Gardens for 2021 season

[Don McCombs]

What does one do with 38 quarts of strawberry jam?

[Mht]

Hot and muggy in Raleigh today but the garden was calling. I tied up and suckered about 400 tomato plants. I believe I will have tomatoes to start picking by the end of next week. I should have some squash about the same time. We got about 2 inches of rain the end of last week so I haven’t needed to water again yet. They are calling for a chance of rain everyday for longer than they have any business predicting it. My farm got about 3 inches of rain last week and a little more last night. They are calling for a chance of rain there everyday for longer than they have any business predicting it also. I hope the predictions are wrong because I need to cultivate my corn, beans, and peas

[Peter Person]

Memorial Day weekend is when we typically get our vegetable garden planted. Not this year. Rained Saturday & Sunday and no higher than 46*F.
Spent Monday getting the new deer/rodent fence up around the strawberries, with the addition of some salvaged 12” composite trim boards buried 6” below grade.

Looking out the window Thursday morning while eating breakfast, I saw a rabbit scampering around in the strawberry bed.
Sent Ginny out to chase it away, and it made a beeline right through a hole in the fencing.

Had Aron pick up a roll of 24” chicken wire on his way down Saturday morning, undid some of our previous work, added the chicken wire, buttoned up the bottom, and then added the bird netting to the top.

$300 in fencing! How many pounds of strawberries could I buy???

[Peter Person]

Got going on the new fencing around the downsized vegetable garden on Saturday. Straight up deer fencing from critterfence.com. 7.5’ x 165’ roll. Had a dozen 10’ T-posts on raincheck at the Tractor Supply in town since the beginning of May. Aron found some at a TSC in Massachusetts, so after finishing the strawberry patch, on to setting the posts. Got them in with only one that had to move about 6” after hitting a rock. Got the top cable strung Sunday morning and hung the fencing temporarily to see how things would look. Going to put it about 4” into the ground and then do chicken wire on the lawn side, one, to keep little critters out, and two, so the string trimmer doesn’t destroy the pvc fencing.

Photo taken at 11:00am, by noon it’s in full sun until around 8:00pm.
25’ x 45’ still provides more than we can use.

[SONNY]

Fence looks great! ---- sad that we gotta fence the gardens in but its about the same deal here ---- most of it has to be fenced! No deer problem here BUT rabbits and coyotes are the biggest problem we have!

[ScottyD'sdad]

I wouldn
t call coyotes a garden problem, Sonny, they eat rabbits!

[Slim140]

Sowed our garden in grass last fall and cut a 275 gallon tote in half this year. We planted 5 plants in it and they are doing great.

[SONNY]

The only thing coyotes eat here are my cats! Poor old cats eat mice and voles, but damn coyotes wont leave the cats! Coyotes are the most useless animal on the planet!

[ScottyD'sdad]

When the cats are gone, they'll eat rabbits. They catch the slow prey first

Ed

[SamsFarm]

We been getting a shower or two (or three) almost every day this week....

Hot and muggy too!

Perfect for weed seeds to germinate!

☹️

[torchred89]

I give up. My sweet corn was 5ft tall. We just had a bad storm and it’s flat as a pancake on the ground.

[SamsFarm]

I give up. My sweet corn was 5ft tall. We just had a bad storm and it’s flat as a pancake on the ground.

That sucks, but usually when that happens, it will perk back up and keep growing.

It wont look pretty, and harvesting is usually a pain, but you should still have sweet corn to eat!

[SONNY]

Stand the stalks up and mound dirt to hold them! ---- did that here 2 years ago, lotta extra work but will save the crop. Corn laying on the ground will be devoured by damn rabbits!

[SamsFarm]

Wascally Wabbits!

http://blog.garywolf.com/2013/10/elmer- ... t.html?m=1

[outdoors4evr]

Really struggling with my garden this year. I'm getting a clue as to why others do seed tests in January.
I had 4 rows of sweet corn (two different varieties) and one row of green beans decide not to germinate.
We had a ridiculously dry April and May that made it very hard to plant. Was watering the garden trying to get enough moisture for seeds to germinate.

Now it seems as if all of April showers showed up in June. My garden is an ankle deep mud pit.