re: The 2021 Garden Thread

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We’re you able to capture the old swarm or were they already gone?

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Unfortunately no. I was completely unprepared. They swarmed after only 10 weeks and literally every piece of literature I’ve read said that that was pretty much impossible.

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We are kind of in a gardening lull over here at the moment. In a couple of weeks I plan on starting some tomatoes. And next month I plan on sowing some mustard greens and starting some cabbage seeds. Fall gardening will be here before we know it.

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... and we're just to at the start of harvesting



... a ground hog has taken a liking to the okra, egg plant has been shareable for a while, tomatoes started coming in last week



... blue lakes are little too thick, peppers have produced a few, surprisingly the swiss chard is still hanging in, and next years compost is in the back



... enough cucumbers you can't give'em all away, tomatoes are defying my pruning, that's the test zucchini in straw bales, and four halfed 55 gallon drums of sweet potatoes... which the ground hog likes even more than okra... it's was sprawling all around a couple weeks ago.



while the basil is in pick-battle phase to keep the flowering at bay (and turning bad)... close up look at wheat straw mulching. There's 4-5 layers of news paper (and junk mail or amazon prime boxes) under neath. And a weed eater every few weeks creates new mulch from the wheat shoots.

Very nice.

Our garden did very well early in the year but I have hit a wall. Everything is living still, but growth has stopped and fruits yields are sparse. Between the rains, the sip beds I built and (I think) the manual watering that was done without my supervision, I fear everything was over watered. I'm holding off and waiting for things to dry out a bit before doing anything else to it.

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I've always thought Cades Cove would be a nice place to ride out an apocalypse. Beautiful scenery, lots of wildlife, plenty of land for growing crops, plenty of nearby waterways. In the event of one, y'all meet me there.

These are the discussions we need to have.

I’m definitely open to better options.

We could exchange seeds too. I saved some from my carmens today and was thinking this. Do y'all save seeds or do you just buy them every year?

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I'd like to start saving seeds, so I plan on trying to grow more heirlooms from here on. As of right now I have a few overgrown okra pods that I'm letting dry up on the plant. Next spring I'm going to focus on trying to plant heirloom cucumber, pepper, and tomatoes.