Actual Farmer Thread - Also Gathering and similar stuff, just nothing related to hunting

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A bounty of berries is happening in my yard! A lot of them are going directly into my mouth, but I had a ton of blueberries so I put some into pancakes tonight. My very small avocado tree is starting to produce some fruits, so that's exciting.
 
This year, I had to neglect my garden for about a month of travel, and I've been dealing with unwelcome vole and rabbit activities since my big orange kitty died. He was a fine hunter. But despite the pest damage and underneath all the weeds, enough plants were merrily chugging away and I ended up with a nice late-summer harvest. Potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes for days!

So now, I'm looking for tomato advice: Does anyone have a favorite short-season or early heirloom variety? Jersey Devil and a random German mutant/sport do right by me, but they take such a long time to get up and running.

I've tried Stupice, which produced early but only the late season fruits had any flavor.
Sub-Arctic Plenty was a little better, but not by much.
Sungold is another reject - they were like little balloons of tomato skin filled with watery seeds. It seems like some tomatoes make inferior fruit when conditions are wetter than they'd like, and my vegetable patch tends in that direction.

I haven't had great luck with Bloody Butcher, finding it to be quite disease-prone, but it's possible my seeds were from an inferior strain and I will probably give it another shot.

Gosh, I can't believe it's already mid-September. Here, it's time to get cool weather root crops and greens in the ground.

e: Today's little yield.
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My Super Sweet 100s are starting to wind down for the season - they're the golf-ball-sized little guys - and Black Vernissage has never been a heavy producer for me. It sure is pretty in a salad, but otherwise only okay - I actually didn't mean to grow it again, but it came back as a compost volunteer. The German whatever in the back is the runt of its litter - the vines are covered in green fellas, each about the size of a Chipotle burrito, threatening to ripen all at once.
 
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Durable Mike Malloy said:
Hey, check out my shiny Pineco!
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e: It was delicious:
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I'm too terrified to learn about mushroom hunting.

I've been eating yew berries. Last year they tasted kind of bland. This year they are sickening sweet. I wonder what conditions change the sweetness. It was super hot this summer. But last year was bad too. Only this year it was also very rainy.

And I know every other part of the yew tree is poison and I know to spit out the seed. But I'm careful not to eat more than three or four berries just in case. Although I've heard conflicting info on how many berries you should have. I also don't eat large portions of anything safe I find because animals can't go to Walmart for more food.

All the honeysuckle around here died off around July. I don't know whether it was the heat or or much rain. But the vines were there. Just not the flowers. Last year there was honeysuckle still growing until November. But November was a little too warm anyway. There was forsythia flowering along with birchleaf tor. It was weird.

I couldn't collect any wine berries this year because it was so unbearably hot that I couldn't get to the place with the best berries. The berries closer to me were all picked and thrown by kids before they were even properly ripe.:(

Some pajeets around here grow bitter melon and some kind of purple peppers. Some just hang off the side of the fence. I wanted to grab one since it was streetside anyway. But again, kids tear them off and throw them.
 
Is anyone else starting their northern-hemisphere spring gardens? I've got tomatoes and peppers under the grow lights and early greens in the cold frame!

I am concerned about how wet my backyard vegetable patch will be this season. Last fall, neighbors all the way up the block cleared out all the trees from their respective properties, and without that biomass pulling water out of the ground, I am afraid my far backyard might now be a literal bog.
 
My little property produces Loquats. The harvesting "season" is very short. Two weeks and it is over. They produce literally hundreds of the fruits from two medium sized trees, and there are very few ways of storing the fruit.

So, I guess I am eating a lot of loquats over the next week and a half. I seriously need to learn how to make preserves/jams.
 
Durable Mike Malloy said:
Is anyone else starting their northern-hemisphere spring gardens? I've got tomatoes and peppers under the grow lights and early greens in the cold frame!

I am concerned about how wet my backyard vegetable patch will be this season. Last fall, neighbors all the way up the block cleared out all the trees from their respective properties, and without that biomass pulling water out of the ground, I am afraid my far backyard might now be a literal bog.
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Land drains are your friend there and you can install them yourself for basically no money. Many tutorials online.
 
BONE_Buddy said:
My little property produces Loquats. The harvesting "season" is very short. Two weeks and it is over. They produce literally hundreds of the fruits from two medium sized trees, and there are very few ways of storing the fruit.

So, I guess I am eating a lot of loquats over the next week and a half. I seriously need to learn how to make preserves/jams.
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make wine from them... Its realy realy easy
 
LazarusOwenhart said:
Land drains are your friend there and you can install them yourself for basically no money. Many tutorials online.
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Problem is, the far backyard is within 2 feet of bedrock and I absolutely do not want to divert water toward the front of the property. I have a dry basement and I want to keep it that way! Once spring melt is through and things have dried up a little, my plan is to drop the lowest-lying part of the yard down to bedrock and maintain it as an intentional vernal pool/bog garden, and use the spoils to build up the garden patch.

Unfortunately, there's no way for compact equipment to access the far backyard, so this project will be just me, a shovel, and so many fucking New England potatoes.
 
Durable Mike Malloy said:
Problem is, the far backyard is within 2 feet of bedrock and I absolutely do not want to divert water toward the front of the property. I have a dry basement and I want to keep it that way! Once spring melt is through and things have dried up a little, my plan is to drop the lowest-lying part of the yard down to bedrock and maintain it as an intentional vernal pool/bog garden, and use the spoils to build up the garden patch.

Unfortunately, there's no way for compact equipment to access the far backyard, so this project will be just me, a shovel, and so many fucking New England potatoes.
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What about transferring water out of the back of the property? Or do you back on to your neighbours?
 
LazarusOwenhart said:
What about transferring water out of the back of the property? Or do you back on to your neighbours?
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Our property backs up to the foot of an outcrop, and we've got neighbors on either side. Our downhill neighbors have similar issues with standing water after spring melt, but they don't ever seem to go outside so it doesn't bother them.

Whether or not the uphill clearing ends up affecting my property, if I can get the wettest patch in the far backyard to persist a little longer into the springtime, it would significantly increase its wildlife value and, with some luck, entice mosquito predators to linger. We have red-spotted newts strolling through all the time and it would be nice to offer them a spot to breed.

An upside to this seasonal inundation is that, once the soil is dry enough to work, it is incredible. I feel like I'm gardening in Narnia's Lantern Waste - literally everything grows. It's just stupid good.
 
Our land came with lots of apple and damson trees, and various fruit bushes. Some of those are gone now, but we still have the trees along with blackcurrants and raspberries, and we grow potatoes and runner beans every year. So far we've seeded the potatoes. Sometimes we grow strawberries too, I think that's the plan for later this year. We also have a rowan tree and I want to make rowan jelly from the berries, something I haven't got around to trying yet.

As for the surrounding countryside, blackberries and elderberries are common around here. It's also not a bad area for mushrooms, but that's not something my family has ever been into, though I'd like to try foraging for them someday.

Oh, and we have a small herb garden too! It did include a bay tree, but it became the unfortunate victim of an unusually cold frost one year...
 
Durable Mike Malloy said:
Is anyone else starting their northern-hemisphere spring gardens? I've got tomatoes and peppers under the grow lights and early greens in the cold frame!

I am concerned about how wet my backyard vegetable patch will be this season. Last fall, neighbors all the way up the block cleared out all the trees from their respective properties, and without that biomass pulling water out of the ground, I am afraid my far backyard might now be a literal bog.
Click to expand...
If it gets too bad see if you can get some straw bales for straw bale gardening. It's like magic. You wet the bales to get the inside to start composting, wait a few weeks, and jam the plants in.

www.gardeners.com

Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales, Straw-Bale Gardening | Gardener's Supply

Think of the straw bale as a large container with a volume of 40 gallons. Unlike a planter filled with soil, the bale is transformed into a partially composted mass of organic matter that's teeming with life.
www.gardeners.com www.gardeners.com
 
kcbbq said:
If it gets too bad see if you can get some straw bales for straw bale gardening. It's like magic. You wet the bales to get the inside to start composting, wait a few weeks, and jam the plants in.

www.gardeners.com

Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales, Straw-Bale Gardening | Gardener's Supply

Think of the straw bale as a large container with a volume of 40 gallons. Unlike a planter filled with soil, the bale is transformed into a partially composted mass of organic matter that's teeming with life.
www.gardeners.com www.gardeners.com
Click to expand...
Interesting concept. I would imagine they take more watering than regular beds though, straw doesn't retain water all that well.
 
I live in the middle of corn country, and many of my friends are multi generation farmers. It seems like a crop of college aged Bernie supporters have cropped up and started knocking on doors, telling these farmers that they should tear up their crops and "go organic" because "they'd make so much more money because Whole Foods charges so much for produce."
 
I doubled the size of my garden to add corn and to allow ample room for the okra, two types of tomatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers to get massive while not crowding each other.

Legit had to use a folding tiller and I am exhausted from fighting with it, but the first and second passes are complete. Seeds are in cheap little greenhouses, so now I just have to let the weed and grass roots die while the seeds germinate.

I think I can rest for a bit, finally.
 
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I used to be able to grow anything but tomatoes. Raised planting boxes. So many peppers, greens, okra, and peas/beans. I'd have a new harvest every day.

I miss having space to garden.
 
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