Discussion Board

I am sure container gardens do heat up more. I never had luck with containers.

Thanks to both of you in Missouri. I was always curious. I always blamed the lack of seeds, plants etc. on being 8 miles from DC. What do these city slickers know?

I miss the old feed store type places. We use to have a chain (small chain) called Southern States. Loved that store. I called it my farm store. You could get things that you don't see anywhere else. That place KNEW when to put plants out for sale, or bulbs etc.

I just wanted to brag that I picked some little tomatoes yesterday and they were in nice shape, not spotty like they were. They were nice and firm. I have so many large green tomatoes out there. if they don't turn soon I'll be trying to find a way to store them for getting red.

My inlaws tried this wrapping in newspaper and putting in a dark place. I remember use eating sliced tomatoes at Thanksgiving. Has anyone tried this?

Yes, Faith I wrap green tomatoes almost every year. Works out quite well.

wait can you explain this ... you just wrap each tomato in newspaper and put it in a box in a cool dark place?


Hmmm this might make it worth my while to grow beef stakes next year... they never can get ripe here because we are too cool of weather.

Yes this is what my in laws did. I am not sure if my MIL would rotate them over or not. I think it was on here that tomatoes should be stored stem side down.

I am wondering if my place is cool enough. I may have to use Mom's office.

I've done that with tomatoes. You just have to remember to check them periodically.

However, I also really like green tomato relish. The recipe is on the National Center for Home Food Preservation website. (I'll find it and link it if anyone is interested.) It tastes somewhat similar to pickle relish but made with green tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, apple, and onion.

I never bothered with the individually wrapping with newspaper. I just lined restaurant bus tubs with a good pad of newspaper and a layer of plain white paper towels. I chose only tomatoes without any wounds, washed and dried them, then laid them on the padding. Put a few apples in with them, apples release ethylene, a plant ripening hormone. I covered them with an old towel. The white paper towels made it easy to spot any that were going bad before they could negatively impact neighbors. I usually separated the round tomatoes from the plums from the cherries, three tubs total. Checking the smaller ones daily is an absolute must. The coolest place I had was the basement, I tucked them up under my grow lamps, which naturally are not in use in the autumn.

great. I have a feeling my time is running short. I'm am terribly humid inside the house. I am running the dehumidifier but with all this rain and clouds everything is humid. I'm worried they may get rotting if I bring them in. I am hoping the weather takes change.

Well I am harvesting my potatoes this weekend so Those will get dried a bit and then wrapped in newspaper. The coolest place I have in the guest room under the bed I think. A basement would sure be nice about now. Once it cools off more then I can move stuff to the garage. The nortth wall should be good.

Sooo I finally have some eggplants on my black beauties. they are all tiny and adorable right now... I hope they will get a chance to get lots bigger.

My bush beans are setting more beans YAY!!!!! ANd my cuccumbers are cool enough now to hopefully set a bit more fruit.
the swiss chard I had to chop down to the ground last weekend because of an aphid infestation has set new leaves and i am going to have some lovely steamed greens this weekend.

I am still keeping fingers crossed that the late corn will be ripe by halloween.

and this weekend I am planting turnips, kale and cabbage where I pulled the early corn.. and maybe some winter carrots too.

I fugure peas will go in where the late corn is and maybe some spinach there too. and another section of beets.

IF I am lucky I will have a good bit of produce form the veggie garden this winter.

This has been the best year for eggplant. I've really been enjoying it. Last night I picked several of them. I also got a bunch of tomatoes in, some green and some ripe. It is getting very cool this weekend. No frost but very cool, mid November like. I picked some of the green tomatoes that were on the ground growing. My plants got so large that they pulled the cages over and the stakes that I had holding the cages.

Have you ever noticed how at joints of a tomato plant they have these little knobby things? Well those can grow roots. Some of the vines that fell on the ground got rooted in.

Okay More fall garden news.

I re-adjusted the compost pile that never got done right over the summer. So I puilled it all appart, and reinvigorated it with some old goat meal that Hubby got by mistake(we have sheep).. and some grass clipping and leaves chopped up togehter, along with all the fruit and veggie trimmings I have been throwing on top of it as I processed teh fall garden... and watered it really well as I built it up... THe first turning of it is this weekend. it should be good and toasty by Saturday.The hope is I have it completly composted by Thanksgiving. SO I can do another pile too.

I got out some potatoes but found a gopher had gotten in the potato bed and eatten all the potatoes that were deeper down. Especially the blue potatoes and the roos on my sweet potatoes.

SO we (meaning me) are going to dig out that bed and put new wiring on the bottom of the wood frame.(I have raised beds with wiring to try to keep out the gophers)

We just had a Huge rain storm Very early in teh season for us a good three weeks early.

so I am not sure what this will mean for the stuff I have growing.
I guess I will have to wait and see. IF things stop maybe some plastic covers will help revive it all.

That seems like some fast cooking on compost to me. I don't seem to cook that fast. It takes me all summer.

Sorry about the potatoes -grrrrrrr I know you had to be mad. I don't mind feeding a little to critters but I hate to lose a lot of most of a crop.

I have little greens beans starting again I was hoping they'd make it before it got too cold.

In Compost news. the compost pile I made OCt 5th is doing awesome I turned it Wednesday and then Saturday I gave it a thorogh turning with my compost turning tool which is worth it's weight in gold.

and it looks like it should be done in about 4-5 weeks at the most. maybe sooner as it is really hot and it already looks awesome...
Faith it is the heat and the turning in more oxygen that gets it changing so fast.. usually if I don't turn it, it takes all summer. OR longer If I dont get it wet enough.


I also processed the anerobic pile, which was just grasses and manuer and papers that has been sitting for over a year. Becuase I never heated it up it took a long time to break down.

I pulled out a ton of nice compost from the bottom of it... took the top and added it back in the bin to wait for the next mowing of grass and leaves.(i throw my scraps in there and then when we make the next pile I will pull this apart and layer it with teh grass and leaves and some chicken manuer from the barn. And really water it well. Once it is wet with the manuers wowzer it will go gang busters.


I am going to try to make as much as I can this fall. so that I have a ton of compost in teh spring.

So I got my two beds ready for some winter planting. THese are 4'X8' beds and they will have kale, spinach beets carrots cabbaage lettuce peas and turnips in them. I use a modified square foot gardening methode. I plant in sections across teh 4 ft side so each bed will have 3 or four crops in it. IT seems to work good and then once one section is empty I can plant the next crop in it..

So for instance the bed that just finished up lettuces is going to have cabages next in that spot. I have never had it this together to try to extend the garden through the winter. I am really excited to do this.

I should have at least 3 winter beds this year and I am planting the potatoes in seperate bins rather than a garden bed because of the length of time to maturity for them. I may go with four beds. depends on how much I get in each bed. And how ambitious I am LOL.That will leave three beds with a leaf mold mulch over the top of them or maybe as cover crop I have to decide pretty soon on that.

My beans are having new babies on them they are sooo cute... and I am thinking I will get maybe 3 more harvest off them. I think I am going to plant even more beans next year. You can never have too many beans

And a few of the ears of corn are ready to pick so we will be having corn for dinner tonight. Yumm.

Happy gardening.

Due to lack of time and a problem with the heat this summer, I did not maintain my compost pile as well as normal. So, my hubby may have to buy some soil for the fall beds. He already used up what I did have for a new raised bed in which he's planted garlic (nice BIG cloves ), radishes, carrots, and some greens.

However, I did recently score a huge pile of free mulch when I noticed tree trimmers at the neighbors with a big chipper-shredder. Since they were only doing the mulberries and not much else, I asked if they'd dump it at my place. Nice to be sure there was no cactus in it or eucalyptus. This gives us plenty of mulch and saved dump fees for the company. (Full truck costs $400 to dump! I didn't get a full truck's worth but probably saved them a couple hundred dollars.) That plus the free year-old horse manure we had hauled over from another neighbor's corral last year (cost $60 to the guy with the front-loader) gives us a good headstart on prepping new raised beds we'll be building for spring gardening.

What a great idea Chili.. I am going to have to keep my eye out for some of these great opportunities.