I live in rural Northeast Louisiana, NewYorkRita. I own some land but my house and garden is on a separate acre. The raised beds are the only open spot. The rest is in yard.

Our weather Robynanne is usually mild during the winter. We do occasionly get some ice storms during the winter months. Our weather is so humid you nearly freeze at forty degrees. The summers are usually hot with temps hitting over a 100 through July and August. I love the heat but my buddy pirl in New York burns out at about 75. I guess it is what you get use to.

Nice progress, Rita and Cybrczch! Rita, my Dragon Tongues are starting to vine now.

Jim, your garden is beautiful. I do have a lot of bees here. Is there any reason to get a hive if you already have them? I just wondered suddenly if there's such a thing as too many.

I found tomatoes on Joseph Lofthouse's Landrace tomatoes--they're the first, even before the cherries and determinates. Not fooling around!

Watered all my beans. They do grow fast. When they produce I should be swamped with beans!!

Front part here are my eggplants but then you maybe can see on the bean trellis that the little bean plants have come up.



The French Gold bean plants. Not many!!


Kentucky Wonder pole beans. These things look like they will be sturdy climbers.


Tavera Bush Beans. One of the french fillet types.


Calima Bush Beans. Again a french fillet type.

Newyorkrita said:I just placed a seed order from AP Whaley.

I ordered Calima Bush Beans and another of those French Fillet types that I just love. Never seen this one before. Called Nikki.

Mainly I went there to order Peas. I ordered those purple podded Magnolia Blossom ones. And Spring Blush and Sugar Magnolia.

So I have three of the Peace Seed Pea intros coming. Should work out for the fall but who knows, I still might order from Peace Seeds directly.

Tired, poofed, really tired as I have been outside working on my garden section for peas. I have an 11 foot section 14 inches wide so should work well for a trellis set up with a row of peas along either side.

Still much to do before it is ready but today I at least dug out all plants along in there. So now it is empty. Plants still need to be re planted. But enough for today.

Rita--you make me tired just reading your posts

I am taking a break from gardening this weekend--attending our state Master Gardeners conference starting tomorrow and running through Saturday afternoon,.. Hopefully that will be enough time for out garden to dry out--we've had at least 3" of rain in the last 2 days, so too soggy to do much.

Too wet here for gardening, as well; but at least it's just been a "nice rain," nothing severe. I hate to think what the weeds that I hadn't yet gotten to will be like in a couple of days when things have dried out enough to do something about them, though

Our temp barely got up to 60F today... and I have a cold

Weedwhacker said:Too wet here for gardening, as well; but at least it's just been a "nice rain," nothing severe. I hate to think what the weeds that I hadn't yet gotten to will be like in a couple of days when things have dried out enough to do something about them, though

Our temp barely got up to 60F today... and I have a cold

mom2goldens said:Rita--you make me tired just reading your posts

I get an idea and that's it for me. I have to start work to make it happen. Been like this for many years, I am always into a project. Just takes me longer these days to get it done.

Lovesblooms, if you are seeing bees, there is no reason for a hive. I hadn't seen a honey bee at my home in several. If it hadn't been for bumble bees and red wasps, the garden would have gone unpollenated. Honey bees are by far the best pollenators. I was in the garden at 6:30 the other morning and I could hear the buzz of bees in the squash, cantelope and cucumbers. I'm nearly deaf, so that lets you know how hard they work.

NewYorkRita, your beans look beautiful.

One advantage to the raised beds are I can work right after a rain. One disadvantage is that if it dooesn't rain today, I have to water tomorrow.

Are you near Bastrop, Jim? A classmate of mine was from there and returned home to open his dental practice in 1970.

Jim41 said:Lovesblooms, if you are seeing bees, there is no reason for a hive. I hadn't seen a honey bee at my home in several. If it hadn't been for bumble bees and red wasps, the garden would have gone unpollenated. Honey bees are by far the best pollenators. I was in the garden at 6:30 the other morning and I could hear the buzz of bees in the squash, cantelope and cucumbers. I'm nearly deaf, so that lets you know how hard they work.

NewYorkRita, your beans look beautiful.

One advantage to the raised beds are I can work right after a rain. One disadvantage is that if it dooesn't rain today, I have to water tomorrow.

I know what you mean because I always have to water my pots. I water everyday as they can not dry out.

There were years I never saw any honeybees but then suddenly the bees returned. I think someone must have a hive around here somewhere.

I didn't grow beans last year cause I simply didn't get to it. This year I am really making up for my lack last season.

So I have been snacking on my peas each day but had not seriously picked in three days. Today I got out there and stripped all I could. I was really surprised at how many there were to pick as I HAD been grazing! However they hide and today I really looked thru all the folliage and found them all.

Some had gotten fatter than I normally pick them but they will make a great stir fry. For eating raw, I like to pick the snap peas when the pods are not so fat. I think they are the sweetest at that stage.

Anyway there are two and a half quarts in the bag. I shared the peas with a friend.




The pea patch which is all in containers.

For those of you who are obcessed with weeds. http://www.growingproduce.com/...

farmerdill said:For those of you who are obcessed with weeds. http://www.growingproduce.com/...

What will they think up next?

I need a small version!

This is the smaller version. http://www.naio-technologies.c...

Oh that is too big too!
And I would need to grow in straight lines for it to work!

Well, it would be great for farmers to use so they wouldn't have to keep spraying pesticides to kill the weeds.

Lots of problems for us with the garden. Deer. Voles. Rats. Drought.

The deer are never an issue but this year we have a couple that just are brazen and bold and are feasting on my beans, beets and tomatoes. Luckily, the main crop tomatoes are in large concrete reinforcement wire cages and they only nibbled on stuff hanging out far. But the voles/rats are eating my just turning ripe tomatoes! The rats are coming from the chicken coop where they installed a new feeding system and they cannot access the feed. We have been getting Shockley, the rat terrier back into the garden. And we put coyote urine on cotton balls near the low hanging tomatoes. I cut up bars Irish Spring soap and put into knee high stockings and hung from the pole bean trellis and used floating row cover on the bush beans. They also ate my strawberries and some beets.

The rain keeps going around us. We have been watering every other day. Not gonna have much for market this week, but we did pick about 10 quarts of blueberries! And the flowers look pretty good, mostly zinnias. All in all, it's very depressing and I will be happy when we aren't going to market any more.

All that work and the critters spoil it for you. Major unfair!

farmerdill said:This is the smaller version. http://www.naio-technologies.c...

I have to send that to my brothers-in-law -- I can actually picture them getting one!

Lovesblooms -- although there may be no need to have a beehive (or 2 or 3) if you already have plenty of pollinators, you do get the added benefit of having honey to harvest . Years ago my ex and I had 10 hives -- they were actually a lot of fun and having all that honey to use and to give as gifts was great!

Where I am now we almost never see any honeybees, but have LOTS of different kinds of bumblebees, as well as some ground bees and other pollinators.