From the Vegetable Garden

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The heat and lack of rain are taking their toll on the vegetable garden here in late August but there is always something to talk about!  The tomatoes are still producing but really could use some good irrigation from the sky.  The garden is ready for some cleaning up and soon I will need to start the fall garden. I’ll talk more in depth on the fall garden soon but this year I’ll be starting my seeds indoors then transplant them into the garden.  That should help be get around any heat germination issues.

The basil is ready for cutting back to trigger some new growth. I took the trimmings/cuttings and dropped them in a jar of water to root them. This way I can have some potted plants growing with my Italian basil for winter use.  Basil roots easy and fast!

The ‘Tigger’ Melons are covered now in powdery mildew.  They lasted quite a while before getting any type of ailment. I could control this with a baking soda solution but at this point in the season I’m also weighing the time and effort to yield factor – I think I’ll just take a cue from Paul McCartney and “Let It Be”.  For those who are getting ‘Tigger Melon’ seeds from me they should be sent out this week, sorry for the delay!

My tomatillos are starting to produce! Now I have to figure out what to do with them.  Salsa verde anyone? They were included in the seed pack from the Greenland gardener product I reviewed earlier in the year.  The Greenland gardener raised beds are a neat idea for a beginning gardener or someone who doesn’t have much time to construct a raised bed. The seeds all germinated but I never managed to get my irrigation setup in this bed and they were forced to rely solely on Mother Nature for moisture.  The tomatillos have done great without any supplemental watering and the cucumbers produced quite a few cucumbers before succumbing to wilt.

Here are some of our pole beans just hanging out. I need to get out there soon a do some picking!  Today we have other plans – it’s one special little girl’s 6 year old birthday.  I think the garden can wait a day or two!

Have a great weekend!

2 thoughts on “From the Vegetable Garden”

  1. I need to root some basil as well. I too think the garden can wait.
    Happy Birthday to the lovely 6 yr. old.

  2. That's a good idea to root some basil for indoor winter use. I have tried digging plants from the garden to bring in, and it never works for me.

    I enjoy your site!

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From the Vegetable Garden

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It won’t be long at all before we can go wild and plant everything we want in Middle TN. I’ve been holding back my tomatoes until all signs of frost are gone in the forecast and it looks like this weekend will be the weekend for tomato planting! Just so you know the best way to plant a tomato is to plant deep. If you want to read more about that look at my post from 2008 about the best way to plant a tomato. Basil seeds need to go in the ground soon and all those annual flower seeds you’ve been saving for our post frost date will be ready to be planted within a few days. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves let’s take a look back at what is happening in the garden now:

The Tom Thumb Lettuce is growing strong!

The spinach is doing well, the bed just needs weeded.

Rainbow Chard is introducing it’s colorful self to the garden.

Oooh and we can’t forget those strawberry blossoms!

This Weekend’s Gardening To-Do List:

  • Plant Tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplant from seed grown transplants.
  • Plants squash, cucumbers, and cantaloupe from seeds (direct sow in the garden)
  • Sprinkle wildflower seeds along the hillside.
  • Construct the entry deck for the garden shed
  • Propagate more plants! ‘Caradonna’ salvia, Chocolate Eupatorium, Asiatic lily and catmint have aready been started.
  • Transplant more Russian sage.

This past week found me very busy outside in the garden. I hope you were able to spend some quality time outdoors too!

Sunday April 4

Monday April 5

Tuesday April 6

  • I was too tired after a day of transplanting arborvitae and planting a dogwood to post!

Wednesday April 7

Thursday April 8

  • Tuesday’s Tasks This is where I talk about what I did on Tuesday! Here you can find out why I was too tired to post about it on Tuesday.

Friday April 9

  • I visited the Bloom ‘N’ Garden Expo – I’ll tell you later about the plants I brought home!

6 thoughts on “From the Vegetable Garden”

  2. This is great, Dave! You're just far enough ahead of us to be tantalizing. (I'm hauling the pots of tomatoes in and out of the greenhouse every day and am still waiting for that first strawberry flower, and your 'Tom Thumb' seedlings make my poor little lettuces look Lilliputian. But even here, spring is on the way! I love the way you've highlighted the week's posts so it's easy to keep up, too!

  3. Dave:

    Your readers who grow veggies may want to visit http://www.AmpleHarvest.org – a site that helps diminish hunger by enabling backyard gardeners to share their crops with neighborhood food pantries.

    The site is free both for the food pantries and the gardeners using it.

    Backed by Google.com and the USDA, more than 1,600 food pantries nationwide are already on it and more are signing up daily.

    It includes preferred delivery times, driving instructions to the pantry as well as (in many cases) information about store bought items also needed by the pantry (for after the growing season).

    If your community has a food pantry, make sure they register on http://www.AmpleHarvest.org.

  5. I am inspired to plant vegetables at our backyard too. They are good source of food and nutrients. By the way, your garden is so nice.

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From the Vegetable Garden

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It’s time for another peek into the vegetable garden! The fall vegetables are picking up their pace while the summer ones are rapidly screeching to a halt among the rains that have been making Spring Hill, Tennessee seem much more like the Pacific Northwest. I saw the sun yesterday for about 15-20 minutes and used that time to scope out the garden and its current state of disrepair. I’ll post more on the work that needs to be done another time as the list making is just beginning but for now have a look at the vegetable garden. Don’t forget to check out other blogs for their vegetable garden updates at In the Garden!
By far the greenest of the greens are the radishes. I’ve never actually eaten radish greens before and recently have come across some radish green soup recipes that look interesting. I picked a nice sized radish this morning perfect for slicing and dropping in a salad.
A few beets are coming along. I’m a little disappointed that more have not emerged but I may have time to add some more seed if I plan on adding some frost protection later.

The beans are well on their way to producing a healthy final crop. Hopefully we’ll get to freeze the green beans to preserve them over the winter. We don’t have a pressure canner which is necessary to can beans and other low acid foods.

Some of the last of the summer crops still producing are the peppers. The peppers have had no problems this year with bugs, animals, or disease. These peppers are the same as the purple peppers from my last vegetable garden update but have been left to develop a little longer to change their color to red. I like a little variety in pepper appearance from the same old green peppers.

Of course we can’t forget the herbs! My wife’s favorite has to be cilantro and it is coming up everywhere in one 3’x4′ raised bed. I let our spring crop of cilantro go to seed then sprinkled the seed in this bed and just let it go. Once the cooler temperatures and consistent rains came the cilantro started to sprout. There are 4-5 small seedling that have emerged with quite a few more cotyledons appearing every day. We may have more cilantro than we can handle.

I have one more vegetable to show you, the pumpkin. We actually have about 4 on the vine but their growth is going to be severely limited due to the squash vine borer. If there was one bug I could eliminate from my garden for all time it would have to be the squash vine borer. Every summer squash and zucchini crop this year was destroyed by the borers and now they moved on to the pumpkins. At least we’ll end up with a few nice decorative pumpkins this year even if they aren’t large enough to make the Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween. That will give us a good excuse to visit a pumpkin farm with the kids.

8 thoughts on “From the Vegetable Garden”

  2. I am SO envious of you picking and eating radishes already. I have been most negligent with planting my fall veggie garden. I need to take a clue from my fellow TN bloggers and get to work. Your pepper is most pretty. I hope your pumpkins ripens too. You know it is most satisfying growing your own pumpkin for Halloween and the girls will love it. I added your link it. Have a good day and hopefully you'll dry out. We've barely received any rain here.

  3. Your pumpkin looks great, Dave! And I'm so jealous of your volunteer cilantro, one of my all-time favorite herbs as well. We had a ton of volunteers in our tomato bed last year, and I was hoping we'd just keep getting volunteer cilantro from there on out, but nary a cilantro came up there this year. Rats!

  4. Everything in your veggie department looks great, Dave! I finally have ONE yellow pear tomato fully ripened and I'm waiting to savour it in a salad this evening. Hee! Tons left to ripen, though.

  7. I don't have a late season veggie garden. I pack so much into our relatively short summer growin season that by the time fall arrives, I'm ready to call it quits!

    About the only thing we have in the garden now is decorative gourds and lettuce.

  8. Hi Dave,
    Something I learned years ago about beet germination is that the seeds need REALLY good soil contact. As in, after you've planted the beet seeds, step on them. (Don't jump and stamp hard enough to compact the soil, just step on them.)

    Since I heard (and started applying) that concept, I'm getting too many sprouts!

    Enjoy!

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