Hubby and I have been gardening in NJ for our entire lives and we are both in our mid 60's. The thing we realized was to only grow heirloom varieties and save the seeds each year from the biggest and best fruits. It has paid off big time. It's been a good ten or more years since we have bought seeds . Our favorite two tomatoes are our Pink Heirloom Beefsteak and a striped Roma tomato. I gave up trying to grow san marzano tomatoes as they are just way too small. The only things I do buy are seed potatoes, cabbage and garlic depending on how our harvest went the year before. We do a ton of canning with all our tomatoes. This year alone we have harvested over 300lbs of tomatoes and so far have made tomato soup, salsa, ketchup and pizza sauce so far. It's a daily this time of year for us. 70 percent of our backyard is edibles and all is fenced. We grow in raised in ground beds.
I hope to be at that level one day. Waiting for these fruit trees to pay off big time hopefully. I do need to get into savings seeds. I'm sure you have plants that are perfectly adapted to your yard at this point
@@SlowAndHomesteadyNJ Yes we do. As for fruit trees, we lost our nectarine to the squirrels last year. It was loaded and the squirrels had a blast climbing it and breaking off branches that we took the tree down. We do have elderberries, an apple, and several fig trees. The deer ate all of our cherry trees. It's always a challenge but you do the best you can. We grow raspberries and black berries as well as blueberries in a enclosed netted area just so we can enjoy the harvest.
Hubby and I have been gardening in NJ for our entire lives and we are both in our mid 60's. The thing we realized was to only grow heirloom varieties and save the seeds each year from the biggest and best fruits. It has paid off big time. It's been a good ten or more years since we have bought seeds . Our favorite two tomatoes are our Pink Heirloom Beefsteak and a striped Roma tomato. I gave up trying to grow san marzano tomatoes as they are just way too small. The only things I do buy are seed potatoes, cabbage and garlic depending on how our harvest went the year before. We do a ton of canning with all our tomatoes. This year alone we have harvested over 300lbs of tomatoes and so far have made tomato soup, salsa, ketchup and pizza sauce so far. It's a daily this time of year for us. 70 percent of our backyard is edibles and all is fenced. We grow in raised in ground beds.
I hope to be at that level one day. Waiting for these fruit trees to pay off big time hopefully. I do need to get into savings seeds. I'm sure you have plants that are perfectly adapted to your yard at this point
@@SlowAndHomesteadyNJ Yes we do. As for fruit trees, we lost our nectarine to the squirrels last year. It was loaded and the squirrels had a blast climbing it and breaking off branches that we took the tree down. We do have elderberries, an apple, and several fig trees. The deer ate all of our cherry trees. It's always a challenge but you do the best you can. We grow raspberries and black berries as well as blueberries in a enclosed netted area just so we can enjoy the harvest.
That’s a nice haul. We need Abe Lincoln updates, did it survive the 2 days??
Diatomaceous earth works pretty good for keeping the ants at bay
I'll give that a try also. I have plenty of borax so I think I'll attack them on 2 fronts.