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Need help with a garden quesiton.

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nenmrancher

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OK, I posted this twice, so please bear with me as I wasnt sure which area would give me the best advice.

This is the first time I have ever planted spagetti squash and the one thing that I did not think about when I ordered the seeds was to find out when to pick the dang things. So my big question is how the heck do I tell when these things are ready to be picked? Any and all advice will be greatly welcomed.

:?
 
The fruits are ready to pick when they change color from ivory white to golden yellow. (compliments of some internet web page :wink: :lol: )

Be sure to whip up a nice batch of homemade spaghetti sauce to go with em...haha... :lol:
 
haha...don't think so. They get that name from the guts of em....the guts of em look like spaghetti when its cooked.

Arn't these the ones that look like flying saucers, or am i thinking of the wrong squash??????????????
 
never tasted em after they were cooked....you eat raw squash? Prolly tastes about like a raw potato....sorta like chewing on packing peanuts or something.

I like squash if it is drownd'ed in butter and fried or oven cooked. anything else isnt much to salivate over.....
 
ya aint ever had fried yellow squash? salt n pepper it...dip it in corn meal....n fry....oh man...ya dont know what yer missin!!!!....n no I dint mean I've at em raw....never at the spagetti squash at all...
 
I'm not much of a salt and pepper on anything type of person.

I love fresh garden tomatoes and sugar tho!!! Pick me a fresh tomato and give me the sugar shaker and i'm set! I got heckled about that here in Texas....apparantly sane people down here put salt on tomatoes not sugar......but not me....salt wrecks em.

My mother uses sugar to, and her dad used to so maybe its a passed down thing i dunno....or maybe its a Norwegian thing :wink:
 
Never heard of puttin sugar on a mater.....but yeap I"m a salt person on maters...n water melons, cantalope...
OMG!!! got the first Pecos Cantalope I've had in foreverrrr when we went to brownwood...hubby bout died of embarassment right there in walmart...i was all excited at the cantalope section cuz they said PECOS!!!!! He's "anti cantalope" person....but I got me one anyway n it was GOOOOD
 
I went to marfa/alpine the other day via Pecos, and seen several being picked and shipped around. I'm not big on musk melon either, but yeah up north my family cuts em in half and puts ice cream in the mittle of em and digs in! I don't even like salt on my watermelon. But I also eat like to eat Tang mix or russian tea mix with a spoon :lol: :lol: :wink:
 
TXTibbs said:
I don't even like salt on my watermelon. But I also eat like to eat Tang mix or russian tea mix with a spoon :lol: :lol: :wink:

Now TX Tibbs, that's what I call a real sweet tooth! :D or desparation.
What color are your teeth after the Tang? Probably the reversed color of this guy :mad: ?

Here's an article that has some funny parts for those of us who attempt raising our own food (what the author calls Homesteading Hysteria)

My garden doesn't fit stereotype

By Chris Remick

[email protected]


After my latest garden fiasco, I began thinking about my critical lack of horticultural aptitude.

First, let me say that not everything I planted in my fit of gardening madness two years ago is dead. Actually, a few things have grown quite well. I have a huge crop of mint that is nearly four feet tall. My ornamental grasses are flourishing in the tall grass patch surrounding my birdhouses, I think. My chives got so top-heavy they fell over but I think that is just their way of seeding themselves in.

All the things I never planted, such as weeds, are thriving. For me of the two black thumbs this is a sort of success.

There are gardeners and there are appreciators and I am definitely in the latter category. I certainly admire a well kept garden and a beautifully groomed lawn. Maybe because neither can be found at my house. I do not enjoy gardening in any form.

In a period of homesteading hysteria I did have a huge vegetable garden. It was a residual effect of the hippie back-to-the-land thing in the late 1960s and I was doing my bit to respect the earth.

I raised enough produce to can and freeze winter provisions as well as eat and share the fresh bounty. No one told me that 101 things to do with zucchini wasn't nearly enough.

It slowly dawned on me that I could simply go to the farmer's market and buy smaller amounts of veggies and eliminate the whole dreaded gardening process. We could live on canned soup during the winter.

Of course we do have to mow down our hayfield of a lawn every once in a while. I really do prefer the natural look but that doesn't work in a neighborhood. Our neighbors are much more diligent at mowing and planting their yards. I can't say it has anything do with their youth although after all these decades we are definitely weary of yard work.

Even when we were young we lived like hillbillies camping out on our property. Snow is a great equalizer.

In winter our yard looks as good as anyone's. In summer we appear to be past due for attention. I often complain to my husband that all we need is a junk car and a bathtub to make our yard complete.

I have come to realize my snide comment isn't far from the truth. I really just want to decorate the yard, not plant, pluck and prune vegetation. I confess I am a "junker." I have a strange addiction to other people's junk, which requires constant vigilance to keep under control. I lost control long ago.

Almost all my home furnishings came from auctions or yard sales. I do sell bits and pieces presumably for profit.

Having a shop helps justify my habit. Because of my accumulative nature my house reached maximum capacity long ago. Some deep-seeded impulse is driving me to expand my will toward embellishment outdoors.

As I walk about my yard I don't see my pitiful plantings, I see the stuff that declares it is my yard rather than some land-proud gardener.

There is an assortment of creatures fabricated from broken bits of tools and machinery, and bizarre wooden carvings share odd places with cut-steel figures.

There are a few cast carvings of mythological figures along with the usual outdoorsy stuff such as birdhouses, a sundial, and a couple birdbaths. There's also several large lovely pots that wold be wonderful for plants but I figure why dirty them since I'd never keep the plants alive.

A few years ago I crafted a fairy circle that consists of white sand, beach glass, a woven twig teepee and old car license plates. I have no proof that it actually attracts fairies but then again I have no evidence that it doesn't.

Under the overhang of my barn is a truly eclectic grouping of rubble. There is the usual broken but presumed repairable cluster of mowers, blowers, and unidentifiable machinery. The centerpiece, according to my husband, is the base of an old wringer washing machine I dragged home years ago. To his mind, it is the same thing as a lawn tub — big, ugly and unnecessary. I am stunned by his lack of imagination.

Once painted and the top covered with bits of broken crockery I am saving, it will be the ultimate out door table. If I never get around to the project, it will forever provide my kids with a head-shaking giggle.

My yard may reflect my house, or more likely my mind; scatterbrained and cluttered.

Perhaps it indicates a bit too much primitive civilization on this particular spot on the planet. So it goes in the land of the anti-gardener.



Chris Remick lives in Rye and can be reached by e-mail at chriskneedeepfarm.com
 
Mind if I add my own garden question. How 'bout broccoli.? The stuff is bloomed by the time its ready to be picked, however, the head of good broccoli is horribly meager, what in the world am I supposed to do to get any good broccoli. I got tons of seeds from them, with all the pods it grew, but no broccoli worth trying to have growing again.
 
Mind if I add my own garden question. How 'bout broccoli.? The stuff is bloomed by the time its ready to be picked, however, the head of good broccoli is horribly meager, what in the world am I supposed to do to get any good broccoli? I got tons of seeds from them, with all the pods it grew, but no broccoli worth trying to have growing again.
 
Sierraman said:
Mind if I add my own garden question. How 'bout broccoli.? The stuff is bloomed by the time its ready to be picked, however, the head of good broccoli is horribly meager, what in the world am I supposed to do to get any good broccoli? I got tons of seeds from them, with all the pods it grew, but no broccoli worth trying to have growing again.

It is a cool weather crop. Sounds like it was planted too late and bolted to seed in the heat. Between that problem and the cabbage worms, I'vegiven up trying to grow it.
Last year my experimental crop, amongst many, was broccoli raab. But it was so bitter it almost tasted medicinal. Maybe only true Italians can stand eating it.
This year there was so much cilantro seed left over from last year's crop that I just broadcast it through the zinnia and marigold bed. Every last bloomin' seed must have sprouted. We have enough cilantro to eat salsa every meal and for bedtime snack.
 
I still have jalapeno peppers growin that we planted last year. Son came in the other day with a handfull of peppers....I thought someone had given them to him..he said no...they were in the garden.
 
the_jersey_lilly_2000 said:
I still have jalapeno peppers growin that we planted last year. Son came in the other day with a handfull of peppers....I thought someone had given them to him..he said no...they were in the garden.
They never froze? Thought they were a tropical plant.
 
We had very few nights that got down to freezing temperatures last winter. maybe 2, but I would imagine the grass in the garden had grown up enuff to protect the pepper plants that were still hangin in there. I have some pepper plants that are what we call Bird Eyes..Chilipequin is the real name I think. They come back year after year, leaves fall off in the winter and then in spring I trim em back with pruning shears. Then they leaf out n go again.
 
nr said:
Sierraman said:
Mind if I add my own garden question. How 'bout broccoli.? The stuff is bloomed by the time its ready to be picked, however, the head of good broccoli is horribly meager, what in the world am I supposed to do to get any good broccoli? I got tons of seeds from them, with all the pods it grew, but no broccoli worth trying to have growing again.

It is a cool weather crop. Sounds like it was planted too late and bolted to seed in the heat. Between that problem and the cabbage worms, I'vegiven up trying to grow it.
Last year my experimental crop, amongst many, was broccoli raab. But it was so bitter it almost tasted medicinal. Maybe only true Italians can stand eating it.
This year there was so much cilantro seed left over from last year's crop that I just broadcast it through the zinnia and marigold bed. Every last bloomin' seed must have sprouted. We have enough cilantro to eat salsa every meal and for bedtime snack.

Is that what those little black, and grey worms were with I think red heads.? Cabbage worms? I hated those things, and hey were impossible to kill.
 

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