Fab tour of your garden. Shame about the peas. Over the past couple of years I've found that sowing peas in guttering in the greenhouse to start the germination and then transplanting when they get about 9 inch tall works best for me especially to protect the early shoots from the critters. Great idea with the carrot heads!! Keep up the great work.
The drought is totally an issue here, too. Our water bill was so scary this month. Part of the high bill was also trying to keep my chickens from dying in the heat. It is a real struggle to keep things going without rain. I bought bush bean seeds and they turned out to really be pole beans. They took over the whole raised bed and climbed up my 10 ft tall tomato plant. We have literally had to climb on a ladder to pick beans and tomatoes. It has driven me crazy, but that tomato plant has done so much better than the others with the heat. I am guessing it is because the pole beans have shaded my tomato plant. Could you imagine how horrible it was to have lived in the Dust Bowl? I guess comparatively, I shouldn't complain too much! I did not get my fill of eggplant this year :(
Thats so tall! I agree with your theory about the pole bean shading the tomato. I'm sorry to hear about your eggplant. I'm glad I'm getting some but I definitely wish I was getting more. I think about the dust bowl a lot actually. I grew up in an area of Texas that was really heavily affected by it, so there were a lot of stories told. Have you seen Interstellar? I always imagine the dust bowl exactly like that. However, as for comparison, a struggle is a struggle, even if you feel like someone else had it worse, your struggle is valid.
Our tomatoes are pretty much done here as well. Trying to get peppers hopefully a bit bigger and ripe. These cool temps have been amazing but I feel ya on the rain. With all the rain we had this spring, I knew when it stopped it would slam down but I never expected it to last this long. When hurricane Debbie came up it brought much needed rain and we started to get rain again then it stopped again. We're supposed to get some from the outer bands/ remnants of this current hurricane this weekend.
Yeah I've seen the forecast saying I'm supposed to get some rain from this hurricane too, but after getting nothing from Debbie I'm not sure I'll believe it until it's actually happening.
We have a short fall where I live, and for my broccoli I plant them inside 1 month before transplanting outside. I use solo cups so they have good room for the roots, and put Jobes organic chicken fertilizer in the bottom of the hole when transplanting.
Yeah I might need to upgrade them next year to larger pots and make sure I plant out much larger seedlings if I want them to survive the initial munching.
Im surprised yours struggle at those temps down there. Up north I've found peppers to be fine down to mid/low 30s. They really pump out the fruit once it dips below 50 at night.
That's so interesting. I've seen many people talk about putting peppers out in the spring, and how waiting until temps are above 50 at night improves their yields for the entire season. I also know peppers are native to much warmer areas, so I made the assumption that when temps get cooler they would struggle more. I definitely have peppers live all the way until the frost, and it feels like that coincides with when the fruit is finishing up from a timing perspective. On the other hand, peppers produce more with each flush, so it could be confirmation bias that the temperature is causing the last harvest to be larger. Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience and I'll keep an eye on my peppers with that in mind.
I am in Anderson so, I can totally relate about the dry conditions. I’ve been struggling with melon and cucumber worms as well as aphids here lately in the season. Any organic suggestions are appreciated. I had similar results with brassicas in my garden 😢. Hoping next year will be better. I started planning for winter planting. About what time of year did you plant your Brussels sprouts last year for the overwinter garden?
According to my notes I started them indoors in mid-late July and was planting them out by the end of August. And they still didn't get quite big enough before the frost I think. This year I don't think I'm going to have any, since all my seedlings got destroyed as soon as they went in the ground. As for your pest issues, I've been reading more about Brix levels and how the healthier a plant is, the less pests can even attack them. There seems to be a point at which the leaves become literally indigestable for pests. Aphids, unfortunately, show up when the plants are the least healthy, and can be indicators of very low Brix levels. The best thing to do is to bring in more high quality compost each year and build up the health of your soil. Potentially even innoculate with beneficial bacteria and fungi (I use Organic Rev for that). Here's the video that I learned from: ua-cam.com/video/bnNOvA3diDU/v-deo.html It's kinda long, but very informative. I'm interested to see what additional research is done in this area and how our knowledge about this topic evolves since it's still quite new, but I am very sure that working on healthy soil is a powerful thing to do for your plants, even if we end up being wrong about Brix.
I'm in the subtropics and the only time I've had a great brassica crop was when I started them in spring as a beginner gardener in 2020. I didn't know they're cool season plants but I transplanted them out in >30 °C weather and they grew and grew and grew and grew. The problem however is european chafer beetles. They are most active here just when everything starts growing. They are so so destructive. Ugh.
That's so interesting to hear! How was the taste? Was it bitter? Did your brassicas produce edibles? I would have expected to hear theyd go straight to seed in the heat.
Nice looking around your garden Rachel 😍
Love your garden tours. They have taught me a few new things about growing a garden in this area. Thank you!
I'm happy to hear it!
Hey fantastic garden tour thanks for sharing this with us.
Thanks for the garden tour....
The Thing Thumb variety of peas is so delicious!
Fab tour of your garden. Shame about the peas. Over the past couple of years I've found that sowing peas in guttering in the greenhouse to start the germination and then transplanting when they get about 9 inch tall works best for me especially to protect the early shoots from the critters. Great idea with the carrot heads!! Keep up the great work.
17:30 try presoaking the peas overnight before seeding in ground, that should help.
The drought is totally an issue here, too. Our water bill was so scary this month. Part of the high bill was also trying to keep my chickens from dying in the heat. It is a real struggle to keep things going without rain. I bought bush bean seeds and they turned out to really be pole beans. They took over the whole raised bed and climbed up my 10 ft tall tomato plant. We have literally had to climb on a ladder to pick beans and tomatoes. It has driven me crazy, but that tomato plant has done so much better than the others with the heat. I am guessing it is because the pole beans have shaded my tomato plant. Could you imagine how horrible it was to have lived in the Dust Bowl? I guess comparatively, I shouldn't complain too much!
I did not get my fill of eggplant this year :(
Thats so tall! I agree with your theory about the pole bean shading the tomato. I'm sorry to hear about your eggplant. I'm glad I'm getting some but I definitely wish I was getting more.
I think about the dust bowl a lot actually. I grew up in an area of Texas that was really heavily affected by it, so there were a lot of stories told. Have you seen Interstellar? I always imagine the dust bowl exactly like that. However, as for comparison, a struggle is a struggle, even if you feel like someone else had it worse, your struggle is valid.
Our tomatoes are pretty much done here as well. Trying to get peppers hopefully a bit bigger and ripe. These cool temps have been amazing but I feel ya on the rain.
With all the rain we had this spring, I knew when it stopped it would slam down but I never expected it to last this long. When hurricane Debbie came up it brought much needed rain and we started to get rain again then it stopped again. We're supposed to get some from the outer bands/ remnants of this current hurricane this weekend.
Yeah I've seen the forecast saying I'm supposed to get some rain from this hurricane too, but after getting nothing from Debbie I'm not sure I'll believe it until it's actually happening.
We have a short fall where I live, and for my broccoli I plant them inside 1 month before transplanting outside. I use solo cups so they have good room for the roots, and put Jobes organic chicken fertilizer in the bottom of the hole when transplanting.
Yeah I might need to upgrade them next year to larger pots and make sure I plant out much larger seedlings if I want them to survive the initial munching.
Carrot experiment suggestion: remove the half on one side, and then you can compare how the two different sides do!
Im surprised yours struggle at those temps down there. Up north I've found peppers to be fine down to mid/low 30s. They really pump out the fruit once it dips below 50 at night.
That's so interesting. I've seen many people talk about putting peppers out in the spring, and how waiting until temps are above 50 at night improves their yields for the entire season. I also know peppers are native to much warmer areas, so I made the assumption that when temps get cooler they would struggle more. I definitely have peppers live all the way until the frost, and it feels like that coincides with when the fruit is finishing up from a timing perspective. On the other hand, peppers produce more with each flush, so it could be confirmation bias that the temperature is causing the last harvest to be larger. Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience and I'll keep an eye on my peppers with that in mind.
I am in Anderson so, I can totally relate about the dry conditions. I’ve been struggling with melon and cucumber worms as well as aphids here lately in the season. Any organic suggestions are appreciated. I had similar results with brassicas in my garden 😢. Hoping next year will be better. I started planning for winter planting. About what time of year did you plant your Brussels sprouts last year for the overwinter garden?
According to my notes I started them indoors in mid-late July and was planting them out by the end of August. And they still didn't get quite big enough before the frost I think. This year I don't think I'm going to have any, since all my seedlings got destroyed as soon as they went in the ground.
As for your pest issues, I've been reading more about Brix levels and how the healthier a plant is, the less pests can even attack them. There seems to be a point at which the leaves become literally indigestable for pests. Aphids, unfortunately, show up when the plants are the least healthy, and can be indicators of very low Brix levels. The best thing to do is to bring in more high quality compost each year and build up the health of your soil. Potentially even innoculate with beneficial bacteria and fungi (I use Organic Rev for that). Here's the video that I learned from: ua-cam.com/video/bnNOvA3diDU/v-deo.html
It's kinda long, but very informative. I'm interested to see what additional research is done in this area and how our knowledge about this topic evolves since it's still quite new, but I am very sure that working on healthy soil is a powerful thing to do for your plants, even if we end up being wrong about Brix.
I'm in the subtropics and the only time I've had a great brassica crop was when I started them in spring as a beginner gardener in 2020. I didn't know they're cool season plants but I transplanted them out in >30 °C weather and they grew and grew and grew and grew. The problem however is european chafer beetles. They are most active here just when everything starts growing. They are so so destructive. Ugh.
That's so interesting to hear! How was the taste? Was it bitter? Did your brassicas produce edibles? I would have expected to hear theyd go straight to seed in the heat.
Whoa, no rotating segment? I want a refund.😉
You caught me, laziness strikes again lol