Our Memorial Day Project & Ongoing Gardening

I owe the board a photo of my favorite mowing system. A 17HP Case VAC or my Deere 40S coupled to a 4' original and genuine Bush Hog. Not the fastest but in these beautiful evenings a Stein of my homebrew XXX (good for degreasing gearboxes too) and a bucolic scene of me vanishing into the evening mist mowing. Gotta get a photo not for the board only but for me as well. Photo needs the misting effect on the border. Straw hat and straw in mouth - life in the country.

The truth, bugs eating me alive, people yelling at me why am I taking so long mowing as many other things need fixing but it's a dream worth striving for.

coalnewbie wrote: The truth, bugs eating me alive, people yelling at me why am I taking so long mowing as many other things need fixing but it's a dream worth striving for.

You had me sold until reality set in. A good salesman always sells the dream.

Your dream would have me mowing with a wide area mower like the Toro groundsmaster or similar other brand. Reality sets in when viewing 1 of those with their high $$$,my mowing rig was/is cheap & does a decent job & gets the job done in 1/2 the time a normal tractor would take.Straw hat is a necessity when sunny & hot,i do like mowing,i just do not like taking 5 hrs to get it done.

The weak link with our gardening project is water, we had a well that we were able to run a sprinkler 24/7,a car wash opened up a few years ago,drilled a well & now we can run our well dry in 1 hr of watering with a 5/8" hose.We have had pretty good rains this yr,till a month or so ago the rains are bypassing us & causing some of the crops to struggle for survival. Right now we need rain ,almost desperately so. We do some survival watering but it won't be enough if we don't get rain soon.

windyhill4.2 wrote:those are larkspur that came up voluntarily , we have a weakness for flowers & find it hard to destroy even the volunteers .

We grow a lot of flowers, and some of the best are the volunteers. There is one area where, some years, we don't have to plant at all, just thin out and maybe move a few of the volunteers. I'm mostly the manual laborer, as maybe you could tell by my not recognizing larkspur. But when the leaves are about the size of a corn kernel in spring, my wife knows what the plants are and says, "Don't touch that, or that, or that..." So generally I'm out there in my big boots, with a heavy spading fork, turning over soil by the square yard while trying to leave those little sprigs intact.

We both grew up on farms with big gardens, I can identify quite a few plants but do not always know their names.We let some volunteers where they are,others we move. My wife saves seeds from quite a few flowers,that way we save $$ and can have more than we would buy normally.

August 8, Friday p/m, I tilled a small section of our garden to about 6" depth with the tractor tiller,it was dry powder the whole way. My wife wanted to plant spinach but the ground was so dry that we waited. Starting overnite August 12 ,early a/m it started to rain & has been raining on & off most of the day,a good soaking rain,we are now at 2" & feeling very blessed. We will be able to plant more fall things in a few days,gotta keep the food coming in to the table.Our Zephyr summer squash has been & is doing fantastic,snap beans are coming in pretty good,we have gotten a few lima beans but they are not yet in full swing.Not much corn,the deer destroyed a lot of it early.My wife says we are in the fun part of gardening now,with all the fresh veggies coming in.

Some more pics of the rewards of having a garden & flower beds.Zephyr squash has done very well,as have the tomatoes.

windyhill4.2 wrote:Zephyr squash has done very well, as have the tomatoes.

Lots of tomato crop failure here in Maine this year. Mine are doing OK but not what I would call good. We had an unusually cool dry June and a typical hot humid July and hot August. Hollyhocks grew rust-free this year, where last year we had to yank them up in July because the rust was so bad. So maybe weather that was bad for tomatoes was good for hollyhocks.

So many commercial seed sellers seem to push the veggies that grow big and pretty but are not the best for eating. For example, a squash called Big Mama which is passed off as buttercup but has much different texture and much inferior taste. You mentioned zephyr squash. I would be interested in the specific vegetable varieties that are both tasty and reliable growers for you. Personally I recommend Connecticut Field Pumpkins, which usually grow considerably bigger than the seed package promises and are fairly resistant to disease. Also Fourth of July Tomatoes, which grow very reliably for me and are great for eating fresh, though in Maine they are never quite ready by July 4.

We do not like that Zephyr is a hybrid,but it is the best tasting summer squash & yields a lot. Greek red is our best all around winter squash,good tasting,good yield,good pest resistance, LONG vines & very prolific yield,stores well.Available from Bakers Creek, our favorite seed catalog,a must have seed catalog,if you have never seen their catalog,check them out,you will be glad you did,they have NO hybrids or gmo crap. Heirloom tomatoes is all we plant, Comstock sauce & slice is the best all around out of 20 varieties we planted .Best pole beans, Kentucky Blue & also from Seeds of Italy .. yellow annelena,.Favorite carrot is a hybrid..Sweetness 2 , red cloud beets are also hybrid, Yukon gold for potatoes, Scottish heirloom - Ailsa Craig for very sweet onion , Copra for storage onion.

Thanks, I'll be trying some of them next season.

Forgot the lima beans,we grow fordhook, they did well for us this year,we got 50 qts.so far.Rberg,you probably can't grow limas way up there as they love heat,56* this a/m, this week highs are forecast to be in the 70's so they wouldn't do much here anymore either. The terrible dry spell we had has ended their life,what is hanging on when filled out will be it for limas this yr.We did get 7/10ths" of rain last evening,that will help our late beans,red beets ,carrots,summer squash,chard, should help save a few of the winter squash.We won't get many winter squash this yr.due to excess drought during the crucial time.

With last nights rain & cooler temps we decided to do some garden work today,didn't get any pics of the actual work done but my wife took some pics of natural beauty.We tilled some ground with plans to put some spinach out,also tilled ground for place to plant 600 strawberry plants.We divided our time on this & our boiler install project,it was a fantastically beautiful day here.

October 12 we planted the 600 strawberry plants,we had an all day drizzle on Monday,some sunshine on Tuesday,lots of rain today. This mild/wet weather will certainly help "set " the plants,they should then be healthy to make it thru the winter & yield good next yr.We didn't get pics yet,we will soon be seeding rye in about 2 acres for cover crop for the winter & will try to update with pics then .

Some pics of the straw berries we planted & some flower pics