How Does Your Garden Grow??????

here's some butterflies that have been going Gaga over our sedum plants though
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black swallowtail
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buck eye butterfly.. I thought it looked a bit more moth like but my image search.feature is saying buck eye butterfly, so im running with it IMG_20190827_161809545.jpg
sunflower I saw walking the poopy
 

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racerboy71 said:
man, my garden was pretty much a complete flop this year, worst year ever.. not sure if it was the weather, was very hot with a lot of late rain or what the dillio, but yeah pretty disappointing to say the least.. oh well, onwards and upwards as they say..
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Same here, no stability in the weather and rampant aphids.
 
Moflow said:
Has anyone else seen a decline in the butterfly population over the years?
Could be cyclic or man made, I don't know.
I've a wide variety of flowers in the garden to attract allsorts of insects.
The butterflies are quite rare to see in my garden these days so I took the opportunity to take a few pics of them basking in the sun, maybe feeding.
Even rarer, 3 different ones together.

The Peacock
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Painted Lady
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The Small Tortoiseshell
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The Bumble Bee and Hoverfly numbers are down too over the years.
The most common butterfly to see here in my garden is the Cabbage White but they are becoming rarer too. I need to plant a few cabbages!
I've seen maybe 20 - 30 over the summer, mostly passing through to greener pastures.
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we have a ton of sedum plants in our yard.. some in the front yard, out by the street, and some in the inner yard, out by the fish pond, and i'll tell you what, if you want to see butter fly activity in your yard, plant some sedum.. they've been going crazy over ours for the last two plus weeks or so.. sedum doesn't really do much in the way of flowering, the tops simply turn from green?, sorry i'm color blind, lol, to a pinkish color, but it must have some sort of pollen or idk what, but it really attracts the moths and butterflies.. some of the swallowtails were not a huge fan of having their pix taken, but some patience paid off in the long run..
 
racerboy71 said:
we have a ton of sedum plants in our yard.. some in the front yard, out by the street, and some in the inner yard, out by the fish pond, and i'll tell you what, if you want to see butter fly activity in your yard, plant some sedum.. they've been going crazy over ours for the last two plus weeks or so.. sedum doesn't really do much in the way of flowering, the tops simply turn from green?, sorry i'm color blind, lol, to a pinkish color, but it must have some sort of pollen or idk what, but it really attracts the moths and butterflies.. some of the swallowtails were not a huge fan of having their pix taken, but some patience paid off in the long run..
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looking at my own pix of the sedum plants, i guess they do flower, lol, but not really my idea of a flower, but flowering none the less..
 
The Gram Reaper said:
Same here, no stability in the weather and rampant aphids.
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that sucks, i've been doing this for quite a few years, and this was hands down the worst year ever.. nothing did well, at all .. the cucs produced a little at the beginning of summer, then quickly died off, the zuchinni, i think i got one and then the plants died off one by one from the heat, my tomato plants never really seemed to take off and bush the way they always do and didn't get much fruit from them either, same with the peppers.. the one plant that i thought were doing ok, the eggplants, seems like suddenly are all rotting on the plants before getting to a halfway decent size... super bummed about it tbh.. :(
 
It got me down also, I have never had this bad of a year with gardening. I think a lot of it had to do with the high UV index, it penetrated the ground and cooked the roots while the weather outside was shitty. Caused so much of my stuff to bolt. Anything that was not a good size before it was planted did not produce much of anything.

I will be prepared next year. Also going to get a greenhouse up if I can. The only issue I have with greenhouses is that I want to fill them with pot instead of vegetables.
 
We just had some rain with more in the forecast so I picked all of the tomatoes that were close to being ripe. I'd rather have them finish ripening on the counter than splitting open on the vine. The big ones are a Beefsteak variety called "Delicious". They are delicious and very big. A very good yielder. I plan on growing this variety again next year. I have a couple more bowls of cherry tomatoes to pick.

The weather has been odd this year and I got hit really bad and early with PM on my cucumbers and squash. I still ended up with more cucumbers than we could eat or I could make into pickles. I still canned 15 quarts and 10 pints of pickles. I only got one eggplant from two plants which annoys me. The beans went crazy and I have a bunch of bush beans I planted mid summer that are about a week away from being harvestable. After a slow start my peppers ended up doing okay. Next year I'm going to have to be patient and not put things out too soon causing them to be stunted from cold temperatures.



tomatoes98.jpg
 
xtsho said:
We just had some rain with more in the forecast so I picked all of the tomatoes that were close to being ripe. I'd rather have them finish ripening on the counter than splitting open on the vine. The big ones are a Beefsteak variety called "Delicious". They are delicious and very big. A very good yielder. I plan on growing this variety again next year. I have a couple more bowls of cherry tomatoes to pick.

The weather has been odd this year and I got hit really bad and early with PM on my cucumbers and squash. I still ended up with more cucumbers than we could eat or I could make into pickles. I still canned 15 quarts and 10 pints of pickles. I only got one eggplant from two plants which annoys me. The beans went crazy and I have a bunch of bush beans I planted mid summer that are about a week away from being harvestable. After a slow start my peppers ended up doing okay. Next year I'm going to have to be patient and not put things out too soon causing them to be stunted from cold temperatures.



tomatoes98.jpg
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Nice harvest! I am guessing you are going to can these? I sure hope so, you got a lot of 'maders to eat. Those beefsteaks are a beautiful strain, I love the classic crinkle look.
 
The Gram Reaper said:
Nice harvest! I am guessing you are going to can these? I sure hope so, you got a lot of 'maders to eat. Those beefsteaks are a beautiful strain, I love the classic crinkle look.
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I'm extremely happy with this variety. There are a lot more on the vine but they're still green. Green but big. We'll eat some fresh but most will go into canning sauce and some diced tomatoes.
 
I wonder if people eating Walmart's tomatoes know that they are fake as hell. Fruit/vegtables from a store are not even close to fresh garden ones with taste, quality, and texture. Walmart is a lot like McDonalds. You might order a burger, it may look like a burger, but its not a burger.
 
xtsho said:
We just had some rain with more in the forecast so I picked all of the tomatoes that were close to being ripe. I'd rather have them finish ripening on the counter than splitting open on the vine. The big ones are a Beefsteak variety called "Delicious". They are delicious and very big. A very good yielder. I plan on growing this variety again next year. I have a couple more bowls of cherry tomatoes to pick.

The weather has been odd this year and I got hit really bad and early with PM on my cucumbers and squash. I still ended up with more cucumbers than we could eat or I could make into pickles. I still canned 15 quarts and 10 pints of pickles. I only got one eggplant from two plants which annoys me. The beans went crazy and I have a bunch of bush beans I planted mid summer that are about a week away from being harvestable. After a slow start my peppers ended up doing okay. Next year I'm going to have to be patient and not put things out too soon causing them to be stunted from cold temperatures.



tomatoes98.jpg
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they look at lot like these ones i grew from seed i think it was last year.. i got the seeds from rutger's uni online, and they were called jersey tomatoes, odd name living in jersey, i know, lol..
they're not my favorite kind although they do produce great, i tend to like the ones that stay more round and don't crinkle on the top like those ones.. just personal tastes, not like i'm prejudiced against crinkle matters, lol.. nice harvest though..
 
The Gram Reaper said:
I wonder if people eating Walmart's tomatoes know that they are fake as hell. Fruit/vegtables from a store are not even close to fresh garden ones with taste, quality, and texture. Walmart is a lot like McDonalds. You might order a burger, it may look like a burger, but its not a burger.
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so true.. i don't know what the deal with that is, not sure if they're maybe grown in say mexico or indoors in green houses or what the dllio, but you're right, store bought veggies are never any where close to being as good as home grown..
 
Some beets, a few peppers of different varieties, more tomatoes, some green for frying, my one eggplant although I did notice another one about two inches long, cucumbers, and a patty pan squash. The tomatoes are not completely ripe but I picked them anyway. They'll ripen up inside. It's been raining so much that some are splitting on the vine.


harvest910.jpg
 
racerboy71 said:
so true.. i don't know what the deal with that is, not sure if they're maybe grown in say mexico or indoors in green houses or what the dllio, but you're right, store bought veggies are never any where close to being as good as home grown..
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Almost all seasonal fruit is picked green, then stored in chilled, climate controlled warehouses. When they need them to "ripen", they pipe in the hormone that signals it's time to get ripe. That is how they are able to be in stores year round.

We have several big tomato growers nearby. They open up the fields at the end of the season for U Pick. Also sell them by the box. We always get a couple of boxes. You can get mostly ripe, to mostly green. Since it's just the two of us, we get about half green. We always have to toss a few, but not too many.
 
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dracaena or what? i think it's a dragon tree....but i'll be damned if i can find a picture that matches it exactly...dracaena seem to grow....different, more clumpy, not annularly, this seems to grow taller with each new set of leaves. it was a broken root when i got it, the stem had been snapped off. my friend was going to throw it out, and i took the root mass and potted it. it took two years to get 6 feet high...
 
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