Yay! There's Billy. We were wondering where you were because the forum has been awfully serious lately and nobody has taped anything to their butt for ever so long. LOL

Your garden is looking GREAT! My curcurbits are weeks behind yours for some reason, but my tomatoes are pretty much on par and the corn has taken off like it's thinking of producing dimensional lumber as well as corn this year.

That eggplant, WOW! I have never grown one and I didn't know the flowers were purple, that is beautiful. Guess it makes sense though...

Happy gardening and mosquito swatting and earwig wrangling!

Thanks northspruce.......I took a risk and put the cucurbits in really early; did a little experiment with soil warming and it took off like lightning. We had very few frost days in May this year so it worked to my advantage.....that and alotta good compost.

Billy
What was your little experiment with soil warming? We were all discussing different things in April, I believe. Let us know what worked.

Shauna

I tried a couple different things, shauna.

i bought some really cheap black rubber hoses last year on clearance at Superstore.....noticed how incredibly hot the water from my black hose was after leaving it in the sun....when i planted the squash and cukes i planted them in a tapered mound of rich compost about a foot high, coiled the black hose around the mound up to the top, filled about three quarters of the way up with water and capped off the end. Picked up a tremendous amount of heat from the sun, then covered at night with plastic.

I also messed around with some black PVC pipe filled in the same fashion and capped on both ends in small lenghts and laid it tightly together in a few areas, but not sure how well that worked. Im considering planting a few right into a hill next year so that the ends protrude and catch the suns rays. will see if it works.

Billy

That's a very interesting concept. I like the idea very much. I really want to succeed at watermelon one day. You might be onto something here. Would a PVC grid of about 1' squares work? 3" PVC buried half in the ground. And coiled hoses . . . how simple is that. Neat idea.

Shauna

thx Shauna....yes the hoses worked well, and helped keep the moisture in the hill as well, so the sun wasnt baking directly on the surface of the soil......have to water the hills a lot now with the heat though.

Im sure the grid concept would work fairly well....and the stuff is tuff too, so after initial investment (unless some is laying around) they could be used permanently. Im also thinking of trying some old, smaller inner tubes.......lay it around whatever a person might be starting in spring.....pull air stem out of valve, fill up partly with water, and cap it stem up, or just seal with a bit of epoxy. I think it will work, and theres no shortage of inner tubes around.

WOW Billy, your garden is way a head of mine....although I did take the cozy coats off of three cucs a couple of days ago......Dh said they had powdery mildew on them.....when I took the cozy coats off.....there was no powdery mildew...but there were two cucs ready for picking that I didn't even know was there. Ohhhhh they were soooo yummy! Sorry I didn't take any pics....they disappeared to fast. LOL.

Happy gardening,
Sierra

Thanks Sierra........gotta love finding those cukes ;-) I havent picked any cukes yet, but am looking forward to it, they are so good fresh. Love eating them right off the vine. Glad that you didnt find powdery mildew :-)

Cheers,
Billy

Here's my corn - returned to the Full Upright Position after our horrible windstorm on the weekend. I had to go out and pile soil around each one, it was flat. Oh well at least I didn't get a tree across my car or thru my roof like several Winnipeggers... I theorize the only reason I had no trees blow down at all is that I just got a new chainsaw :~)
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wooohoooooo nice. Be picking corn out of your teeth in no time flat :)