Garden 2015

[EL34]

I picked 5 pounds of sugar snap peas yesterday
Put a bunch in the freezer and ate a bunch 

[bakerlite]

Good work man!


The January storms decimated my poly tunnels so i don't think we'll be seeing as much this year :(

[EL34]

Having a pretty good Sugar snap pea crop this year
They are gonna be done and checking out soon because of the heat

The Broccoli is still going strong

The other stuff that is just getting going is Eggplant, Sweet Peppers, Tomatoes, Cucumbers and green beans
The stuff in front of the peas takes over after the peas die

The tomatoes get over 12 feet tall
They go up the 9 foot trellis and come back down

[tubenit]

Doug,

Your veggie garden looks fantastic!  I've got two grape tomato plants going and they are chest high already & then one full size tomato plant so I can cook some fried green tomatoes.

Jeff

[EL34]

Awesome.


I am doing battle with green worms eating my broccoli plants
They can eat all the leaves in a couple days if you let them


I used high pressure water from the hose sprayer to blast them off the plants but it has been raining a bunch and the beds were getting too much water
I switched to using the leaf blower set in low to blow them off the plants
That works even better than water 

[Refugee]

Here on the other side of the water most of our problems have been with slugs.
In the news they say we are being invaded with foot long Spanish slugs but that is what the newspapers say.
They are just under 2 inches long and very narrow.
The evil things strip the outer off bean stalks when they are young.
We promote birds as they take worms and aphids to feed there young so a bit of research into the correct type of bird box will save you a lot of time and money.
Do not poison the slugs as these can be eradicated without getting slime on your hands and the birds clear up at dawn.
My weapon of war for dealing with them is a light saber and an old pair of industrial scissors. I just cut them in half and leave them out for the birds as the larger birds use them for baby food a few minutes after they have finished singing.
The birds that take green worms fly in flocks and just squawk but work hard at dealing with pests.
Our red currant bush has so much fruit that the branches are hitting the ground before we have harvested a single fruit. It is overloaded.
It is a late start for for all the other plants this year as it went too cold for a couple of weeks after they were planted out.
Ants are a problem too and there is no product sold that works unless you do a bodge. I use white spirit as used for cleaning paint brushes about a week before planting out and turn over the soil several times before planting. If we do not do this the ants remove all the soil from under the plants killing them. They can also dig under pathways and crack the concrete surface.

[EL34]

I have heard about the UK slug problem


I have very few garden pest here in the Mountains

[sluckey]

Snap beans already gone. Had a lot of rain just as they were maturing. Lot of loss due to rot. Crook neck squash are just about done. Cucumbers doing well but they really look weird this year, and I don't recall what seeds I used! Celebrity tomatoes and jalapenos are just now coming in. We should be pickin' butter beans by this weekend.

Here's today's pickins...

PS... I use cages for my cucumber vines to grow on. That long skinny cuke is 12" long! It was hiding in plain view!   

[EL34]

Nice crop Steve!

[PRR]

Starting to sprout here. Carrots and corn.

[EL34]

nice

[shooter]

slug problem

They are BAD in MI also, counted more than 50 in a 10X10 area.  No longer have ducks but they would slurp their weight in slugs!!!

[EL34]

Hmmm, not a slug in sight here


Hope they do not crawl south   

[Refugee]

I have chopped hundreds of those slugs in half but not as many as last year.
I had to tip almost a gallon of white spirit down about 6 or 7 ants nests in order to keep them from spreading pests onto my soft fruit.
We got over 25 pounds of black, red and white currants once we had the ants under control. We got no black currants last year due to ant damage by them spreading aphids.
I have not been able to find a commercial ant killer that actually works here in the UK.

[PRR]

We got a tomato!! Big as my thumb and nearly ripe.

Corn is as high as my eye, and lush. However it is in a pot, so really barely 4 feet high, and hasn't set any ears yet.

Crab-grass is doing very well.

Hardly any slugs, not like past years.

[EL34]

Milk weed is doing awesome this year in these here parts 

[shooter]

Been here 25yrs and this is the best yet for wildish black raspberries, the queen Ann's lace and my crop of bull thistles are amazing

[Refugee]

Red gooseberries have done well and curly kale has also done well once ahead of the slugs. Keeping ahead of the slugs is the secret here in the UK.
Peas and beans have produced a crop but nothing special.
Cabbages have to be used as fresh leaves as they get attacked bu worms if left to heart up.