2023 garden season

[kenmbz]

Tomatoes not ready here yet.
Blackberries looking nicer now that we have too much rain and i killed off the mites.
Wild raspberries are coming in by the thousands, deer get most of them.

 

[Lightning Performance]

I was thinking about jury rigging some kind of support for the squash as they develop. This is for next year... plenty of time.

They sell net bags for supporting fruit from a vine grown vertically.

 

[muddstopper]

https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetab...a-candy-roaster-hubbard-squash-seed-3912.html

The price for thirty seeds is about the same as I paid for the packet of 5 seeds, then add shipping. I have found the seeds for sale at other places as well, but my problem is the question of are they true candi roasters. Seed companies plant lots of different plants and they dont really have the room to isolate the different varieties so some mixing can occur. One of the reasons I plant my candi roasters late in the summer. My squash and cukes is already gone by the time the roasters are ready to pollinate so nothing there to cross pollinate. I do the same with my corn, stagger planting times so it doesnt cross pollinate. My Uncle was a master at producing seeds. He had the perfect location, no other houses or farms within miles of his place. He has maintained his white polific corn and tennesse pencil cob corn since the 1960's and it is the same seed as it was when the TVA moved the area residents out in the 1930;s to build their lakes. I have bought lots of so called heritage seeds from large seed companies only to find what I get isnt what I thought I was buying.

 

[muddstopper]

As an aside, can Winter squash be grown vertically on a panel? I have Butternut and Zuchetta crawling all over the ground. Hard to spray the undersides of the leaves and stalks.

I saw something I thought was neat on utube the other day. Guy was in indonesia or someplace and was growing watermellon. What he did was take a bunch of feed sacks and fill with his potting soil. He laid the full sacks down flat and cut three holes in the flatside. In the two outermost holes he planted his watermellon plants and in the middle hole he used the top half of a 2 liter pop bottel. He then took bamboo and laid across of all the sack sort of forming like a lattice panel. He fed the 2 liter bottel with all kins of scrap food. Looked like cantilope pieces to me, but probably something else, and would pour water in the bottle to keep his plants watered. When the plants started putting on mellons, he took pieces of feed sacks and laid under each little mellon, he also used straw to make like a bird nest to place between the little melon and the feed sack. He grew some pretty mellons, none of those giant types but they sure looked pretty and red inside.

 

[Backyard Lumberjack]

North Georgia Candi Roasters are pretty rare seeds. Mostly grown in Georgia, Tenn and NC. Not saying they wont grow in other places. The problem with finding seed has more to do with the people growing them. They can cross pollinate with squash and cukes from a mile away and you dont always get good seed. If you plan on growing anykind of squash, pumkins or cukes in your graden along with the candi roaster, dont bother saving the seed as it wont come back true.
https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/2017/11/17/north-georgia-candy-roaster-a-winter-squash-to-remember/

vine borers here have convinced me not to grow squash or zukes! besides, i don't care for garden variety. too mild, imo. prefer store bot! but not for tomatoes! lol

 

[Backyard Lumberjack]

Tomatoes not ready here yet.
Blackberries looking nicer now that we have too much rain and i killed off the mites.
Wild raspberries are coming in by the thousands, deer get most of them.

View attachment 1098149

nice! bet they are sweet ~

 

[djg james]

Tomatoes not ready here yet.
Blackberries looking nicer now that we have too much rain and i killed off the mites.
Wild raspberries are coming in by the thousands, deer get most of them.

View attachment 1098149

I do miss my wild blackberries.

 

[djg james]

candy roasters will not grow here!LOL! Tried them many times just for the hell of it!

Really, I was thinking of trying them. What was your experience?

 

[sonny580]

They get about half grown and most of them rot on the vine. Dont know how big they s'posed to get but we had all sizes just rot before actually mature. Wrong climate for them here in central Illinois.

 

[muddstopper]

They get about half grown and most of them rot on the vine. Dont know how big they s'posed to get but we had all sizes just rot before actually mature. Wrong climate for them here in central Illinois.

Interesting statement. I have heard of them being grown all the way up in Maine. They are also grown overseas

 

[sonny580]

Tried them for 5 years and same results every year with them.

 

[muddstopper]

Tried them for 5 years and same results every year with them.

I have had similar problems with squash. Some years worse than others. I just did a quick search for possible reason and this is what I found.

Plant Guide​

LLaLe
80735

• Vine
• Warm, Hot
• Annual

Squash, Winter : Candy Roaster - North Georgia​

Pink, banana-shaped fruit have a blue tip and weigh around 10lbs.​

A smaller strain of Candy Roaster from northern Georgia. This type of squash is famous among the people of the southeast. Delicious, smooth orange flesh is perfect baked, fried and makes great pies; hard to find and quite beautiful. BAKER CREEK
Cucurbitaceae Cucurbita moschata
Save

• Overview
• Prep
• Plant
• Care
• Harvest
• Problems
• Ratings / Review

Start Indoors and/or Transplant












Start Outdoors
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
This is an example of the timeline you would see based on your growing conditions.

Black Rot​

Xanthomonas campestris var campestris
There are several different diseases called “black rot” affecting different crops, but this bacterial disease is the most important for growers of Brassicas. It isn’t usually a big problem, but can affect plants at any stage and sometimes gets out of hand (usually in warm wet weather, when it can spread rapidly.)
Black rot commonly enters the plant through damage from insects and can spread from plant to plant quite easily. It first shows itself as yellowish V shaped lesions on the margins of the leaves. Affected areas slowly enlarge and darken as they dry out and leaves eventually die and drop off. The resulting leaf loss can eventually result in the plant becoming stunted. The inside of the stem usually shows dark streaks where the bacteria is present. This disease is sometimes confused with Fusarium wilt, but the characteristic V shaped lesions help to differentiate it (also symptoms start at the top, rather than at the bottom).
The best Black rot control methods are cultural. It can survive in plant debris, so be careful to remove and destroy infected plants (and any cruciferous weeds). Practice good hygiene and crop rotation and make sure leaves don’t stay wet for long periods. The disease is often transmitted by infected seed and if you suspect this you should treat them with hot water (122 deg F for 25 minutes) or bleach. If it is a big problem try to find a resistant cultivar.
Xanthomonas bacteria is that it is the source of xanthan gum, which is widely used as a food additive.
Image: David B. Langston, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org

 

[sonny580]

I have grown the Jumbo Pink Bananas before to 65 - 70 pounds and didnt have any trouble.
Just cant grow candy roasters here.

 

[Del_]

Italian sweet frying peppers are coming on strong! This is a five gallon bucket full. We started with Jimmy Nardello but for the past five years we've been saving seeds and there are three other kinds of Italian sweet peppers in the crossed seed we save. Peppers cross easily. We are heading for a record harvest as about 20 times this amount are hanging on the plants. We try to wait until they are totally red as they are at their sweetest then.

 

[muddstopper]

Italian sweet frying peppers are coming on strong! This is a five gallon bucket full. We started with Jimmy Nardello but for the past five years we've been saving seeds and there are three other kinds of Italian sweet peppers in the crossed seed we save. Peppers cross easily. We are heading for a record harvest as about 20 times this amount are hanging on the plants. We try to wait until they are totally red as they are at their sweetest then.

View attachment 1098520

Planted Italian Cayenne this year. Was hopeing it would be similar to the old time Cayenne we used to grow years ago. Its supposed to be a lot milder than the cayenne we have been growing. Pulled one yesterday and took a bite, I can say for certain it aint mild, in fact I think it is hotter than the cayenne I thought was to hot.

 

[farmer steve]

Got the fall cole crops on the ground yesterday. The trays I buy are 128 cell size. They sell them as 100 count. Most were in 115-120 count so I ended up with over a 100 extra plants. Need to get drip lines laid today.

 

[sonny580]

Started harvesting the long day onions. Looks like a lot of 2 pounders in there and so far got one 3 pounder from the first row.
About reached my goal of 13 leaves per plant. High percentage were from 10 to 13 leaves and that is getting there.

 

[Brushpile]

First Cherokee purple from the garden and I made me a baloney and mater sammich. If Id'a thunk, Id'a sliced a fresh crispy jalapeno to put on there.

Never had an issue with my peppers but this year got holes in my ghost peppers near the stem. Nothing on my jalapenos or habaneros, just the ghost and reapers.

 

[farmer steve]

First Cherokee purple from the garden and I made me a baloney and mater sammich. If Id'a thunk, Id'a sliced a fresh crispy jalapeno to put on there.
View attachment 1098979

Never had an issue with my peppers but this year got holes in my ghost peppers near the stem. Nothing on my jalapenos or habaneros, just the ghost and reapers.

Possibly corn ear worm. They don't normally bother hot peppers as much.

 

[sonny580]

Took another load to Midwest Food Bank today. Gonna have a TON of onions still to go to them.