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First off, can anyone help me identify if the photo below this is a zucchini plant? I made a mound of compost and then planted zucchini seeds in it. When they started to germinate I realized that I have some kind of squash or melon seeds in my composter and they started to germinate as well. I think I have thinned the right ones but I have no clue what a small zucchini plant should look like.
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As sides from my zucchini mix up things are going well. The peas have started to form baby peas which is exciting, I have never eaten a fresh peas before. The beans have climbed about 2 feet up the trellis so I suspect they should start leafing out along the tendrils soon. My potatoes are getting massive, almost 3 feet high!
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I have started to blanch my celery plants, I have read conflicting things on weather you should blanch celery or not but I am going to go ahead and try. My first through was to use PVC waste pipe but I could not find any that was wide enough. I ended up using 1 gallon perennial containers with the bottom cut out of them, they seem to do the trick. They seem a little small so I think I will keep a look out for larger containers but for the time being they do the job.
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The heirloom tomatoes all have 3 clusters of flowers per plant and I am patiently wait for the kings of the garden to form and ripen. The photo below of the tomato blossom has to be the largest tomato blossom I have ever seen, they are larger then a quarter. The plant is the Hillbilly Potato Loaf tomato, I think I bought these seed last year just because of the name and it turned out to be a very nice tomato.
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Now for the failures, my butter crunch lettuce is in the composter. It formed lettuce that looked more like romaine and only one plant formed a butter crunch head about the size of an onion. I think this was caused by using lettuce grown in cell packs because every lettuce that I planted from transplants did poorly well the lettuce that I seeded in the ground grew get. This fall on, I will only grow lettuce from seed not from the nursery.
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My beets still have leaf miner, it doesn't seem to be as bad as it was but they are still munching away. This probably would not be the case if I keeped up my spraying schedule, shoulda woulda coulda I guess. I did a posting on garden web and was told that leaf miner should not kill the beets and that it would be okay to just leave them be. That is what I am going to do and hopefully still harvest some kind of beets.
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I think I will end on a lighter note by protesting my jealousy of all the zone 7-9ers that are beginning to harvest many things. Going though all these harvest posts makes me want to move to a warmer climate. I think I would kill for a warm tomato right off the vine right about now. With all the magazines starting to publish recipes for things like cucumber gazpacho, tomato watermelon & feta salad, pork tenderloin with charred tomato salsa and so on doesn't help. That made you hungry didn't it?
Great looking garden!
ReplyDeleteDan, your garden is looking good. I unfortunately can't help with the identification, but did want to chime in that I too am jealous of the folks in warmer climates. Not the 7-9 zones, I'm in 8b, and my clmiate's horrible for growing warm weather crops.
ReplyDeleteThe important zone distinction is the AHS one. I'm in zone 2 which means we get 7 or less days a year over 86 degrees. A budy of mine in Alabama gets over 50, hehe. That's the primary difference in growing seasons for warm weather crops. Of course she'd kill for one of my salads and I for her corn, hehe.
We all have our pros and cons I guess.
I think it is your zucchini, Dan
ReplyDeleteThe Garden looks really good.
It does a bit like zucchini... except my zucchini has started to flower when it gets to that size.. hm... your cabbage looks wonderful. i wonder when it will be ready for harvest!
ReplyDeleteHydrocult - thanks
ReplyDeleteSinfonian - yes the grass is always greener on the other side. I have not heard of AHS zones, I will have to look this up and see what mine is. We get a lot of hot weather from late spring until fall here. This years it doesn't seem to be the case so far.
Hendria - I sure hope it is zucchini
Dp Nguyen - From what I have read about cabbage if you plant it in the early spring you want to harvest smaller heads, before there is a lot of persistent heat and they will not store for long. If I was to plant cabbage in the late summer it can then be grown until the heads are very large, harvested after frost and will store well over the winter.