Thes are actually the 4th or 5th or maybe more harvest after the initial center head. They are getting smaller with each harvest.

Pam. I am not technically oriented so at first all of John Jeavons many pages of lists, charts and diagrams made my head swim and my eyes glaze over. I really let that stuff intimidate me for the longest time. In the meantime, I tried Square Foot Gardening and, while it works reasonably well, some of the spacing---especially for plants like tomatoes and squash that become huge monsters in hot climates--just just didn't give me the results I wanted. So, I went back to "How To Grow More Vegetables...." and tried to incorporate more of that spacing. What I do now is a hybrid of the two, and I do it because it works. Some years I use the spacing from John Jeavons' book almost exclusively, and other years I use some square foot spacing, especially when I am in a hurry because square grid spacing is easier at a time like that. I try to make my grow lists beginning in August while everything is fresh on my mind. I know that by December, I might not remember if it was Yellow Submarine we liked or Medovaya Kaplya or both or neither, so it is best to make next year's planting decisions while everything is more fresh in my mind. This year I have the greenhouse, so I won't necessarily have to drag container plants into the garage as I have in the past. Maybe I can just keep them in the greenhouse with a small heater. Time will tell. We routinely have tomatoes until Thanksgiving or Christmas depending on the weather, and I'm talking about from in-ground plants. Picked at the breaker stage, they ripen slowly and we can eat them from a long time. I extend the season even more with the container plants. Some years I plant the long-keeper types like Longkeeper, Reverend Morrow's Longkeeper, Red October, etc. and they will last a couple of months after being picked if you pick them just before the breaker stage or at the breaker stage. I put them on shelves in our tornado shelter. Golden Jubilee is not, technically, a long-keeper, but it works well when used as one. Busy1, You're there! I know you've been too busy to be online much. I suppose it still is too hot and too dry there to plan on a fall garden? The Keetch-Byram Drought Index numbers for your part of the state are getting scary high. Carol, Likely in these temperatures the row cover is reducing enough light to prevent wilting, but in the spring, if I leave the heavyweight frost blanket on plants on a hot day after a cold night, they do not look happy when I finally uncover them. I use floating row covers a lot in the cool season, but it is hard to make them behave in the wind. I also have cat issues. If I put a row cover over hoops, the cat think it is cat furniture, climb onto it and rip it or tear it. If I put it on plants without hoops so it is free-floating, they think it is a cat blanket and lay on top of it and the plants. To keep the cats out of the garden, I'd have to remove the cedar entry arbor because even when I close the gate, they climb over the arbor to go inside. I don't know how to solve the kitty cat issues with row cover, because they are stubborn. If I yell at them to get off the fabric, they do. However, the minute I turn my attention elsewhere, they're back on it again. Since I'm not out in the garden every minute of the day, the cats do as they please when I'm not there. Thus, for cat reasons, floating row cover works great for me on cold nights when the kitties are in the house but not so great during the day. I have similar issues with shade cloth, but the worst issue with it is that snakes like to lie on top of the shade cloth and sun themselves. I suppose they consider it a bonus that they can scare me to death when I see them there on the shade cloth, often inches from my face. The best solution would be to take out the arbor and replace it with fencing with a standard gate that would keep the cats out, but I love the arbor and the 'Pink Lemonade' honeysuckle that grows on it, so I'd rather not take it out. Anyway, the garden needs the cats or it likely would become overrun with field mice and voles. I just wish I could convince the cats that floating row cover is not meant for their comfort. Dawn

Zach - if that's a typical spring I'd move! sleevendog - oh, thought I remembered you're near NYC but didn't realize you had garden/farm in another location - yeah Catskills must be colder than here. Now I understand the snake concern too. edweather - it's been fairly nice (warm and overcast) for planting out, just not sunny enough to really harden off since I know those hot bright days are coming, and I'd like to control how much sun the plants get at first. Then along comes a downpour, or a night in the low 40's to wreck all the planting out plans! I'm starting Sunday. Plants have been out at night (on the nights it hasn't fallen below 45) and are inching out into the back yard (east) for more sun every day (with a few getting burnt - don't know what's up with Mark Twain, they were among the first to go out but are getting bleached and not growing as well). Yeah, it's 2 weeks past the average LFD here, should be putting out peppers by now! Next year definitely planting out early, under cover - I got my sample of cross-connectors on Tuesday, have to order them but should have them by the end of June. Was going to wait until Sept to put the plastic on. But we'll have it for next spring! Still working on building my raised beds (this photo a couple days old) and DH says he'll take a pickax to loosen the soil where the beds are going tomorrow - compacted from bulldozer. I'm going to start putting out the sprawling indeterminates and cherry toms that are hardened off along the fence where I had beans last year, and once we get some manure moved here the others are going in the middle of the tunnel with T posts, the beds (west side shown here) are getting peppers and determinate tomatoes. Today and tomorrow I'm planting beans until the Tstorms hit this afternoon. Hope everybody gets a break in the weather - Zach sounds like he sure could use it!

Kim, Thanks for the info, but with all due respect, we are avoiding the entire DFW metro area like the plague and staying closer to home since there's over 6,000 coronavirus cases down there. Up here where we shop, we have or have had 2 cases in Carter County, 2 cases in Love County, 4 or 5 in Cooke County, TX, 4 or 5 in Montague County, TX and a few dozen in Grayson County, TX, so we're staying close to home until the case load falls significantly in the DFW metro.....and I think that is why I'm going stir-crazy. You know that almost all my favorite places to shop are down there, not up here. Nancy, I'll have to give the full report later, but we went to the meat market in Muenster TX on Saturday very early and then hit Wal-Mart in Gainesville to get a few things. We were home by 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. which is pretty good because Muenster is a far drive and most of our time was just spent on the road. Then, on Sunday we hit Home Depot as soon as they opened and breezed right in and out, and then ran over to the Sam's in Sherman, largely because I wanted to buy a couple of new water hoses and we like their 120' long ones since our gardening spots are so far from the house. We were at Sam's Club when it opened, and there was quite a line to get in, but by the time we parked and walked to the door, the line was gone, so we walked right in without waiting. Sherman was a real experience, and not necessarily a calm, soothing one. More about that later. I hope your shopping trip was successful. Now that I've been out and relieved the cabin fever and bought a few of the things I wanted, I think I can stay out of the stores again for quite a while. I know we'll be staying away from Sherman for reasons I'll explain later. Larry, I understand the feeling of being behind. I've never been this far behind in planting, and I am trying to stay calm and not be overly worried about it. Since our rain basically stopped, we are rapidly going from lakes and puddles and flooding to dry, cracked ground---you know how clay is about doing that. No rain is falling in meaningful amounts and it is getting hot fast. Our rainfall totals for April are far below normal but we're still above average for the year since January, February and March overachieved drastically in the rainfall category. I should be worried about both the early arrival of the heat and the seeming lack of rainfall over the last 3 or 4 weeks, but I'm so happy to be able to play in the dirt that I am not. I miss having cool-season crops, but had I managed to get them planted, they would have rotted anyway in the wet ground, so I just have to accept that this is how it is this year. Since it is getting so hot so fast, I'm going to plant mostly southern peas and only a small amount of green beans today. I can plant larger amounts of green beans for a fall harvest. When the rain almost totally stops in a rather abrupt manner and the temperatures spike quickly, that usually means a hot, dry, miserable summer is ahead and I don't care right now. I'm just happy the rain has stopped. Marleigh, Can you order the mower part online? That's what Tim has done lately, and the parts ordered have arrived within a few days each time. We did go to HD this weekend and he got some parts he needed for something while I bought plants. We were there shortly after the store opened and got in right away, found what we wanted and got out. By the time we were leaving, there was a line waiting to enter the store. Since we haven't been out shopping, I didn't know this was happening, and I was quite shocked. I do not think I would wait in a line to get into any store, and I hope I don't have to eat those words later if the shopping situation worsens over time instead of getting better. Nancy, I have grown legumes both with and without inoculants and I am not sure I ever could tell a difference. If you are growing beans or peas where any sort of legume has grown in recent years, you don't need the inoculants anyhow. The inoculants might be helpful in newly broken soil, but it would depend. We have lots of clovers and vetches growing here on our property, likely surviving remnants from when our place was part of a family's farm, so I haven't worried much about using inoculants over the years. Amy, There's nothing wrong with random thoughts! Was Margaret's open and did you get to have some goulash? My dad loved goulash and used to make it on the weekends when he took over cooking to give mom a break since she didn't like cooking. Rebecca, I hope nothing in your face is broken. I bet you have turned kinds of pretty colors by today. When Lillie hit that parked car while on her friend's hoverboard a couple of months ago, her face turned delightful shades of yellow, green, blue and purple. These were her first black eyes and she wore the colors proudly after she got over the shock of it all. She had swelling around her nose, but it wasn't broken. I think she was a little embarrassed to go to school with her injuries because she is quiet and shy by nature and didn't want for everyone to be staring at her, but she got over it pretty quickly, and her bruising actually faded more quickly than we had thought it would. I hope yours does too. Jennifer, I would bake my own bread (and we have stored the ingredients to bake at least several months worth of bread, so we could do this) before I'd stand in bread lines. I'm not worried this will be a reality for us though. I might be slightly more concerned that the end result of all the closures of meat-packing plants due to high infection rates of Covid-19 among their employees might result in higher meat prices or in some types of meat being temporarily in short supply. I hope Finbar is going to be alright. Chris has had to drive a couple of his birds to the vet in Dallas within the last few weeks, and his vet is not playing around with the virus. The lobby/waiting room at the vet office is closed. There are Do Not Enter signs on the door. They meet you at the car, greet you, have you fill out the paperwork there, and then they take the pet indoors to be examined while you wait in your car. This is a super busy vet practice because it is one of the few that actually sees and treats tropical birds (among other pets, not a pure bird specialist). When they are done, the return your pet to you, you pay electronically, and they give you whatever medications or supplies you need. He said the vet techs that come to the car are masked and gloved, and of course, you can speak with the vet on the phone if needed. I have to agree with dbarron that throwing up in a purse is a classic cat revenge move. Did somebody or something upset Finbar? Larry, I am glad you are able to get some things done. I hope the rain stays away this week and you can make more progress in the garden. There, it is Monday morning and I am at least caught up on last week. Now, I need to feed my pets and head out to the garden. Just to vex me, the sky is very cloudy and they threw a 20% chance of rain into the forecast. I'm just going to ignore it and carry on as long as there is no lightning. Dawn