anyone still gardening?

I just picked a bowl of fresh salad greens from my garden. It's snowing but we haven't had any extended cold so the greens are still going strong on December 5 in NJ. Go figure.

I always plant spinach on November 1 with the assumption it won't sprout until the very earliest warm days of spring and then I can brag to my gardening friends that I have the first spinach crop, This year it all started to sprout already. It may survive but I'll likely be out there again come January planting more seeds.

Not gardening now but do have a few shrubs to plant ... soon. I use do do something similar with spinach too but I started earlier than November. I'd plant in September and usually get a few leaves for salads before the cold stopped them. I'd just pluck the large outer leaves in the fall. When they would go dormant, I'd cover them with some leaf mulch and pull it back in early March. I'd find little half dollar sized plants consisting of a whorl of leaves. First couple of warm days and they blow right up an I'd be pinching the larger leaves off the side of the whorls soon after. Darn, can't wait to be able to set up a veggie garden if I can keep the critters happy elsewhere.

Have turnips ready too pull up. Greens have been good this year too

Bk

Ohhhh, I love turnips.

I moved some blueberries last month thinking they were headed into winter dormancy. They started to look like they wanted to bloom last week. I hope it doesn't mess up any crop this year. They are only a couple years old so this coming year would be the first decent crop out of them.

After bringing our Calamansi trees inside, they are still bearing fruit. It nice to have fresh Citrus all winter.

Yup, I'm an avid gardener. Still gardening.
I hacked some sumac out of the garden so I could toss it in the town's leaf collection... still have a bit more to do.
I noticed some red and pinkish flowers,out there. What the heck are they hangin' around for??? And how'd they get there in the first place?

I buy these pots of flowers and put them on the back steps...four on either side...
They look nice for a week or so; then they turn brown.
They definitely looked better in the store.

Now I have this nice wreath that the Boy Scout down the street delivered ... I better hurry-up and put it on the door. With my track record I know its gonna turn brown soon...heck I don't even see how you can water it...Maybe it'll look OK when it turns brown, ya' see its got this nice Red Bow on it.

When I have time I'll tell you about last year's Alberta Spruce from Home Depot...
They had Red Bows too.


Bob

We got lazy with the garden this year. Most of the stuff we planted died, except for strawberries (which went by in June). a couple acorn squash, some mutant corn , and I just cut down my brussels sprout "tree" a few days before the snow flew. Cooked it up along with some of the leaves close to the top - YUM!

Here's a pic of our mutant corn! We didn't take care of it like we should have ... Looks like it grew on 3-mile island!

SMITTY wrote:We got lazy with the garden this year. Most of the stuff we planted died, except for strawberries (which went by in June). a couple acorn squash, some mutant corn , and I just cut down my brussels sprout "tree" a few days before the snow flew. Cooked it up along with some of the leaves close to the top - YUM!

Here's a pic of our mutant corn! We didn't take care of it like we should have ... Looks like it grew on 3-mile island!

So, Smitty How's the job at the Nuclear Plant comin' along?

Bob

we got mutant corn here too this yr
the runoff from all the rain this yr didnt do our garden much good....the whole garden was muddy all summer

Only thing I still have in the ground are carrots & onions. Always seem to forget to pull them.

samhill wrote:Only thing I still have in the ground are carrots & onions. Always seem to forget to pull them.

Suggest trying some parsnips next year. They need to stay in the ground till 'bout now. The cold sweetens them up. Shred up equal parts of carrots and parsnips and sauté them in butter. Little salt and nutmeg ... mmmmmm.

My sister always grows Collards. They are a winter crop, and have to be left out in the cold for a certain period. Bioled up, with vinager and chopped onions, YUMMY!

SMITTY wrote:We got lazy with the garden this year. Most of the stuff we planted died, except for strawberries (which went by in June). a couple acorn squash, some mutant corn , and I just cut down my brussels sprout "tree" a few days before the snow flew. Cooked it up along with some of the leaves close to the top - YUM!

Here's a pic of our mutant corn! We didn't take care of it like we should have ... Looks like it grew on 3-mile island!

omg!! soooooooo funny!!!

SMITTY wrote:....>8..Here's a pic of our mutant corn! We didn't take care of it like we should have ... Looks like it grew on 3-mile island!

Looks like a heck of a polination problem That happend to me when I tried a few rows together and the plants ended up not getting polinated enough to make full ears. I changed to small 'hills' with 5 or six plants/hill. Got much better results consistantly that way

I've never had success with corn; they always come out mutated like those shown above.

I finally got around to mulching in my garlic today. I hope it isn't too late as some bulbs were starting to pop out of the ground I have a pretty good side business selling it to local restaurants so I'm going to be seriously annoyed next summer if my procrastination sets back the harvest. I usually plant about 10 pounds and harvest about a hundred.