Succession plantings are the way to go. I learned a neat trick from Joe Lamp'l, the host of Growing a Greener World, where he removes the suckers growing between the main stalk and branches on a tomato plant and instead of throwing them away he uses them for his succession plants. Within a week you'll have a young plant that would have taken weeks to grow from seed. As you can see from this picture, all those little hairs on the stem of the sucker are potential roots, so suckers make a quick and easy way to get a succession crop of tomatoes going. Some people will stick them in water till the roots start growing but you can stick them in dirt and they'll grow as long as you keep the soil moist.
Start this thread up again. Planting time. One thing I know for sure that Nebraska grows the best beans. We were in Nebraska and bought a bag of beans..they were in a burlap bag..maybe 3 pounds. We get dry beans here just not as fresh as the one we bought in Nebraska. The beans we bought were from Alliance, I even called the company but they said they were a wholesale company.
Planting my tomatoes I broke a limb off the plant. I dug a whole stuck it in the ground and I think it is going to live. Some of the leaves look like they are freshened up.
Amazing. That definitely inspires me to try planting cuttings this year. I got my first wave of tomatoes - 53 seedlings planted in 28 spots - in the ground on May 5th and planted the seeds for the Summer succession crop a day later. Now they're up and I've got another 30 tomatoes that will be going in the ground in about a month or so. This year I'm sticking with some hot weather varieties that have worked well in the past - Virginia Sweets and Sungold Hybrid Cherry - and experimenting with some other tomatoes that are supposed to handle the high heat and humidity we get here in the Old Dominion: Black Krim, Prudens Purple and Brandywine OTV, which is supposed to be the most heat tolerant strain of Brandywine tomatoes. I'm partial to the dark "black" and "purple" tomatoes like Carbon and Cherokee Purple, but they have a tough time when it gets really hot. Hopefully the Black Krim will pan out in their stead. I'm also experimenting with a new variety of pumpkins this year - Jarrahdale. It's a blue-gray culinary pumpkin from New Zealand that appears to be a lot like Blue Doll pumpkins. I've heard they might be tougher than Blue Dolls but not quite as productive. They're also heirlooms, which is nice. Pumpkin seeds have gotten mighty expensive over the past several years.
I looked at it yesterday and it still looked ok, that was before the rain and wind. If the little thing makes it after today I will let you know. What you were talking about before really does work, this was a fresh break on a young plan,if it survives today it can survive anything.. We are getting heavy rain today, yesterday was bad but today seems a bit worse. Three inches yesterday in just a few hours. today the rain is starting early. What you were talking about before really does work. You will have to share some pictures of your Jarradale.
Hopefully, it's still hangin in there. What kind of tomatoes are you growing? If I recall you live further south than I do (Virginia). Every year I experiment with new varieties that supposedly can handle the punishment our summers dish out, but very few have performed as advertised. The toughest tomato I've grown is a Sungold Hybrid Cherry, which will power through the hottest conditions, and out of the large indeterminate varieties Virginia Sweets have held up better than the rest. I'll keep ya posted on the pumpkins. So far Jarrahdale seems to be a real vigorous variety. I started the seeds in the plastic cups our dog's chicken livers come in and they were all up in a matter of days and then took off. They're about 3 weeks old now and ready to go in the ground. Fortunately for them I'm just getting around to clearing the pumpkin patch so they might get babied for another week until I get time to transplant them.
Better boy and mortgage lifter are the two types we planted or think we planted,. I thought I planted a large tomato last year and got something kin to cherry tomatoes when the plants started producing. Not complaining too much because they were prolific producers. We had plenty of cherry type tomatoes to eat. I grew those from seed and this year we bought the plants. The broken branch from the tomato plant is still living it is a small plant. It looks like if will live to be a larger plant. Finger crossed.
I planted 8 Celebrity and 3 Better Bush. The Celebrity are huge and making fruit. Ain't got no pics yet. I am doing my weeding with chemicals. No fuel burnt, soil unhurt.
A Are you using Roundup? I am doing my weeding the hard way and the weeds are beating me.... What I am hoping for is getting the ground clear enough that next year it maybe a bit better. We will see who wins this war..the weed or me.Our garden isn't as large as it usually is so maybe just maybe. I will concur the weeds. My husband uses the tractor to till the between the rows and then we work on getting the weeds away from the plants.
Yes, I do use Roundup. And weeds always gets the better of me. Since my garden is small I can cover the plants with something....like a mason jar or Styrofoam cup and spray. I also use mulch.
I do a complete burn down at first and just spray and no till. Just break the ground enough to plant.
I can dig a circle about 2 or 3 feet in diameter. Plant as many as 4 watermelon seeds in the circle and wait till they come up. Then you can cover the seedlings with a Styrofoam cup or glass jar and spray round them. Space your watermelon "hills" bout six or eight feet apart. Once the vines start to run no Roundup. It gives the vines a head start.
Found a golf-ball sized green tomato on one of the vines today. Won't be long until I am complaining about what to do with all the tomatoes LOL. There are worse problems to have I suppose. I just fear that if it is a good year for yellow squash, I am up the creek because I have been planting those things everywhere after buying a way too full package of them. I don't even especially like the things.
We got a real gully washer. A frog strangler. My watermelon plants were almost under water. No need to worry about water for a while. We are saturated.
I have 3 podcasts I pretty regularly listen to. The one I mentioned above is responsible for helping me get out of the trap of believing politics is the answer to my problems or a path to a successful, happy life. I’ve never gone down the audiobook rabbit hole. Probably should. But I do put my phone and Bluetooth devices to good use. LOL. I don’t know where the time allocation ROI line is between absorbing information and processing it. Sometimes I feel I spend too much time on podcasts. I probably spend too much time here too. But this is a good place to have your ideas and conclusions tested… Trying to get me to write a book? That’s a huge subject. I’m close to the 100th meridian. That’s kind of the dividing line where the rainshadow from the Rocky Mountains dissipates significantly. So compared to points east of me I’m still getting low precipitation on average. For example, Iowa can grow corn that will yield as well or better than mine and they have no irrigation. Yes, they have pests and diseases we don’t have yet. But they still have higher yield potential with less inputs, partly because they get a lot more rain. And yes, we use different plant genetics based on rainfall, humidity, specific pests, and length of growing season. There is some overlap, but typically the hybrids and varieties planted 50 miles east or west of me will be very different genetically than what I plant. So short answer is we are nowhere near a scenario where too much rainfall is a detriment. Of course there is the other metric, precipitation rates and daily totals. There is some increase in these metrics, but if benefits are accounted for, extreme rain events are on average net beneficial. Examples are destruction of insect pests like aphids and grasshoppers and recharge of the aquifer (extreme precipitation is a vital factor in recharge of unconfined aquifers). Every year is different. That’s the only constant. I’ve had one year we never irrigated because it rained so much. We’ve had summers it didn’t rain at all. Not knowing is part of the fun/challenge. Humans have been dropping seed down hollow tubes into the ground for millennia. Several years ago we figured out a better way—essentially conveyor belts that deliver the seed to the soil. Before, when seed was dropped down a tube, ground speed was limited by the constant of acceleration of the seed due to gravity. The seed has to fall free without touching the walls of the tube to maintain good seed spacing. Much over 5 mph ground speed and you outrun the falling seed, making it impact the back of the seed tube. Now none of that matters. Now bounce related to uneven ground is the limiting factor. We’ve eliminated a lot of bounce already with active hydraulic and pneumatic down pressure systems that maintain constant ground contact by adjusting down pressure on each row in real time. There’s so much going on with electronic controls planters with more than 8 rows have to have an auxiliary alternator installed as the tractor standard electrical system gets overloaded. There's really too much information to keep track of. To optimize everything you really need to contract with agronomists and marketing experts. I’m lucky my seed dealer is my neighbor and he’s also a professional agronomist. He’s happy to help me out when I need it just because that’s what he does to get and keep seed business relationships.
Farmer Paul and Tobias did quite enjoy hearing about the solar flares knocking out your GPS when you were drilling. Paul won't even use GPS in his car. Much preferring to use maps or the tried and tested technique of winding down your window and asking for directions.
The more dependent we become on technology and electrical power, the more convinced I am it will eventually lead to wide scale human suffering. Our societies are becoming less resilient as we depend more and more on a singular resource (electrically powered silicon chips). Someday Paul and Tobias will be eating while the vast majority starve.
Sounds like it's going to make it. Coincidentally, the show where I learned about propagating tomato suckers ran recently - this time I wrote the episode number down: Episode 1112: Making More Plants By Propagating Your Garden https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/episode-1112-making-more-plants/ I need to watch the whole thing and study it closely, but I've been slack about learning how to propagate because my wife is really good at it. It's a great skill to have, but until I pick it up I'll have to content myself with planting what's she's propagated and right now I'm up to my eyeballs in Altheas and boxwoods. We can't grow hibiscuses up here so I'm planting Altheas as a substitute along the edges of the forest surrounding our property and I'm using the boxwoods to encircle our vegetable garden. The hedge won't keep a determined critter out, but it will look nice and you can't beat the price of free plants. Getting back to tomatoes, I started everything from seed - Totally Tomatoes has just about every tomato you can imagine and Southern Seed Exchange sells varieties suited for our climate - but yesterday I was in a garden supply store and broke down and bought 8 Cherokee Purple plants. I didn't plan on growing any of these because I've gotten inconsistent results out of them in the past, but there they were and on a good year they can't be beat. Last year I experimented with packing my tomato pants closely together and that worked out nicely, so this year I'm going to try that with the Cherokees and see what happens.
Apologies, but I am not a fan of "dark" tomatoes. The main reason being the spoilage. Cherokees go bad fast. My best luck has been with Celebrity and Better Bush
Combine that with this and you've got a recipe for disaster: In 2020, about 82.66 percent of the total population in the United States lived in cities and urban areas. As the United States was one of the earliest nations to industrialize, it has had a comparatively high rate of urbanization over the past two centuries. The urban population became larger than the rural population during the 1910s, and by the middle of the century it is expected that almost 90 percent of the population will live in an urban setting. In other words, fewer and fewer people will possess the means and skills necessary to endure shortages of food, power/fuel and other basic necessities, much less a complete breakdown of the supply chains they rely on. We got just a little taste of that during the pandemic and it's enough to make you wonder about the questionable policies some governments are taking in regard to the production (and transportation) of those commodities.
The spoilage has been my biggest problem with that variety, too, and the last time I grew Cherokees I had bad cracking issues which compounded the spoilage. The one thing I've learned from growing them is that the fruit have to come off the vine before they're ripe and it's certainly a trick getting the timing just right. The year before that when it was a bit cooler and drier I didn't have those problems to the extent I did the last time I grew them, but the inconsistency led me to throw in the towel. My best results have come from Virginia Sweets and Sungold Hybrid Cherry, and this year I'm experimenting with a new variety of black/purple tomatoes, Black Krim, that is supposed to have a high tolerance for heat but that remains to be seen. I'm not sure Black Krims have the same flavor profile as Cherokee Purple, Carbon, etc., and if they don't my experiment will be useless. I'm really curious about your use of Roundup - I didn't know you could use it near plants that are actively growing. How long do you wait to plant in soil where you've done a full burn?
I have had seed in the ground...no green on top.... And sprayed Roundup right over the whole corn plot. It is a good idea to wait for a while before setting out plants. You are going to get a lot of weeds even after Roundup. I have taken a cover over watermelon babies and sprayed all around them. After they get going good I kinda neglect them.
Agree. The push is to drastically increase population density. A recipe for turning a minor problem into an apocalyptic disaster in a short time.
