Project Garden Noob - Year 6

Our latest garden development has been animal destruction.  Everyone said we'd have an issue with the rabbits.  Because of hubby's awesome fence, that hasn't been an issue. But recently, our near ripe tomatoes were suddenly being eaten (sadly, I have somehow not taken pictures of the devastation).  We were worried about two culprits - rats and squirrels. Squirrels seemed like an obvious culprit.  We were finding tomato chunks in the yard and  this one in the tree.  I apologize for the truly terrible picture.  But you get the idea.  Limb, red blob = tomato. Rats we were a little skeptical about.  I've never seen a rat in Colorado, but we noticed that something was digging holes underneath the fence that faces a busy street and we didn't think it could be rabbits because the tomatoes are in cages, and the damaged tomatoes were high off the ground.  Something had to be climbing.  Hubby decided to get traps and make some fanc...

So remember pumpkin looking like it had a cocaine problem? Here are some close ups Asked the Grandpa.  He had no clue.  I was floored, this has to be bad if a man who's been gardening for over 30 years had no clue what I was talking about.  I took to Facebook, because I have a fair amount of gardening friends (3), and thought I'd venture there.  Yes, I'm too lazy to Google.  The verdict was mildew, thank JC.  She suggested a combo of milk and water and if that didn't work the ever mentioned neem oil. I tried the milk and water.  Nada.  This was right around Labor Day weekend.  Now, as mentioned before, I have a great nursery around 15 minutes away, but I find them a little spendy.  So I was lazy and waited until after Labor Day to hit up the nursery by my office.  Mistake. Mildew spreads.  And worsens.  Fast.  The mildew is now on the pumpkin, zucchini, spaghetti squash, and cucumber.  Tomatoes, than...

August went pretty well, mostly good growth, really got some harvesting done.  Here was a batch of veggies I sent home to my mother-in-law. So nice to have little vegetables coming out of the garden. The tomatoes and zucchini have been doing their thing.  Still a little leaf roll on the tomatoes, but 5 out of 9 plant seem to be doing alright. Zucchini has been zucchini (Where did that one come from?!). Oh the pumpkin.  I will never put a pumpkin within the confines of a garden again.  I feel I can safely say that was our biggest noob mistake this year.  Pumpkins crawl, EVERYWHERE.  No plant or fence is safe. I've had to chop it back several times and remove it's creepy tendrils from the tomato plants. See how well it got outside the fence. Yeah. Sadly, if you look closely in this picture, you will notice some white spots on the pumpkin and zucchini plants, like someone dusted them with flour, or perhaps cocaine.  Hello mildew...

Dear Time, Please stop moving.  Thanks, Me Hello August, or what I like to call the gateway month into Christmas.  The garden has been moving along.  I did a major cleaning this weekend of overgrowing leaves and vines, tomato suckers, and ripped out all our broccoli and cauliflower.  They had issues, let's just leave it at that. Sadly I didn't take a lot of pictures of the work I did because quite frankly, I was frantically trying to get it done before a very busy weekend.  I'm glad I did as this week has been nothing but rain, so all my freshly groomed plants can soak it all in. Our first tomatoes are starting to turn red, mostly the Romas and heirloom cherry tomatoes.  I find that I like these heirloom versions much better than the standard grocery store ones.  Go figure.  :-) Hubby also has a baby watermelon.  Watermelon are notoriously hard to grow out here, so we'll see how he does, but so far, so good. Zucchini is ...

On Saturday, July 6th my husband and I attended a "Common Tomato Problems" class at Tagawa Gardens . It covered a lot of the usual that I've heard about, blossom end rot, cracking, etc.  Also covered some pretty gross looking bugs, which luckily we have not seen. But we also learned about Physiological Leaf Roll, which is pretty much how it sounds.  The leaves roll inwards.  It's brought on by a variety of environmental stresses (i.e., temperature, moisture levels, nitrogen levels, etc...).  So we come home and look at our plants, sure enough, looks like we got a bit of this going on. Good news is, this shouldn't affect our yields at all.  I gave them a little TLC today - pruned, side-dressed, and put mulch around the base of the plants to retain moisture. Up until this point, I'd been hesitant to apply mulch.  One, I just don't like it and two, since our soil is soooo clay ridden, I feel it should be retaining moisture a little too well.  ...

My peppers are looking funkified.  I know it's a horrible picture, but I'm sure you can see those blackish spots. I'm not sure if they have picked up the previous plant herp, aka fungus, that the broccoli and cauliflower had.  Or maybe some other kind of blight?  I'm treating it with the fungicide and rolling with it.  I've come to accept the fact, long before we even started this whole gardening thing, that not every plant was going to be a winner.  If they don't make it, they don't make it.  C'est la vie.  For a dose of good news, we had our first zucchini harvest this week. I made lovely zucchini ribbons with a meat sauce for a couple lunches this week. In the background, you'll notice a zucchini accident (young one I broke while trying to trim off dead) and a pepper.  Apparently, you are supposed to remove the first peppers to encourage growth.  So I lopped him off and here's to hoping between that and the fungicide, the p...

So I guess now that our garden has moved passed the infancy stage, we are starting to notice some issues as everyone is getting bigger. I had a mild heart attack taking a closer look at my zucchini this weekend.  Mainly this: Can you see that gnarly baby zucchini.  What the hell is that?? Called grandpa (duh), he said it just didn't pollinate correctly - trim off and move on.  So I did.  Here is close-up grossness. Otherwise, our zucchinis are looking beautiful.  I've been admiring all the blossoms and wondering if I should try and cook them.  I've seen it done on Chopped after all....   I hope that I'm complaining about how much zucchini I have in a couple of months, desperately trying to pawn it off on poor saps.  My poor parents - they are going to get it from me AND grandpa!