[MC Ain't Crazy]

Put in some strawberries. Not exactly a survival food, but I want the whole family involved and learning the skills. They are one thing the kids like, and will take an active part in caring for.

Some peas. Cannot recommend them as a survival crop unless you've got a lot, a lot, a lot of space. They sure are delicious though. Also a really easy intro to seed saving if I understand correctly. "Let some mature on the vine to the point of drying out; collect them when you pull up the peas" sounds too easy to be real.

Tomatoes in containers all over the porch (8 kinds, all open pollinated except for a hybrid cherry and 2 Early Girls, which I planted in case everything else bombs as I have always had excellent luck with them).

Question-- What are the best o-p tomatoes for dealing with a climate that is cool and wet in the spring/fall and hot, dry, and buggy as anything all summer????

Corn/beans/squash. My garden is really tiny so I thought I'd try maximizing space with a three sisters setup. I think I botched it and all I am going to get is more pole beans than I know what to do with. Again with the pressure canner.

Glad I slipped some squash in here and there around the place as an experiment in sylvan/guerrilla gardening. How does one protect a guerrilla gardening project from deer???? Just hope they don't find a few plants scattered here and there worth eating????

Time's almost up, but I think I might go for a walk tomorrow and toss a few things out going up the hill. It would be interesting to see what they do.

I got to get the okra out, too, or give up on it. How do y'all think it would work planted in cut-open bags of bought dirt and trellised with lines tied to the porch railing????

 

[dylanM]

Okra will grow in the bags of dirt just fine . What kind of okra are you planting that vine? For tomatos we have the same weather you you listed, & I love the amish paste & romas.
We planted strawberry plants today also. These have runners on them , blooms & berries also.So now I need to look up how to grow & care for strawberrys & what to do with the runners.At 20cents a shovel full & she dug them while I waited, it was to good a deal to pass up.

 

[MC Ain't Crazy]

I don't know if it does exactly (this will be the first year I've planted it). Package directions say "provide trellis for support;" most other things I've encountered that say that vine (peas, beans, squash&cukes though too heavy to let run up strings), and it seemed to me I could remember it growing that way somewhere. I might be out of my mind.

Is it maybe more like tomatoes??? Like, stake or cage for support?

Sorry-- I am a terrible gardener. No I'm not-- I'm a novice gardener. I've always been around gardens, but it was something else I was "too stupid" to be allowed to help with. So I got mad, dragged in some dirt (soil exists in patches here; mostly it's crumbly rock which they tell me is great for supplying trace minerals but not much else), and started planting things. I figure, I don't learn much about it from reading books (funny but I guess I cannot learn practical things in an academic way), so I'll have to learn the hard way.

I've killed a lot of stuff. Fed hordes of blister beetles more tomatoes than I've fed my kids. Hey Kev in East Texas not all that far from me-- what do you do about those dang things???? What few mentions of them I see say they're beneficial on account of eating grasshopper larvae and should be hand-picked if they start to cause damage. I don't know what universe the people writing this book live in, but I'm talking about hundreds of bugs. By the time you get to the end of a 15' row hand-picking, you've been at it more than 2 hours and they're thick at the beginning again. It's getting better though. Lettuce did great this year-- I'd almost given up on it and now I'm giving it away 'cause we're not going to be able to eat it all before it bolts. How do you collect seed from lettuce, btw???

 

[wrt355]

hmm, i never even knew what a blister beetle was until i read this and googled around...never had any trouble with them in the garden but i think i remember some alfalfa hay we bought was infested with them...

Spinosad takes care of some beetles iirc, might work on blister beetles...

 

[MC Ain't Crazy]

Anybody had luck using soap and lime spray for other beetles???? A book my mil gave me recommends it-- it is the only book I've ever seen that gives them any attention or relates destructiveness from them like I've experienced.

So I want to believe it. But then it looks one of those anecdote gimmick-books. I don't know if to trust it or not.

Hey, what've I got to lose???? Worst that happens is I end up with a choice between more pyrethrin than I want to spray (baaaaaad for bees and butterflies) or trying to figure out how to farm them for Spanish Fly instead of the garden I'm not going to get. lol

 

[MC Ain't Crazy]

How hard are deer on okra??? I'm all set to plant tomorrow, but no idea for a barrier. At least, not one that won't be depressingly ugly (okra's going right by the front steps).

 

[survivalistmomma]

Thank you for stopping by my garden thread. You mentioned giving up. Never give up. If nothing else we grow in persistence.

As gardeners, there is so much that is not in our control; too hot, too cool, too wet, too dry, lots of bugs, disease, persistent weeds, bad seed, poor soil, personal illness or injury... It seems no 2 years are a like.

Some years nothing grows. It was one of those years for gardeners around here last year. It was so cool that the tomatoes never turned red unless they were brought in the house. They were lucky to get one or two tomatoes per plant. I have had years where it rained all spring and the ground was mud until July and could not be worked in time.

It sounds like you had a good lettuce crop. What kind did you grow?