Anybody does vegetable gardening?

[walkingman]

This is our garden this year. It is 98° today and we will break 100° tomorrow in Central Texas - too hot for man or beast. We desperately need a cool spell or the veges will have a hard time setting fruit. But thankfully we are supposed to have a cold spell next week and the temps should drop to the lower 90s.

I made it a lot smaller a couple of years ago. Now we usually just grow tomatoes, green beans, squash (zucchini and yellow) and purple hull peas. Hopefully we have some good tomatoes any day.

Can't wait for my first "tomato sandwich" ! ☮

[Diamond_Dog]

1. Your garden is beautiful.

I don’t know how you can stand that kind of heat, though!

Here in NE Ohio ours won’t look like yours for a couple more months. We’ve downsized quite a bit over the years. Now it’s just tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, and cucumbers.

What are purple hull peas?

[codfisherman]

2. Cow peas in NC

Beautiful garden there! Purple hull peas, cow peas, blackeyed peas however they're called, I plant'em, eat'em, and love'em. I also plant black beans, october beans, bush limas, papago peas, and python beans. Just finished putting in a row of pole limas to climb the neighbor's back fence. This is the first year I'll have a harvestable amount of fava beans. They're cold hardy, I planted them in December. My first little cherry tomato is shy just a few days of being ripe, my beefsteaks and romas should start flowering soon.

[walkingman]

5. Cool, I love limas also. Never heard of the papago or python beans.

Our favorite tomatoes are Better Boy, they seem to do better in our climate - don't split as bad and are a consistent large size but hard to beat a good tomato of any variety. We pick them after they blush and bring them to our barn and let them get real ripe and them just put in plastic bags and the freezer. They make great soups, sauces, etc. and are easy to skin and core afterwards.

Jealous - I bet you have great soil in Ohio....

[Diamond_Dog]

11. We have clay soil.

Mr. Diamond tills it and mixes in manure. He also plants a cover crop over the winter to add nutrients.

We like Better Boy tomatoes, too! (In “Ohiya” we say “Tamaytas”)

Awesome on the beans. My favorites are black beans. Never thought of growing them!

[codfisherman]

15. Black beans

They'll climb corn, okra, sunflowers, amaranth, or trellises so I use them all around.

[walkingman]

18. 😂 We say "Tamaytas" also in Texas 🤣

Cool about the cover crop - we tried planting buckwheat one year as a covercrop but then decided to go to the no-till "ruth stout" method because we have a few Longhorns steers for tax purposes and always have round bales of hay available. Not sure it save much work but it definately helps on the weeding. I make the mistake of getting "first cut" coastal hay one year (usually the first cutting they use weed killer on the pasture) and that was a big mistake. It took a lot of work to get rid of the hay - it was killing everything we planted in the garden. Now I make sure that I get second or third cutting - they don't use the weed killer so no problem.


I love beans of all kinds - out biggest problem here is the poor soil and the very short growing season. It has gotten to where we have to plant tomatoes no later than late Feb. or early March, which means taking a chance on a freeze, and have lots of 5 gal. buckets to cover them in case of cold or hail. The beans usually like warm soil to germinate and so depending on the weather it could get too, hot too quick to produce - really a challenge. Central Texas is not the best place to garden....that's for sure.

[Diamond_Dog]

21. Holy cow! No pun intended!

I’d hate to get that fellow riled up at me!

Our biggest hurdle in Ohio is rain. Too much of it. We can’t plant any veggies outside until the 3rd week in May either unless we want to cover plants due to frost.

I’ve had very good luck consistently with string beans and Romaine lettuces. Tomatoes and peppers do okay depending on what weather we get. Mr. D likes Hungarian Hot Wax peppers.

I’ve never heard of “first cut, second cut, etc.” so that’s good to know! 🙂. We’ve also used buckwheat and winter rye for covers.

Here’s Sophie checking out some striped eggplant

[walkingman]

24. Never seen eggplant like that, my wife makes good baba ganoush.

I wish we could grow romaine lettuce here but we have never had any luck - I think it must be the terrible heat or maybe drought or both? Anything to break our usual cuisine of BBQ and Mexican food - although I like both. When it is spring, it is really nice to have some fresh veges. For some reason we have never had a lot of luck with peppers? You would think in our hot dry climate they would do well? They get up and then when summer heat comes just seem to stop growing or don't produce much - maybe it has to do with pollination or setting the fruit. I don't know.

[AllaN01Bear]

26. heart the longhornasarus.

[codfisherman]

14. Papagos and Pythons

Both these have been experimental for me the last few years. The papagos are an heirloom variety of cowpea raised by the Tohono O'odham people of the southwest and northern Mexico. The python beans grow like a three feet long green bean , I've yet to eat one. I rotate some kind of bean through each plot every four years, so the more the merrier.

[walkingman]

19. Interesting....where do you get the seed? I like to try new stuff.

We rotate our cowpeas also - you can definitely tell that they fix nitrogen after a crop because the next year things grow noticeably better in that area. However, since I downsized I cannot rotate like we used to. Just usually back and forth, etc between two locations.

[codfisherman]

42. Bakers and SESE

I love the Baker's catalogue, they're pricy but good for rare and unusual seed. The python beans came from them. Southeast Seed Exchange is a collective outfit in Virginia that specializes in southern heirloom varieties. The peanuts and many oldtimey herbs I grow came from them.

[walkingman]

44. Thanks - I'm gonna order one!

[walkingman]

3. Thank you for the kind words.

The heat is not pleasant and we often ask ourselves why we continue to live here but we have family obligations so not a lot of choice. In the summer we try to get out in the mornings and evenings and it's not too bad, especially if there is a breeze.

What are "purple hill peas"? They are similar to black-eyed peas but sweeter, and tastier in my opinion. They are very heat and drought tolerant and produce quite a lot. We usually pick in the morning and let sit for one day and then shell the next evening (makes it easier to shell) while watching the tube. They freeze well and nioce to have in the fall and winter.

Gardening in Central Texas is challenging - our soil is poor and the growing season is short, but we have a well and use a lot of compost so it does OK. I love veges and look forward to the growing season - by July we will be done.

[Diamond_Dog]

12. I think my post #11 was meant for you, Oops!

[Laurelin]

4. Your garden is lovely

My garden is currently under water and has been for months. It's still raining, too. But thank you for reminding me thar swamps are better than 100 degrees.

[walkingman]

6. Wow? Where do you live? Texas has been getting a lot of bad weather

but mostly north of Austin. We only had 1.06" this month and it is usually our wettest month so we could use more but I definitely don't want the hail or tornados....Climate Change!!

I hate 100° also. When I was transferred to Ausitn in '87 they only averaged 24 days over 100° and now it is typically 60-90 days.

[Laurelin]

47. I used to live in Pflugerville

But now I'm in the Netherlands.

[Siwsan]

7. I'm putting in plants tomorrow

For one thing, it rained this morning so I want to give the soil time to drain a bit. Also, I forgot to buy an extra bag of garden soil and one of manure/humus mix so I'll do that first thing tomorrow morning. I use a bulb planter to pop out the soil and then put a mix of the above beneath and around the new plant.

[walkingman]

23. Using the bulb planter sounds like a cool idea. We have sandy soil

so not sure how well it would work for us. I usually take a shovel and dig a hole and then do the same as you with the compost. We usually use one a gallon flexible pot with the bottom cut out and after planting the tomato seedling surround the plant with that pot. It is a convenient way to be able to water the plant later. On row crops like beans I just take a hoe edge and make a furrow, drop the seeds along the row and backfill. Everyone has their best method usually based on their soil.

[Laurelin]

48. We use bulb planters

Our soil is sandy. It works fine. Again, in the Netherlands, so ymmv.

[Bayard]

8. That's a nice looking garden

We seriously downsized ours too a few years ago. It got to be so much I couldn't keep up with it.
Now we have two different patches: I grow watermelons, cantaloupes, and cucumbers in mine. Mr. Bayard grows the tomatoes, peppers, and squash.

Everything got planted late this year, so many thunderstorms (including today and tomor.)

I love any version of fresh blackeyed peas, especially crowders. I do miss those.

[walkingman]

10. I know what you mean....

I noticed that we had a volunteer cantaloupe in our compost pile the other day


Here is a pic of our garden from the windmill before I downsized - just spreading the mulch became too much. Not a big deal until I got old but not enjoyable anymore so.....

[Diamond_Dog]

13. Wow! Gorgeous garden!

I hear ya 100% on getting older and not being able to keep up what you used to.

I love your Peace sign too

[Bayard]

43. Very nice!

Looks weed free, and tidy. Sometimes I miss growing a little bit of everything, but we needed that field for the goats anyway.

[walkingman]

45. Thanks, it becomes an obsession. Too old to handle a big one these days.

[Beachnutt]

9. Wow, Great looking garden.

I found a big fat green catapillar on one of my tomato plants this morning and he had clipped off some leaves.
How do you keep the bugs off ?

[walkingman]

16. Could it be a Horn worm? They are notorious for getting on tomatoes.

If so, we plant a Datura (Jimsonweed) a few yards away from the garden. Although be careful, if you have children because it is poisonous. It serves as a "trap plant" and the horn worms will go there instead of the tomatoes. They turn into a beautiful moth (hummingbird moth) but can devastate a tomato plant.

If one does get on the tomato - then they are hard to find. I use a blacklight flashlight at night. In the dark they will glow under the blacklight and are easy to find. Otherwise we don't have many problems except for squash bugs. I make sure and rotate them every year and if they do get in the stem take a syringe and inject BT into the stem to kill it. Sometimes it works sometimes not. Can be very frustrating.

[Beachnutt]

17. Yes it had a horn

so it must have been.
That sucker took the top off one of my tomato plants in an hour or so this morning.
I got him off and disposed of him but now I wondering what to do so that another one doesn't come along.

[walkingman]

20. Be sure and keep an eye out - if you had one you very well could have more.

I have noticed when using the blacklight the eggs deposited on the plant glow also. Usually if you find an eaten stem just look and look on that stem and you can usually find them - not always easy especially on bushy plant or if you have multiple worms. Some years we have none and some years we do? The trap plant works well but not always a solution for everybody.

[Beachnutt]

22. Thanks

for helping me out, I Love your garden.
Great work.

[SWBTATTReg]

25. Nice tip on the blacklight flashlite...I'll remember this...thanks!

[dweller]

30. If it's a hornworm

And it has a lot of white eggs attached to its body LEAVE IT. The eggs are from a parasitic wasp that kills hornworms (with those eggs) and then hatch to more wasps that kill more hornworms.
If you get an infestation of hornworms pick 4-5 and run them through a blender with enough water to make a spray … use it on your toms … they will stay away . Gross but effective.


✌🏻

[walkingman]

34. Thanks - gross but a good tip. 😂

[mahina]

27. .

oops

[mahina]

28. I try.

Your garden is inspiring!

I've grown cherry tomatoes, bok choy, zucchini, kale, kalo (taro); now growing ginger and apple bananas mainly

Best luck with the weather!

[walkingman]

32. I love bok choy and have never even heard of apple bananas.

I think I have seen info about taro? Looked it up and is supposed to be similar to sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes.

Amazing how many different types of garden crops are available. We all grow up eating our local cuisine and seldom even think about the other stuff that is available. I'm guessing maybe the only place we could get apple bananas or taro might be "whole paycheck (Whole Foods)" here in Texas.

[mahina]

35. True!

You could get kalo (taro) at an Asian market probably. It's a little bit like sweet potatoes except without the sweetness, which is better for me. You cook it in many ways the same or I do anyway. Rinse it off, cut it up, wash your hands, steam it in the instant pot with the pressure high. If it is eaten before the oxcylate crystals are handled this way people get a very scratchy throat. you can cook it in a cast-iron pan after that like potatoes sort of, or you can mix it up in a blender and store it in the fridge under a half an inch of water. That is poi, a very nutritious food.

They might even have apple bananas. I guess you never know. They taste much better than Chiquita bananas. They are small maybe 6 inches or so very yummy.

I'll look for those bean seeds. Did you ever see The Mountain Minor?

?si=x24w6TGkF5oQWLoc leather britches

[walkingman]

38. No, but thanks, I'll put on my watch list. ☮

[mahina]

40. It's a good one

I’ve never been there so it helped me understand a little bit. And I get it about the beans 🤣
Aloha

[AllaN01Bear]

29. wow.

[GreenWave]

31. I use coconut coir to help retain moisture

[walkingman]

36. Cool! So like a mulch? How does it come, in bales?

Does it decompose and enrich the soil? I looked it up and seem to be a very versatile product.

Are you in Central or South America? Expat?

[GreenWave]

46. To answer all three of your questions...

Coir lasts a long time. Many places carry it: Mother Earth, Amazon. Read reviews so you don't get one with fill product.

Now those last 3 questions...Was, was and was.

[wryter2000]

33. I am so jealous

My garden didn't look like that, and now, I'm in an apartment. I actually snuck a couple of amaryllises onto the rooftop area so they could get some sun. They disappeared. I'm sure the management didn't approve.

If you can grow pole beans, may I suggest fortex? The most delicious green beans I've ever eaten. You will fall in love with them.

[walkingman]

37. Seems like they wouldn't care about something on the roof. I've seen

a show about how people in NY have gardens on their roof that flourish - kind of like a community garden.

Thanks for the suggestion about the Forex beans. It is not easy to grow them here because our weather, heat, and drought are so early in the Spring - I've tried multiple varieties and some years good crops and others terrible. I'm going to check and see if anyone has had any luck growing them.

I have come to accept the fact that some years we have good crops of certain veges and others don't do well and the next year the exact opposite - it seems to be all weather related. This climate change is really affecting us in Texas and it is becoming quite obvious - although their seems to be a lot of denial still.

[The Blue Flower]

39. I keep trying but...

The critters, from bugs to chipmunks to rabbits to birds, think it's a salad bar.

[walkingman]

41. I hear ya, I have to put up an electric fence around my garden to stop

the deer. We had to replant the purple hull peas this year. Right after the broke the ground and got just a few sets of leaves, they came one night and eat them to the ground. They left the stems but after about a week they didn't seem to be coming back so we raked the mulch back and replanted the entire row right next to the original one. I then put up the electric fence and haven't had any problems again (knock wood). I used t-posts on the corners and then fiberglass poles that I already had - they take two strands of wire. Then I took a big roll of red weed eater cord that a neighbor gave me years ago which I have never used and put it at the top of the tposts. I read that they would not jump a red string or line? Seems to be working? Although in years past I only used the 2-strand bare wire and it worked.

I have a 20 mile AC charger that I used to use for the steers, and it will really bite you - I figure if they get stung once they probably wouldn't try again.

Not sure what I would do about those pesky rabbits 😁 or chipmonks?