Gardening

As far as I can tell they are over 9 feet tall... What the hell did they bury in their front yard?!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20123777

All pots, there is paving under the plants.

Post image is spaghetti squash

This tomato held up surprisingly well.

Marigolds

Another angle of spaghetti squash and watermelon I think.

Beans!

Cucumbers

Tomato

And nasturtiums.

I've been having trouble with several of my plants the last couple of years. I've planted almost 4 blueberry bushes, grapevine and some winterberries that do well for several months then seem to start growing very slow and doing poorly.

Our soil is more of a silty soil that doesn't drain well so I did fill the holes in with good potting soil with compost and covered with a thin layer of the silty soil and try to water about once a week. The last year I had 3 blueberry bushes that I planted early spring that put out some new growth and then started to grow very slow and later died In early fall and didn't come back the next year. I've tried to fertilize and add gardening Sulphur to them to help acidity the soil but no matter what I do everything slowly starts to die. I've noticed this year the leaves on the grapevines and blueberries appears to have chlorosis and the winterberries' leaves are turning brown and curling up. It's still ~90 degrees out so I doubt anything should be going dormant yet (I live in zone 5b). I even tried to buy special blueberry fertilizer to make sure I wasn't missing anything important but I'm still having issues.

Here is the blueberry bush:

The raspberries:

And one of the winterberry bushes:

Does this look like iron defiency or potentially some other sort of issue? At this point I'm considering getting my soil tested but if anyone has any advice let me know.

Behold, after seven months, I have turned one Market Basket acorn squash into four.

Should be ready soon 🤞

I had a volunteer milkweed this year in my small raised bed/container garden.

Early into the season it developed a yellow aphid infestation. I was horrified! They were disgusting things (and far, far too many of them). While I was interested in an insect garden, I was worried spread to nearby plants, specifically my prized blackberries, affecting yields.

I researched and treated the aphid infestation with Neem Oil and basically killed the living population. Success!

Or so I thought…

After I traveled for about a month, I returned to see the aphids had rebounded in full force.

An interesting thing though, neither had they spread to other plants.

Even more interesting there were ladybugs, there were beetles, there were wasps, there was even a praying mantis.

I wouldn’t say the milkweed is super happy about the arrangement, but it is growing, and it was a volunteer into the garden.

Overall it’s been the best plant of the season by far teaching me a little bit about ecosystems.

TLDR: my aphid infestation totally allowed my predator insect population to boom

I assume the best way is to go off of date on the packaging for maturity days, but with the weather here it’s kinda hard to determine, they were stunted for a few weeks before even doing anything.

Could frost here anytime and covering these isn’t really an option! Any advice would be appreciated!

This came up unexpectedly and I’m waiting to see what it’ll be. I didn’t plant any squash or pumpkins this year. In fact I’ve never planted either in this garden bed. We affectionately call it our “pumquash” while we wait.

I have it under a greenhouse because we had our first frost warning this weekend, and I’d really like at least one fruit to mature so we can solve the mystery. This is the furthest along.

Today’s our first frost date, and I haven’t had a single ripe tomato yet. Time to break out the plant covers and cross my fingers.

I usually make green tomato relish. What are your favorite green tomato canning recipes?

So much sauce is going to be made

year three of this garden and Insect variety is way better than previous two.

Too hot for the garden today so have another picture from my phone. If anyones on bluesky tell Aaron Alexovich these things exist.