2021 garden thread

[labradors]

My best-tasting tomatoes were grown in containers on the deck and dragged under the awning every time it rained.
I made the huge mistake of not putting plastic mulch down in the veggie garden. It diverts a lot of the rain water so that I'm "dry farming" (just giving each plant a little water every day). Taste is so much better that way.....

[WLLady]

my tomatoes are really quite nice this year, but they are cracking and i did have a lot of blossom end rot from the uneven torrential rainfalls....we've had less rain in the last 2 weeks so they're doing quite well! in fact, i just ate a couple cherry tomatoes off the counter LOL. This weekend i MUST pick the tomatoes and do something with them (likely tomato sauce or tomato paste....). The sweet corn is finished and the plants are drying up now, glad i got that in the freezer last weekend! now it's just pulling out 150 dead corn plants and hacking them up into pieces so they actually rot down in the manure pile. we should also have another watermelon ready! yay! my zucchini plants (all but one) finally got too big and fell over or broke off at the base, so thankful that they are almost done LOL. I've discovered a zucchini brownie recipe which has saved our bacon this year with zucchinis. muskmelons and honeydews are going crazy too...need to see if the bugs have spared any of the ones left. and get the potato squashes harvested bleached and stored. I have a horrible feeling that fall is going to come in early this year. We have trees already starting to change here, and the geese are flocking up and practicing flying formation already. the wilt FINALLY got my cucumbers. i'm not really sad, but a little, becaue they're my all time favorite veg. I do have another crop of lettuce to plant to the garden (still in flats) but i do need to weed something to make a spot for them LOL. the weeds do tend to get away from me in august somehow. So the garden clean up is beginning slowly. the mice found one of the giant pumpkins....it's now a flat orange pancake LOL. i'm hoping they leave the others alone for a while longer.

[Farrier1987]

Too hot. Too many blackberries. Too many weeds. Too much goat milk. Too much cheese. Not enough energy.

[Ontario Chick]

Definitely too hot, still no rain here, although driving yesterday I noticed the road was wet for about a mile, some 10 miles away from here, so somebody got rain, just not us.

Back to the mushy tomato subject, got some local strawberries, also mushy...
apparently too much rain and not enough rain, the same difference

[Home Grown Poultry]

we got lots of rain and waaay too much wind 2 days ago that knocked down all our corn, a bunch of Russian Mammoth sunflowers and snapped the tops off all of our tomatoes that are strung up to the chicken run. THEN 2 hours ago same thing! like a friggen twister both days. might have been actually, my buddy sent me a pic of a pretty large funnel on the ground it looked like in between my house and his a half hour north. EC didnt give us any warning whatsoever! until about an hour after they passed.... like we live close to the border and it's almost like they dont pay much attention to what is goin on in the states. I mean if they are looking at the same radar EC provides us than they dont have much to go on.

check out this mutant sunflower!

[Killerbunny]

STill picking wonderful toms and digging potatoes which have been great. Loved the little fingerling types in raised beds ad the Chieftains are excellent, Foodbank is doing well.
Raspberry question. These are great and I'm still picking. I have several types some from @Farrier1987 that are yilding so well I've had canes break. Heritage which is a 1st year fruiter and 2 types on 2nd year canes. What do I do know for pruning and stuff and can I move plants to expand the bed?

[Ontario Chick]

this is a good site.....

https://ourstoneyacres.com/pruning-ever ... aspberries

I wouldn't bother moving raspberries if you are happy where they are, they will send out shoots in the spring, just dig them up and plant if you want new plants.

[Killerbunny]

Thx @Ontario Chick

[Ontario Chick]

I must say, I am still a bit struggling with mine,
Although the spring crop is smaller then the fall one, very often, if not always, the fall crop never quite ripens, before the first frost puts an end to it.
Last time we had raspberries here, they crossed with the wild ones and we ended up with generic "whatever", still see them pop up sometimes.

I know one is supposed to support the canes, and I am sure @Killerbunny you are familiar with the 2 wire support very common European system of supporting raspberry canes, but I am getting a bit casual about the whole thing.

[Killerbunny]

It's not genetic you knw @Ontario Chick I'll have to check it out. Currently the jungle stops the turkeys from getting them all LOL!