What did you do in the garden today?

[Acre4Me]

I bought another half bushel of Empire apples to dry.



How do you tell when they're cured? If you can't get the temp/rh up as high as they say it should be, can you just cure them longer?

Yes, that’s my understanding. But, they do not do well in cold temps. Fungus snd decay will start more easily bc not cured (when they actually heal skin nicks and cuts and supposedly get another skin during curing). So, your greenhouse is fine as long as you can keep the night (or day) temp above 55F - as I recall reading.

 

[fuzzi]

They lost me with the strike in 1994-95. I haven't watched or listened to more than a few innings since then.

Same here.

I was a Red Sox fan from early childhood, went to Fenway a few times. They broke my heart in 1986. The strike just slammed the lid on any future interest for me.

 

[NanaK]

I watered the small garden by the greenhouse. Onions, carrots are sprouting. Weeded the strawberry's a bit. Earlier in the week I noticed the wild bunnies had fertilized them for me. Which reminded me I need to go ahead and cover the carrots with netting.

 

[Sally PB]

Hubby and I were pretty solid Tigers fans about a decade ago. Once they traded Justin Verlander, I lost most of my interest. I don't recognize most of the players' names any more.

 

[fuzzi]

I decided to rip out the remaining melon vine and prepare the raised bed for more collards.

Before I began:

Note the soil level is two boards down

Partially rotted compost ready to add:

Double-digging to add the compost:

Ready to plant!

Now the soil level is 3" higher

And the collards are planted and watered!

Now I'll add small stuff around the collards, like radishes, maybe beets or chard.

 

[gtaus]

Double-digging to add the compost:

Nice pictures. I have a couple of questions for you concerning adding compost to your raised bed. Do you double-dig your raised bed to bury your partially composted material? Is that a lot of work?

As for myself, I sift all my compost and just put it on top of the raised bed. But my compost is finished and sifted. Sometimes I use a small Ryobi 18v cultivator to mix the top compost into the raised bed. No double-digging, but the cultivator does an excellent job of mixing the compost and the old raised bed soil. Also, FWIW, my old raised bed "soil" is a mix of chicken run compost and topsoil mixed 1:1.

My Ryobi 18v cultivator...

Good for mixing up to the top 4 inches of soil. Easy to handle in the raised beds.

I also have a Ryobi tiller universal attachment for power heads that works great and will till up to about 8 inches deep. I use the tiller more for initially setting up my raised beds, and then the cultivator for the annual compost top-off.

I only mention my power tools because maybe other people, getting on the years like me, might be interested in some tools that can save time and labor. I'm sure double-digging is probably not all that hard for a raised bed for younger people, but the cultivator and mini-tiller make the task really easy for some of us.

 

[Smokerbill]

I've kind of gotten out of doing the double dig thing to mix in compost. I just till compost into the top few inches of the bed. Don't want to disturb the worms and stuff working down deep in the soil.

 

[jerryse]

I picked some hollyhock seed. I need to pick a spot to sow them. A tip Grandma told me 60 years ago. She walked by the Hollyhocks and crumbled the seed pods onto the ground. She said do that and you will always have hollyhocks.

 

[Birdsong 82]

Lovely refreshed raised beds! Nice work

I decided to rip out the remaining melon vine and prepare the raised bed for more collards.

Before I began:
View attachment 3652745
Note the soil level is two boards down

Partially rotted compost ready to add:
View attachment 3652748

Double-digging to add the compost:
View attachment 3652749

Ready to plant!
View attachment 3652750
Now the soil level is 3" higher

And the collards are planted and watered!
View attachment 3652756

Now I'll add small stuff around the collards, like radishes, maybe beets or chard.
View attachment 3652761

 

[akroberts1085]

View attachment 3652359
Cut more dahlias, and there are still so many more blooming and getting ready to bloom outside! Big dinner-plates of magenta and purple, medium-size pink, tiny ones that look like daisies but with various colors in the centers and petals, medium-sized ones with perfect, concentrated petal shapes - How do I love these, I can't even count the ways....

I guess I shouldn't be that disappointed that my luffas, beans, basil and cabbage failed, because the things that did produce, are producing a ton, and I have time to fill my cans and freezer with them. I processed more butternuts that were ripe, still have many more to go, been making several gallons of applesauce every week, with more to go, and processed lots of cukes - I froze many containers of cuke soup, then made 7 quarts of sweet&sour pickles out of the cukes that were big and seedy.
I brought one to work today to test on my pickle-loving coworker, and we both agreed that the flavor was delicious, but they were too soft.
Still have a bunch of small cukes on the vines, that I left to grow, but I doubt they will get much bigger. This weekend I'm going to strip them, and pickle all the tiny cukes sweet&sour like I did the oversize ones, leaving them whole. I bet they will turn out great. Also need to dig potatoes, carrots, strip the rest of the tomatoes and start winterizing the garden.
My freezer is getting close to full, and so are my canning jars.

Anybody else follow baseball? As a Mariners fan (and Detroit Tigers still, from my childhood there and my Grandpa) I'm disappointed and have lots of opinions, but it's interesting that every wild-card matchup was decided 2-0, and I think it will make for very exciting playoffs.

I watched a video and the lady used zucchini cut thick. She didn't cook it she just added some apple cider vinegar and herbs and water. She said they stay crunchy. That might be a better way to make pickles