2023 agriculture efforts

[JohnRoberts]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. So far I have had multiple early plantings wither and die. They germinate and prosper inside my heated greenhouse then fade when moved outside. We haven't had another hard frost (more on that later), but apparently tropical plants do not appreciate overnight temps lower than 50'.

I just checked the 10 day forecast and see several 51' nights. I am thinking of planting some seeds in the ground instead of in my heated greenhouse. They may do better in the dirt, or not.

The good news is that I have several tomato plants and a couple squash plants prospering. Peppers apparently are too tropical for planting this early.

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The hard frost several weeks ago trashed my fig tree... most of the upper branches are dead and already drying out... I see a few new up-shoots growing up from the base roots so it looks like start over time. The fig tree was pretty productive so I will miss this year's lost crop of figs. I am seeing a small handful of fruit on my several fruit trees (peaches and two different apple trees). The plum trees are still barren but they always blossom too early for their own good.

One of my two blueberry bushes that already had a berries growing, lost them all after the frost.

JR

 

[jensenmann]

This year I planted two quince trees, a medlar, five different plum trees and several rock pears. Last year´s hefty dry period killed a bunch of my berry plants and all my figs. So I decided to move to something more robust. We´ll see what will happen this year. Weather is completely nuts over here. Old farming rules cannot be applied anymore. And it doesn´t help that all my farmland is on top of a hill, rather dry and unaccessible with a car.

My next adventure will be grapevines. One of my properties is a historic vineyard which dates back to the midage. But it has no more grapevines since the last owner died and nobody took care of it. I bought it a few years ago from the family and it was a mess, completely overgrown. It took me two years to get it under control. And now it´s time to bring it back to it´s original destination.

 

[JohnRoberts]

This year I planted two quince trees, a medlar, five different plum trees and several rock pears. Last year´s hefty dry period killed a bunch of my berry plants and all my figs. So I decided to move to something more robust. We´ll see what will happen this year. Weather is completely nuts over here. Old farming rules cannot be applied anymore. And it doesn´t help that all my farmland is on top of a hill, rather dry and unaccessible with a car.

My two plum trees tend to blossom too early so the blooms get frozen (so far).

There is a new theme "no mow May" presumably to give bees a better spring. This may be nonsense but I am willing to embrace any excuse to avoid yard work. But I will thread that needle by mowing just the trim... I joke that with my 25HP zero turn I can mow my yard in 20 minutes but then it takes a couple days to mow the trim. I plan to spend the entire month of May mowing trim.

Today I trimmed the weeds away from my two blueberry bushes... the freeze trashed all the early berries, but both bushes look alive and well.

My next adventure will be grapevines. One of my properties is a historic vineyard which dates back to the midage. But it has no more grapevines since the last owner died and nobody took care of it. I bought it a few years ago from the family and it was a mess, completely overgrown. It took me two years to get it under control. And now it´s time to bring it back to it´s original destination.

Sounds like fun... My property had a grape arbor (muscadines?) that I ignored and they died off.... If we had time travel I'd go back and save my grapes.

JR

 

[user 37518]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.

Many would disagree with you today, much of the AI, neural networks and such, rely on exactly that. Also, doing the same thing over and over again is what almost all musicians I know do, they repeat scales ad nauseam, and they do get a different outcome over time by becoming better. I guess that a better definition would be doing the same thing over and over again always with bad results and expecting a different outcome.

 

[jensenmann]

I´m mowing only partially so that there´s always something blooming. And I start late. The first trees to harvest are cherries in june. That´s when I start mowing, but undeneath the trees only.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

I've picked over three gallons of blueberries in the past couple of weeks, all from my two older bushes. There's at least another gallon (or two) ripening. My wife made blueberry muffins last week and a big cobbler this week. I've frozen four quart bags and we've eaten a bunch raw on cereal or for snacks.

This was last Friday's harvest. I picked another gallon this afternoon.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Today I saw my first small green tomatoes coming... I should have 2 squash ripe enough to harvest for this weeks meals.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

here is a photo of my irrigation system hack to better put the water where needed. Looking at the stock sprinkler head near top of the photo we see 8 streams of water spraying out. The sprinkler head near the bottom edge of the photo has an old beer bottle cap sitting on top. The beer cap captures the water sprays and drips straight down.

Not watering the weeds will help manage them too.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

The hard freeze this spring trashed my fig tree... every branch died down to ground level. After I pruned off all the dead wood, the tree grew back with a vengeance. Pretty soon I had 15-20 up shoots.

I pruned the too many up shoots back to only 7 or 8 branches. This new growth is already 4' tall and still growing strong.

I decided to put all the up shoots that I pruned off into jars with water to get them to root. This weekend I stuck the up shoots into flower pots with potting mix. I feel lucky about getting some new trees out of this hard freeze drama. The top up shoot pot in the picture is actually from my peach tree.

I am not sure where to put all these new trees but I'll figure something out.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

My tomatoes are being eaten by horn worms.... Apparently they hide under leaves in the daytime but I can see evidence of their frass (excrement), and partially chewed green tomatoes..

I may need to do some nighttime hunting. They say a UV flashlight helps them stand out.

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Late update...had a decent cherry tomato and pepper crop (all container grown). Got about 40 muscadines off of my young vines. One grew about 4' along the trellis, so hopefully they're getting established now. Only been in the ground since last August.

Back in the spring I did the shiitake logs. When I checked them today I saw they had started to flush. Cut four nice ones (3.4 oz total) and more are about to pop. Anyone have a recommendation for a good small dehydrator?



Sure beats burying logs in the ground.

 

[JohnRoberts]

My garden is definitely winding down... I am still getting a couple ripe figs everyday.

The pecan crop is pretty much a total loss due to heat and water stress.

I have one small cantaloupe and one even smaller watermelon growing on vines, so it will be a race to see how big they can get before a frost takes them down for the count.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

I don't want to jinx it by declaring victory too soon but today I got my first ripe fig in over a week. I still have dozens on the tree but they stopped getting ripe. I figured that it was lack of water (we haven't seen any significant rain for weeks). After 4 days of watering my tree is showing signs of new life. It has been a bad year for my fig tree, first getting trashed by a late hard freeze, now water stress.

I have already lost this years pecan crop to heat/drought.

JR

 

[Gold]

There was so much rain in the Adirondacks that the wild blueberries and strawberries went crazy. We haven’t been there much this year so the wildlife got it all. I’ve also never seen so much moss. It was like walking on a shag carpet on a lot of the property.

 

[crazydoc]

'Twas a strange gardening year. Very few carrots and beets even came up, despite careful attention to water and shade. Some little bastard (probably ground squirrel despite chicken wire) ate all the heads off the developing cabbage, so none. Winter squash only got a few inches long, and zucchini and yellow very unproductive compared to prior years. Determinate tomatoes were great, but indeterminates almost none until the last week or two, still green and the season about over.
Fantastic year for peppers - green and purple bell, Anaheim, regular and brown jalapenos. Finally got a good crop of apples but had to spray them with liquid fence so deer and other critters didn't touch them. I sprayed the peaches too but they still turned into pits on the ground before ripening. Plums are good despite ground squirrels in the trees -don't want too many plums for a mess on the ground. Lots of crab apples still on the trees, but a PITA to make jam.

This is probably my last garden - I'll be 80 next spring and having progressive leg neuropathy makes tilling, preparing and weeding a garden difficult.

 

[JohnRoberts]

'Twas a strange gardening year. Very few carrots and beets even came up, despite careful attention to water and shade. Some little bastard (probably ground squirrel despite chicken wire) ate all the heads off the developing cabbage, so none. Winter squash only got a few inches long, and zucchini and yellow very unproductive compared to prior years. Determinate tomatoes were great, but indeterminates almost none until the last week or two, still green and the season about over.
Fantastic year for peppers - green and purple bell, Anaheim, regular and brown jalapenos. Finally got a good crop of apples but had to spray them with liquid fence so deer and other critters didn't touch them. I sprayed the peaches too but they still turned into pits on the ground before ripening. Plums are good despite ground squirrels in the trees -don't want too many plums for a mess on the ground. Lots of crab apples still on the trees, but a PITA to make jam.

This is probably my last garden - I'll be 80 next spring and having progressive leg neuropathy makes tilling, preparing and weeding a garden difficult.

maybe you can scale back to a smaller garden while this year seems hardly worth the trouble.

JR

 

[fazer]

Squash was good but tomatoes got hammered with hail this year. We planted prairie grass in the back yard area for our new grandson that is doing great with all the rain this summer. Paxton is now 22 days old. I’m looking forward to seeing him play in the new backyard next year. The dogs also like the new grass.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

'Twas a strange gardening year. Very few carrots and beets even came up, despite careful attention to water and shade. Some little bastard (probably ground squirrel despite chicken wire) ate all the heads off the developing cabbage, so none. Winter squash only got a few inches long, and zucchini and yellow very unproductive compared to prior years. Determinate tomatoes were great, but indeterminates almost none until the last week or two, still green and the season about over.
Fantastic year for peppers - green and purple bell, Anaheim, regular and brown jalapenos. Finally got a good crop of apples but had to spray them with liquid fence so deer and other critters didn't touch them. I sprayed the peaches too but they still turned into pits on the ground before ripening. Plums are good despite ground squirrels in the trees -don't want too many plums for a mess on the ground. Lots of crab apples still on the trees, but a PITA to make jam.

This is probably my last garden - I'll be 80 next spring and having progressive leg neuropathy makes tilling, preparing and weeding a garden difficult.

My Dad just turned 82. He used to have a big garden back in the 70s and 80s. He's scaled back to about 10 tomato plants, a few butterbean vines, a few okra stalks and a couple of blueberry bushes. Gives him something to enjoy without excessive effort.

Maybe a couple of raised bed setups would help by moving the weeds closer to you. You've got to keep on keepin' on, as my grandfather used to say.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Update: success from watering fig tree.... It had stopped giving me ripe figs for over a week so I speculated that ground water was drying up. We haven't had a good rain for several weeks.

After about three days of watering I got a second ripe fig this morning so that seems to confirm my thesis that the fig tree was under water stress. I need to be careful not to overwater but I still have dozens of unripe figs on that tree...

[edit- I just killed 3 huge hornworms that were eating what's left of my tomato plants. They have long since stopped making green tomatoes but were still putting out blossoms and new growth. The horn worms were busy and well fed. /edit]

[edit2] today I got three figs from my fig tree so it looks like it is back among the living since I watered it. /edit]

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

More shiitake today. I've gotten over 11oz so far and only from two smaller logs (I innoculated seven total). Biggest one was over 1.5oz and 4" across. I split a bag of 500 plugs with a neighbor. He used some oak and now his are flushing, too.