Share your Garden's progress report!

[DaveH]

My garden is modest this year. A 30' x 50' plot but only 2/3 full at this point. I have:

16 caged and 10 staked tomato plants. German red, Reif Red, Pineapple, Fantastic, various Brandywine strains, Anna Russian, Kotlas, Delicious, Rutgers, Manalucie, Miracle Sweet, Orange Oxheart, Patio.

I grow pole beans on a large tomato cage. 5' dia, 8' tall. Blue Lake this year. Cascade Giant is preferred, but not available from Territorial this year. Fortex, Helda, Musica good in the past.

2 - Zucchini plants, also some basil and cilantro in pots.

That's it so far in zone 6. Modest. I used to grow corn, but the corn available from local mennonites is superb so I no longer feel the need to grow corn since it is rather labor intensive.

Everything is exploding from the ground so far. Spraying tomatoes with Daconil--I've had massive blight problems. Amended soil with Espoma Tomato-Tone, and feeding with Miracle-Gro tomato food. Prefer an organic liquid, but M-Gro never fails.

Your Garden? Dave

[Mary McHugh]

I'm zone 6 too. The tomatoes are incredible this year. It's a great growing season. I've already picked (and eaten!) my first tomato which was a Park's whopper. A second will be picked today. Then I'll have a lull for a bit before the rest come in. I have Park's Whopper, Brandywine, Fourth of July, San Marzano, Sun Sugar & Supersweet 100 cherry, German Johnson, and tons more that I've already forgotten.

In years past, I've had terrible luck with cukes but the few plants I planted this year are growing like gangbusters. I have several that are almost ready for picking.

My first square of corn is almost ready too -- Seneca Daybreak. Basil is fantastic and the chiles and peppers are flowering profusely. Some of the chiles are covered in green fruit.

Eggplant is the only thing not doing that well. It's just not growing. The past few years I've neglected to add compost/manure to the garden and it started to run low on nitrogen especially. Over this past winter, I managed to get some manure where the tomatoes are, which probably explains their phenomenal growth.

In other areas the plants started to yellow so I added some fast acting urea from Espoma. That did the trick. For the eggplant tho, I just added a general purpose veggie fertilizer. Maybe I should add some urea to the eggplant too.

The weeds appear to be held at bay due to a combo of handweeding, black plastic, and my hubby's anniversary present to me, a new rototiller which I've been using to cultivate the uncovered path and any open areas.

For the most part, this is the best garden I've had in years!

Mary

[DigitalVinyl]

Zone 6b/7 here. Definitely a productive spring. I only have about

150-175 sq ft of garden in ground and containers. Tomatoes, cukes, squash & zucchini are the best growers so far.

Eggplant- like mary's mine is small and had a lot of yellowing in the leaves. One eggplant is growing but still small enough to just rot off if it wans't pollinated properly. I've been using a seaweed fertilizer to help it out and the plant seems to be responding.

Spaghetti squash- Gi-normous plant. 8 foot tendrils. About 6-8 lbs of squash ready for picking and no sign of it slowing down.

Crookneck squash- yellowing leaves, kinda brittle. Something happening to it. I saw both a squash beetle and a squash borer on this plant. ONly two squash so far.

Canteloupe. Smaller plant than I expected, and flowers everywhere--nothing else. Not sure if this is normal or not.

Watermelon (sweet ice box) - tiny plants. May be getting over shadowed

Tomatoes-Sweet 100(4 ft tall), Big Beef(4 ft tall), Roma(puny and weak-something happening with that one). Green Tomatoes on all. I thought the Sweets would ripen first but I think the beefsteak may beat it out. My salt shaker is just waiting...

Peppers- Jalapenos, thai dragon, anaheim(green chile), bell wonder. The bells are not leafing up much. Thai has tons of peppers. Jalapenos are ready to be eaten--a good two dozen already. However Jalapeno & thai suffered from something--peppers have been very small.

Horseradish-- did *NOT* know how big this plant gets. My friend had

4foot tall leaves in her garden. I will have to move this for next year.

Broccoli & Cauliflower-planted a bit late but finishing first heads of broccoli and started to harvest cauliflower.

Green beans(kentucky blue) & red kidney beans aren't getting as tall as I expected. I think they aren't getting enough sun. Nearby Tomatoes and cukes grew faster and taller than expected. A few green beans are growing.

Cukes-Kirby-5+ pounds so far. Another 2-3 cukes a day. I'm ready to try my first batch of pickling.

Corn, first planting is growing cobs. Hoping pollination went okay. One stalk on end is browning. Another has tassels jammed. Another has aphids. Last year my corn didn't make it this far. Second & third rows are growing but center of the bed isn't getting enough of something--stalks are running shorter there.

I'm out of lettuces. SHould have started another planting before. I'm about to seed some baby bear pumpkins for October.

With the exception of basil, sage & oregano I screwed up my herbs. Basil bushes are huge and smell wonderful. I managed to only get one cumin plant to make it to seed. The dill that sprouted in between the patio cracks from last years' volunteers is better than any I planted. The others are still diminutive, some browing.

Onions and garlic are okay, but timing was wrong. I will probably harvest as greens and replant for bulbs to harvest next summer.

Flowers from plants are doing great, and those started from seeed(too late) are finally beging to take off. My seed starting was a bust this year. What I did get to grow was during later attempts and I didn't get the jump on the season I wanted.

DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,

[Liashi]

My garden?

Hmmm. . . .

Let's start with the bad news first.

Tomatoes-- Deer . . . This iz WAR!

I have five tomato plants this year (okay, okay . . . more like 4 1/2 . . . ) Huskey Cherry Red doing okay so far. Might have had a tomato from Supersonic if a deer hadn't eaten half and left the rest. (grrr. . . .) Had a pink beefsteak, the top of the stem got broken off during transplant and it took FOREVER for it to come back. Then a deer chopped it off again . . . the second pink which was to "replace" the first is okay, but still awfully small. The experimental "Bonnie" plant looks like it's got something wrong with it.

On the bright side. I'm not expecting too much more deer damage. There is now a fence. It went up in one evening the day before we had to go on vacation.

Carrots--

Looking awfully crowded next to two pumpkin plants the size of California that are growing fast.

The plant bulbs that is in the middle of it all are finally flowering. the "gladiator" looks so pretty! Other wise . . . I guess things are okay there. ^^

Lima beans and green beans-- This iz still WAR!

First harvest. Not bad. It and the corn now have a fence. This fence went up the day after we got back from vacation. Guess what those deer had been up to?

Corn--

We way qualified for the "knee high by the Fourth of July" mark. Tallest stalk has one tassel. Haven't seen any pests on the corn for a while now, but I'm still on the watch.

Pumpkin-- Yay for thorny plants which the deer don't bother!

Did it have to explode?? This stuff is turning into a weed at this rate! Think I'll trim some vines.

Watermelon--

If the Pumpkin doesn't overgrow and kill it, it looks like it might have a chance. I don't think it's too fond of our clay soil. At least there's a flower!

Hmm. I think that's everything. ^^ We definitely need more fence! May have a hard time getting the picture to load during peak hours, keep trying if you'd really like to see it. ^^

[nutNhoney]

Great idea Dave! Your garden sounds wonderful! I am envious of such a large growing area. I'm on the edge of zone 6a and 6b. Unlike your lushious 1500 sq. ft garden, mine is a modest 244 sq. ft comprised of two 4' x 8' raised beds, three 4' x 10' raised beds, and a 6' x 10' unraised bed. I have a small 6' 8' greenhouse and several planters that increase my veggie growing capabilities. It is by far my largest garden project yet! I'm using the square foot method for the raised beds and rows for the unraised bed. I'm using dowels to stake up many of the plants but will use trellises for the tomatoes.

I'm growing: 2 variety of peas, beans (pole, yellow wax royal burgundy), lettuces (bristo mix, mesculin, grand rapids), radishes (cherry belle, gourmet miz), squash (zucchini, acorn), onions (green, spanish, red), potatoes, peanuts, carrots, cucumbers (bush, burpee, straight eights), beets (detroit red), broccoli, brussel sprouts, peppers (bell boy, jalepeno, hot, habanero), stawberries, cantelope, watermelon, tomatoes (roma, brandywine, beefsteak, sweeties) and herbs (thyme, lemon thyme, oregano, chives, sweet basil, red basil, mint, lemon balm, rosemary).

All the gardens are very lush so I'm pleased. I'm battling overheating in the greenhouse but think I've got the hang of it. So far we have enjoyed strawberries, lettuces, herbs and radishes. The squashes are setting up nicely. The zucchini will be ready to pick likely by the end of the week if pick at the 8" length. The bush cucumbers are getting close to the pickling stage and one is already too large for pickling. The peas have quite a few pods and will be ready for picking soon. One patch of peas is almost at the end of the dowel so I may have to add trellises to allow them to continue growing upwards. Four more patches are not quite that tall yet. One patch of yellow wax beans will be ready to pick by the weekend.

The garden changes daily! I am really enjoying it. Like you, I had a little blight on the tomatoes so sprayed them with Bravo. I am considering using Miracle Grow simply because of the heavy load on the raised beds. The soil mixture I used is about half compost but I worry that won't be enough nutrients.

[Liashi]

What is it with cherry tomato plants? Mine is also the happiest of the bunch. ^^

Have you broken off some of the suckers? I note that the main vine gets big when you leave a sucker on there, but it takes those thing a while to set fruit, so you don't want to leave all of them there. You can just break them off and compost them but this article recommends starting new plants, if your growing season is long enough:

that I'm much of an expert. The best think is how suckers can regenerate your plant if a deer distroys the top. . . . ^^

[Dawn]

My garden is modest. It's a 5x6 foot plot. :) Two roma tomato plants falling over, heavy with yellowing fruit. Two other tomato plants, I'm not sure which variety (either homestead or rutgers), my husband planted them and didn't note which cup they came from. They're not doing well, still only about 10" high and I just fertilized them last weekend. I have a row of red onions getting fat, and a row of onions for 'green onions' also getting fat. The rest of the garden and surrounding grass is being taken over by strawberries, I'm getting a second crop off them this summer.

Next to the plot are 3 mounds: one with cantelope, two fat little baby melons on the way, lots of blooms waiting to be pollenated. The other two mounds have different varieties of zuchinni. Mostly I've been picking them and throwing them in the compost because heavy rains are causing the young fruit to rot on the vine. I've got two coming on the "shepards" variety that I think will go on the grill tomorrow for dinner, though.

On the side yard I have 3 more tomatoes, either Gulf State or Arkansas Traveller (again, planted without noting what was going where) which are growing very well. They are starting to put out blooms. I'm experimenting with tomato varieties this year, to find one which does well in our late summer heat and drought. Two varieties died after being planted.

Oh yeah, and on the front step I've got rosemary and basil in pots. So far they haven't died. (Most years my garden report is a list of what has died, this has been a good year, but it's only July.)

Dawn zone 5