My garden pics: June 2018

[wiperhunter2]

Over the years I've talked to many of you that grow gardens, here are my pics from this year. I'll add what the plants are later, when I have more time and tell you all about how my garden has evolved over the years. Right now, I'm going fishing.[]
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[wiperhunter2]

Pics:
1. Buttercup/Butternut Squash
2. Cantaloupe
3. Yellow squash and Zucchini in front of my wife, sunflower behind her
4. Watermelon
5. cucumber
6. Kale far end, not sure what is closer but it was suppose to be kale too[:/]
7. Tomatoes
8. green bean on fence close, snow peas toward the end of fence
9. Another view of the Yellow squash and Zucchini
10. View of garden looking toward the South
11. Bell peppers
12. View of garden looking toward the West

Started this garden in the current location about 6 or 7 yrs ago using Rainbird gear driven sprinklers. The garden grew pretty good but the weeds were driving me nuts and I just could not keep up with all the weeds. A few years ago I installed a drip irrigation system on about 1/3 of the Garden, just to see how it would do. It turned out great, so the next year I installed it on the rest of the garden. Much easier to keep up with the weeds now and it seems to grow much better, without all those extra weeds.
I hope all of you that grow gardens, be it flowers, vegetables or you do your own landscaping will post your pics here. Thanks for viewing.
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[pickyfishy]

Very Impressive! I am jealous. I can't keep anything alive-- no green thumb for me.. Thank you for sharing your pictures

[fishon]
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[wiperhunter2]

Thanks Vicki. My neighbors tell me the same thing but like I tell them, it isn't a matter of having a green thumb as it is just to have a decent watering system. Almost anything will grow if you keep it watered[].
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[jjannie]

Of course it takes a bit more than just water[].... we tend to be 2 weeks behind those on the lake side of the Wasatch mtns, and with all our trees, and frequent deer and bird visitors we have most of our gardens in the open areas and fenced with 6ft fencing with a layer of bird netting around and on top the strawberries fencing - so far so good, just all takes us bit more effort/precaution.

The cukes look smaller than they actually are, and I'll be thinning them down to just two plants as that is all we really need (they germinated better than expected). I've included a few extra pics of our rain barrel planters, 2 clematis and water lilies in our pond and even one of my 'pet' robin who likes to visit when I'm out in the garden and bathe in our pond.

[wiperhunter2]

Looking good Jil, thanks for sharing your pics with us. I don't remember you having water lily in your pond or maybe I just forgot, where did you buy them.
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[jjannie]

We got them years back at J&J Nursery. Seems only the white ones tend to live longest, our pink ones although hardy, never seems very prolific. The hibiscus hasn't bloomed yet, its really pretty but since its tropical I have to winter it over in the basement which is kind of a pain. The lilies are nice because the give the fish places of shade when the summer gets really worm - like we'll be soon... Jeff still needs to give the waterfall a power spray down but we've been so busy with million other things he just hasn't gotten to it yet.

[wiperhunter2]

I'll have to look into buying one of them the next time I'm at J & J's, thanks for the info Jill.
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[jjannie]

Sometimes Valley Nursery also has some for sale too if you don't want to make that longer drive.

How'd your lavender winter over? We needed up removing that really large one that was just getting bit unruly, but then we transplanted 2 'volunteers' in its location. Its so nice when you brush up against it when mowing the yard.

[wiperhunter2]

Everything turned out good, the only one that I lost was the first one I got from you.
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[wiperhunter2]

Picked the garden for the first time this year yesterday, here is a pic of what I got.
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[Old_Coot]

Curt, looks like you have gotten the drip system concept down pat!

I sure miss my garden.
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[wiperhunter2]

Yes, I've been tweaking it the last few years since we first talked about it and I'm pretty happy with it now. It is amazing how few weeds I get now. I'm surprise you are not growing at least one or two tomato plants in the flower garden, at your new place.
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[wiperhunter2]

A little over a month later from the time the first garden pics were taken and my garden is looking like a jungle, it's hard to get around and pick it but everything is looking good. I haven't measured the Sunflower plants but I'm sure some of them are over 10 ft tall. Here are those pics, let me know if you can't ID any of the plants and by the way, I found out what those other plants were, they are Sea kale.
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[jjannie]

Wow, looks good. Too bad you have such a hard time getting around in it - LOL [] Are the green produce on vines, pumpkins? I see your peaches on the trees in the back yard are doing well too!

We harvested our first cherry and sun sugar tomatoes on Thursday (see pic) and we felt so happy, they were so tasty. Our jumbo Romas and Big Whopper tomatoes have lots of fruits on but they aren't even close to getting ripe yet. Of my broccoli starts that survived, we harvested enough for three of us for dinner tonight. The freeze cloth I have them covered with is keeping those cabbage moths from laying eggs on them, and the cabbages are just starting to make heads as well. The melon planter we've made this year has golf ball sized cantaloupes and watermelons as well as many nickel sized ones on the vines - just hope we wont get an early freeze before we get to harvest any of all these. The granddaughters planted another set of pea pods that have started coming up.

My hibiscus in the pond just started blooming. It has lots more blooms to go though. (pics, Bernie is just the kid's dog). I got a solar fountain that is meant for birdbaths in the pond in an effort to cut down on the non-aggressive (thankfully) paper wasps that we get by the boatloads at our pond. They are just unsettling there are so many. The larger batch of baby shubunkins that we moved indoors to watch them grow some have been released into the upper pond, and the smaller ones have been moved to the place the bigger ones vacated. Some look to have some good coloring on them already, some are just that olive brown color like a few of the adult fish have. The adults are not eating the ones we didn't catch, they pretty much ignore them when they are in the same area in the pond.

I'll take some pics of the garden areas tomorrow morning to share - but its not as note-worthy as your garden is.

added more pics 29 July, you'll notice I took a lot of them through the deer fencing we had to install after being robbed so much in past years.

[wiperhunter2]

It really isn't a big deal but I do have to step on the plants to get from one spot to another while picking the garden. No pumpkins, the vines are either sweet potatoes, cantaloupe or cucumbers. The only thing we are getting a lot of is cucumbers and okra, starting to get some yellow squash but so far we are just blanching it, then freezing. Now that we have our Freeze dryer back we will start using it this week. Peaches are pretty small so far but we do have a bunch, hope they get bigger before we start picking them in another month or so.
Glad to hear you guys are getting some tomatoes, we are having similar success but no big tomatoes are even growing yet for some reason, small Romas are coming on but they are not much bigger that big cherry tomatoes[crazy]. Broccoli already, good going. Hope you have time for your watermelons, we picked our biggest one last week and it was pretty small, because the vine died for some reason. I don't think we will have a good year for watermelon. Finally pulled the last of our snowpeas two weeks ago and planted more green beans in their place.
So the hibiscus actually grows in the pond? That solar fountain is pretty cool, did you buy it locally? The wasp are getting pretty aggressive around here too, starting to dive bomb you when you get too close to their nest, no stings yet but it will likely happen if it continues to stay hot like it's been. Good to hear some of those baby fish survived. Everyone's garden is different and I'm sure there are folks that have bigger and nicer gardens than I have, it's all about sharing the common experience of growing something, no matter how big or small the garden is.
I won't know until I try the Freeze dryer but they gave me a new pump, hopefully it will work now.
Here are some more pics
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[jjannie]

What is the green produce Roxanne is holding? - Was it those Crenshaw cantaloupe that you guys grow? That is rather large I was so sure it had to be a pumpkin.

Yes as you know we have to garden in patches here and there, where we get enough sun, even if it is not all day sun. Most folks out here prefer to not even garden, but we haven't thrown in the towel on that yet. A garden ripened tomato taste makes it all worth it us - anything more than that though is just fun - like gravy on mashed potatoes - but if you aren't good at making gravy, just a little butter on them and you can be pretty happy. []

The fountain I got off Amazon. Think for our large space a larger one would be more effective on the wasps, this smaller one could then be moved to the upper pond that feeds the waterfall then. Luckily ours are never very aggressive. We have no nests at our place here and if you watch as they fly away from the pond some are going far up the back hillside, some toward the side field. Too bad our fish won't eat them if they get knocked into the water. We've tried a lot of things to deter tehm - a target gun flyswatter - Jeff thought that'd be pretty fun, but it really didn't work very well for the distance we need to travel, but it was entertainment nonetheless, using a good ole fly swatter but once again, effective but you can only reach so far, or catch them as they get water right at the edges - you cause a good spash with each swat - again, fun, but not as effective. Where the fountain sprays they wont land for fear of getting waterlogged I think - but I cannot cover the whole surface with water spraying - that wouldn't be economical use of power or water as it of course could splash out and dry up needing to be replaced .

The hibiscus is a tropical plant and has to winter over in the basement. Then after all chance of frosts has passed, I can move it back out to the pond - it sits on the shelf around the sides of the pond. I do cut it back to about 3 inches just before frost. You only get about a month to month and half of flowering, which isn't much, but they are so pretty. This fall I plan to divide it as I think has outgron the pot I have it in, so next year I should get more blooms.


Think I'll be aking some Rhubarb Crisp tonight when the girls are here. I haven't yet run FDer load yet, still waiting to get 4 full trays. So I'll be adding some more crisp to what I save as a test - if it doens't work out well, we'll just be able to eat it withour having to make another batch. Hopefully you're back in business with yours as garden harvesting is quickly appraoching.

Oh Jeff jsut got back from the walk around the yard - our melons have all dounled in size just in couple days time - this of course bodes well that will get harvest of some of them after all - yeah!

[wiperhunter2]

That is a buttercup squash that Roxane is holding. Not exactly sure when to pick them, so we picked that one to see. Last year we had a few that looked like that one, just blew up, so I decided to pick them earlier this year. Only thing we could figure was that the juices inside started to ferment and expand in the hot sun. Our Crenshaw cantaloupe are about the same size as that buttercup but they will grow to 10 lbs. so they have a ways to go. Our regular cantaloupe just are not producing this year, they are blooming just no fruit[].
So let me get this right, the hibiscus are not in the water just at the side of the water? The reason I ask is because a neighbor has one that looks almost the same but it isn't by any water, I was just wondering if it was the same or just similar. Since your fountain sprays is run by solar energy I thought that would give some good water movement in my pond, instead of turning on the power to run my waterfall. Glad the melons are growing well there, we might only have another month left before it starts cooling down. It isn't suppose to be cooling down much now but our overnight temps last night was down to 64 degrees and after having the overnight temps in the 70's for weeks now, the cool down was nice.
Good luck with the Rhubarb Crisp.
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[jjannie]

Since I wasn't aware of a buttercup squash, I did some research on them and found some info in the attached doc.

My goodness, we stayed pretty warm last night at 67 for a low temp when we've typically been mid to upper 50s, but with the cloud over night that is moving in for the next few days. We even stayed up extra late so we could turn on the fans and finally ended up doing so when it at least got down to the house's temps. [crazy]

I have yet to check our melon patch today, but as of yesterday, they were growing fast. No color yet on the larger tomatoes, but the cherry ones are keeping us happy for now. With any luck, we'll soon have lots of tomatoes for making sauces and salsa.


The hibiscus we have is a bog plant, so only the bottom of the pot sits in the pond water. I've seen the hibiscus that people have in their yards, they sure are pretty when they bloom but I've only seen them in pinks, whites and light purple ones, never reds, here in Utah. Hopefully when I divide it this fall then next year I'll get 2 areas with them. Too bad they don't bloom all through summer though. []

[wiperhunter2]

Yes it was a warm evening and very humid this morning when we got up and went for our daily walk. OK, I understand now about the hibiscus, next time we walk by the plant, that is being grown in our neighborhood, that looks like it, I'll take a camera and get a pic of it. Probably not the same plant you have. All the tomatoes we have picked so far have that wilt stuff on the bottoms, I use to think it was caused by our sprinklers but since we don't use sprinklers any more, I'm not sure what the problem is, any clue? Thanks for the info on the buttercup, I'll copy it and view it later on my other computer.
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