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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:47 am 
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Location: Fort Worth,TEXAS
Another year, another garden.

Last year the garden went in after I paid a friend to dig it for me in April because my job was keeping me so busy I was
working 7 days a week. Nominal success, we had a crop of tomatoes and peppers that were good for eating and I canned
about a case and a half of tomatoes. Peppers in the freezer are still holding out. I didn't get any onions planted. I had a
good crop of cucumbers (planted too close to the house - I won't make that mistake again!) and zucchini (I'm figuring out
how to at least slow, if not completely eliminate, the attack by the worm that bores out the stems).

The job situation is stabilized - working normal hours again, and I'm in my garden doing my own digging this spring. It's great
therapy! I have a couple of beds of potatoes in, and one more to plant this weekend. I'll be digging out the raised beds
and preparing them for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, and much more. Last year I experimented with putting a serving
spoonful of mashed mackerel in a few holes before planting, and I found those plants had healthier and more robust foliage.
They bloomed and fruited a little later than some of the other plants, but they bloomed longer and more consistently
through the season, so I am planning to do the mackerel trick in the entire garden. So far I've found that a can of mackerel
at Dollar General is the most reasonably priced (about $1.65 per can).

Beneficial nematodes were watered in last weekend after a good rain. I have a bag of corn gluten meal to use with a
flour sifter after I prepare my beds and have my bedding plants in. The plan is to sift the corn gluten meal over the bare
soil to slow the germination of weed seeds, then put hardwood mulch over the top so my garden isn't bright yellow. I have
a "stirrup" shaped hoe to use to take out the weeds when they're small before they become established and huge (happens
every year, once the crops are big enough the grass tends to fill in underneath). I always vow to keep the grass and weeds
out of the garden, but it is a never-ending battle.

Every year I try out new sprinklers, soaker hoses, and timers. I suspect some gardeners have large collections of sprinklers
by shape, size, material, and yet always go back to a few old favorites. I don't have a sprinkler system, I lay out hoses and
soaker hoses and water by zones from a brass 4-way connection on my front faucet, depending on where the gardening
activity is each year. Several years ago I moved my vegetable gardening into the front yard and every year since then I've
enlarged those beds. This spring I planted onions all over the front yard in existing beds, and I put in a row of asparagus in
front of the stone wall at the front of my house.

I'll continue to post photos of new challenges, insects, and successes in my garden in this thread. It is easier to find if I put
it all in one place rather than spread them out over the forums, though I do post photos in individual questions when I have
or can find photos that are helpful.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2014 7:19 pm 
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The summer flew past, apparently - I didn't post any of the photos I planned, but I did get out this evening and race
to bring in the last of the produce before tonight's freeze. Looks like of lots of green tomato relish this year! I'll make
some eggplant Parmesan for the freezer, and will be slicing and dicing lots of peppers for the freezer.

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:18 am 
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Now for something different - making the case for using compost for more than just to make your garden healthier. Use it to save the planet. This YouTube video is simple, to the point, and offers great illustrations to make the case for healthier biologic activity in the soil to capture and store carbon removed from the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvAoZ14cP7Q

I'll be saving my little bit of the planet this week as I use more of my back yard compost to prepare my garden for over-winter crops (onions, broccoli, Swiss chard, etc.) and sprinkle some over the turf.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:35 pm 
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This summer I decided to plant more sweet potatoes; I'd gotten a handful of slips for a song at Marshall Grain before they closed the Lancaster Street store, and they sat in a cup of water until I had the keyhole-shaped raised bed ready. I've never had much luck planting them for the tubers, I was putting them in for the lovely vines. Beauregard variety (what you find in the grocery store most often).

Months passed and my next door neighbor and I were quickly harvesting everything before the first frost. I commented that I ought to look to see if there was anything to dig up since the vines were everywhere, wrapping around eggplant, poblanos, curled around and climbing the okra. Sprawled across many square feet of lawn, climbing the volunteer wild sunflowers, tangled in the cherry tomatoes. What we found was astonishing - sweet potatoes the size of footballs, so deep and so large it was difficult to dig them out. We got a few, then left the rest for another day; underground the tubers were protected from the freeze. These are a few that I dug the first day, in a large stock pot (for scale):

Image

Again, for scale, my garden shoe is a size 9 women's sneaker.

Image

Every so often I would go dig a few more. They were corkscrewed into the soil, wrapped around each other, so large that it was like an archaeological dig to keep the large yet brittle potatoes from breaking off if we tugged on part of one still buried.

My daughter loves to come help with the harvest, and on the warm Thanksgiving (2016) afternoon, she spent time in that same bed still digging potatoes.

Image


I went out some time later and thought I finished digging out the bed, but then I pulled the vines up off of the lawn and several potatoes popped out of the ground as I yanked on the vines. So I dug around in the turf and found another ten pounds of potatoes.

Today (January 24, 2017) I dug around in that keyhole shaped bed to put in the start of Irish potatoes for this year - and I stumbled upon several more sweet potatoes that I'd missed, deep under where the okra had stood all summer. Four more pounds of potatoes that look in great shape were harvested this afternoon. I hesitate to say this is finished - there are probably a more under the turf still, the messy area where the garden ended and the lawn began and the vines ran rampant all summer. I'll probably find out in the spring, if I find shoots from the still-buried potatoes. (Which I'll transplant into a regular garden bed.)

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