KREESTUH’S GARDEN PROGRESS 2022: More Plants, More Problems

I usually buy seeds from local greenhouses or hardware stores in the spring; for example, I bought two packets of spinach this spring, but only planted one. Now I have a packet I can use in the fall without having to scramble looking for more. But a lot of times places like Tractor Supply will carry fall crop seeds even if you don’t do this.

I’m still new to seed saving, but my understanding is that a lot of produce from the grocery will actually reproduce just fine; though it might take longer to sprout or be a little less robust. For example, I usually replant green onions I buy, and that works reasonably well for a couple months before I have to rebuy. We also had a volunteer tomato pop up in our yard this year, likely from a tomato that got dropped by one of our nieces at a cookout the year before lol.

But in some cases, you have to be careful about regrowing stuff from the store. Like with potatoes, you want to use true seed potatoes from a greenhouse, and not just sprouted ones from the store; because store potatoes might be carrying something like blight which can affect your soil for a couple seasons if it gets into it.

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I don’t do a lot of indoor gardening, unfortunately, outside of the herb garden and a couple potted trees. My husband wants to get into hydroponics but we haven’t started a setup yet.

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So I was just curious and I look forward to your guys’s venture into hydroponics as well. In any case, I know it’s not really related to your garden, but I found this podcast very interesting and it’s about space plants and whether or not we can adapt plants to the space, environments and space soils that we are going to be dealing with. And I think for anybody interested in gardening, this is fairly interesting

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Late July 2022, Harvests + Preservation

Some quick updates, we’re really getting into harvest season now:

I am swamped with tomatoes, so this weekend I pulled out the dehydrator. Three full trays worth yielded an alright amount of tomato powder, I will probably continue dehydrating any straggler tomatoes we get throughout the season.

I also canned some salsa for the first time. The tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, and onions all came from our garden-- only had to buy the garlic!


In progress.


All done! No worries about the one on the front left having incorrect headspace, that’s the leftover jar. We’re eating it now and not storing it!

And finally-- some fresh corn!

I’ve come a long way…

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I don’t have a garden to speak of, but I can imagine it’s quite the milestone to be able to eat your own homegrown, homemade meal. Enjoy!

We do get sweet corn from the farmer’s market and it is really getting good lately.

You have come a long way indeed!! Your pictures inspired me to make a cup of coffee!

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Corn has been good this year around here too.

“Tomato powder” thats awesome. Almost dehydrated water.

The garden tour video on Floatplane reminded me of these plants. Dog for scale.

The one on the left is probably 20ish years old and was rescued from a friend’s basement that got very little light. It’s only marginally better in our living room, but I’m hoping to rehabilitate it.

The middle one and one on the the right that creeps to the left are essentially rescue plants. My mom gave me some trimmings that fit in a gallon freezer bag about 8 years ago. They were very crooked and difficult to grow straight.

The close up is from the pot on the right- the sprouts reminded me of the tree in your video. The plan is to trim it above the shoots and hope that it grows more normally.

These are normally indoor plants, but I’m giving them some summer sun to help get them healthy enough to trim.

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Awesome! The tree has a ton of dead old growth on it near the top, but we weren’t sure if it would help or hurt to trim it back. The very top and bottom are starting to get new growth now that we’ve moved it outside (and away from Cricket’s claws). I’ll have to see about trimming it some.

Tore out all the old stumps out of my yard this weekend should put me where I want to be for next season for starting some permaculture.

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That is pretty much it. Once you do that, they will last for months. Mine lasted about 7 months.

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I’m mostly in harvest season right now so not a lot of updates on the plant side of things, and it’s still a bit too warm to plant anything for Fall. But I did buy some cute mushroom lights for the garden…

Also got a little patio fountain which I’m low key obsessed with.

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Mid August Updates!

Tomato and Pepper Soup

Harvest season is upon us. My husband turned this:

into tomato and pepper soup:

10/10 very delicious. Still eating on it this week. We also made some tomato sauce but it’s already almost gone lol.

Sad Squashes

With all the heavy rain the last few weeks, we’ve been struggling with powdery mildew on the pumpkins. I’m not sure they’ll pull through, but I think we will get at least one harvest:


My lone pumpkin and the bane of my existence, frickin’ crab grass.


Baby butternut squash. This has actually produced really well against all odds, we have a lot of these stocked up in our pantry right now.

Removing Cucumbers, Sowing Fall Greens

My cucumbers were on their last legs, so I removed them and made room for some cooler weather crops: lettuce, spinach, and brussel spouts:

I also noticed some new seedlings where the old lettuce was. If you watched the patreon/floatplane garden tour, you’ll know I let my spring lettuce go to seed-- and it’s paying off!

Pollinator Garden

And finally, I have started some work on a pollinator garden space on the side of the food garden. I had sunflowers planted here for most of the summer, but as they’ve been dying back, I wanted to do something a little more permanent. The flowers selected for this new bed are perennial, which means they should come back year after year; I currently have coreopsis and veronica growing in here (along with a bird bath!). I need to get some proper mulch but the hay works fine for now.

Also, as an aside, if you are in Zone 6/Kentucky, you might check out this resource for ideas on how to plan pollinator gardens. It’s a great guide! Plant by numbers | City of Lexington

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Happy September! The state of KY is having a tree sale if you are into that kind of scene: https://secure.kentucky.gov/InventoryServices/Forestry/Seedlings

(Mainly putting this link here so I don’t forget next year)

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Speaking about Kentucky, it’s had a long history of growing hemp! In fact, one of if not the biggest growing busts in America was in Kentucky.

Bees and birds love hemp, and it will also help pull out contaminants from the soil, it’s been used since the 90s to remove nuclear radiation!

Alao, it is a great nutritional plant, high in protein (the seeds are) and the flowering or fruiting part (buds) have all however many 11 or so amino acids and fatty compounds as well.

I am not a hippy but Hemp should be taken off of the list so that we can use it for all of it’s wonderful properties and it’s abilities. It cannot get you high so I don’t understand why the plant remains on the control list. We can sell poppy seeds and grow poppy flowers.

I met a super cool man named Earl in Taipei, Taiwan twenty years ago. He was from Kentucky, but had lived in Taiwan since he was stationed there with the USAF in the 1960’s. He stayed there, but he told me all about guys in his town growing weed in the hills and driving it up to Chicago (where I am from). He was the only American at my first wedding. He was also one of the coolest men I have ever met (Taiwan, Thailand and Philippines are full of very cool Americans).

Hemp is 100% legal in all 50 United States, to purchase that is.

What I would like to see happen, is “legal” cannabis businesses band together as one, in all states where cannabis cannot be home-grown, and they just shutdown entirely, state-wide, until the law is changed.

States just want tax money from “halfway” legal cannabis, and businesses don’t care.

So if the entire state legal cannabis industry in the remaining 15 states out of the 41 or is it 42 that are now medically legal would stand up and shutdown their business until homegrow is allowed, imagine how insanely quick (in DAYS) the law would change!

But this industry doesn’t care about the consumer, they do not educate or hand out information about our (all mammals) endo-cannabinoid system, why having only thc in a 150:1 or 200:1 ratio of thc to almost non-existant cbd levels, is not enjoyable, and newly released research.

They are all just trying to get their money. Those businesses don’t want homegrow, because that would cut into their business. This is why I don’t like “legal cannabis”.

It’s only truly legal in 26 states, where it can be grown at home. Is it illegal to brew my own beer, anywhere even at home?

No? Then why is it any different for cannabis? Because it’s very easy to do and requires basically no prior skill.

I would love to grow hemp to make my own clothing, it can’t be that hard, maybe time consuming, but not impossible. It could replace

carpeting

toothbrush bristles

plastic-fiber air filters

any synthetic or cotton fabric

electronic device casings in all manner of objects, from speakers to mice to case fans to keyboards (and keyboard switches) use imagination

Matresses (somewhat getting there but it is prohibitably priced, and many times these products add synthetic foams)

Pillows blankets etc

Building insulation Hemp has better insulation than many other commonly used materials

“Plush” anything could be made with hemp

Speakers, there are already hemp-cone speakers from a company called

Tone Tubby

Headphones both casing, and speaker cone materials

If we all, as a human race, cared about the planet, we would have come together, just like we did with the Montreal act or whatever it was for refridgerant gases like R-22 and the banning of leaded gasoline.

Why is micro-plastics not the new leaded gas or ozone depletion?

We are having more storms, more loss of life due to them, and we just keep on like everythings still within normal average conditions, no changes to be made here.

This is delusional and 100% not reality. We are losing so much top soil on aerable land, that if it keeps up, estimates say we won’t be able to grow food as we do now, in 60 years.

Oh but I know, it won’t get to that point, we are a very smart human race, we’ll figure it out. I know we will, that’s obvious or we’ll all starve. But, will it tale 60 years to get our heads out of our asses and make changes?

The rainforests on Earth used to cover 14% of our land.

You wanna know what percent it is now?

Take a guess.

Is it 12%?

Is it 10%

Or perhaps it’s 8%.

Nope.

It"s less than that.

Rainforests on the planet now cover just 6% of the earth, due to deforestation. The worst part is, and this has been known for a long time, is that the soil in the rainforests are not very fertile. I don’t know why.

So the people deforesting the rainforest, plant some stupid plant, for the starches in the roots.

Its worse than that though. As the soil isn’t fertile, the crops don’t do well, and so the deforesters leave the area after just two years and cut down even more!

It’s ridiculous! Short-sighted human behavior is not positive for the future. The only thing we have going for us right now, is the world seed bank in the arctic to save us, and local micro-gardening techniques. Big Ag is on its way out.

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Well Im old enough to know a time when it was. Jimmy Carter and Alan Cranston can be thanked for that back in 78. It was tantamount to moonshinin’.

Being young and impressionable the “hemp vs MJ” debate has also been part of a good part of my life now and is honestly so far past what I ever thought it would be. I never thought “legal” was really possible. Where its lacking IMO and where it comes up againt the most resistence is hempseed oil’s many replacements for petroleum products [tossup to pharma maybe]. Since the 30s w MJ/henp classified as a drug and w various petroleum competitors winning civil transit contracts it was stigmatized and set aside where no future research could progress for decades. Yet here you are still making these points that honestly were “crazy college topics” when I was in school 30yrs ago. You know back when Al Gore was Nostradamus?

My Hemp brethren!

It is always about money, unfortunately.

Dunno if you already looked into this but

TIL garlic skin can be used as mulch. Also growing garlic around fruits can repel animals and insects.

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