Planting August 2023 Planting and Chat Thread

[packyderms_wife]

Planting Calendar - Gardening by the moon

This planting calendar helps you pick the best days for gardening tasks based a 200-year-old formula. Our readers swear by it! Learn more.

www.farmersalmanac.com

• 1st – 1st
  Barren day, fine for killing plant pests.
• 2nd – 3rd
  Excellent for any vine crops such as beans, peas, and cucumbers. Good days for transplanting. Favorable days for planting root crops.
• 4th – 6th
  Neither plant nor sow on these barren days.
• 7th – 8th
  Good days for transplanting. Root crops that can be planted now will yield well.
• 9th – 10th
  Any seed planted now will tend to rot. Good harvest days.
• 11th – 13th
  Plant seedbeds and flower gardens. Good days for transplanting. Most favorable days for planting beets, onions, turnips, and other root crops.
• 14th – 18th
  Best for killing weeds, briars, poison ivy, and other plant pests. Clear wood lots and fencerows. First two days are good harvest days.
• 19th – 20th
  Excellent for sowing grains, winter wheat, oats, and rye. Plant flowers. Good days for planting aboveground crops.
• 21st – 23rd
  Plant seedbeds. Plant peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and other aboveground crops in southern Florida, California, and Texas. Extra good for leafy vegetables.
• 24th – 25th
  Cut winter wood, do clearing and plowing, but no planting.
• 26th – 27th
  A good time to plant aboveground crops.
• 28th – 29th
  Barren days, fine for killing plant pests.
• 30th – 31st
  Excellent for any vine crops such as beans, peas, and cucumbers. Good days for transplanting. Favorable days for planting root crops.

 

[seraphima]

Harvested the bed and a half of garlic today - don't usally work on Sunday, but after church could feel that rain was just about to start. Cut the rest of the scapes, then lifted the plants with my garden fork, shook off the dry soil, and carried the bundles of plants into the basement to start drying. In a day or two, will hang the garlic by tying the tops of 4 or 5 together with twine, one bundle at each end, and hanging them over a wooden clothes drying rack.

It has been such a cold year that this harvest is a week later than any other year in my records, and still the bulbs are smallish, but very healthy looking. The bulbs will enlarge anyhow as the plants hang, and the sap flows down into the bulb from the stem and leaves.

The broccoli is excellent this year, and the Red Russian kale, too. Brassicas, onion family, potatoes and peas- the mainstays of the cold Northern garden.

 

[seraphima]

Spent a few minutes today weeding out a spent bed and then planting in strawberriy plants. About a third of the bed is completed; the light ran began so I took a breather. I really like perennial plantings. This year has been cold so many plants weren't even planted- no zucchini, no peppers. But, the reliable cold weather plants like strawberries, rhubarb, and among the annuals or biennials - kale, broccoli and so forth have been great.
I'm feeling better this year; planning on making srawberry-rhubarb jam, raspberry jam,salmonberry jelly and so forth and am freezing the ingredients so i can cook them when the colder weather comes in this fall. It has been several years since I did any significant amount of canning, so it is a happy return to productivity.

On another note, my DIL gave me a food dryer, and it is wonderful for getting projects done in just one day! Cut and dried thyme in one day. Same for yummy kale chips!

 

[dioptase]

We've been having a good harvest of tomatoes and basil, and soon we'll be having more peppers (they got planted late). Along with the more-or-less permanent herbs, that's all that I've grown this year. (I was going to start some lettuce seeds, but I now have a surgery date for late September, so I may not get around to transplanting seedlings even if I get them growing. (I have never had any luck direct-sowing lettuce seeds into the garden.))

We planted all of 4 tomato plants this year: 1 DIRTY GIRL, 1 CARMELLO (dehybridized), and 2 JUTLAND. We really like this last one; it looks like a Roma but it is not a paste tomato at all. It's a very tasty and juicy red tomato (large plum shape) which is basically for regular salad/etc. use, and has few seeds. DH seems to have decided that he doesn't like the other two (although he ate CARMELLO fine last year with no problems), as he now only wants to make his gazpacho using the JUTLAND. (It's a great tomato, we've also been slicing it like a salami and salting it and eating it fresh.)

I bought the plants from Laurel's Heirloom Tomato Plants. I wasn't able to find a commercial source for the seeds (in case she decides to stop growing it), so I am using those few tomatoes that have fallen on the ground to save seeds from. I have a small cup of fermenting seeds going right now.

I also harvested some seed heads from a Japanese bunching onion; I need to shake the seeds out and separate them from all the flower fluff. I should also go harvest the chive flower heads, and the garlic chives will be flowering soon.

All these garden riches - the vast variety of edible plants, the beautiful and delicious variations in cultivars, the tiny miracles that are seeds - make me think just how good God is. (We could all have been eating only grass!)

 

[seraphima]

So happy; got 2 batches of strawberry-rhubarb jam canned, and a batch of salmonberry juice (to drink, like apple juice). Did a whole dryer load of kale chips- I use sesame oil, soy sauce, and some salt on them. Pulled all the dead leaves off the red rhubarb bed, weeded it, and mulched it with fine seaweed. Weeded one of the potato beds and the calendula bed. Sprinkled a couple of months worth of eggshells, dried in the oven and crushed with a rolling pin,onto a bed which will be planted with garlic next month. A good day, I'm so happy.

 

[seraphima]

Picked the last of the strawberries yesterday, and hope to get the last of the salmonberries today, if the rain holds off. Been working on cleaning up the now-dried garlic, doing a little more canning of juice, and preparing for the last batch of strawberry jam. (sigh!)

 

[dioptase]

DH made more gazpacho today, yet there are still more tomatoes to go. I think that we're going to try freezing some gazpacho, and see how that works out. (We don't can, freeze-dry, or dehydrate.)

Below is a pic of one of the (mixing bowl size) bowls of the JUTLAND tomatoes from the other day. These look like Roma tomatoes but they aren't; they're meant for eating fresh (or gazpacho) and they taste fabulous. They're our favorite tomato now.