Your 2017 Garden- what are you doing?

@Bacawind look up 'landracing'

It's a method of wile gardening that helps weed out weak varieties for your area.

a landrace has extremely wide genetic diversity and the ONLY selection being done is by survival of the fittest. You don't fertilize, you don't water, you don't protect from pests. What lives stays in your landrace gene pool, what doesn't make it- bites the dust. This way, you get plants that are truly adapted to their environment. You even keep the weird, less tasty ones around because they may contain genes that help your crop survive a drought one unusual year or something similar.
A landrace has MANY varieties and somewhat unpredictable outcome because of its diversity.


http://www.motherearthnews.com/orga...ng-promiscuously-pollinated-tomatoes-zbcz1401


I've been experimenting with this but in the desert you need water. I did throw some seeds in the wash behind my house last year but they keep getting eaten.

 

Saw some squash bugs today, so I guess it's time to test out the organic bug killer I found, at Walmart. If that doesn't work, I might have to go nuclear on them!!

 

Did our daily once over with the wife to get all the squash bug eggs. Soapy water, wipe them off the leaf, drown the eggs in the water.

Kinda a pain but worth it. Those things will destroy your entire squash garden.

 

Moving COW DUNG
15 trips =60yard's of POO

 

I just pulled the last of my zuccihi vines

cuz

you can never have enough zucchini recipes
Zucchini Recipes - because you can never have too many ways to use zuccs! | Survival Monkey Forums

 

Was outside yesterday morning (at about 4AM, right after I rolled out of bed, and before first coffee), watering my "crops". Just happened to look down, and look at what was looking right back at me!

Guess I'll have to go out and check the rest of the plants, to see if any of this one's brothers (sisters?) are ready for pickin', too!

Looks like it's going to be stir fry for dinner, this weekend!!

 

Strawberry's 30 # , Pees were on , Raspberry's are next . Cherrys & apples , peach , pear's coming.
Potatoes , corn/ maze (fodder for critters) tons will be this year .
Sweat & a pool later after to cool off ! .

 

As usual great plans, but lacking the follow through
Second year at the new home. Last year I created a small garden using my father in laws rear-tine tiller. Did ok. Over the winter I picked up a 4' tiller for my Kubota, what a difference that made! More than doubled the size of the garden, but was it too much too fast?
The garden started off great, then I had a construction project start up at the beginning of July which took most of my time, then a family vacation for a week. What a mess when I got back. Waist high weeds, tomato plants all over the place. OK, still time to salvage this.
picked the good veggies out of the garden, the went into rehab mode. Trimmed the tomato plants up and got some cages around them. Used left over concrete mesh to create the cages, not pretty, but so much stronger and better than the cheap things from the store.
Had the neighbors tell me that sweet peppers don't grow well in our area, challenge accepted. Growing some really good sweet peppers.
So far I have canned 20 pints of tomato sauce (first time I've canned tomatoes from my garden in this quantity), also have 7 1/2 pints of jalapenos and 7 1/2 pints of candied jalapenos. I have also dehydrated cups of habanaro's, banana peppers and jalapeno's. These make for for some nice powders to spice up meals.
Harvested sunflower seeds as well, and gave my hens several heads as a treat.
Pickled cumbers and froze zuchinni and squash.

All in all, a few set backs but doing well this year.