Garden: What the HELL am I waiting for!

[Sweetened]

The gardens this year have been a drain on me physically. I get two or three rows raked up into line and I'm nearly dead on my feet, my ribs hurting, baby kicking. I have had to make decisions to back off when I'd rather push through, but I'm not interested in dropping the Karate Kid early into the dirt, calling Moose to say "Heyy.... I had the kid in the garden!" In addition, between the chickens, cats and escape artist bucks, I have done nothing but slam my head into a wall repeatedly in an effort to deal with my urge to put otherwise loved animals into the freezer. The chickens and cats dug up my beans and peas! Asshats.

There is otherwise nothing in, thanks to the bucks breaking a fence and eating all my strawberries which I had delicately planted with admiration and pride. I was going to plant on the long weekend until it FROZE and snowed here, so it's all coming down to this weekend. What gets in, gets in. Everything else... I will either buy plants for or just forget.

This is my last year attempting corn and squash (with the exclusing of seeds from a squash that voluntarily popped up middle of June last year and was in fruit by July). Corn just doesn't go for me, stunted little stalks grow, ears don't. I think in 4 years I've had 2 ears of corn we've eaten out of the garden. Squash starts quit on me in a few weeks, and on the rare occasion they don't, they don't make it through the hardening off process and I lose them then. My tomatos are small and spindly this year, a large disappointment. 3 years ago I started ordering my tomatoes from Heritage Harvest Seed and I had amazing success. Last season, the tomatoes didn't seem true to type when I ordered them again, and this year the Blondekophen that I desperately wanted to try had less than a 50% germination rate! I was so incredibly disappointed. They also didn't harden off well and I was so looking forward to growing these.

I will say, pigs are a must for garden tilling though. We had pigs on one of my new gardens and I moved him back and forth over it several times. NO weeds have come back up in there except one stubborn dandelion. The other two gardens which were manually done are very weedy. We will, hopefully, have a pallet fence up around all the gardens for fall and be able to rotate a couple piggers through the gardens to grow up over winter for harvest in early spring.

Any gardening success for you guys? Troubles?

[niglefritz]

I had planted WAY too many tomatoes. I ordered only one small packet, which was not enough. So...I dug out some 5 yr. old seed. They all spouted...giving me 52 out of 54 in total. Whew. I will give a few plants away. I know we need tomatoes this year, but really? We will hopefully get some heavy trellises up, because these heritage tomatoes (black krim and sicilian) produce huge trailing plants that produce like crazy!

Yesterday I put my baby plants out and killed some due to the heat (not any tomatoes). That reminds me...I should go out and check how they are doing.

I am doing new gardens this year (still waiting for them to get tilled one more time and one to even begin to be done...sigh)...so it will be weeds and quack grass like crazy. So very not looking forward to that.

That is what I hate most and one reason why I quit gardening for so long. We will see if I will do this again next year. We plan to get some pigs this summer, so I might just tell dh to put them in the garden once I'm done. Thanks, Sweetened.

[Sweetened]

Yes I just finished reading your post! I did that as well last year, with old tomato seed. Thought maybe one or two would sprout -- 86 seeds later . In a backwards thankful way, cats knocked it down and it went everywhere, killing all the starts. In retrospect, I may have been able to store them.

I remember reading about someone finding a small packet of corn seeds in an attic they were renovating. They planted them, and they grew, and the packet was from an old seed company with a year date in the 60's, and they found it in the 90's. All the corn grew and he started sending them to heirloom companies. Quite interesting. I never throw away old seed, I always see if it germinates.

The pigs were REMARKABLE. I just had them in a wire dog kennel that I'd move back and forth every few days and provide minimal food. They dug right down. I put the tiller through it and it was like butter. Just sunk into the dirt and ripped through the few dead roots that were there. I was able to get deeper than in the other gardens -- what a dream! They are definitely worth the try.

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