Garden, what do you grow?

[Chuck52]

Bird,

I can give you some deer if you're pining away for some./w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif Last year they chewed up my newly planted fruit trees until I caged them. Then they mowed down the beet tops so much I thought I'd get no beets at all. They also mowed down one planting of beans, but I had enough of them to get some too. They don't seem to care for okra.

We had so many cherry tomatoes I tried drying some. Turns out a full dryer with four trays gives you maybe a cup of dried cherry tomatoes. I think we used the whole cup in one pasta dish. I should have dried some of the romas, but that's another case of hind sight. This year my wife says she wants to put up some relishes, so I need to do cabbage and peppers. In this area, no one seems to know about chow chow and other cabbage/pepper/green tomato/etc based relishes, but they are really popular back home in East Tennessee (note the capital E, we don't claim the rest of the state). The peppers did pretty well last year considering they had to root-hog-or-die after a really drenching rain knocked most of the plants flat. I've never grown cabbage, so that will be one new crop for me.

Chuck

 

[Bird]

Chuck, if we had more deer, I'd be eating them./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

<font color=blue>I've never grown cabbage, so that will be one new crop for me.
</font color=blue>

There are too darned many varieties of every vegetable now-a-days. I just always thought cabbage was cabbage, but there are different ones of those, too./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif This past year I had the Crown White cabbage (just looked like the ones we can buy in the grocery store), but the year before when I went to get the plants, the guy said all he had was "Flat Dutch" which didn't mean anything to me, so I got them, and found out why they call them that. They weren't round; sure enough they were flat; looked like a balloon that you'd pressed down on the top until they were about half as tall and they were around. I'd never seen any like that, but I couldn't really tell any difference in the taste; just as good, but no better than the others.

Heavy rains usually are not a problem for us, except when they come with a strong wind, which seems to happen every year about the time the corn gets waist high./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif Sure is hard on the corn, tomatoes, and sometimes a lot of the other plants.

 

[JeffRey30747]

The deer around my place seem to be fickle about okra. Year before last, all I ever got was okra stems but last year they didn't seem to touch the okra at all.

 

[rdln]

I also want to try cabbage and have my uncle to teach me how to make sauerkraut with my family's recipe so I can pass it down.

 

[TerryinMD]

Can you share the kraut recipe?

Terry

 

[rdln]

Is there any Heinrich or Wormsbacher in your blood/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif?.

I dont have it and haven't approached my uncle yet, figure I needed some fresh cabbage first, but we will see.

 

[Bird]

I don't guess we'll ever learn to make sauerkraut, since my wife won't eat the stuff./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif She buys the smallest cans the grocery store has for me, since she won't touch it herself. Yet she loves cole slaw and steamed cabbage.

 

[TerryinMD]

Let me check the family tree..... ahh.... ahhh. oh-oh.. yes sir /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Terry

 

[Wal]

We usually grow three things in or veggie garden(any more than that is just to much dang work for me!) Gotta ALWAYS grow tomatoes, usually "Big Boy". Gotta have either zuchinni (sp?) or yellow crookneck squash. The third item is something different every year. A couple of years ago we had some really nice brocolli and actually cooked up a couple of the early stalks for dinner one night. The next morning, the rest of the dozen or so plants were gnawed down to ground /w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif/w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif Later on that morning my wife calls me at work and says theres a "big, ugly, furry animal" rooting around down in the ruined brocolli patch. Couldn't tell me what it was. After a session of "20 questions", it sounded like a woodchuck to me. I call our local conservation department and talked to someone who seemed to know their "critters" I asked this person if they had ever heard of woodchucks eating brocolli. They laughed and said brocolli is a real delicacy to woodchucks /w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif Anyway, so I was able to borrow one of those "have a heart" traps from the d.o.c. and baited it with, you guessed it, brocolli. Had to go to the store and buy the brocolli though /w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif The next morning we had one very angry woodchuck in the trap. Called the d.o.c. and they came and got their trap with woodchuck enclosed. Ever since then I have a few choice words for any woodchuck I happen to see

 

[MossRoad]

Don't feel bad. I spent $150.00 on an electirc fencer to keep the woodchuck from eating my $50.00 worth of produce /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif