Napoleon54

I remember several Apexers talking about gardens a few months ago and am curious how everything's going.

I've been helping the 'rents a lot with thiers lately. Peas, beets, broccoli, cauliflower are done with for the season. Zucchini are still chugging along and we're getting a few acorn squash that're big enough to pick. Butternut squash are on thier way too, but not big enough yet. We've been getting a steady stream of tomatoes for about a week now and it looks like they'll keep coming for another 2 or 3 weeks. I've made a few small batches of sauce (~2 quarts each) for current use and dad's been canning the rest unsauced for future use (prolly 12-14qts of that so far). Peppers (green bell, red bell, and banana) are still chugging along too but probably not for too much longer.

Apparently some of the seedlings dad got this spring when he planted the garden were mislabeled by the nursery 'cause 12 plants that were supposed to be beefsteaks turned out to be cherry tomatoes. Thus we ended up with 16 cherry tomato plants instead of the 4 he wanted. This mixup has allowed us to make the following conclusion: nobody (lemme repeat that: NOBODY!) needs sixteen cherry tomato plants. Ugh! Yesterday I picked the plants clean of everything ripe and ended up with ~16lbs of cherry tomatoes. And what can you do with them? Not much, so after about 3 hours of cleaning, blending, cooking, filtering, reheating, and bottling, I had 1 gallon of tomato juice. Blargh, what a pain, not worth the effort, even if it did make a nice bloody mary.

Apples are just starting to come into season and I'm wicked excited about that. 'Rents have 10 really old and large apple trees on their property that were largely neglected before they moved here a couple years ago. Dad sprays them for bugs a few times over the summer but that's about it aside from picking apples from them. This past week my youngest brother and I cleared out all the brush and weeds that had piled up underneath them and trimmed the lower branches. What a difference that made! We've also been picking up all the drop apples and have pressed maybe 7 gallons of cider thus far. Mmmmmm!!!! It'll be another month or so until most of the apples are ready and when that happens I'll probably be doing a batch of cider every day (2-3 gallons with the current setup), in addition to apple sauce, pies, etc. I'm most excited about the cider 'cause I want to ferment a bunch of it.

Lots of yummy stuff here! How about you?

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Prngr44

The crazy ass heat has all but decimated ours. Zucchini's were nice but the tomatoes/peppers/eggplants are getting hammered.

I've all but wrote it off for this year and have already started focusing on the layout for next year.

Napoleon54

Eeek!

The lack of rain here this summer would have ours in much worse shape if we weren't able to water every couple days. It hasn't been as productive as it could've been, but it is doing decently. Luckily the rents' well is very reliable.

renovation

very bad this year .to much heat and lack of rain .couldn,t water it enough

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oblongmelon

This is the first year in ages that I put sunflowers in..they are HUGE!..SOOOOO pretty
They make me smile. Due to all my mishaps with bones and joints this year, the gardening didn't amount to much (except flowers)..but I can tell you that my brothers have a bumper crop of grapes, tomatoes and eggplant...mmmm can't wait to get my hands on a few of those!

zippyjuan

My dad gave up on his long ago. Too little rain and the water cost more than whatever he might have been able to grow. He has always had a garden, that is how (along with raising chickens, rabbits, and pigs) is how his parents fed him and his seven siblings growing up. The soil where he lives now is also just not as good for growing. He does still have some fruit trees.

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The Happy Squirrel

my kids garden is growing great cucumbers, tomatoes, pumpkins, and sunflowers.

hhe on a side note kinda funny

the kid calls the television remote a "mote" and calls tomatoes "matos" i taught him to properly say remote then all of a sudden his plants and fruit became rematos hehe

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Markel

But I say "remotos".

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Agent Plissken

My hot peppers are comming along! I never grew anything before, but this year I decided to start growing peppers. I build a coldframe greenhouse type shelter that fits over my outside table (with a fan in it for air conditioning) that kept the seedlings from drowning in the rain or burning in the direct Alabama sun(by filtering the sunlight.)
I planted too many (100+), and now i have dozens of pretty big pepper plants still in plastic cups! I dont want to buy that many pots, but i dont want to kill the plants either... Many of them I got into larger pots, and I also built 2 raised "lasagna" beds, and filled them with peppers and I will build 2 more beds (4 total) for next season!

here are some pics of when the plants were young in this other thread.
http://www.gotapex.com/the-softer-si...t-peppers.html (Growing Hot Peppers!)

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uncledaddy

That's cute....now where the hell did put that tomote control.

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Napoleon54

Awww yeah, got my hard cider brewing!! Nearly 10 gallons of luscious golden bubbly apple wine should be mine in the near future. 2-4 weeks fermenting in the jug, followed by another 2 weeks in the bottles to build up some carbonation, then they should be ready to drink. I'm tempted to find a warm place to store the jug to expedite the fermentation process. I don't mind speeding one along 'cause I'm planning to make up another couple jugs that I can let ferment at a lower rate --> better quality. I wish brewing provided some amount of instant gratification 'cause I'm too exicted to wait. Yum yum yum.

Oh, and I gotta do a couple batches of spaghetti sauce tomorrow. Tomatoes in the garden are in danger of going bad if they don't get used soon!