I didn't take all the pics I was going to take, like the watermelon bed. I swear, if I don't make a list of everything these days I forget half of it. I think I lost my brains somewhere in the garden shed.

This bed was one of the two that had the pea plants and trellises recently removed. I planted zinnias in there and two Lightning Rod plants in the middle. There's room for more zinnias once I grow more. Ran out of light shelf room at the time. Behind that bed is the Bodacious corn and the fall planted kale which is ready for another cutting once I water it tomorrow and it recuperates.



The spaghetti squash got planted in the middle of the right hand stretch of trellis so it will have plenty of room to climb. The other half of the trellis has Crawford pole beans coming up.



Meanwhile the Orangeglo watermelon has started to run.



All of a sudden the Provider beans have caught up to the Jumbos and Blue Lakes in the other bean bed and are starting to go above the second level support string. To the right is a trellis with Red Ripper peas that will readily climb it and to the right of those are four rows on Silver Queen corn.



And finally a pic of what the two shallot bulbs I bought this spring have made so far. They were stuck in a corner of what used to be the leek bed and now it has sweet potatoes in it. If the shallots taste decent I'll buy more next spring. After that I should have enough grown and saved to be able to plant a recurring supply of my own.



There are scallions ready to be planted somewhere so I think I'll plant them down the side of this sweet potato bed and then mulch everything if and when we get some forecasted rain this weekend. Well, regardless, they're going in there anyway! Gettin' tired of weather games. :rolleyes:

[PlainJane]

Hope you get some rest and Pickles finds relief. No fun living with pain.

Do you plan to put cardboard under your watermelon to keep fruits off the soil? I’m trying to decide what to do about my little honeydews.

[GoDawgs]

Yeah, there's cardboard under the leaves to keep the weeds down. I need to go to the local supermarket and get two more buggies of collapsed cartons to do that whole square area.

And thanks for asking about Pickles. She reports that pain in the bum leg is greatly reduced. YAY! In fact, she's out on the riding mower as we speak! As for myself, I am noticing improvement with the bronchitis. A lot less coughing and junk coughed up buy will still need to sleep in the recliner a few more nights.

[GoDawgs]

I did get the watermelon patch scalped down yesterday and ready for mulching with cardboard and leaves. Those are two Charleston Gray plants in the ground. A Homemade Pickles cuke in the bucket by the trellis and Jerusalem artichokes behind the trellis. That's the old dead pigeon pea in the left corner, still needing to be yanked out. When it happens I'm going to set four sesames plants across that end. One of this year's toys.



The Silver Queen got fertilized and hilled this morning. The empty stretch was caused by cutworms last week. Never had them in corn before but I caught one of the little buggers at work. Got out the bT and sprayed the corn and all remaining brassicas.



Carrots down the sides are almost ready. National Pickling cukes down the middle are ready to topple over and run. There's a sample of Jimenez (MMMM) pole beans up under the end trellis.



The garlic is drying up and will probably be ready for pulling in maybe 10-14 days. Meanwhile there's one each of Smooth Criminal and Straightneck yellow squash plants being trained to stakes with seeds of each coming up next to the stakes. There will be a total of four staggered plantings of each as I'm hoping to avoid an avalanche!



This is a perennial bed to be refurbished. On the left end are purple coneflowers and I'll add some Indian Summer Rudbeckia I'm growing. The two dead blueberries on the other end are coming out and Hello Yellow Milkweed will be planted, hopefully for Monarch butterflies.



Yep, things are coming and going but isn't that the way it is with everything?

[GoDawgs]

It's cloudy out there, 73 and a beautiful breeze. That makes working out in the garden a real pleasure. Rain's coming in tomorrow but that's ok. It's been a long while since we had a good one. I spent the morning mulching stuff.

The late brassica bed is still hanging in there. The broccoli is long gone but there are a couple of cabbages and two collard plants on the near side, four kohlrabi and two kales on the far side, all getting ready. In fact, the kohlrabi need to come out now.



The cukes are about 12" tall and ready to lay down and run so I needed to add mulch before they did that. Then I added stakes to show me where the stems go into the ground so I know where to water them. The question remains...will the cukes overrun the carrots? We'll see!



Speaking of the carrots, I pulled one each of the three varieties to see where they were. Left to right are Bolero (always ready to party), Danvers 126 and Envy. They're getting there. The Bolero is 6" and the Envy is about 8". They all need to thicken up a bit but I think they'll get there before the cukes try to lord it over everybody.



The first straightneck squash in making! As I did last year, I'm tying it to a stake instead of letting it run on the ground. It seemed to produce better. At the other end of the bed there's a new one called Smooth Criminal and it's putting on a fruit too. I bought that one because the description said it's almost spineless and grows vertically but it looks like it might benefit from some tying too.



My last task of the morning was to pull one of the garlics to see where they are. I'd been withholding water for two weeks thinking they were close to harvest. The leaves are starting to brown a little so I just had to look.





Nice size but I can't feel a lot of clove formation yet; some but it could use more. They'll get rained on this weekend and then maybe they'll be ready in another two weeks.

[PlainJane]

@GoDawgs do you have issues with pickle worm getting after your cukes?

[Rockporter]

Looking real good out there.

[GoDawgs]

@GoDawgs do you have issues with pickle worm getting after your cukes?

Oh yeah! We never had any until about four years ago. After reading about them back then it seems they've always migrated up from Florida mainly along the coast and somewhat inland all the way north to Connecticut but I guess they decided to move farther inland. It is recommended to cover cuke and squash plants before sunset and then uncover in the morning (a night flying moth) but I don't have the patience to do that. They're not here that long but maybe two waves a season when they are here.

I think they arrive in late June-early July? Could you give me a shout when you first notice them on your cukes? Early alarm!

[PlainJane]

Will do.
I’m late starting my cukes what with all the garden construction and am now a combination of pessimistic and paranoid lol.
However I have a lot of seed so what the heck.

[GoDawgs]

Today was Tater Day #2. Last week it was 16 lbs of Yukon Golds, today it's 21 lbs of Kennebecs. That's plenty for two people especially since there's no cellar here in which to store them. We'll probably end up canning a lot. In the meantime, I can see some NY salt potatoes in my near future!





This was one of the pea beds, now doing flower duty. The upper half has zinnias, two Lightning Rod plants in the middle, and the near end has the Jewels of Opar with Blue Victory/Victory Blue Salvia in the middle of those. @Seven Bends, these are your blue salvias.



The Jewels of Opar on the corners with the Blue salvia in the middle:



Then I got the four sesame plants set out at the end of the watermelon bed. I need to get these mulched.



@rxkeith, your carrot mix is doing well here in Georgia! Can't wait to see what all is in there.



And this afternoon I spied some "toothpicks" on the Jumbo and Blue Lake beans. It won't be long until it's bean picking time! And it's a good thing, too. We just used the last jar of canned beans. The beans didn't do well last year and it's a good thing we had a bumper crop the year before that were canned up. Can't wait for fresh beans! And making Dilly Bean pickles and three bean salad.

[GoDawgs]

It's June and things are moving right along. I've got my first Fat Frog micro tomatoes. I guess this is what they're supposed to look like since they're soft and fall right into my hand when I touch them.



The Crawford pole beans (new to me this year) are starting to climb and are up almost 3' on the trellis.



Meanwhile, over in the bush bean beds the first Jumbos (an MMMM variety) will be ready shortly. Maybe 7-10 days for them to get as big as the several I grew last year to bulk up the seed count.




There are 18' of Jumbos and 18' of Blue Lakes in that bed with 36' of providers in the second bed. The BLs and Providers are blooming and maybe setting a few "toothpicks" here and there. Can't wait for the taste of those first fresh green beans!

This morning I took the weed whacker between the beds and will mow the wide middle aisle and outer perimeter later this afternoon.

Something nipped back the sesame plants I set out a couple days ago. Grrrrrr! They got three of the four. One has only 3" of stem left. Yesterday I set tomato cages over them and tied the cages to stakes in case it was deer. Well, this morning one of the munched plants is a bit shorter again. I'm going to blame the dastardly squirrels since this morning I found a real young one messing around about 5' from the sesame plants. I'm going to put netting around the cages later today. Meanwhile I will start a few more plants just in case the others don't make it.

[PlainJane]

How did the Fat Frog micros taste?

[GoDawgs]

How did the Fat Frog micros taste?

Rather non-descript. I honestly think all of the micros would taste better if grown outside rather than under lights. I just potted up the next four to their forever pots and sat them outside. Those would be Chibbiko, Dark Stripe, Hahm's Gelbes and House. They're for the MMMM. I've done all but Dark Stripe before so I'm looking forward to seeing what that one's like and also the others now that they're outdoors.

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday I posted a photo of beans coming along and was figuring a few days more until they're ready. Well, I hadn't looked underneath near the bottoms of the plants. Lo AND behold I found and picked 10 oz of Jumbo bush beans! Thank you to whoever contributed them to the '21-'22 MMMM. I planted them in a bucket last fall to make enough seeds for an 18' row.



And the first Smooth Criminal squash got picked too. That little one was the very first to form and just won't get any bigger. Since it was just getting a deeper color I went ahead and pulled it. Oh boy, fresh beans and squash with lunch tomorrow!

I gotta do a search and find out what's behind that squash's name.

[MissS]

That's a very nice first harvest especially since it was unexpected.

[GoDawgs]

Rain! We got 1/2" late yesterday afternoon right after I set up the sprinkler for use today. First rain in 10 days. In the process the sprinkler came apart due to a broken part that keeps the whole thing together. I repurposed the wire from one of those little flags they mark cable lines with and wired the thing back together so all is well again.

Two main tasks for today. This morning is Jumbo bean picking #2. I also got a load of flattened liquor cartons yesterday so those will be laid down in the watermelon patch today and covered with leaves. I'll probably have to scalp the ground again with the weed whacker before doing that.

[GoDawgs]

So two main tasks for today turned into three. Funny how that happens. The first was getting that cardboard down on the watermelon bed and adding leaves on top while it was cool this morning. The grass did need to be scalped and I had to have long pants on for that so yay for cool air! This is the bed being cardboarded:



Then I dumped leaves over it all. I used all the cardboard I had so will have to wait a week for my source to get in another delivery. I want to expand the mulched area back to the trellis and to the sides of the area.



See that dark strip along the bottom of the mulched area? I decided to start shoveling up leaves at the other end of the leaf pile and 3" down I ran into this really nice stuff. Actual compost! Big fat worms in it too! So I decided to leave that stuff alone and save it for potting up the tomato replacements. Some did get mixed in with the leaves though. Neither Pickles nor I can remember if part of the leaf pile (collected fall '21, used spring and fall '22) was left over, overwintered and composted or if we used it all up last summer before the new was collected this past fall.

A good rain came through this afternoon and dumped 0.8" on us so the watermelon mulch is nicely soggy/heavy and I won't have to wet it down this evening.

The bad news was that three of the four 8" tall sesame plants I set out got munched hard by something. The good news is that there is new foliage coming from the leaf axils so I won't seed any new plants. Here's the cropped 2" and the 4" plants:





Project #2 was to bake more English muffin bread. Done but it still has to be sliced and wrapped for the freezer.

Project #3 was to grind up that 10 lb pork butt I found at Sam's yesterday and cubed up last night. Done except for wrapping it up in one pound packs for the freezer.

I think it's time for a cold one!

[PlainJane]

Nice days labor! Cheers!

[GoDawgs]

Today there were more firsties in the garden; one regular (non-hybrid) straightneck squash, some nice 'Envy' carrots and just shy of two pounds of Provider green beans.



The first beans picked are usually the most pretty and the straightest so Pickles is going to pickle some dilly beans from the Providers. The squash and carrots are for kitchen use.

[GoDawgs]

It was garlic digging day this morning! They were planted Oct 15th. There are Russian Inferno and Siberians on the near side and Lorz Italian on the far side, yellow squash down the middle. Before digging:



The bed after garlic harvest and planting more squash, one more each regular straightneck and one more Smooth Criminal. The goal is getting a steady flow of squash instead of avalanches if the borers allow!



I took the garlic up to the pole shed and spread it out on screens to start drying. Haven't even counted the bulbs yet but will do that tomorrow when I tidy them up a bit. Pics afterwards.

At the right end of the bed is a patch of Siberian bulbils, Year 2 of growing this batch. They're not quite ready to pull but it will be interesting to see how big they are for replanting this October. A long but cheap way to increase planting stock!

This is a clump of six Siberians that grew from one clove planted. That was probably a large clove that had barely started to divide and looked just like a nice size clove to plant. If the small ones haven't divided I'll replant them this fall. Or just toss them in a jar of pickles.



I also got the cow peas from Native Seeds planted this morning. Did just 10', half of that on each side of a partially open bed.




Pickles did the first canning of the season today. Ten pints of green beans and four pints of dilly beans. Tomorrow is bean picking day again.