# Spring Garden Report 2016



## Rubberback (Sep 9, 2008)

Not as good as last year but overall very nice. Got taters, bookoo onions, maters not like last year but so far I've canned 21 pints of salsa & 10 quarts of maters for squetty, cucs so so but I've eaten my share & the chickens have had their share, squash not a squash bug one but had cutworms but I fixed their butt, Corn was small but very tasty.
Got my first lope & quite a few on the vine. Watermelons will see.
Eggs my god the chooks are laying like mad. Quail hatches have been good. I'll wind up hatching about 500.
I got one lope growing that is as big as a watermelon.


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## Paul Marx (Nov 13, 2009)

I didn't get a count , but we canned a lot , dehydrated a lot , and sold everything else I picked . My Big Beef tomatoes did very well , I would guess a couple hundred plus lbs. My Romas are still doing pretty well , and I've picked around 50 lbs. I was picking around 20 lbs. of yellow and zucchini squash a day , till that darn mildew/fungus got them . The pickling cukes I'd probably 15 lbs. daily till the mildew/ fungus got to them as well . Green beans I just got tired of picking . I'm still getting Purple hull , and Black eyed peas . Okra is just getting started good .


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## Rubberback (Sep 9, 2008)

My sales on veggies was very sad, now eggs that is a different story. Been selling about 30 dozen a week. I use to sell a few hundred lb's of maters and 200 lb's of onions every year. Not even close this year! I'll probably cut back on my gardening & put more interest in my birds.


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## The Driver. (May 20, 2004)

Looking good Hombre!


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## Dick Hanks (Aug 16, 2007)

Great pictures Randy. Be sure to post up a picture of that big cantaloupe when it gets ripe and you pick it. Sounds like a really big un.


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## Rubberback (Sep 9, 2008)

Dick Hanks said:


> Great pictures Randy. Be sure to post up a picture of that big cantaloupe when it gets ripe and you pick it. Sounds like a really big un.


I smelled the one I picked had some sweet smell. But my nose ain't working. So I'll make the taste manana. Hope its sweet. 
Yes sir Dick its a big un! Again hope its sweet. I think the amount of water the plant gets determines that.
Either way it won't waste my birds will be s-- in high cotton.


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## Meadowlark (Jul 19, 2008)

Rack 'em and stack 'em:

1) from 20 pounds of seed, produced 125 pounds of new potatoes....about average crop. Canned 14 quarts for the first time and the rest in dry storage

2) from 6 bunches of onion sets produced over 250 pounds of onions including 11 onions that totaled 25 pounds topped by a 2 1/2 pounder. Best size on onions ever here. Rigged up fan system to aid storage which appears to be going very well

3) from one double row, froze 6 gallons of pintos and had several meals already...yumm

4) from another double row, produced baskets of green beans canning 15 quarts, eating many meals with new potatoes. A big pot of green beans and new potatoes is one of the best meals you can get

5) from about 1 pound of seed, produced over 300 ears of corn so far with another 200 at least yet to mature through September. Froze a few gallons, but either ate all the rest or gave it away to appreciative friends and family (and a few lucky cows)

6) tremendous crop of tomatoes, buckets and buckets, which became Pico, Salsa, 20 quarts of canned, and countless slicers. Still producing and expect to have good slicing tomatoes through September this year.

7) about 1/2 row of yellow, crook neck, and zucchini squash produced far more than we could eat...and is still producing

8) good bell pepper production (several meals of stuffed bell peppers) but slow on japs, not enough to keep up with pico demands, but really coming on strong now.

9) best crop ever of cantaloupes....great flavors, no predators....yet

10) lots of cucumbers...far more than we can use

11) a couple of meals of artichokes

12) peas growing as cover crop in the potatoes and onion rows. Will soon plant more peas in the first three corn plantings space. Will have bushels and bushels of peas but probably won't harvest but about 10% with the rest for re-seeding cover crops through October. 

13) First meal of fried okra yesterday...with many, many more yet to come.

14) fresh peaches for breakfast today, overall crop small

15) tremendous Ouachita blackberry crop, gallons and gallons

16) buckets of plums

17) snacks of raspberries, boysenberries, and logan berries. No mulberries yet.

18) I guess I'd have to include tremendous crop of carrots, brock, cabbage, brussels, kale , turnips, and radishes since the topic is spring...the seasons change the plants in the garden but the garden never stops producing. 

Looking forward to more summer crops of corn, okra, peas, peppers, and melons, tomatoes, and especially to soil building... preparation for next year's onions and potatoes is well underway with legume cover crops going strong. The cycle continues.


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## Rubberback (Sep 9, 2008)

Lot of veggies Lark! Good job! Dick my lope was mighty tasty. I'll post the monster when I pick it.


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## SPECKulator (Feb 24, 2005)

I planted early this year in mid- late-March and got away with it (no freeze). Things got off to a great start until it started raining, and kept raining, and kept raining, and you get the picture. I did not turn on a sprinkler throughout the month of May and most of June, and had to walk through mud and water halfway up my rubber boots every time I went out there. 

But, I had good production before the rain took its toll. Pickling cucumbers were great. We canned nearly 60 quarts of garlic-dill pickles. Tomatoes and peppers produced well early on and we made 50+ pints of salsa and about a dozen pints of whole tomatoes. Green beans did okay. I froze 10-12 quart bags of blanched beans. We had way more zucchini, yellow squash and scalloped squash than we could eat and gave away a bunch. Corn did okay but only about 1/2 of the ears filled out. I ended up with +/- 50 ears. I picked 10-12 nice cantaloupes, but most of them ripened about the same time, so most were shared with family and co-workers. Watermelons were a total bust. I will get a few more grape and San Marzano tomatoes and a few more peppers, and the okra is going strong, but that's about it.

Now I have to find the time to remove the dead plants, till and get a cover crop of purple hull peas started.

The first few pictures are from May 9. The last one (wet one) is from May 19, and it stayed pretty much that way for several weeks. Every time it would dry enough for the boots to not sink, we would get another downpour.


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## Wado (May 15, 2011)

*Cucumbers*

SPECK, that's a load of cucumbers! What variety if I may ask? I always plant National Pickling and this year only got three good pickings and they crashed after a four inch deluge. I planted Straight Eight's and only made vines so I gave them up, might have been bad seed.


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## SPECKulator (Feb 24, 2005)

Wado said:


> SPECK, that's a load of cucumbers! What variety if I may ask? I always plant National Pickling and this year only got three good pickings and they crashed after a four inch deluge. I planted Straight Eight's and only made vines so I gave them up, might have been bad seed.


I honestly don't know the name of the variety. I bought them in bulk at Renken's Nursery in Victoria. I do know they only sold one variety of pickling cucumbers. I have given up on planting slicing cucumbers. Every variety I have tried in the past has done poorly. Now I just use the pickling cucumbers that get too big for pickling to slice for salads. I think they have better flavor anyway.


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## Wado (May 15, 2011)

SPECKulation said:


> I honestly don't know the name of the variety. I bought them in bulk at Renken's Nursery in Victoria. I do know they only sold one variety of pickling cucumbers. I have given up on planting slicing cucumbers. Every variety I have tried in the past has done poorly. Now I just use the pickling cucumbers that get too big for pickling to slice for salads. I think they have better flavor anyway.


Ditto on the slicing variety, I think my big mistake was planting them on flat ground. I started planting between cattle panels so they can climb and had way better luck. The best help is to have bees, lots of them as long as they are the little brown European no African's.


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## SPECKulator (Feb 24, 2005)

Yep, I had way more bees this year than in previous seasons.


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## jm423 (Sep 18, 2011)

My squash and zucs have been bummers this year--seeing almost no bees my neighborhood. Some folks moved a batch of bee hives in down the road a ways in past years, but must have rained out this year. Garden about over except okra, peas, and peppers (seed compliments of Mr Dick Hanks)


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