This crap can hurry up.

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Beans are suspect. I think rabbits are getting at them.

I've been getting nice tomatoes since late June. I don't know how much of a delay there is being further north, we can safely plant mid-April.
They look like they are coming in fine, just a little late. Peppers are looking good too. I never get a decent yield with peppers.

A small chicken wire fence will help keep the rabbits out. Can make it short enough to step over.
If you have deer in your area, they could be a culprit. They will eat just about anything with new growth.

On another note. I got a bad batch of cucumber plants this year. Very bitter and nasty.
At first I thought something was wrong with my soil. After reading up, it seems like bad genetics.

when I see tomatoes just starting to turn orange, I know it's time for squirrels to come get them.

Winter wild coffee harvest is near.

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also Red salvia (thanks Troy)

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...228_073410.jpg

White salvia

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...228_073739.jpg

Lantana

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...228_073306.jpg

Pintas

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...228_073525.jpg

Carrots

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...228_073606.jpg

Broccoli

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...215_073547.jpg

Onions are looking good.

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Where do you buy beer seeds?

Just plant the can tabs or the pry/twist tops if you want bottles.
Don't forget to add some salted nuts or pretzels for fertilizer.

You don't want any. They were supposed to be pale ale but came up as domestic light.

Trying to get your slugs drunk?

We haven't planted shit yet this year. Wife has ironically been too busy coordinating mergers of giant monsters of agribusiness.

But in other news, our garden bed is almost completely flooded with water... so maybe rice?

Asian experimental cooking - drunken slugs

Ready for pics^^

Also, my tomato plants are about as tall as me now. Growing up, just need them to start producing some juicy tomatoes. I can't help myself and pluck the cherry's and eat them immediately, instead of harvesting and using them in a salad or something.

My peppers are doing amazing, like always. I did some beef jerky in the smoker (smoked 12 hours, it was amazing) using the jalapeno peppers and some tomato in my garden. Made a spicy verde salsa / marinade and soaked them over night.

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I need to weed i know, and i have a ton of unused space. Race car / boat / playtime is way more important, i think we can all agree.

first time finding this thread. Will start contributing.

Aloe plant in front yard is blooming. I'm sharing this because I don't know how many people have ever seen an aloe plant bloom before.

Also, the milkweed is attracting lots of very hungry monarch butterfly caterpillars. The caterpillars are quite attractive in their own right, but they look even better near the flowers.

I just counted 22 caterpillars. Eat up fellas.

Sixshooter that's an awesome aloe plant. I grew some Scorpion peppers a year or two ago before a hurricane killed it. My tree dropped a branch on it like a guillotine. Did them hydroponically outdoors and the plant was about 7 feet x 7 feet. Massive plant, insanely hot peppers.

I learned to grow plants from growing pot years ago. My buddy and I tried everything from soil, to drip systems to full on hydroponics. Now I only grow hydroponically as the yields and plant quality is much better. Easier to control nutrients and there is less of an issue with bugs/parasites.

We've had quite a bit of trouble trying to grow certain fruits and vegetables. Hydroponics sounds like an interesting option.

I've been collecting the bits for an aquaponics setup. I really want to try farming American Shad and combining that with traditional hydroponic vegetable gardening. Just trying to find an IBC Tote that's not been used for used motor oil or greywater.

I have an aloe plant(i think) inside. I can't recall it ever blooming(sp?), maybe because it's inside, or maybe because it's not an aloe plant at all. haha

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This aloe is at least 6 years old. I've not researched how long it typically takes for them to mature and bloom like this. That bloom is greater than 6ft high at it's top. It's a big plant, lol.

It isn't all that expensive. The initial cost can be high depending on how many plants you're trying to grow. If you're doing it outdoors it is less expensive as you don't need to buy lights, light hoods, ballasts, and cooling fans. Plus no lights compare to the amount of lumens the sun emits. Grab some Rockwell cubes, a 5 gallon bucket, plastic mesh cube holder (snaps on top of the bucket), an air pump, air stone, air lines (a fish tank pump and lines will work)

I used the Lucas method of nutrients. Basically two bottles. One is for vegetative growth the other for flowering. Start off with 90 percent veg, 10 percent flower, then over time scale the opposite way. It will cover all the nutrients a plant needs to grow.

I live in Charleston SC and we have an awesome gardening store called Greenspirit Hydroponics. Check out their website to get an idea of the materials and stuff I mentioned so you know what to look for if you decide to try it out. The yields are great.

Greenspirit Hydrogardens

Red salvia and white salvia are blooming. They are native to this area. Also have a pineapple growing, not quite native.

Nice!

I just paid to have 3 trees in the front yard cut down and the stumps ground. Hopefully we will be able to get grass to grow, and trying to decide what we will plant in the front yard. Our house faces almost straight north, is kind of a boomerang shape on a corner lot, so I'm not sure what beds are going to full/partial/shade, to know what to plant.

And I don't want to screw it up since plants and small trees and shrubs are damned expensive!

Some of the easiest things to plant and grow are native plants to your particular area. They can handle the the heat or cold or dry or wet or soil conditions that are naturally occurring. We are doing mostly natives and edibles. Some of the non-natives are for bringing additional pollinators around. But the native pollinators in your area will be looking for the native plants from that area.

Are you still in Oklahoma? http://www.oknativeplants.org/

Edit: There's a long list of choices on that site.

The allium stellatum (prairie onion) is native and should be really easy to grow, as most onions are. You can enjoy the blooms and greenery and also eat the greens and of course the bulbs.

http://www.newmoonnursery.com/_ccLib...s/DETA-477.jpg

Here's something else on the Oklahoma list you should plant just to tell people you have them. Anntenaria neglecta, commonly known as "pussytoes."

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...2-05-20_03.jpg

Yep, still in OKC. It's not so much figuring out what's native, as how much sun everything is going to get.

Here is a satellite pic of the, the yellow represents trees that been removed in the last year, and the red is front/front of the house. You can see the front door points just slight West of dead north. With this being a winter photo, the sun is lower but you can see in front, all the flower beds are completely shaded (inbetween the sidewalks and house). So I'm not sure how much that is going to change in the summer (didn't pay attention last year because those trees were still in the front yard).
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Just looking at the list here I see you're quite a few flowering choices for shady areas.

http://www.oknativeplants.org/upload...andscaping.pdf

Stones on top of plastic sheets would work well between the walk and house. I would concentrate on plantings where the trees were.

Thanks!

There is some stuff growing there now, we just don't like boxwoods and want to make the house look nice. With the big vaulted ceiling over the master/living and cathedral in the dining room with huge windows facing the street..........now with the crappy Bradford Pears removed, the house looks really nice sitting on the corner. So now I want the to be as nice.

It's been so insanely wet here. Finally got the garden pretty much all the way in. Just have to turn over one strip, i may try onion and garlic again we'll see. I also need to get my herbs going again.

Here is all the morels i've found. Hopefully after this week things will warm up with some decent humidity. I'll try again this weekend.
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Built this easy little cage for the beats. Rabbits keep eating the leaves and i think that is why i have low yield.
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I've got Romas, and cherry tomato, no beefeater this year. My plants got like 9' high last year and were falling over with the heavy tomato on them. Bell, habanero, banana and jalapeno peppers.
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I'd like to get rid of that dumb plant by the telephone pole and put another rhubarb plant in. My last one i had was awesome but for some reason it didn't last as long as i thought it would.

Any recommendations for a vegetable plant-friendly herbicide? Two of my three raised bed planters (the short ones) are chock full of grass and starting to grow some weeds. I don't want them to smother my habaneros or jalapenos out.

https://www.acehardware.com/departme...YaAnmAEALw_wcB

Just rake it up. Toss it to the side.

It's a pretty small box (4x4), and the stuff growing up is spaced far enough apart (like 1" on centers with a split leaf for most of it) that you can't get at it too easily with most tools without hitting one of the plants. I was hoping to not have to take the time to yank it all out by hand.

Yank it all out by hand.

Pull them then mulch.

An easy way to keep weeds down is to
0. remove as much of the weedy stuff as possible. cut, pull, whatever.
1. unfold and flatten some paper grocery bags and lay them over the soil. You could also use some cardboard (brown). Leave a ring of uncovered soil around your plants as big as their drip line.
2. mulch over that to hold it in place.

it'll block the sun and kill the weeds. and the paper will biodegrade quickly.

or use glyphosate and sue for 2 billion when you get the cancer.

Honestly after the end of July I hardly bother with weeds or grass. Only pulling the big ones.

Up until then I just spend 15 minutes a week with the rake thing turning over the dirt. I never have problems.

My bleeding hearts I planted a couple years ago finally came in nice.

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Added an arch and Vine type plant, I forgot what it was called. I may need to help it because it looks real flat.
And my $40 shit kicker jap maple is looking real nice. Bought it at Lowe's years ago for what I think is cheap because nobody wanted it.

I really like the flower bed with the stone wall and wood fence. It has a very happy look to it.

At first glance I thought that Maple was a red hibiscus. I forgot they don't grow that far north.

That looks nice! My little Japanese Maple turned into a monster after about 3 years. I need to trim it back quite a bit this fall, it's practically touching the ground.

Azaleas are blooming now.

Nice

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Herb garden that I thought I was going to touch. I don't think I will now. It had completely died off from last year and came back looking like this. Guess we'll see how it does..

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Ahh crud. Had a response but the uploader failed. Thanks. All the dark rocks were stolen from the Gatlinburg area.

Yada yada. Shady Fern garden.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...70bdc5f1bb.jpg

experimenting with plant monitoring:

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Using the Xiaomi Mi Flora device connected to a raspberry pi running Home Assistant.
Bought from the president's bugaboo: https://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Flor...r_warehouse=CN

Milkweed and heliconia.

Native garden with cone flowers, black eyed Susan’s, lantana and milk weed. Aka the I never have to do anything to garden. And my sons mammoth sunflowers from the Houston rodeo. Almost time to harvest the seeds.https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...14113f57f.jpeg

tomotes(grape and Roma), cucumbers, bell peppers, and strawberries
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All of my peppers are recovering well from slug damage. My wife wasn't watching the dogs, and they dug up my ghost pepper plant. She stuck it back in the ground, but it was beyond dead. Most of the leaves ripped off, brown, wilted over, and broken off about 4" up the stalk. I didn't pull it out, out of sheer laziness, and wouldn't you know it, after 4 days of cloud cover and rain in NC it's about a foot tall!

Have a cluster of jalapenos that came in, our first ancho chili, a sweet snacking pepper, and maybe one or two others. The leaves on the Carolina Reapers are HUGE compared to last year. They really seem to adapt to whatever they're planted in, so moving to the bigger pot this year was a smart decision. I thought I'd be elbows deep in Tabasco peppers already, but that's been one of the three slow growers this year.

Speaking of jalapenos, looks like we are getting a few.

Sure don't look like any jalapeno I've ever seen!

I was just about to say the same thing. Mine all grow like fruit on a tree, not in a spicy flower.

Here's our stuff:

Peas, Carrots, assorted flowers, CORN

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Rb...w1630-h1223-no

Bed #2:

Rainbow Chard, Beets, maybe a carrot or two? Arugula (bolted af), beans with the leaves eaten by rabbits, somewhere some basil and other stuff I've forgotten.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/vr...w1630-h1223-no

THIEVES.
Hopefully the coyote living in our neighborhood teaches them a lesson.

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My thoughts too.

Mine do not look like that at all.

My wife told me they were jalapenos. I wonder where she got the seeds. Mystery peppers!!

Typically if they grow upright in clusters like that, they're some species of ornamental chili. I would expect them to turn yellow and red soon.

Guatemalan insanity peppers?

Yeah, the upright peppers are probably one of the Thai style breeds.
Or at least a cross breed with them for visual appeal

Still edible, but usually they tend to be a bit low on flavour compared to the normal eating species (they tend to still have a bit of heat though, and dry really well for storage)

Last year a bunny got into our raised garden bed and had bunny babies. My dane, bull in a china shop style, found out and got into the garden and destroyed it. No more of that this year.
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Bunnies got into my native garden a few years back and had a litter. Found bones and fluff about a week later. Lots of hawks, raccoons, coyotes, and stray cats here.

fruits of my labor. Have about 3 more gallon bags of tomatoes in the fridge, and some tupper ware too. We have already given away bags to our neighbors already. More cucumbers in the fridge too.
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My tomatoes never come in until mid-July. Kinda jealous of your more southern gardens.

The peppers have a medium heat and a thin flesh and have been nice to cook with, whatever they are. They are attractive when growing.

I saw (and bought) one that resembles the red one at the farmers market but have not used it yet. Definitely doesn't look like the jalapenos I got. Those are much shorter, darker green, and blunt on the end. And sadly this time not spicy.

This is why I hate jalapenos sometimes. Their scoville range is huge and you just never really know what you're going to get. Sometimes it's not hot at all. Sometimes it's just right. Sometimes you almost die choking on your food. Why can't we just get some consistency around here?

Thai chili peppersb are superior for use in cooking. #Changemymind

Serrano peppers are the consistent droid you are looking for.