Gardens, Photos, Progress & Baby Eating Watermelon

I keep getting scolded by people for not showing photos, or enough photos this year.  We have a new camera, and I am not really attached to it the way I was to the old one that crapped out on us.  The new one is a Nikon COOLPIX with something like 14000 dpi, or some other insane resolution level.  It cost half as much as the last camera, and about the same as buying 4 disposable 35mm cameras and then paying for developing.  Amazing how fast technology is moving.

Anyway, the above photo is the Mandan White Flour corn, taken from the south side of the field at the Ness farm looking north.  There are 4 rows, each about 100 feet long and it is growing nicely.  The last weeding of it was just zipping between the rows with a cultivating tiller, so there are a good amount of things in there I would prefer were not, specifically thistle plants.  Either I will rouge them out when I have time, or deal with getting a lot of thistle stickers in me when it comes harvesting time.

This is an Amish Pie squash plant.  I tried growing these 2 years ago at this same garden, but the seeds I had did not come true to type.  This year I secured some new seeds and have about a dozen plants spread out over 100 feet.  Last time I grew them, what we got was highly variable in shape, but they all tasted great.  Hoping this year for the same great tasting squash, but something more like the 80 pound advertized size they can get to.

The above two photos are of Japanese Pie Pumpkin (c. mixta) and gooseneck gourd.  For whatever reason the germination on those two was horrible.  The plants I do have look good, but 2% germination is not a good thing, and not enough time to replant them.  My hope is that these plants produce well, and I get seeds with better germination for planting next year.

This row of beans I planted last week.  Nice to see them up this tall in only 7 days.

The Wamneheza corn (looking south from the north side) is also growing great.  Should tassel about 2 weeks after the Mandan White flour corn.

This is the Gnadenfeld cross that Michel Lacham sent me.  The seed was an F2 cross, so this is the seeds saved from the two melons I got from that wonderful melon I showed in the blog last year.  Does that make this an F2?  I am not sure.  Trying to figure that out in my mind.

Due to the lousy germination of the earlier squashes I went back and filled in with a LOT of my short season mochata.  When I say a lot, I mean about 100 plants that are up.  <grin> It is looking like it is going to be a banger year for squashes.

The early plantings of beans here are looking great.  There are some holes in the rows that seem to correspond to animals walking across the field, but none of the animals stayed and grazed, so not missing a ton here.

I also put in a couple of hills of Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash (c. pepo) which are just coming up now.  Glad to see them germinating so fast.

Lance and Heidi Ness planted hills of Arikara Sunflowers around the north and west sides of the garden early in the year.  They are all looking grand.

Lance also put in eight 300 foot rows of the sunflowers with his new tractor planter.  Was just a few weeks ago, and they are a 12-18 inches high.  The weeds are up and happy as well.  Lance plans on using his new cultivator for his tractor on them but with how tall the sunflowers get it is not really a worry.

On the lower left side of this photo Piper is chasing a striped gopher.  She was quite distressed that it got down a hole and spent a good amount of futile time trying to dig it out.  The rest of the photo shows the 150 foot by 500 foot planting of Victor Kucyk 2175 corn.  This is not select seed.  It is just general seeds from last year.  I only had a few pounds of selected seed, and will have to select out from this like I am starting over.  The selected seed I planted down in Red Wing, and that has been the favorite of the deer down there.  So far the corn in the back field at the Ness farm is untouched.

This is just a close up of the corn.  It is getting close to 24 inches tall already.

Back here at home the gardens are going well, and the above photo is Claire with the chamomile, right before we stripped most of the flowers from it.  We keep harvesting and drying the flowers for tea.  Fun, and so welcome to have a hot cup of chamomile tea in the winter.

My tallest tomato plants, by far, are the Rumi Banjan.  They are just starting to set tomatoes.   I have beautiful Phoebe standing next to them for scale.

Here Phoebe is standing next to Siberian Gallina yellow cherry tomato plants, and Red Romain lettuce.  The lettuce was undersown to the tomato plants, and the ones we have left are bolting up flower heads.  We will leave a few of them to flower and get seeds from.  The tomato plants are no where near as tall as the Rumi Banjan, but have set a lot of tomatoes already.  These were some of my earliest planted tomatoes, going into the ground on March 24th.  I did not lose any of the four types I planed that early to frost or freezing.

Here Phoebe is next to Rainbow Chard and Moravsy Div tomatoes.  This is another March 24th planting and they have set a lot of tomatoes as well.

Here Phoebe is nestled into the Coldset tomato plants to show the size of the tomatoes set on these.

For scale, I have Phoebe and Claire with the Coldset tomato plants.  These are a real sturdy bushing type apparently.  I did not know the stems were so thick, but they only have short cages on them which they are outgrowing.  In front of the tomato plants, next to the girls, are a few self-seeded tobacco plants.  They seem to do just fine seeding themselves in the gardens, and I leave them where they do not interfere with the other plants.  It is already maturing and here we are in the first month of summer.

Here is a cluster of Siberian tomatoes (the one just called Siberian) which I think will be my first ripe tomato this year.  The plants are not as vigorous as I remember them in the past, but they all have a good fruit set at least.

Tug Hill Paprika, of which I lost every one to rabbits down at the Red Wing garden last year, I started just a ton of this year and planned on planting here at my house where I could keep a closer watch on them, and our cats eliminate feral rabbit threats.  What I did not take into account was my best rodent chaser having a taste for baby pepper plants.  She at about 100 right out of the seedling flats.  Once I had them outside she left them alone, but I was down to 12 plants.  Of those 12, I have 11 left.  I had to put the sticks next to the plants because the cats kept using the pepper bed as a dust bath.

In my backyard I have a lot of squash.  Tons of it considering the amount of space that I have.  This is a hill of Arikara landrace.

And this is one last shot of the gardens at the front of the house.  The left side of the photo is some volunteer Rumi Banjan plants I will give away to someone, in the middle is Genovese Basil, and to the far right is the other side of the Rumi Banjan plants that Phoebe was standing next to in an earlier photo.

And that is as much as I am going to write right now.  It is hot outside, and we are going to take them to their cousin’s and play at Medicine Lake for the afternoon.  When it cools off I will try to get back out in the gardens.

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7 Responses to Gardens, Photos, Progress & Baby Eating Watermelon

  1. stone says:

    That chamomile is awfully purdy.
    My first plantings of beans and squash r done…

    Very nice looking fields, weeds n all.

    • Tom says:

      your squash is already done? Mine is up and looking good, but will be some months before it is done. Nice to be eating fresh beans now.

    • Ornella says:

      I’d left a message ealrier this week about the bare-root perennials I bought at the plant sale. They had some clear crystals around them and I planted them around the plants in my garden upstate. Recently I noticed that the crystals had turned into kind of a gooey mass. Should I just leave them there and assume they’ll eventually be absorbed into the soil?Many thanks!

    • Tom says:

      sorry if I missed the message. I would contact the place you bought it from and ask them. It is probably harmless, but you want to know.

  2. Phil Kuhn says:

    These gardens remind growing up in Georgia and we had 35 acres,but only had 3 30 x30 gardens. Those vegetables were good. It brings back memories. I build garden and memorial crosses at mygardencross.com check it out. Thank you for the pictures it is awesome. God Bless

    • Meinrad says:

      Have you tried totamo leaf tea? Soak totamo leaves in water over night, drain out leaves, use as spray on garden. It is good for most soft bodied bugs like afids. Diatrimatious Earth, made of powdered sea creature skeletons, found in the pool section. Lightly puff on vegetable garden for most exoskeleton bugs, like ants, fire-ants, and crickets. Gets in their joints and dehydrates them to death. Must reapply after rain. Completely harmless for humans and pets to touch, although avoid inhaling the dust. I did notice the application on the plants needs to be a dust, if you apply to heavily, it seemed to dehydrate the plants.Great Blog. Thanks.

  3. Samareh says:

    Your bare root purchases were paekcd with a small amount of Terra-sorb Hydrogel, an absorbant gel that sequesters water then slowly releases moisture to protect the bare roots from drying out during transport and short-term storage. In the landscape it can be added to the root zone of water loving plants during planting to boost the moisture available to roots in dry conditions. This hydrogel holds 200-times more water than soil. If situated on the soil surface the gel does become a gooey mess and should be scooped up.Thank you for supporting Battery’s gardens with your purchase! Happy gardening.