Good Growing Grow Along second check-in
Welcome to the good growing grow along check-in number two. So it is now July, and we're gonna do a quick check-in to see how our gardens are doing, and then elicit some feedback from you as well. So I guess we can start off with, how our gardens are doing. So, Chris, Emily, do you wanna you wanna kick us off?
Speaker 2:Let's say, oh, should I start? Feel me to start.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, Chris. You
Speaker 2:start. I'll just pull up my photos so we can see what I'm talking about. Feel free to make comments as you wish. Well, things I feel like are going splendidly in my grow along garden. As we talked about last time, I had a total failure of the black night runner bean, and I only had one of the candle fire okras survive.
Speaker 2:And pictured here is that one candle fire okra. I I love okra. I can I think you talked about this one, and and also you've you've mentioned cotton also in the past, but this plant is just pretty? I just like it. I would grow candle fire okra or really any okra just for fun, for the looks.
Speaker 2:It has this beautiful red stem, and it has these red pods that develop. Now the thing with candle fire is, I remember it was remarked that it doesn't have those kind of ridges on the pod. And I've harvested two already, and it kinda still does, but it they're still more rounded than normal. And so I've I've enjoyed my candle fire okra. I've only had a few pods.
Speaker 2:But if you can see that growing point right there, there's a lot of flowers and growth that is about to I feel like this plant's about to really take off here as we are talking late July. There here are my hog brain, beans. I should have trellised them. I have not. So I am just constantly biting, biting, fighting, this, angry vine that wants to grow all over stuff.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to push pull push and pull things away. Maybe I'll get something for them to climb on here soon, but it's looking less likely as the year goes. But I have yet to have any flowers or any fruit set on my hog brain. Now I have just this morning what is it? July 23, picked my first lemon cucumber.
Speaker 2:Actually, brought it into the office right here. So, Emily, you talked to me about when to harvest this one. So could you describe that again? And I'll I'll observe my lemon cuc that I have to make sure that I've harvested it correctly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So so I don't have any, harvest yet this year. I'm watching, and I've got some blooms on mine. But, from years past, looks like to me, at least from what I, how I enjoyed our lemon cubes, you picked it at, like, about the perfect time. So they'll start to you can see the bottom of yours.
Speaker 3:So they they start developing a deeper, richer, like, more golden color over time when they start, to mature. And you wanna obviously harvest when they are immature because then you're gonna have a more, you know, flesh, you know, like, a, more juicy flesh. Like, it's that cucumber. Right? You're not letting them actually collect the seeds.
Speaker 3:You're you're harvesting them to eat the flesh. And so, I think you did a great job. That, to me, it looks like when you would harvest it, when it's not too big, it's it's just about baseball size. Starting to have some coloration, but it's still, like, lemon colored. It's not golden.
Speaker 3:It's not it's not too done. So I expect it will be, if you like the flavor, which to me was more mild, than a than a regular cucumber, not lemony. That's not why, you know, like, don't expect a lemon flavor. There's no citrus flavor. Flavor.
Speaker 3:It's supposed to still be cucumber flavored. It just looks like a lemon, but I think I think you're gonna enjoy it if you if you enjoy cucumbers, assuming that.
Speaker 2:I I do. I I am excited to try this. This being my first one, I have not tasted it yet, but I I am looking forward to giving it a try. And with with my cucumber vine, at least, let me back up here. You can see I decided and I'm very happy that I did this.
Speaker 2:So I planted this on a retaining wall, and I have trained it so that it cascades over the retaining wall. And this is gonna be easy picking, I think, coming up. As you mentioned, Emily, I had a lot of male flowers. Actually, for several weeks, it just produced a ton of male flowers. Only in the last maybe two weeks have I really started seeing several female flowers pop up.
Speaker 2:So I'm about to be hauling in buckets of of cucumbers here pretty soon. But I really liked how I used the retaining wall to help me in, maybe managing this plant a little bit more. Onto my honey bun, this right here, I have several of the honey bun squash fruit developing. This was my first one that started. I don't think it's ready yet.
Speaker 2:It does have the those green, kinda lines within the the furrows of that fruit, but I'm looking for a more tannish color, on the ridges of that fruit to develop. And until I see that, I guess I'm just gonna hold on to them and let them stay on the vine.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'd I don't think it looks I wouldn't I would do the same. I would wait for it to ripen a little bit more. It doesn't look at least to me. I don't know.
Speaker 3:I've never grown any bun, and mine aren't developed yet either. My garden got a later start. So
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And and with that being a winter squash, you want that to be fully ripe. So that skin should be nice and hard. Can't puncture it with the thumbnail. Not that you wanna go poking holes in it all over the place.
Speaker 2:That's the tough part about it. Yeah. You're like, alright. The test is to punch a hole in it that I can't be able to, but what if I do? It's not good either.
Speaker 2:And then onto my mizuna, and I had a great round of mizuna. We used it on salads. We used it on sandwiches. In terms of the flavor, I mean, it was kind of a I almost thought of, like, almost like a mustardy green kind of, flavor. But then I started seeing several of the leaves getting eaten on, our mizuna.
Speaker 2:So I did a little bit of, closer investigation. I started finding these really interesting. I thought they were pretty caterpillars on my mizuna. And turns out that mizuna is a brassica. It's related to broccolis and, you know, kales and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2:I and I kinda guess I kinda got some of that flavor from there. But, Ken, you identified this one for me. What what am I dealing with here?
Speaker 1:So that is the was it the cross striped, cabbage worm? Is Is that what's most? Yes. Yeah. Cross striped cabbage worm.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And that's one that's not usually one of the ones we talk about, but I've had, one year I grew broccoli in the fall and it got wiped out by this thing too. So I think this is the one we maybe overlook a little bit when we talk about, some of Nebraska pests.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. And and wipe me out, it did. I mean, it's a very pretty caterpillar. It has a bluish gray back, bands of neon yellow, greenish, stripes on the sides, and a cute little red coppery, head.
Speaker 2:But let me pull up my picture of what my bazooka looks like today. That's my mizuna and my cat, when it in its full glory. And, again, it did very well. It was a delicious plant we harvested just by picking the each individual leaves off and putting them on sandwiches and salads. But my mizuna today looks like this.
Speaker 2:It's completely defoliated. The caterpillars have defiled it. So it it it is gone. I'm kinda holding on to it to see if it re sprouts, but I don't think it will. Well, yeah.
Speaker 2:They had a feast, and I just watched them do it. I didn't spray anything. I was just like, oh, this is interesting. Sometimes I just watch critters destroy my garden and take pictures of it.
Speaker 1:And do the same thing.
Speaker 3:Like a good extension professional does.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. Well, Emily, how are things growing along in your grow along garden?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Intermediate success. So we talked about how, we did not have any germination of the oh, what was it? Black night? We had that was a fail.
Speaker 3:We didn't have any okra. So I I did wanna ask the question because I've never grown okra, and I was excited to grow it this year. And I'll get to be excited about it next year because ours didn't germinate. Is that pink, you know, like, the rose stem color, is that normal, or is that a candle fire characteristic, like, on the plant?
Speaker 1:Usually, it's usually green. I think it's a candle fire. And and some of there's some other ones that have colors, but usually, it's it's all green.
Speaker 3:Okay. Because it's beautiful. Like, your picture is that's stunning. So, I'm gonna try that again. I might actually start it inside, I think, next year just to give it a an advantage, hopefully.
Speaker 3:But, Mazuna is going really, really well. Let me, contrast your photos with mine here. So here is our, some of our plants in our garden bed at the office. We've harvested, at least twice off of it, and it's just it keeps coming back. So really, really thrilled about it.
Speaker 3:I actually brought some in the office here for a recording. The, stems are, like, purple. They're really pretty. Really, really lovely. And then there's, like, that purplish color for the the leaves, and so, thrilled, to have it in the garden.
Speaker 3:Let's see. Southern cowpea is just doing this. So we're we don't have any, any piece to harvest yet. It's doing well. There's a lot of blooms on it, and so we'll we'll wait and watch.
Speaker 3:And then our honey bun does not look great. And it had, vine borer. So gonna have to pull it out. It just is not not gonna do anything here at the office. At home, It's some blossoms on it, and it's, I need to go check it out again.
Speaker 3:I I looked at it recently just kind of in passing. It was a really quick walk through the garden. It was doing okay, but we had some strong winds, at the house the other day. And so I'm a little concerned about what it did, to all those large plants. And I just haven't had a chance to check-in on them.
Speaker 3:But, there were blooms, and I don't have any squash yet. So, waiting to see. What else? Oh, and then just for fun, while out in the garden, we the other week, we talked about this isn't part of the grow along, but the other week, we talked about snapdragons. And, Ken, this is for you.
Speaker 3:This sweet little thing is just growing in a crack in the concrete. And so even though sometimes our plants don't do well, sometimes they surprise us. And so I just had to put that little ray of sunshine, in here because, get after it, little Snapdragon.
Speaker 1:Yes. As Ian Malcolm put it, life finds a way. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 3:I mean, not all the life in our gardens.
Speaker 2:Some of it will.
Speaker 3:Some of it does. Yeah. My lemon cukes at home too, same kind of thing. I need to go trellis them. I'm have been so bad.
Speaker 3:There's it's ready to go. The the hog panel is right next to it. I just haven't trained them, and so need to go do that. But they got a late start as well. We talked about that in our last podcast where my garden just was kind of a hot mess at the beginning of the growing season.
Speaker 3:And so just a late start, so I'll just have later harvest. But, they're looking really good, and I love cucumbers. Chris, what well, can you give an update? Then I wanna know what you're gonna do with all your cucumbers because I have some thoughts for what we could do with them. So, Ken, how's your garden growing?
Speaker 1:Alright. So I took some pictures this morning. So here are the lime and cucumbers here. So we had some some serious weed issues, and you can kinda see all that those piles of crabgrass. So that's all cleaned out now.
Speaker 1:Micris, a lot of male flowers on there. But I do have
Speaker 3:so you
Speaker 1:can see the flowers there. I do have a a few fruit, if I guess, depending on the size of your thumb, but size of the thumb might be a little smaller than that. So hopefully, you're probably probably a week or two. We should start seeing some getting some fruit off of there. Now so that's progressing along nicely.
Speaker 1:We have two, of those that made it. Here is the the acorn, honey bun. Alright. Here. So that's the the one plant that made it there.
Speaker 1:You can see more of the weeds that have been removed. And we do have some fruit on this. We've had, This has been flowering for a while. At least two fruit on there. I think the one on the right there, you can see it getting a little bit of that, yellowish orangeish color.
Speaker 1:So that may be getting close. I haven't tried to puncture it with a thumbnail. I'm gonna let it go probably another week or so, before I start seeing how hard it is and or I may just harvest it and cut it open and see how badly I screwed up and how much longer I need to wait. So but that that one is also, progressing nicely. It's still a lot of blooms, and stuff on there.
Speaker 1:We've got a lot of this is the first place. This is a blueprint garden. This is the first time we've grown any kind of squash or anything out there, and I've got several squash bees, that have found the plants, so it's been fun, watching those run around. Here is, the runner bean, right here. So my my trellis is, woefully short.
Speaker 1:So these are in 17 inch tall raised beds. The posts are, what, five foot tall. You pound them in the ground a foot. So I don't have a whole lot of trellis here. I I needed a larger one, but it's it's it's keeping them somewhat off the ground.
Speaker 1:So you can see, nice red flowers here. I have not seen any pods yet, but some of these flowers are getting getting older. So if I did if we didn't get any, pollination, we should probably start seeing some pods forming here in the next week or two, and then, can report back. But I've grown this at home for several years, not this specific cultivar, but, you know, I like the the bright red flowers. They got these nice big, flower clusters on them and stuff, and they will get, quite large.
Speaker 1:And then here is our hog's moraine. No flowers yet. It doesn't really wanna grow up the trellis too much. I keep pulling it over there, but it just kinda wants to go all over the place and is now eating the entire, raised bed it's in. I I've looked then looked terribly close, but I haven't seen any flowers.
Speaker 1:But I think we probably should be getting pretty close, to getting some flowers on there. So, hopefully, again, in the next week or two, start seeing some flowers on those and
Speaker 2:Is that fighting a watermelon patch?
Speaker 1:Yes. So that's the the caterpillar tunnel. We grew some watermelons in there three years ago, and they volunteered ever since. And this everything just kinda got raked out, and we have dozens and dozens of watermelon plants growing all over the place. So Nice.
Speaker 1:Those will those will probably need to be either a path cut through there or all of them are gonna get yanked because they're eating everything as well. So, I think we didn't have any mizuna, and okra did not germinate for me at all, but those that did, they are doing are doing pretty good.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Your stuff looks great, Ken. Way to go.
Speaker 2:I'm jealous you have the black night runner bean. This this is a very pretty flower. It's gorgeous. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because Yes.
Speaker 1:Come to Jacksonville. He can enjoy it. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll do
Speaker 3:Would you harvest some of this just one of the blooms and see if it works as a cut flower? It's so pretty. I wonder how like, what the base life would be for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I can try that.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I can report back next time.
Speaker 3:Thanks. Because that color oh my goodness. Very nice. Stunning. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of harvest, Emily, what what should I do with all these cucumbers that I'm about to have?
Speaker 3:Yes. Well, first, I mean, eat them fresh. Right? And you can, you know, use them just like a regular cucumber. But I was made aware.
Speaker 3:So we would always can, like, pickles. We'd make just pickles in a, we use a steam cook, steam cooker, steam, steam pressure cooker. It's not a pressure cooker.
Speaker 1:Water basket?
Speaker 3:No. It uses steam. Basket? It's a steam canner. So it's it's a little bit limited because it has to be, acidic foods that you would can't.
Speaker 3:So you're really limited with what you can do, but it goes really fast. So we would do pickles, and we do tomato based, things in it. You can't do any of the other vegetables. So it's limited, but it's faster. So we would do pickles.
Speaker 3:But our, food and our nutrition and wellness educator made me aware of freezer pickles. Have you ever done these?
Speaker 1:No. No.
Speaker 3:So I I'm leery about putting things in the freezer because I think it makes things kinda mushy, and I like a real crisp pickle. But she insisted that they stay crisp. And I think she was, awarded an award for one of her recipes, so I need to go ahead and get, get that from her. But I'm gonna try that, and I'll share it with you, Chris, and you can try it too. I just think I could put them in the freezer.
Speaker 3:I don't have a lot of freezer space, but I'm gonna try something different with them doing freezer pickles. So and they're smaller. So I might just do, like, fun, like, slices and then little wedges, instead of spheres. So
Speaker 2:Well, I I yeah. I definitely am interested in trying that. We're doing a lot more freezer preservation this year. Actually, just last night, I took a, I don't know, a couple dozen sweet corn ears, blanched them, cut them off the cob, got them all, thrown in the freezer real quick. So, yeah, sweet corn in the December.
Speaker 2:That's the goal. So, yeah, freezer, that's what we're going for this year.
Speaker 3:Yes. Ken, do you have any that's that's all I have experience with. I don't know. I mean, your mizuna's toast. We're just gonna eat fresh mizuna and keep donating it.
Speaker 3:I mean, honey bun. I I don't have any specific recipes for that. I just like it with a little bit of, brown sugar and butter. A little bit. Emphasis on a little bit.
Speaker 3:I like my squash. It tastes like squash, not like candy. So I know there's a variety of opinions of that. But
Speaker 1:So when we've done acorn squash in the past, we just usually roast it and mix it in with with something or kind of as a filler.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to it. I'll we'll see. So not only do I get to taste test it, I I will, also check back with you all and see if the kids like it too. So they might want a little bit more sugar on theirs. It's actually constant, yeah, sweets in my house.
Speaker 2:Just not great. Oh, I I guess also my question on harvesting okra, never grown it before. What I wish I had more okra plants too because what do you do when you're pulling off one pod every week? You know, there's not much to do. So got any advice for my one or two pods of okra I'm getting a week?
Speaker 1:I personally, I like it plain. Just eat it right off the plant. I like that better than cooked or or fried or if you're only getting a couple, that may be the most practical way to do it. Unless you're gonna freeze the munch and
Speaker 2:Could try. Well, what's this thing about slime? I I I again, slimy okra doesn't sound great. So how do I harvest without the slime?
Speaker 1:I don't know. It for me, it's just like when you eat it, you just kinda gets gets kinda mucus y a little bit.
Speaker 3:That's a that's a word that we wanna use when we're describing our vegetables.
Speaker 1:A little little snotty in
Speaker 3:there? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't know I don't know if there's a way to to breathe out that. I guess frying doesn't usually Mhmm. You don't usually get that. I don't know what causes it or why it does it.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's just me. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'll try. Hey. I don't know. I and I I know, yeah, there's certain ways where you when you put okra in, like, a gumbo, you cook it a certain way. It reduces that mucus.
Speaker 2:That stuff
Speaker 3:it's not
Speaker 2:mucus. It's mucus seed like gel like substance. But, I think Grant McCarty, he grows okra. He might even have some videos on that. Maybe throw a link about that in the description where it shows Grant harvesting okra.
Speaker 2:I think he talks about the mucus. So yeah.
Speaker 1:You just don't you don't want them to get too big because then they get kind of fibrous, and you don't I I've pulled them, you know, when they've gotten I mean, these are the larger types when they get four, five, six inches long and, like, you just you chew on it and chew on it. And it's just they're so fibrous. You can't you can't really chew it up or swallow it. So
Speaker 3:So I wanted to share with you something from Grant about harvesting. So he has a a blog post, and I'll send the link, and we can send it in the email. But he says, and I quote, you might also consider wearing gloves and long sleeves as the ochre leaves and pods are have very fine hairs that may cause some irritation to your skin. And so does it have that? Have you observed?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I Okay. I I would agree. Yeah. Definitely that.
Speaker 2:Okay. And and probably the squash plants too. Yeah. Yeah. And you're rooting around there looking for a cucumber or something.
Speaker 2:Sometimes those hairs can get your arms.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've noticed that I've never I've never had any issues personally with it. But
Speaker 3:Yep. He also recommends that you wash them immediately, unless you plan to cook with them that day. If they stay wet, they'll potentially begin to mold and develop a slimy outer coating. So wash them or wash your singular okra when you get it. And then you can also with the, slime or goo he calls it goo, another good term for our vegetable stuff descriptions.
Speaker 3:It's released when you cut. And so cutting into smaller pieces produces more of it. So use bigger pieces. That's I thought good advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Or just just like Ken, just pop it off and eat it right away.
Speaker 1:Then you get all the goo.
Speaker 2:But can't tell if it's all in your stomach immediately. Swallowed whole.
Speaker 3:Alright. Any other updates? Any anything else you want to share before we talk about how we want people to share information with us?
Speaker 1:Let's say for the the runner beans, you know, if people start getting pods on those, you can eat those as a green bean, or you can let them fully mature. And and everybody that planted them saw those seeds. They're they're pretty, and you can eat those, those dried beans as well. So you've got you've got options there as to how you pick and and consume those runner beans if you wanna go that or just grow them as an ornamental.
Speaker 2:And the southern pea hog brain, that is traditionally a dried pea or bread a pea a dried bean. Right?
Speaker 1:Yes. I believe so.
Speaker 2:Okay. Suppose there's no nothing stopping you from eating it more fresh, but I'm I'm going to try to dry him down. That's my goal for this year with my hog brain. So we also did get feedback from folks with our last survey. So thank you everybody for sending us your feedback about how your plants are growing or, in some cases, like us, not growing.
Speaker 2:It happens. As you can tell, happens to everybody. So we did have, you know, one one question that someone brought up, and they asked about how did you choose which seeds you would make available? I don't know. It was a cold wintery day, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:I don't know. What what why do we choose what we chose?
Speaker 1:Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Speaker 3:The the darkness of winter and the cold had crept in and, well yeah. We had kind of we had some criteria first. Right? So it'd be full sun, could be direct seed. So that narrowed down into what we were looking at.
Speaker 3:And then we all just kinda pulled together things we thought were interesting. That was basically the criteria, that we started with. And then we talked as a group, you know, what had we already grown or what had we grown. But then different cultivars that we brought, you know, to the discussion were interesting, had fun names. Naming was part of, like, for some of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was as simple as that. I saw the, Mizuna. I hadn't like, I think I, advocated for Mizuna. I just like pink.
Speaker 3:I really like the color pink. And so, I was on board with, the Mizuna, and then I think, Ken, you brought okra, which is also supposed to be some pink, and so I supported that. And you had liked okra and thought that we should grow it. And so, I mean, that's my memory of it, of the conversation was that we just all brought four or five thoughts to the table or plants to the table that we had sourced from different, kinda unique catalogs, things that we, you know, found that were new or exciting, and then we just talked about it. Narrowed it down.
Speaker 3:Does your memory does that match your memory?
Speaker 1:That's that's that's mapping. Mhmm. Okay. Big big list. Narrowed it down to a little list.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ornamental appeal gave one gave gave points. You know? You know? That's that's that's would would be something we'd want.
Speaker 2:So Yeah. And then just weird stuff. Things we've not tried before. We're like, this is a thing a time to try new stuff, grow new stuff, and we can flounder along with with everyone listening and watching us right now as we learn to grow new things.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. I think we did talk about too, like, the growing season. So warm season crops for the most part. I know mizuna is a little on the edge. But we were starting something new, and so we thought we'll just do it all in one push instead of, you have in a spring garden and a summer garden and a fall garden.
Speaker 3:So maybe in the future, we could expand that a little bit if we wanted to, start a garden sooner. But that was, I think, one of the criteria that we also talked about where it was like, we just need time to organize the program. So we started in the summer. There was something else. What was it?
Speaker 3:Oh, size. I think we also considered size. We were trying to do things that weren't that were a variety of sizes so that more people could participate. So if you have, you know, patio garden or limited space, you could choose some of the plants that were smaller in in size. Whereas if you have a larger space to grow in, and wanted to do more and or the bigger plants, then you could choose those.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and I guess pollination played a little bit because we had some corn on there, but the with having to plant blocks of that, that wasn't really gonna be feasible to send out thirty, forty seeds so you could have a nice box. So that got that got axed in favor of things that you could grow one plant and still get, a harvest off of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that's behind the curtain.
Speaker 2:Well, we also got a lot of comments about, especially slow growth of okra, which is something I've I've definitely seen. It it really just sat there for a month. It just sat there and didn't really do much of anything. And and even now, it's fairly slow, but it's really starting to take off, I think, ramp up now that it's become more of an established plant. So, again, we were really selecting for direct seeded.
Speaker 2:Everything in my garden was direct seeded. If there are some things that that we can get started a little bit earlier inside and bring it outside, it just gets us that extra jump on the gardening season. Maybe we'd be more advanced, but we wanted to really stick with that direct seeded approach for this one.
Speaker 3:And maybe that would be some feedback folks could provide for us. Like, do you have the capability to start plants inside? Like, I, will say we intend on doing this next year as well, different plants, of course. Is that we assumed that that was a limiting factor, for participation that, you know, starting seeds inside and having that set up. You know, we'll send out a survey and and ask for some feedback.
Speaker 3:That would be one thing we'd be curious. You know, if there were one or two things we could start inside early, would you be interested?
Speaker 1:And, again, we'll we'll send this out in the future if there's other things you think would be good to grow as part of this. Mhmm. We are open Yep. Suggestions.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We do need to be mindful. So, they need to be smaller seeds. That was a lesson we learned this year is it's it's hard to mail. If we're gonna keep the program free and we would like to, just so that we can have more people participate, the US Postal Service has different widths of packages that they consider an actual package or an envelope.
Speaker 3:And so, we did learn that the I think it was the runner bee. They, set us over the edge for scale or size for package. So it was fine this year, but just something to keep in mind. We will be more conscious of that in the future just so that we don't get emails.
Speaker 2:Well and and, again, thank you to everyone who responded to our survey and several people. Like, we we have a lot of information that a lot of comments, a lot of good data, and lots of photos that people have also, submitted. And so we'll just share a couple of those. Y'all have some really pretty gardens, and you're doing a great job of keeping, like, weeds down and, like, keeping plants looking healthy. So kudos to you.
Speaker 2:Some beautiful shots here of of different, people in this, kind of participants in this program help going along here, growing along with us, you know, from the okra. There's lots of okra from okra in the field, okra in containers. We have lots of lots of people trying container growing this year. So some some really gorgeous looking plants, coming out of containers, you know, things growing on decks, on patios, in the landscape, edible landscaping. It's it's a thing that you can do with these these plants that we have selected.
Speaker 2:Isn't that cool? It's just incorporated right there in the landscape with the everything else with the salvias and such.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Everyone's garden's, like, very impressive. We, I need I need to, get out of my garden and clean it up. It's very it looks wonderful. I love that trellis that we yeah.
Speaker 3:I need I know. That's a really neat if you don't want a metal trellis, you know, so when it blooms, it'll be real
Speaker 2:pretty. Mhmm. Nice runner bean. Here's some mizuna, again, growing in pots. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just very decorative, very ornamental. It's sitting on this wire, metal chair right here. It's just it's sort of an accent piece. We love how people have incorporated a lot of this in the landscape. And, again, we have other folks that are trying, you know, different types of, growing culture.
Speaker 2:So this is, someone doing a lot of fabric pot, growing. And here, this participant in particular, they asked us if if we could tell based on this photo if perhaps whitefly maybe devoured their mizuna, based on this picture. I I I looked closely at it. I don't know. We really couldn't tell, though, if if anyone else has any comments about what might have happened here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm not sure what that and and Wi Fi's are gonna have that that piercing sucking mouthparts, so they wouldn't be necessarily chewing it up. And I think if you had enough whiteflies to see that kind of damage, you would you'd probably see them flying around if you, if you bump that plant. It'd look like it's snowing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Lots more bag culture with the cucurbits. Other pots here, creative ways of watering. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:There's more honey bun. And, again oh, and it's this is part of the holiday. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So neat photo to end on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So thank you everyone for sharing this and growing along with us. So far I mean, I'm having a blast trying these new things, and so, it it has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I appreciate everyone joining us for this little experiment. We appreciate the feedback too. We know that garden season's busy, so, taking the time to send us some of your feedback is really appreciated.
Speaker 1:And speaking of feedback, say, if you're watching this, you probably got the email with the survey in it. But we do have another survey, another check-in, for people to to fill out and and tell us how things are going. And and on this one, we're we're gonna include questions on harvesting. So if you've been able to harvest anything, what have you harvested? How much?
Speaker 1:Have you eaten it? Did you like it? All that stuff. So please take time. That shouldn't take terribly long.
Speaker 1:Maybe, like, I think most people took five, ten minutes. I think largely depends on if you grew everything, it's gonna take you a little longer than if you only have one thing. But shouldn't take you too terribly long, to fill that out and and let us know how things are going.
Speaker 2:Yeah. More surveys. Oh, yeah. But that's what we do here. You know, we wanna collect data and and then present that feedback to to the world.
Speaker 3:And,
Speaker 2:yeah, it it is hard to find good trial data anymore when it comes to kind of an unbiased approach. You know, we're not here trying to sell you these plants. We're just trying to grow them and see what does best here in Illinois and what is fun to grow here in Illinois.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I people have been being honest and and providing their, like, full spectrum, you know, feedback too. Like, if things you do not love or if they don't go well, that's okay. Like, it's please share that with us too. We would like to know, because it does help us, you know, evaluate the plants and then also, hopefully be able to support you.
Speaker 3:So Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, let us know if, I don't think it will, but if the honey bun squash tastes like hot garbage, let us know. We want to know. And we will also be tasting it to find out. Well,
Speaker 3:because you're We'll know.
Speaker 2:My tongue is numb. I ate the squash, and I can't feel anything right now. So, yeah, we will we're we're doing this all together.
Speaker 3:Alright. That, I think, wraps it up for another update. Our second, we'll do another one in August and see how the gardens are growing. And, thank you all again.
Speaker 2:Good luck. Have fun. Today, Ken is unhinged.
Speaker 1:Okay.
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