July 5, 2012 Garden Pictures, Really starting to see damage from the heat.

 

For those of you new to the blog these strawberries had to be removed from our large patch. My husband and son have started raising the strawberry patch so the size of it had to change. These plants were in the way so they had to be removed. My daughter and I transplanted them into this container and within a day we thought we had killed them. I cut off all the dead leaves leaving the roots in the soil. Slowly but surely the plants starting come back and we have actually gotten about ten strawberries out of this container. My suggestion if you ever have to transplant strawberries, never give up on them, they are quite the hardy plant.

If you are not aware there are two types of strawberries you can get, the plants we have are called Ever bearing. Ever bearing plants will continue to put out strawberries for most of the summer, the other type puts them out one time and that’s it. Ever bearing Strawberries can get quite large but not as large as the other variety. I would prefer having strawberries all summer over having one batch of very large berries.

This is one of the plants in the container, here you can see that it has a small berry that has turned red. You can also see here that on this plant alone there are three more that are still green. Not to bad for a plant that basically had to start all over and catch up with the others.

The two pictures above are showing the range in sizes of strawberries we have been getting. Some have been smaller while others have been quite a bit larger. The really important aspect to us is they are YUMMY! (I like to use big adult words as often as possible. LOL)

The picture on the left are the Blue Lake Green Beans, in this photo they look very good. In the next set of pictures you will see how the heat has really done a number on them.

In the picture on the right are Bush Green Beans, I’m not certain of the brand of these. They had done quite well and had produced like crazy. Then they started looking really bad when the triple digit heat hit us. I went out to pull them out and start a new batch but when I got close and looked they are producing new leaves under the dry ones on top.

I’ve opted to give them a bit more time to see if they come out of the damage the heat did to them and start producing again. If they should not start looking better soon they will be removed, compost added to the bed and another batch of beans started for a fall picking

I took this picture in an attempt to show you the base of this tomato plant. That is one plant, when it was planted it had one stem. If you don’t pick off the sucker leaves on a tomato plant they will start growing as well. These however are not sucker leaves, the stem actually branched out under ground and came up like this. The base of this plant is small in comparison to some of the others.

These have by far been the most amazing Tomato plants I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

This picture taken at a distance doesn’t do justice to how pretty the Loofah plants are. I was attempting to show you the height of the plant. I will have some pictures later on that will show it better. They have reached a height of about 5 ft tall so far.

The two pictures above and the four below are all basically showing the same thing. I am forever amazed at a plants ability to stretch its “arm” out, grab a hold of a supporting object and wrap around it.

Some of these you can see where they had to reach a fair distance, some sent runners one way and then another and yet others just kept wrapping around in the same location.

The plants “knowledge” that it needs to do this in order to support the items it will produce is just something to behold.

I’ve finally gotten my daughter to just sit down and look at plants with me. I mean really look close like this and see the truly amazing things they do.

Loofah Plants in a Raised Bed Garden

Loofah plants are by far one of my favorite summer plants. If you have never tried these out you really should.

Once they vine and start producing you leave the gourds on the vine, in fact you will leave them there as long as you possibly can. What will happen is as they grow you will be able to feel the weight of them. The longer they are left on the vine they will start to dry out and the weight difference will be amazing, they will become very light. Once they reach that point you remove them from the vine, peel them, shake all the seeds out and keep those. There is no sense in buying seeds again the following year. If you have a good crop of Loofah you will have more seeds than you know what to do with.

There is also a very neat trick with this plant. It will produce both male and female blooms, and the females of course must be pollenated. If you are lacking on bees in your area to do this job you can actually take the male and female blooms and lightly tap them against one another and pollenate them that way.

It has been two years since I've been able to grow any Loofah's so I will have to do a little research to remember which bloom is which, once my starts blooming then I will take pictures of them and post them for your reference.

I am amazed by them though, once they start shooting out runners (I like to call them little arms) they are ready to start climbing. This plant always seems to grow so slow to me until the runners come out and they get attached to something to climb on, then they seem to go crazy.

Here is a little tip on those runners. They will attach to anything trying to hold on and start their climb. That means they could wrap around each other, a weed, anything they can get a hold of.

I watch very closley for these runners and if you are very gentle with them you can uncurl them and get them wrapped around whatever you have that you want them to climb on.

In our case since we are number 1 cheap and number 2 both of us were raised on farms, we look for the inexpensive way to fix things and get the job done. Several years ago when we started the Loofah's and the cucumbers my dad gave us some cattle panels. By building a two raised beds and inserting some stability poles we flexed the panel and made our own arches out of them. Weather will not ruin them and the Loofah's and cucumbers can not produce enough weight to destroy them. In fact they are strong enough that if you were willing you could vine some pumpkin types on them as well.

If you don't have access to cattle panels you might want to check at a farm store in your area. I believe them to be a bit costly, in this area I think they run about thirty dollars but for something you would never have to replace that just isn't bad. Also, which is our next project, they are perfect for those beautiful vining Roses!

Nearly forgot, before I add pictures on here, what do we use Loofah's for. Well the most common know use for them is in the shower/bath. I love these home grown ones as they are not near as hard as the kind you buy in the store, though they are the same thing. It must be something in the way they process them for commercial sale. We have also found they are wonderful for scrubbing as well. Instead of buying those green scratchy pads or brillo pads we use the Loofah's. If you use them for scrubbing and sometimes even in the shower use they can get kind of dirty, as anything can. I have found that putting them on the top rack of my dishwasher is a wonderful way to get them spotless again. They will have some color variation to them when you peel them. If this is bothersome to you, you can dip them in bleach and get all the color out. I'm not sure of the method on that as far as how much bleach for how long. If you are interested leave me a comment and I will look it up for you. The color variation never really mattered to me enough to worry about it.

Below are pictures of the arches and some close up shots of the Loofah's.

When we set up our cattle panels for arches we did several in a row as you can see. By doing it this way we can plant things on each side of the box and have it vine up the panels. Our initial idea for this was for the Loofah's but we soon discovered this was an amazing way to do another one of our crops. Since bending over is very painful for me my husband suggested the next crop to vine on the arches would be cucumbers, and wow does it ever work wonders. If you have ever dug through a hill of cucumber plants trying to find produce you can really appreciate this next photo.

Young cucumber plants starting to climb the arches. Just look at all the blooms, it appears they are going to be very productive this year which will be great for getting pickles made.

I hope you find the suggestion of the arches helpful, they have been a blessing to me and I'm suprised at the number of things that we could do this way. It would also be great for  pole beans or peas. If you have never given Loofah's a try, do it, if nothing else it is an amazing process to watch and you end up with durable goods to use when they are done.

Also if you haven't ever had a garden or if you have been thinking of having one this is such a great way to go. The Raised Garden Beds have much better soil for your plants since it is such a mixture of compost and other materials. There are a very small amount if any weeds in them since the bottom side of the box is covered in a weed barrier cloth. For extra protection we put two layers across the bottom and use a staple gun to attach it. As you can see in the close up of the cucumbers in the last picture there are no weeds. Those boxes were set up three years ago and still doing great. The only thing we have to watch with these since they are not stacked two high is when we are mowing the yard not to shoot the grass in the box when we go by. For that purpose we do not use the riding lawn mower around the garden boxes rather we use the push mower with a bagger on it. That works out as a double benefit because we dump that grass clippings in selected area and let it dry, it then becomes more material for the compost bin.