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cbownesouth
08-24-2009, 09:34 PM
Hello from the beautiful blue ridge mountains in western North Carolina.
My garden is 1/4 acre of my 3/4 acre property. I'd like to expand but alas too many trees(about 24 poplars 3 maple a giant blue spruce and 16 fruit trees all under 2 years old. Next year I'm putting anything that has pretty flowers( snow peas okra etc) in my flower garden. I wonder if snow peas climbing on boxwood would kill the boxwood. I do want to keep those because they are green in the winter:D I planted yellow cherry tomatoes next to a forsythia bush and they climbed it nicely. I tell my friends God provided the trellis.
I learned my lesson this year ONLY HIERLOOM SEEDS!!!! A fungus went through and killed all my yellow tomatoes then my specialty reds (the early girls almost made it but then died. :mad:) but the cherokee and uglies (my only true heirlooms) survived with flying colors. I actually found a nearby farm that the soft tomatoes that can't go to market they drop between the rows and they are letting me glean the field after dinner each night when the pickers are done. 1 row makes about 10 qts or 2, 5 qt crock pots full. So even in my sad troubles with my tomatoes I'll make a couple hundred qts. My second crops of beans snow peas yukon golds and lettuce and spinach are now really producing.Have you ever seen a mountain cabbage? so far the biggest has been 14 lbs! 1 and 1/2 made a 5 gallon crock of saurkrout I got 3 dozen pumpkins all the smaller pie pumkin size that I didn't even plant. I threw a rotten pumpin in my compost spread the compost and they just came up in between other things.

I've lived here for 2 years and it is just about ideal except that we live in a community that doen't allow farm animals but we have angora rabbits for fiber and fertilizer and I'm wondering whether a bee hive is considered farm animals.

Garden Green
08-24-2009, 10:39 PM
Hi neighbor! I'm just on the other side of the mountains from you! Crappy about your tomatoes, it happens unfortunately. But at the same time, its really awesome that they are letting you pick some tomatoes at that farm. If nothing else, you've made a friend or two there.

At least the rest of your garden is doing well. And I personally have never seen that type of cabbage, do you have a pic you can post of it?

Dana

cbownesouth
08-24-2009, 11:16 PM
Not yet but I'll take one of my next giant.

gardengirl72
08-25-2009, 09:44 PM
Save as many of the seeds from the heirlooms as you can and use them next year.