2026 Garden Thread

[begreen]

A caution on the tomatoes. They don't like extreme heat. We have gotten sun scald in the past year on very hot days. This year I will be top covering them with remay or sunblocking cloth during very hot spells. With a super el Niño brewing, this may be another record breaking summer. It already is in the Pacific with an exceptionally strong super typhoon hitting Guam and Saipan islands. Very unusual for April, they usually occur in summer.

 

[djlew]

A caution on the tomatoes. They don't like extreme heat. We have gotten sun scald in the past year on very hot days. This year I will be top covering them with remay or sunblocking cloth during very hot spells. With a super el Niño brewing, this may be another record breaking summer. It already is in the Pacific with an exceptionally strong super typhoon hitting Guam and Saipan islands. Very unusual for April, they usually occur in summer.

My wife mentioned something about this. I was thinking the same thing, last summer was brutal. My tomatoes got wiped from a cooler start to the Spring/Summer and then never really recovered. July and August were brutal. I'm hoping I have better luck with tomatoes this year. I'm also doing better amending soil. Last year, besides some garden tone, we just did the log, brush, leaf trick and the top soil was just recycling center compost. Pretty carbon heavy I think. This year hopefully waiting until Mother's Day puts us at lows in the 50sF but hopefully the highs aren't too high. I still have some mid 30s lows coming up.

BTW, how are your peaches doing so far? Was just thinking about them since mine got the blooms wiped by a frost a couple weeks ago.

 

[begreen]

The peaches have finished blooming and are leafing out now. I had to act like a bee and do some hand pollinating due to cooler weather at bloom time. I am going to construct a permanent shed for the dwarf peach trees this year. They are outgrowing the portable greenhouse.

 

[djlew]

Cool! I want to build something modular and portable while my peaches are small to protect them from future frost. I might even leave one in the pot I have it in to "diversify my portfolio" so to speak.

 

[djlew]

I think the lemon especially is enjoying outside. Flowers buds swelled really fast and a ton more are forming. Featuring apricot seedling and pomegranate. Giving the deck a bit of life before the veggies come in!

 

[begreen]

I think the lemon especially is enjoying outside. Flowers buds swelled really fast and a ton more are forming. Featuring apricot seedling and pomegranate. Giving the deck a bit of life before the veggies come in!

Our citrus plants are going out today. They will welcome the full sunshine. However, the greenhouse won't be the same without their intoxicating blossom aromas.

 

[djlew]

Our citrus plants are going out today. They will welcome the full sunshine. However, the greenhouse won't be the same without their intoxicating blossom aromas.

It's always a treat getting that smell walking by. I'm sure inside or in a greenhouse it really encapsulates it. Might hit just under 40F here soon so should bring it inside!

 

[DuaeGuttae]

My Satsuma has been out for a while, and the key lime has been enjoying the heat wave outside this week. I just brought the latter back into the sunporch this evening. It would be okay for the next night or two, but the current forecast for Monday night is for 33 degrees, and we usually drop lower than the forecast. I moved the key lime, jade plant, ginger, fish pepper, and some hardening pomegranates and blueberries back in today so that I wouldn't have to worry about them tomorrow when the cold front moves in.

I worked on mulching the area where I plan to plant the pomegranates. My husband was chipping up branches and twigs from a dead pine tree he took down. I had added my old roselle plants from the garden to the pile, and I think they clogged the chipper. He didn't have time to unclog it before a commitment this afternoon, so that put an end to the mulch production. It was too hot to be outside at that point anyway.



This evening I worked on setting up some hoops and frost cloth over my tomatoes. They don't need it tonight, but this gives me a day to see if my setup works before its required. Sunday and Monday they'll need some protection, and I'm planning just to leave it on during the next few days.

I actually already have a couple of blossoms on my Ruby Slippers Cherry tomato. I don't know if they'll set fruit or not, but they seem to have settled into their new home without a problem during the heatwave. Now we'll see how they do during the cold snap.

 

[djlew]

Awesome! I can't tell you how many times I have clogged my chipper. Once so bad I had to use a pry bar to dislodge it. Then I asked myself... do I get new/sharpen the blades? Or just deal with a jam every time!? Still haven't answered that question...

How did you do with the cold snap? I accidentally left some seedlings out that got obliterated. I covered my blueberry and brought in my lemon in time. Nothing else is really flowering so I am pretty low risk but still a bummer to lose the seedlings.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Awesome! I can't tell you how many times I have clogged my chipper. Once so bad I had to use a pry bar to dislodge it. Then I asked myself... do I get new/sharpen the blades? Or just deal with a jam every time!? Still haven't answered that question...

How did you do with the cold snap? I accidentally left some seedlings out that got obliterated. I covered my blueberry and brought in my lemon in time. Nothing else is really flowering so I am pretty low risk but still a bummer to lose the seedlings.

You've only had to use a pry bar only once? You're definitely ahead of us.

Our blades can be sharpened, reserved, or replaced, and I think we've done all three over the years. We use the chipper a lot. It's a pain but definitely worth it to improve performance. Our best way to avoid a jam is simply to watch the input and output carefully and to stop feeding it if the output diminishes. I think the roselle debris was too fluffy and clogged the output and my husband thought he could clear it by putting through some good wood. Instead it just caught stuck in the mechanism. I think we'll be prying or even sawing at that wood with a drywall knife to dislodge it.

It's a little too early to say how we've done with the cold snap. It's twenty-eight degrees this morning. Yesterday was the surprise with thirty-three in the morning when the low had been predicted to be in the forties. My mom had not protected anything in her garden and lost a few tomatoes. Yesterday afternoon she got everything covered with boxes, buckets, bins, and bags as well as my extra frost cloth over her strawberry blossoms. I'm still concerned about the temperatures tonight since they've been dropping well below what's been predicted, so I'm not sure I'll trust the forecast.

I did peek under the frost cloth in my garden yesterday when I was resecuring some edges, and things looked okay. I'll have a better idea when I remove it, probably tomorrow. I sure hope everything did okay in my garden as I don't have replacements grown out. My mom does have backups, so she'll be fine even with the ones she lost.

 

[djlew]

You've only had to use a pry bar only once? You're definitely ahead of us.

Our blades can be sharpened, reserved, or replaced, and I think we've done all three over the years. We use the chipper a lot. It's a pain but definitely worth it to improve performance. Our best way to avoid a jam is simply to watch the input and output carefully and to stop feeding it if the output diminishes. I think the roselle debris was too fluffy and clogged the output and my husband thought he could clear it by putting through some good wood. Instead it just caught stuck in the mechanism. I think we'll be prying or even sawing at that wood with a drywall knife to dislodge it.

It's a little too early to say how we've done with the cold snap. It's twenty-eight degrees this morning. Yesterday was the surprise with thirty-three in the morning when the low had been predicted to be in the forties. My mom had not protected anything in her garden and lost a few tomatoes. Yesterday afternoon she got everything covered with boxes, buckets, bins, and bags as well as my extra frost cloth over her strawberry blossoms. I'm still concerned about the temperatures tonight since they've been dropping well below what's been predicted, so I'm not sure I'll trust the forecast.

I did peek under the frost cloth in my garden yesterday when I was resecuring some edges, and things looked okay. I'll have a better idea when I remove it, probably tomorrow. I sure hope everything did okay in my garden as I don't have replacements grown out. My mom does have backups, so she'll be fine even with the ones she lost.

It sounds like despite the challenges you have a good plan and took good precautions. I will say, this is the first year for me where it was even really worth paying attention to the forecast in terms of protecting crops. Not saying I shouldn't have before, but I actually have blueberries and raspberries flowering this early, lemon was outside, etc. which is exciting but equally scary! Zapped some peach blossoms, so I am starting to get firsthand experience on how important it is to pay attention to the forecase! LOL

 

[DuaeGuttae]

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men
Gang aft agley.

The cold got my tomatoes even under the frost cloth. It may be that there were gaps where it was held under the bamboo poles that let air in, or it may simply have been too cold for too long. All the leaves were killed on the tomatoes and some stems as well.

Here is a photo of the best of tomatoes, on the Ruby Slippers Cherry plants.
Don't be fooled by the green Austrian Winter Peas behind it. There are no large leaves left, but the stem is still alive, and there's a tiny bit of growth at the very bottom.

Here is a photo of the worst of tomatoes, the smaller of the Tundra plants. It looks dead and hopeless to me.

Most everything else has a green stem but dead leaves with no new leaves showing. I'm leaving everything in the ground for now, though, to see what happens from the stems and roots while I start some replacements inside. I figure by the time the replacements are getting big enough, I'll have a much better idea of how the garden is doing.

The potatoes got hit a little but look much better overall. This is the middle section of the row with the slightly larger plants.


My lettuce and arugula in the planter on my patio look like they had a trip to the spa. I need to thin some arugula. I sowed way too thickly thinking that the seeds weren't good. I've already transplanted some to the garden. I think I'll put some thinnings in our salad for dinner tonight.



Most of my other plants got to move out of the sunroom yesterday and today to keep enjoying the sunshine and hardening off. I have plans to transplant a bunch of lettuce on Saturday.


My tomato seeds that I sowed before the cold started popping up yesterday and today. I thought it was interesting that one of these seems to have three cotyledons.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Today was a lovely day for gardening. It was not too hot and not too cold, and the sun was behind clouds for most of the morning and for much of the afternoon.

I started the morning by finishing putting down cardboard around my camellias and hydrangeas in one of the three beds where I'm trying to eliminate grass. New neighbors gave us lots of moving boxes recently, so it has been a blessing to have a good supply to use for this. We didn't make any new mulch today, but we had an aged pile in the woods that my husband shoveled into a cart for me to finish the project.

The next task was to get the pomegranates and blueberries planted behind the house in the fenced beds. The pomegranates are behind the back wall of our garage which faces southeast, so it should be a more protected location for them in winter. (If you notice the orange extension cord in the corner, it's running over to the electric log splitter where my husband was splitting up a dead pine he took down a couple weekends ago.)



The blueberries are behind the house on the other side of a patio from the pomegranates. I have two smaller varieties planted somewhat close together. We dug a really wide hole and did lots of amendments mixed in with the native soil, which does tend to be acidic naturally. I'll have to watch it, though, because they're near the concrete patio and house foundation. I put down some extra cardboard where bermuda grass was coming through gaps in our previous layer that had many more small boxes pieced together.


My last project before lunch was to transplant lots and lots of lettuce into the row where we had covered winter rye trimmings with compost. I think I put out forty-nine transplants. I gave a few to my mom. I'm planning to grow okra in this row later in the summer, but I'm trying to use the lettuce to eat and to act as a shade for the soil to help keep out the bermuda grass.



After lunch I weeded out some grass that was coming into the bed, put down some moving paper as a barrier, and covered it with more compost. I then planted Rattlesnake pole bean seeds all along the trellis in the back of the bed. We've used up all our frozen green beans from last year, so I did a full row of eight panels this year instead of only six.

I then helped my husband clean up from logsplitting and get the splitter put away just before we actually got some rain. It has been, dry, dry, dry here recently, so it was lovely to see it coming down. We got about a quarter of an inch, and there may be more showers later. I'm so pleased.

The last good news of the day is that the Ruby Slippers tomato is definitely putting on some new growth.

 

[TreeCo]

Hey folks I've not been checking in here as much now that our heating season is over.

I've been in the garden!

Some garden photos from yesterday: Cauliflower, three cultivars of heirloom collards one being a yellow 'cabbage collard', two cultivars of broccoli. We've been eating and freezing collards for the past few weeks. Two rows of sugar snap peas, 7 kinds of garlic and a triple row of multiplier onions.

 

[Whitenuckler]

Hey folks I've not been checking in here as much now that our heating season is over.

I've been in the garden!

Some garden photos from yesterday: Cauliflower, three cultivars of heirloom collards one being a yellow 'cabbage collard', two cultivars of broccoli. We've been eating and freezing collards for the past few weeks. Two rows of sugar snap peas, 7 kinds of garlic and a triple row of multiplier onions.

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Nice garden. Paradise.

 

[begreen]

Hey folks I've not been checking in here as much now that our heating season is over.

I've been in the garden!

Some garden photos from yesterday: Cauliflower, three cultivars of heirloom collards one being a yellow 'cabbage collard', two cultivars of broccoli. We've been eating and freezing collards for the past few weeks. Two rows of sugar snap peas, 7 kinds of garlic and a triple row of multiplier onions.

Fantastic. That looks to be a month ahead of our garden up north.

 

[TreeCo]

We started the tomato and cruciferous plants from seed on 2-1-26 and grew them for a few weeks under led tubes and then moved them in and outdoors depending on weather conditions.

Zip code 30011 if you want to look at usda grow zones. We are getting a low of 45°F tonight and higher than that for the next week predictions.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@TreeCo , thanks for the pictures of your garden. It looks great.

I grew up eating collard greens and loved them, but they don't seem to be so well known anymore. Are you part of the Heirloom Collard Project?

When do you anticipate being able to set out your tomatoes? It's been so cool here that just last week I potted up some tomatoes and peppers a second time as our soil temperatures have dropped significantly. Our lettuce is loving it, though.

 

[djlew]

I have been slacking on photos. This is the current progress in the orchard. No veggies yet. Raspberries look promising, and I am currently working on getting the pH right for the blueberries, cranberries, and strawberries. They don't look too upset! I dug up some of the raspberry suckers to hopefully make more plants. Pardon the mess in the berry patch, I am still in the middle of cleanup after a pretty brutal winter that brought down a lot of branches, etc.

The peaches are looking to be putting on some good growth. I hope they really get a good foundation this season and I get a crop next year.

I used some more homemade mulch for this season. I hope it treats me well.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Thanks for the photos, @djlew. It's great that you're building an orchard. Your idea of a mess in the berry patch and my idea are very different. I would view those little twigs as part of the mulch. That's the type of thing I put in my garden paths on purpose to fight the bermuda grass.

In fact, I've been working the past two Saturdays with my husband and mother to do just that. The first Saturday we worked on a bed in front of the house where I have ornamental camellias and a fig. This past Saturday my mom and I cut down more invasive autumn olive and a little ailanthus and mulched it up to beef up the mulch in the vegetable garden paths. We got four of the nine paths covered with enough mulch to hold down another layer of brown paper for occultation. We have plenty of autumn olive to turn to mulch as well as countless brush piles from normal branch drop. It's just a matter of finding time to make the mulch in the midst of the other tasks.



My plan is to do a lot of transplanting on Saturday: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, whatever seems to be growing out of the current pots. Some of my peppers are flowering. Smaller plants may wait another week or two. I'm hoping that my husband and mother will team up on the mulch making while I do that.

My Austrian Winter Pea cover crop is just beginning to flower. I love the blooms, and it's also a good sign that it's a good time to cut. I have to get that done to make room for my tomatoes. A few of the pea plants are approaching five feet tall at this point, though most are shorter.



I have this plant sprouting up around my garlic where I spread my homemade compost earlier in the year. I figure that it must be some seed that I introduced into the batch from yard waste that didn't get killed off. Does anyone recognize what it is?

 

[Montanalocal]

Do you have Mullein around your area? That looks like a Mullein seedling.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Thanks for chiming in, @Montanalocal . Yes, we have mullein. That was a possibility that I considered. The leaves are somewhat velvety, but it doesn't look quite like the plants in the area that I know are mullein.

This is a photo that I took this morning. The larger, brighter green plant is one of the mystery seedlings that I pulled from my garden and carried over to the roadside where there's something of an infestation of mullein. I've run the lawnmower over these some time ago, so that's why they're a little chopped up, but all the mullein I see around here is a lighter color and feels softer. They do have a pretty similar smell, though.



I'm perplexed by it because it does seem to be coming from my homemade compost, but I don't recognize it at all, and I'm confident that I never put a mullein flower spike in there. We cut the mullein back to keep it from spreading. We do have a lot in the roadside ditch and where the land was disturbed there to clear sightlines for our driveway.

One thing that did occur to me is that my daughter pulled up a huge amount of perilla last year as well as some other weed that I can't quite recall right now. We did compost those, and while I don't think they had seedheads at the time, there was soil on their roots. Perhaps this weed came from some type of seed that was lying dormant in the soil for a time.

I can hand pull these easily from my garden. Mostly I'm just interested in an identification to figure out what it is and where it came from.

I'm open to being convinced that it is mullein and open to other suggestions as well. Thanks for any help.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I did a lot of transplanting on Saturday: tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, sweet potato slips, and a little roselle and blue butterfly pea. It was a lot more than I normally plant at once as I usually stagger the plantings over several weeks. It's just been very cool for May, so I delayed some plants.

I also chopped and dropped the winter rye cover crop, some with the mower where there was nothing to save, but some by hand where I had some plants to preserve. I also chopped the Austrian Winter Peas and used them to mulch potatoes and tomatoes.

Lastly I laid down more builders paper and spread out autumn olive mulch that my mother and husband were making for me while I worked in the garden. It can use a lot more mulch, but we're making progress since this was layered over last year's batch. It was a long, hot day in the garden, but I'm very thankful to have gotten so much done before the heat wave came in yesterday.

 

[djlew]

Looks great DG! I'm glad you were able to get a lot done.

It has been brutally hot here the past few days. We should be topping out at 100F here today. Then the massive temp drop is supposed to come in tomorrow. I've been working hard trying to keep everything hydrated. My blueberries are showing signs of scald. I am going to move them into a raised bed or pots next year I think. More control over soil acidity and can move them into shade.

Everything else seems to be fairing fine. My tomatoes and cucumbers are enjoying the heat from the looks of it. I threw down a layer of my homemade mulch to cool them down hopefully. Nasturtium seeds are also popping up! I also direct sowed some of these "rainbow carrot" seeds I found at the store. They look really cool in photos! We'll see how they do.

Besides the scald on my blueberries, my peaches might be reacting to the heat by throwing out some water sprouts, but I can manage that. Hope everyone else's garden is faring well!

 

[burning VC]

from last week, there has been a good deal of growth since...

Front porch garden...this is just some rocks and clay...
from left to right...
front row,
Early Girl tomato, Marglobe x2, Rutgers, Early Girl.
back row, 'Mystery Squash', White Cucumbers x2.........hard to see them down low in the rear, at ground level.

Here is the main section, again it's 8x30...
up front, tomatoes again...(extra's in pots)
from l to r.
Marglobe, Yellow Str. Squash, Rutgers, White Cucumbers, Yellow Str. Squash.

Dirt area in middle is fresh Asparagus crowns...

Easier to see from the side.

Off to left is the white cucumbers i mentioned...in front of us is an Early Girl tomato, yellow squash, and Black Zucchini to the right. The single Okra plant hides over there.

In the longer shot you saw the Green pole beans in the back, here's a better view of them.

Have cages in here now for the beans....White Mountain Half Runners....and they have runners coming in now, just not in these pictures..

And here is the minor garden...more of the same things...

Many circular(ish) rows....going from front to rear....

Tomatos, Rutgers and Marglobe x2 each.
Yellow Str. Squash.
Black Zucchini
White Cucumbers
Cantaloupes.....Honey Rock, Iroquois, Hales Best.

And then there's what remains to plant....and now that it's FINALLY RAINING, I can plant these since there out beyond the reach of the water hose, and certainly would have crispy-dustified weeks ago......

Jugs have more White Cucumbers, Pablanos(didn't sprout), Roma tomatos(no sprout)...

and the trays are ALL Watermelons..
Petite Yellow, Golden Yellow, Sugar Baby, Stars and Moon, Congo, and Crimson Sweet....

No pics of the Butternut Squash, or Pumpkins...

@djlew This year I AM growing Early Girl tomatos...Started them from seed after last years nonsense...
(last year)I purchased '-Bush- Early Girl' at the hardware store i've used for years, not knowing there were two kinds, bush and normal...
However, the growth was nothing like expectations. (Claim-54 days to harvest)....well...I strongly suspect these were some type of yellow tomato...they never turned red, and certainly not early.
They came all at once, all different sizes, and very late(90+ days)....even then they were yellowy. So last year wasted due to poor labeling by grower...

This year i purchased the Early Girl seed myself, and so far i'm impressed.

All Rutgers and Marglobes are knee high. Each Early Girl is over waist high and has 3-6 Golf ball sized tomatoes that are rapidly increasing.
Marglobes and Rutgers canopy 1 sq. ft. EG has 4 sq. ft easy of canopy.

I'll get some photos of a side by side for your comparison.



the minor garden activity for now....
I started a Potato tower this year, as an experiment.
Still have some hot peppers sprouting, and I'm trying for late bloomer okra to join their older sister.


Planting melons, winter squash, pumpkins and sunflowers now that it's rained. We've had 1/4 inch of rain in 3.5 months.