Uenth's 2026 Garden Thread

[Uenth]

Honestly, it is somewhat miraculous that a garden was even planted this year. I had already purchased my seeds (that's a January ritual and helps get me through the cold and snowy days of Jan/Feb and, more importantly, I had already prepped the soil when Hub was admitted to the hospital so, I snagged 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there and bit by bit planted the garden. Have everything in the ground except for cantaloupe, which will be a first for me. We both love cantaloupe so I thought, just for kicks, I'd try it this year. Just planted cucumbers and zucchini as well as getting tomatoes and peppers in the ground so will try to get cantaloupe planted tomorrow and be done with planting.

Everything else is up and thriving and the tomatoes and peppers look to be loving being in soil instead of those horrible little plastic containers. Anyway, here's a few pictures of the 2026 version!

4 rows of corn carrots that I haven't had time to thin out yet and peas who just absolutely love their really cool trellis.
Will have to replay to myself I guess I can't figure out how to post multiple pictures in one post.

 

[Uenth]

Here are some of my green beans. I used 3 of these crazy bean stalk things. Need to wind twine around them and the beans will use the twine for support. This is their first year (the stalk support thingies) and that means I don't know if they will work as advertised but I buy a lot of cool garden toys from this place and everything else works as advertised, so fingers crossed and all that.

This is the second year for the strawberry planter and plants. I was pleased with last year's crop, which wasn't huge but for a first year it was great. I expect more strawberries this year and we enjoyed last year's immensely. Strawberry shortcake, fresh strawberries on a cheesecake I made, strawberry scones and, of course, sliced up on cereal in the mornings. The top tier lost some plants because Arlo and Missy (mostly Arlo) deduced that it made an excellent mountain for their game of King or Queen of the Mountain. I had covered them in straw and then put a tarp over the straw so that it didn't blow all over the neighborhood so I could easily understand what a fine looking mountain it made and they were having so very much fun. I just sat outside and laughed at their silliness!!!

I've got 2 slicers planted, "Better Boys" - LOL on that name and one Roma for canning, San Marzano's. Hub was stationed in Naples for a few years and San Marzano was right next to Naples. He could see tomato fields from his apartment balcony. I planted them year before last and they are nice and meaty with few seeds, perfect for canning.


And, last but not least, 3 of your ordinary green bell peppers. I like to get, purple and yellow peppers when I can but none were around the day I bought my tomatoes and peppers, so perhaps next year.
I have a lot of weeding to get done but I tend to weed on Wednesday as we get mowed on Tuesday and our guy leaves me all of the clippings so I weed as far as I have grass clippings to put down and then start from where I left off the next week. Then start all over again when everything is covered with grass. I do that because once the grass is down, it cuts down immensely on weeding chores and I don't need to water as much or often as well. It's worth the time to me to use our grass clippings, for sure!

 

[Uenth]

I've been derelict in my 2026 garden thread. After last night's weather, this is a good time. Garden has been fabulous and then last night's weather hit. Here is what I woke up to this morning.

Pretty sad, eh? I've gardened before and used to have a customer who clued me in on how to handle wind damaged corn. Turns out as long as the stalk isn't broken, you can gently push it back in place and then build up the hill. So that's how I spent my morning. Went out to the garden about 6 this evening and this is what it looks like now.
Not too shabby, considering how much it was listing this morning!!!

 

[Doc Fumble]

Glad your garden survived. We had a lot of tree damage in our neighborhood last night. I suspect we weren't alone.

 

[Uenth]

Glad your garden survived. We had a lot of tree damage in our neighborhood last night. I suspect we weren't alone.

Yeah, our front yard had lots of branches down. The biggest one took 4 very muscular young men to men. I wiggled it for about 2 seconds and knew if I tried to move it, I'd be seeing my spinal surgeon so, uncharacteristically, walked away from that sucker.

I was so pleased to see the garden this morning standing tall. I have 2 stalks of corn that I braced with a narrow wood strip and 3 pea plants that I had to tie to their trellis as the falling corn ripped the pea plants from the runners they had used to connect to the trellis. Nothing to complain about for sure. I saw a couple of neighbors tearing out their gardens because they thought there was too much damage for the garden to recover. I would have given them a bit of time myself, but I hate to give up on a garden.

It's really quite amazing though when you look at the picture I took about 7 AM yesterday where the garden looked pretty sad, versus the picture I took about 5 PM last night. Hardly even looked like it had seen a storm.

 

[Uenth]

Boy have I neglected this sucker. Not sure if y'all understand but my garden is really all about the corn. The other produce are just because I don't want to be a one trick pony and also, I know that once the corn tassles release their pollen, everything in my garden will get pollinated, so it's a win-win. And our produce is way better than what I can buy anywhere in town, so I play in my garden.

At long last, day 23 from the sighting of the first corn silks emerging finally arrived. It was finally time to start harvesting corn. I have this down to a fine art. I draw a diagram of my corn patch and walk around every morning once the silks start emerging, notating what plants are showing silks for the first time and notate the date on my diagram. Then I just add 23 days to whatever date I wrote down. When I go to harvest, I only grab those ears that are at day 23. The end result is perfectly ripe corn every time. I did get some incomplete pollination a few ears because right after the silks started emerging, we had about 5 consecutive rainy days and wet corn silks cannot absorb the pollen. Most of my corn, somehow, managed to pollinate.
Yesterday, I harvested 9 ear and today was 13 ear. I had 3 that were not full ears, due to the rain. I'll blanche them tomorrow and cut the kernels off, throw them in a ziplock bag in the freezer and use that for side dishes of cut corn, winter stews and soups, etc. Just because it's not good enough to eat off the cob doesn't mean it should be wasted.

At any rate, picture shows these beautiful ears, I've been harvesting. I have another 18 ear on the stalks that need a few more days and maybe another dozen that I'm not sure if they will pollinate or not. My pollen is long gone but according to my Farmer's Almanac handbook on veggies, pollen travels for miles airborne and there are miles of corn patches just a mile or so from our house so I'll just cross my fingers and see what happens. I did cut down about 6 corn stalks tonight as all the corn on them has been harvested and, frankly, I need the room back there. LOL. Anyway, attaching a photo of some of the corn ears still on the stalks.

I pulled all my pea plants a couple of days ago. We had some early heat that pretty much fried my peas so I'm going to do a second planting in a few weeks. Need the temps to be consistently lower yet. Pea plants grow quickly and start to produce just about as quickly so hopefully, I'll get a nice second harvest. Green beans are insane. I'm already to the taking beans around to some neighbors. Zucchini, OMG,do Gucci's love to produce. I've probably got a full gallon frozen in the fridge, made a batch of chocolate zucchini muffins and a to die for chocolate zucchini cake. Still have a loaf of zucchini bread in the freezer from last year's stash. Trying not to do too much baking right now. I've got some time intensive projects downstairs and it's such a hassle with most of my kitchen "stuff" packed away in the spare bedroom.

 

[Jimbosc]

I could write a very long story on our flower garden......summary - we have been overrun by weeds at this point. However - we do have a plan to fix it and 4 raised beds installed so far with flowers transplanted. The goal is to put in 16 total (we have the room) - the 6 x 3 x 1 steel ones. We won't get them all in this year but looking like we'll get 8 done at least and work on cleaning up plants that are overgrown right now. Might go to 8 by 4 for one row (so 3 beds instead of 4) - but we'll see where we are at when we get to the last row.

The unknown is if all our perennials will survive MN winter in raised beds (other neighbors have them). They SHOULD but ya never know. I told my wife my days of maintaining her flower gardens are over when we moved here 7 years ago. Things got out of hand for a reason - she has respiratory issues so all the smoke and air quality problems that last 3 years have really limited how much she can be outside. This year has been great - although July is being very July like in terms of temperature....lol.

Our gardens in Iowa were massive - and I about killed myself keeping up with weeding, pruning, etc. when she wasn't able to do it. No more - I've never really enjoyed gardening - this was always her thing. I was just the manual labor occasionally. We downsized big time here but even that has proven to be difficult. Hoping our new solution works! Will share pictures at some point.

 

[Uenth]

I could write a very long story on our flower garden......summary - we have been overrun by weeds at this point. However - we do have a plan to fix it and 4 raised beds installed so far with flowers transplanted. The goal is to put in 16 total (we have the room) - the 6 x 3 x 1 steel ones. We won't get them all in this year but looking like we'll get 8 done at least and work on cleaning up plants that are overgrown right now. Might go to 8 by 4 for one row (so 3 beds instead of 4) - but we'll see where we are at when we get to the last row.

The unknown is if all our perennials will survive MN winter in raised beds (other neighbors have them). They SHOULD but ya never know. I told my wife my days of maintaining her flower gardens are over when we moved here 7 years ago. Things got out of hand for a reason - she has respiratory issues so all the smoke and air quality problems that last 3 years have really limited how much she can be outside. This year has been great - although July is being very July like in terms of temperature....lol.

Our gardens in Iowa were massive - and I about killed myself keeping up with weeding, pruning, etc. when she wasn't able to do it. No more - I've never really enjoyed gardening - this was always her thing. I was just the manual labor occasionally. We downsized big time here but even that has proven to be difficult. Hoping our new solution works! Will share pictures at some point.

Love to see pictures when you get to that point, for sure!

Gardening is definitely my thing. Hub's health prevents him from helping, other than the eating part - LOL. I don't have my plot tilled, due to the underground sprinkler lines underneath it. I spade it by hand. Work about 15-20 minutes shoveling every day until I get the entire plot dug. I don't plant the entire garden in one day either. Get the corn in the ground one day, peas, carrots and beans the next day and then I'm in a holding pattern until the weather gets warmer and then I plant cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers. Those have to have consistently warm temps so I don't rush it. My mower leaves me my grass clippings and I spread those faithfully every week. Keeps weeds down and I don't need to water nearly as much that way also. I don't mind the prep beforehand and spreading the grass clippings. It's more than a hobby, I take it all very seriously but also derive a lot of pleasure just from watching things pop up through the ground and watching them grow.

 

[Uenth]

Rapidly winding down the 2026 garden. Tomatoes were a bust mostly. I bought, I thought, 2 beefsteak tomatoes, which are usually ginormous. I'll attach a pic I took that shows how small these guys are. More work slicing them than they are worth. Most of the green beans I gave to neighbors and customers because I was so busy working on the baby quilt during peak green bean production. That was OK because I still have a full bag from last year's harvest in the downstairs fridge. Cucumbers are just starting to come on strong. I think I have harvested at least 4 dozen of those bastages and there are at least 6 or 7 more growing on the vines right now. I've been giving some to my brother to take to the Veteran's Club as they have a table set up where people bring in their excess veggies for other members to take off their hands. Kinda nice thing they do with that and I'm pleased to contribute to their table. Afraid my neighbors were going to start running the other direction if they see me coming so I looked for other avenues to get rid of my excess. I also have 3 gallon zip lock freezer bags full of finely grated zucchini in the downstairs fridge. Bell peppers are starting to really produce. Hoping to get a lot chopped up and frozen while we're without a kitchen. Carrots look great. They're getting nice and fat and starting to lengthen so it looks like it will be a great harvest. I did also plant a Roma like tomato plant, a San Marzano (In Italy, that is neighboring Naples and hub could look out his apartment window and view all those fields, while he was stationed there many moons ago). The Roma is producing well. Hoping I'll have the kitchen functional in time to can about 12 jars of tomatoes.

I am going to plant another round of peas. We're slated to be in the low to mid 80's for the foreseeable future so I'm going to throw some more peas in the ground end of the week. I only have about 1/3 of a gallon zip lock bag full and that is not nearly enough. We use a ton of peas in meals and also as side dishes.

I did plant some cantalope seeds, just for fun. Nothing was happening there as far as producing edible lopes. Dunno what the issue is. May or may not try again next year. First time I've ever planted anything and not had anything produce. Better luck next year hopefully.

The other part of my garden that I love, maybe as much as my corn patch, is my strawberry patch. I have a cool 3 tiered planter with a hose and spray nozzle that winds up the middle so you can efficiently water easily. Anyway, with all Hub's health issues and recovery in early spring, I didn't get them uncovered and hay/straw removed as early as I should have. By the time I got all of the protective stuff off, there were probably 60-75 blossoms on the plants. Problem was that bees couldn't access the flowers so I got very little in the way of edible fruit. Those that did pollinate didn't produce a berry bigger than my little fingernail (which is a very small nail and clipped close to my fingertip), so we're talking really teeny, tiny strawberries. I bought a plant with bright red flowers to hang over the planter (hoping to attract more pollinators) with limited success. Hub was happy as most of my spring production went on his cereal at breakfast. I was stunned with how few strawberry blossoms I was getting and started researching. I discovered, and it makes complete since, that the plants can either generate new offshoots (runners) or they can produce fruit but not simultaneously. I read that the end of June and everbearing strawberries (what I have planted) produce to about the end of June and then start up again in late July and produce until a hard freeze. My guys are now flowering and producing and most have pollinated and are producing Lucious looking and large strawberries so I'm now in slicing/freezing mode. I like to make cheesecake from scratch for Christmas Day dessert and we topped with strawberries from my strawberry patch last year. That was quite fun to tell my brother when he came over. That I not only had made the cheesecake (including crust) from scratch but that the strawberries topping it had come from my strawberry patch. He was dutifully impressed. LOL.

I'm not at all upset with my garden production this ear. With Hub's hospitalization and recovering at home, versus skilled care, it's honestly kind of amazing that there even WAS a garden. I'd grab 15-20 minutes here or there and do soil prep, plant, weed, etc and somehow it all got done. I felt like I was sliding by the seat of my pants most of the graden season but that was just the way it had to be this year. I was just glad we figured out how to schedule so that I could even have a garden. Everything I harvested was a bonus to me. Anyway, hoping for a less eventful early April in 2027 and a slower paced, more enjoyable garden season.

Now, bring on the 2026 football season!!!

 

[Uenth]

I wanted more harvested peas than I got because it got too early too soon. So, I decided to try my hand at a fall harvest and planted another packet of peas early August. They were standing just as tall and pretty as could be yesterday morning and then the damn Nebraska wind came to visit and knocked them over. Irritated me enough that I almost pulled them up and then tempered my sometimes horrible temper. My reward was coming home from a pie and coffee date with one of my besties that I have literally known my entire life. We grew up on the same block and she's 3 months younger than me. She turns 70 tomorrow so I bought her pie and coffee for an early celebration.

Anyway, got home and poked my head in to see of my peas were alive or dying a slow death and was greeted with the sight of pea blossoms open and some ready to open in the morning. A wonderful sight to see as we could have a hard freeze at any time now, just depends on Ole Man Winter. Here are a couple of pictures.