Fruit and vegetable gardens 2024

[wierdly]

I have tried a lot of the super hots, The Trinadad Moruga Scorpian is one of my go too for curry chicken, goat and Oxtails. The Scotch bonnet is another full of flavor and heat and we use it for jerk chicken. The Carolina Reapers are similar to the TMS but hotter. I had a lot harder time keeping the plants happy. Now I think there is one hotter than the Carolina Reaper. They are all hotter the day after you eat them. LOL

 

[Fiddler's Green]

Teased a bunch roots today. I had eight peppers per container before.

Separated and defoliated the peppers. I put two peppers per container. I also gave the onions a buzz cut and selected the most stout F1 and F2 tobacco plants.


Future friends

 

[pinner420]

Im half tempted to do a hempy solo!! I played with kratky last month but had to abort.

 

[H.A.F.]

I planted peppers and a few early tomatoes that can die if I get a late frost and it's no biggie. Last year I had an Anaheim and a poblano that were actual small fruit trees by fall. There were a few bells like that too. Those are the peppers I cook with a lot and I know now that one tree can make enough for the year if I give them some attention.

But most of my peppers stayed knee-high-ish. All of the hot ones were small, and the shishito, bananas, and a few other sweets that were probably some heirloom variety with no 'hybrid vigor'.

I think this year I am going to leave those in pots so I can move them wherever and they don't take up prime real estate. They are also the ones I really don't need a lot of but having the variety is like with weed. The poblano are like my chemdog, I could eat those in anything. But having a spice jar of dried pepper flakes from 20 different hot peppers is also something I would use - just never in bulk.

 

[H.A.F.]

I have a milk crate full of older ferments and lacto-bacillus that I am renewing for the weed garden so I will be using the old stuff in the veggie garden. I know about sprouted seed teas and crazy JADAM bucket-ferments with just lawn clippings or comfrey and some rotting leaves with mycelium.

I have been getting the soil ready using some of the stuff I have learned growing weed indoors, but last year I didn't think about the ferments and such for the outdoor garden. At 4-5ml/1tsp per gallon, you can't beat the expense of the brown sugar over buying a sack of fertilizer. And the LAB can be made rinsing the rice you are cooking for dinner, and using up milk that's getting old.

My goal is to feed myself (obviously) but also to see how well they do over past seasons now that I know what I know.

 

[H.A.F.]

Future friends

The tobacco looks nice. I have only planted the loose gnat-shit looking loose seads so far, I have about a dozen seed pods still intact both from the ones Dagga sent as a freebie and the one I flowered out inside the tent.

The one I flowered stayed in a 1/2g pot the entire grow and did fine. the ones outside got way bigger so pot size matters but inside works great.

 

[Fiddler's Green]

The tobacco looks nice. I have only planted the loose gnat-shit looking loose seads so far, I have about a dozen seed pods still intact both from the ones Dagga sent as a freebie and the one I flowered out inside the tent.

The one I flowered stayed in a 1/2g pot the entire grow and did fine. the ones outside got way bigger so pot size matters but inside works great.

I took six of the best F1s and six F2s to open pollinate and see what happens.

 

[H.A.F.]

I took six of the best F1s and six F2s to open pollinate and see what happens.

I only had one plant so I think they are self pollenating. might have to work at crossing them.

 

[pinner420]

 

[H.A.F.]

I have no clue what practices she is using, and her immediately bashing peat is a socio-political sustainability thing, not a grow thing. I use the black gold seed starter for weed and it's perfect. I don't want anything extra in my mix. Cannabis seeds carry their own nutrition and are good in sand until the cotyledon start shrivelling.

 

[pinner420]

Ya i coulda done with out that noise. Currently testing 50 compost 50 sand topped with vermiculite.

 

[H.A.F.]

Ya i coulda done with out that noise. Currently testing 50 compost 50 sand topped with vermiculite.

I care about the world and all that, but I only worry about making my little handful of acres good instead of beating my head against lots of walls. I use the hell out of shredded cardboard in my garden, my worm bins, etc. and now they say cardboard is bad. Guess I am gonna die oh wait! we all are anyway LOL I trust my worms to keep me safe...

Back to the garden stuff.
I have peas coming up all around my fence and the best so far are the Green Beauty from Baker Creek, and they are a big-flat-pod-little-pea sugar pea where you eat the whole thing. I have some sugar-snaps and some shelling peas too. cover crop is coming in nice.

I already showed the celery and horehound that made oit through the winter, one of the types of mizuna that thrived here popped back up first warm spell and starrted flowering when it cooled back off. This version made it through the heat of summer looking great, and none of the bugs ate it. I can't even think about growing lettuce outside so this is a win. I transplanted them into this bed that is just a catch-all for plants I started then had no clue where to put them. That's lovage right by the rail which is a celery tasting herb, and the red striped stuff in the back is bloody dock. when you chop it the juce is beet red. random cover crop radish in the middle.

I have clumbs of hairy vetch that should be flowering soon

And I have a few little stands of clover that I'll be planting around, or transplanting if I have to dig it. What I noticed over the past few days is that the little cover crop plants are thriving by the clover now, but they al;l; started popping up after the same rain.

 

[H.A.F.]

I buy bat guano because I think it makes better weed. I buy it from Down to Earth, and I guess I trust their sourcing of stuff, but look at it this way:

If they are sending kids spelunking down caves to harvest this stuff they won't be stopping just because I didn't buy any.

tHiNk Of ThE cHiLdReN!!! ​

 

[H.A.F.]

I forgot about these. I got those micro-tubers going inside, and the blue ones are obviously blue when they get going.

and I got a pair of fig tree starts and 5 strawberry from Baker Creek and all are doing well, one already has berries popping

 

[pinner420]

I've been doing spring cleanups in between rain and snow storms out here. Went and got propane tanks filled last weekend so its time to reset the green house and get all the repairs needed to get it back online. I'm going to see if I can sell my vast array of autopots they've served me well for many years!! I need to play catch up!!!

 

[1oldfart]

I've been doing spring cleanups in between rain and snow storms out here. Went and got propane tanks filled last weekend so its time to reset the green house and get all the repairs needed to get it back online. I'm going to see if I can sell my vast array of autopots they've served me well for many years!! I need to play catch up!!!

@pinner420 ,what do you have to take the autopots place? catch up on what?is there somthing new going on?

 

[pinner420]

Hiring 2 new guys for the landscape crew. I'm more than impressed with my new legion of airpots and blumats. My intentions are to get my seed trays up and going and wholesale out 500 to a 1000 plant starts to a couple retail outlets. Whatever doesn't sell I'll load in the truck and take to the grocery stores and sell them. My daughters are fixing to make a lot of soil blocks this weekend...

 

[pinner420]

Lift off!!

 

[H.A.F.]

Found this guy hanging out on the screen yesterday,

I think it's a hummingbird moth?

 

[H.A.F.]

I started out just making some hardwood leaf mulch. The leaves were to the top of the fence in fall. I tossed in some barley and some hairy vetch and sure enough stuff grows in just leaves. I had extra micro-tubers and starrted them in pots and have been deciding where to put them. This is now a potato experiment. There's a 4" pot worth of starter soil around each, but then it's just the leaves. The main thing I noticed is that the chipmunks haven't touched this stuff.

I had a roll of hardware cloth in the shed so I made a cage. I sifted out the compost pile and it was full of worms, but also has lots of brown leafy bits, very aerated. I put a layer of cardboard then a 5g bucket of compost/mulch. I had some old fox farms organic top dressings I added into each layer too. My goal here is a rich potting soil.