when are you sowing your garden this year?

[Irving]

Looked up Blossom End Rot, and our Golden Girl tomatoes definitely had that. It was a bummer. All the other tomatoes (juliets and a few romas) did very well. Corn completely failed after starting off strong.

[hollohas]

Warm fall has been good. Picked this yesterday...

[TFOGGER]

This weather has been ridiculous. Still harvesting raspberries this afternoon...

[Irving]

Still harvesting tomatoes, even though I turned the water off a few weeks ago.

[encorehunter]

Now that we are moved to the country and work on the house has slowed, I have begun work on a terraced hillside garden. The slope is SSW in direction, and should have good sunlight for 8-10 hours a day during summer. I have cut about 30 trees out and am working on clearing the oak brush. I still have another dozen trees to take out from the top of the hills where I am planning on putting the dwarf orchard. Im planning on using the trees I cut as the walls for the terraces. A friend has a lot of aged cow manure I can have for free, and he will load it with the tractor. When I said I wanted 40-50 truck loads, he asked when I wanted to pick it up.

I have been amending our lower field to grow grass for a pasture. The soil tests are all showing ph at about an 8.0. The nutrients are there, but lacking. I have put 4 yards of dry pine needles, 2 yards of goat manure and straw, and a yard of chicken manure onto the field and disced it in. We have quite a bit of clay, so Im trying to break it up with the organic material. In the garden, I'm going to bring in some topsoil, but mostly I will be mixing our clay with the manure, then mulching the plants with pine needles. My biggest hope is to get the orchard established for the years to come. I have plenty of flat area above where the garden will be, but it will get more and more difficult to get water the further I go from the house.

[Irving]

Perfect bump timing. Is there anything we should be doing to our gardens this time of year?

Encore, post up some before pictures.

[ray1970]

You should be planting stuff.

[Irving]

Well, I pulled all the plants and raked everything up, but I wasn't sure if I should be spreading a winter fertilizer or something. I have a compost pile, but it rarely, if ever gets mixed. I imagine I'll just let it sit all winter and hopefully it'll mostly be ready in spring.

[TheGrey]

Have you gotten your seed catalogs yet? I received my catalogs from Baker's Creek and Johnny's seeds...and I even got a catalog from a nursery that sells fruit bushes and trees. (I can't recall the name of the place offhand.)

[Irving]

Just saw new seed displays going up at Home Depot last night.