2012 Gardening Season

Things are going fairly well here.
Some tomatoes have a dozen 3" green fruits.
Have a handful of peas ready to eat.
Beans have flowers.
Zuchini has flowers
Squash flowers will open in a few days
For some reason my Kiwi vine, after 5 years of one or two fruits per year, looks like it will have hundreds this time around.... no explanation for that one.

I do see a lot of cucumber beetles about, my Pak Choi (like Bok Choi but smaller) was covered with earwigs tonight. I'll attack tomorrow with DE.
And I released a bunch of ladybugs tonight and will continue every evening till the 1000 are released.

Picked my first pepper today...
Hardley a peck, but picking peppers is a peculiar project
Particularly suited to preppers.
Once I have picked a peck of peppers, perhaps I should pickle them?

Picked my first pepper today...
Hardley a peck, but picking peppers is a peculiar project
Particularly suited to preppers.
Once I have picked a peck of peppers, perhaps I should pickle them?

hee hee - very good!

I was out weeding and mulching today and things are looking much better. Quite a few green tomatoes but nothing ripe yet..yum tomato sandwiches...

there are blossoms on the tomato plants that are large enough so there is hope!

I am in zone 2. You guys are making me jealous!

Isn't the main crop for zone 2 pine cones?
Anyways, not much to be jealous of, all my tomatoes and peppers were bought from a nursery due to lack of space to start my own seeds this year.
The pepper that I picked (don't get me started again) is a sweet banana pepper. The plant was about 8 inches high when I bought it and I only bought one to try it out. My sweet strawberry pepper was bought the same way.

I got a flat (12) red bell peppers and a flat of green bell peppers. Both are very short, but somehow producing peppers.
I also bought a flat each of roma and fantastic tomatoes. These guys are going nuts! About 3 feet tall and more green fruit every day.
Everything I started from seed myself is a little on the slow side and very short...green beans are about a foot high and flowering...wax beans are even shorter and flowering.

Next year I will be starting some of my plants indoors in the extension I'm building, with artificial light if I have to.
Also, I'll be arranging things differently. There are sections of my garden that get quite a bit of shade, so leafy things will go there.
I tried the square foot method with the tomatoes and cabbages, and although it may be a pain to get the fruit out of that mass of plants, it looks like I'll get great production despite the tight spacing. I'll do more crops that way next year.

I'm already seeing a lot of things to improve upon next year, like planting more peas and beans. Also, I need to get to one of my other properties with the chainsaw and get clearing. I'm thinking of moving the sweet corn there, as well as growing some feed corn for the chickens and trying my hand at wheat. I have two lots I bought at a municipal auction for dirt...no pun intended. They are both about 1/3 acre and wooded, so I have lots of work to do to get at least part of one ready to grow on.

Some things are starting to really grow...
We have countless tomatoes waiting to ripen and are still seeing flowers that will give fruit.
Zuccinni is about a week from giving lots of yummy veggies
Peas are coming out, although I seriously under planted and only harvest a handful of peas every 2 - 3 days.
Picked my first green beans today and got about 3 cups once cut up.
I also got 4 green peppers and seeing lots more growing on the plants.
My decorative gourds are flowering and starting to produce...I may plant some decorative corn and different sized gourds next year in hopes to sell it at a local flea market for a weekend in the fall...the money earned would be put towards soil conditioning and irrigation equipment (I really hate standing outside with a hose).

Number of things starting to come in from the garden, most of them are producing about half what they do normally, having said that we did the first dig yesterday on the potato's, as I had been listening to a farmer on the radio talking about the fact that he had about a fourth of the crop he should for this time of the year, so I wanted to compare, clearly my heavily mulched, hilled three times dry land spaced potato's are doing much better then his, in fact , I am bang on with so far the ones that we have checked producing the same amount this year as any other year to date.. These are seed potato's that we had held over in the cellar for the winter, and were april planted.

So for me at least, its clear that I would should be getting my planned amount of 500 to 600 hundred pds of potato's out of the garden season..

I planted another 63 pea seeds today using the square foot method...just 7 square feet of space at 9 seeds each. I was very happy with the square foot method for tomatoes, zucinni, and corn, so we'll see how this works out.
I am now getting about 3 cups of cut up green beans every 2 days.

NEED HELP PLEASE

Does anyone have a natural solution for cabbage worms?
Other than hand picking the buggers?
Thanks

Cover them in a floating row before they get laid on, otherwise no, sorry, no other advice to give on them. I have been able to reuse the floating row cover for a number of years as I only use it for a limited time.

Oh well, guess I'll just have to keep picking them off and washing away the eggs with the hose...
Cabbage a la swiss cheese anyone?

http://rpalulis.hubpages.com/hub/Natural-Ways-To-Control-Cabbage-Worms

5. There are many sprays available on the market, but you should avoid using many of these insecticides for several reasons one the cabbage worm is known to build resistance to these chemicals and two, do you really want insecticides sprayed on your food? There are some natural and organic applications. I read that sprinkling corn meal, rye flower or a mixture or 1 part salt to 2 part flour on damp leaves will kill the worms. After they eat they will bloat and die.

I hope this helps.

NEED HELP PLEASE

Does anyone have a natural solution for cabbage worms?
Other than hand picking the buggers?
Thanks

I did a google and found this from the University of Ohio
Generalist predators that feed on cabbageworms as well as other pests are lady beetles, lacewings, spined soldier bug, hover fly larvae, spiders, yellowjackets, paper wasps, and ground beetles. Virus diseases can infect and decimate imported cabbageworm and cabbage looper populations.
Cultural and Physical Control
• Destroy crop debris after harvestso that any larvae or pupae remaining on the plants are destroyed.
• Removeweedsinthemustardfamily(wildmustard,wild radish, shepherd’s purse, pepperweed) from the area because these can serve as safe refuges for these pests.
• Lightweight row covers placed over the crop canprevent moths from laying eggs on plants.
• In small gardens, the worms can be hand-pickedfrom plants at least once per week.

Love this natural remedy that I found...gives a whole new meaning to wheat belly
Flour as Pest Control
Dust the cabbage leaves with white flour. The best time to do this is right after it rains or in the morning while there is still dew. The cabbage worms eat the flour, become bloated and die.

Love the flour idea...
Ya, with the little ones...no pesticides.
Thanks for the ideas!