Lickbranchfarm's 2018 Garden thread

Well one cantaloupe bush is done, deer busted the last one that I was waiting to ripen, pulled it didn't have any blooms on it. Right now I'm waiting on my Blue lakes to come off, plus I have 2 watermelons I been eyeballing for a while.
2nd planting of cucumbers are up along with the 2 rows of squash and zucchini I planted last week so still some work to be done.

On another note, I was thinking of starting my collards from seed, I've only done this once, and they got leggy on me. Usually I get my starts from an older gentleman, I get like 25 plants for $7.00 and they are good plants 10"-12" tall. never had a problem with them, but I'm thinking of planting 3 times the amount I did last year. I planted 100 last year, and only put 10 or so In the freezer, sold the rest. I was sold out, field plowed in by December. Had people looking for them during the holidays, couldn't deliver, I don't want to be like that again this year.

I'm also planning my fall garden....
Broccoli
Cabbage
Beets
Radish's
Kale
And at least a couple different kinds of lettuce

What no green onions or bok chio ????

i think a lot of people will use collard greens and turnip greens quite a bit since they seem to be fairly indestructable if you don't get a killing freeze. up here turnips are a nice cover crop and i eat a few here or there of them. when they rot they smell like beer to me.

deer trampling can cause a lot of damage for sure and a melon to boot. aww, drats! you going to cage those watermelons until you can pick them?

majorcatfish said:

What no green onions or bok chio ????

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Nope don't do onions, may plant a few for the wife she loves them, me... not so much. Bok chio...never heard of it till I joined this site Lol.

Lickbranchfarm said:

Nope don't do onions, may plant a few for the wife she loves them, me... not so much. Bok chio...never heard of it till I joined this site Lol.

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pm me with your address and i will send you some seeds to try this fall, does well in raised beds home grown is the best, what they sell in the grocery stores taste like cardboard....

Haven't had a whole lot going on garden wise. Watermelons are done planted 2 bush's, I got 2 melons. Bugs got the butternut squash. Blue lakes have been putting out right steady but I think they are about done. Okra is about 6' tall now, getting roughly 10 lbs. every other day. I did re-plant another row of squash and zucchini just to see if it will make it. Doing some weed eating around the asparagus bed, man those things have jumped big time. I weeded the bed real good, I probably need to put a couple more bags of mulch on it.
Tomatoes have blight real bad, was gonna spray but figured I'd just let it run its course, still getting plenty of tomatoes. I will say this has been the best year for tomatoes since I have been over here.
I've been planning my fall garden, Major sent me some seeds to try this year (Thanks Major). I opened up the fence to the blue lakes to let the deer have at it, Will be pulling what's left in a week or so, disking everything in real good, then starting my Georgia Collards. Looking forward to Fall.

Asparagus bed.......

My collards bolted, sprang up to about 4-5 feet high and went to seed. I ignored them. It' s getting time to plant collards for fall, so I mentioned to DH that we needed to clean out the collard bed and get it ready to replant. Well guess what? New sprouts of collards are sprouting out from the base of the stems. So guess I'll use the pruning loppers and whack off the stems close to the ground, select a sprout and pluck off everything else. I'll toss some sheep poop on them and off we go again. Now I'm glad that I didn't pull them up and make it nice and tidy.

Lickbranchfarm said:

...Tomatoes have blight real bad, was gonna spray but figured I'd just let it run its course, still getting plenty of tomatoes. I will say this has been the best year for tomatoes since I have been over here.

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today happened to be the first day we've picked tomatoes here from the beefsteaks. i was going to take a look at the Roma's because i know they're loaded, but got sidetracked by picking beans and didn't make it to that end of the garden.

we get late blight every year, i've never sprayed anything for it, by the time the plants get taken out enough of the crop is done anyways for our uses. it's a good no stress, no input solution to what's basically not a problem then... 20-40lbs of fruit per plant. looks good so far this year as long as we don't get any severe hail storms.

the late blight started here a few weeks ago. plants will keep growing through it as long as they can until the frosts take them out. sometimes we've had the plants drop almost all of their leaves but the stems are still green and if given a chance they'll keep putting out flowers and fruits. at the far end of the season the fruits will start getting spots that have to be cut out or we just feed the whole fruit to the worms.

we are winding down in the garden as well, need to start thinking fall/winter gardens

Well things have been hectic here to say the least. Finally got all the Okra pulled, everything disked in, wife and I went and picked up the Collard starts. We purchased 400 and after planting all day Saturday, I passed the 400 mark a long time ago. I have 1 more bucket full to go, I'm thinking its going to be closer to 500 if they all make it.
Going to start my broccoli, turnips, mustard, and cabbage next, also the seeds that Major sent me, going to get all that in hopefully by the weekend.