prairiemoon, Thai basil has a different flavor, almost completely different, more cinnamon/licorice-like. Darn it's been so long, I can't remember the taste. Unless they are trying Asian recipes, they probably wouldn't enjoy it. Our garage is semi-heated so I have the Confection squash there. Last year it was kept under my husband's workbench in the cellar. The Pennsylvania Crook Necks are sitting on a bench in another part of the cellar where it is cooler. The cellar used to be very damp (old fieldstone foundation) but a few years ago the walls were sprayed to keep out moisture. So far so good. Those are also supposed to keep for 6 mos. I wasn't going to grow them again since like many butterNut types, they are watery but a recipe for caramelized squash was fantastic (roasted with brown sugar). Confection is very dry so I have used it mashed or cubed for Thai curries or other casseroles. I use either squash in recipes for baked goods esp my favorite pumpkin ale bread. I usually add either lime or wood ashes to the garden. We burn wood so there's always plenty of ashes available. I found a source of nicely composted horse manure on Craigslist. The owner mixes manure, kitchen scaps, ashes, etc and turns the pile with his tractor bucket all winter. In the spring it is beautiful and he only charges a nominal fee to load our utility trailer. When I build a lasagna style bed, I give some of the layers a good sprinkle of ashes. I need to re-check suggested application amounts. I love Alaska nasturtiums because the leaves are so pretty. Two years ago I had a lovely yellow climbing nasturtium that did great. Last year it was a bust and didn't climb the ladder I have leaning against the wall. I might not have watered it enough since water priority went to the veggies beds last year because it was so dry. I have cooked with flowers in the past but I'm not a big fan. I grew borage last year specifically for the pretty blue flowers that taste of cucumber but never used it. I have started file folders for recipes to use during different times in the garden year when there's a lot of sugar snaps, spinach or zukes. I started digging out my old herb recipes that I put aside when I didn't have fresh herbs to use. i.e. Rosemary jelly is very nice and good in thumbprint cookies. Opened up pickled tarragon sugar snaps this weekend. Some people liked them, others didn't because of the tarragon flavor and red peppers. The bizarre cucumber from Baker Creek was Poona Kheara. Very nice eaten fresh. You don't have to peel but the skin turns brown as it gets bigger. Starts off almost white. Seemed ok in pickles but I just did easy recipes like freezer dills.

Thanks for posting this, it's very helpful. This is my first year gardening in the PNW, and I'm feeling a bit at sea with all the tales of tomato disappointment I've been seeing. Not that it wasn't difficult growing them back in South TX, where I had to hope they'd produce before the blast-furnace heat and disease stopped the plants. :( I'm glad to hear Sungold does well, as that's one tomato I don't ever want to be without. I would like to ask -- how large do Sungold plants get here (say, in the Willamette valley)? Back in TX, mine were easily over 6 ft tall. I'm wondering how big a cage I'll need here. The others I'm considering are divided into two groups: Ones I'm considering b/c I've heard they do well here: Anna Russian Legend Willamette Momotaro Carmello Bloody Butcher Northern Lights Japanese Black Trifele One's I don't think I can stand not to grow b/c I love them: Aunt Ruby's German Green Ananas Noire Old German/Pineapple/some other red/gold bicolor (suggestions?) If anyone's got opinions on these, I'd love to hear them. I tend to like low-acid tomatoes with a sweet/savory flavor, meaty flesh and not many seeds (like ARGG and many other large, oddly colored heirlooms) so suggestions on that type that might be successful here are most welcome. Also, what tomato and other vegetable cultivars can I expect to see in the nurseries and garden centers come spring? I'm not used to what people tend to grow up here, obviously, so I don't know which tomatoes I'll have to order and which I'll be able to find. As for what else I'm going to grow, well, I just planted sugar snaps today, and will probably plant trombocino/zuccheta rampicante once it warms up. I'd love to try more vegies, but honestly, I suspect a large part of my very small garden is going to be filled with the ornamentals I could never grow in TX -- dahlias, peonies, delphiniums, and annuals like nasturtiums and sweet peas.

Y'all, I hate the heat and it has slowed down the fall garden a lot for sure. I am just so ready to be able to go outside in cooler weather and spend the whole day out there if I want to. The stuff I still have in seed packets in the house isn't going to grow until it is planted, is it? It isn't going to get planted until the soil cools. Our high temps this week have ranged from 101 to 106 and our heat index has been even worse, so the soil sure hasn't cooled down a lot yet and I have only gone outside for very limited times in early morning and in the evening. Hopefully the cold front that should make it this far south late this evening or early tomorrow will give us enough of a cool-down that the soil temps will drop some more and quickly at that. Larry, I have big plans for the fall garden, and even to me, my own list seems too ambitious if I look at it all at once. Luckily, it doesn't all go into the ground all at once or I'd never manage to get it done on time. Due to the nature of the plants, some were planted many weeks ago and some aren't planted yet. I can manage a big garden in lots of small spurts of activity, squeezed into whatever cool hours we have. Lately I just wave at my plants as I walk down to the mail box and back, and I promise I'll stop in and see them when it cools down. All along I intended to keep whatever summer plants were still producing (except for most of the tomato plants since I had so many) and whatever had survived the grasshoppers and blister beetles and I intended for sure to plant October beans, southern peas, summer squash and broccoli. Everything else was "iffy" depending on if it ever rained again. I ordered the seeds, though, so certainly hoped I could use them this fall instead of next spring. Being this far south and often having high temps in the 100s occasionally through the end of September, I never get to put greens in the ground very early so normally the fall garden gets planted in July/August for the warm season stuff and then late August/early September for the cool-season stuff, and often I don't get the fall greens into the ground until early October. So far, that's about the same planting track I am on right now, except I'd hoped all summer for an early cool-down so I could be ahead of my own planting schedule for once. That didn't happen. For whatever reason, the grasshoppers are still munching away on the plants that remain from spring and summer, and especially on the tomato plants (the blister beetles are helping them eat tomato plants) but haven't touched the fall plantings of southern peas and green beans. That sort of adds to my feeling that insects are more prone to attack stressed plants and leave healthier plants alone. It isn't that the heat isn't stressing the beans and southern peas, but just that they are younger, healthier and better able to handle the stress. I did keep row covers on them for a while, but the row covers have been off the southern peas for a couple of weeks now and off the green beans beginning about 3 or 4 days ago. So far, nothing has nibbled on them. The 3+" of rain that fell a couple of weeks ago saved my fall garden plans. For a while there, after I planted the southern peas and green beans, I thought that might be all I'd do for fall. Then the rain came along and perked up both the garden and the gardener, and I added fall cukes and squash, and started seeds in cups of a lot of the cool season stuff that can be grown from transplants, like the kale and lettuce. Now I'm just waiting for the weather to become more cooperative. With cooler temps, I hope to get the root crops seedied into the beds in the next few days, and I do mean "few" because our VFD's annual fundraiser is next week so I'll be spending some time on that as well. I have to wait until the soil temps drop low enough for good germination though, so you can bet I'll be out with the thermometer checking the soil temps daily. Carol, After that 3" of rain fell, our heat index just soared. I would use our own readings from our thermometers and barometer and plug them into the HPC's online Heat Index Calculator. For a few days we had a heat index between 112-116 but it has been lower the last couple of days as the insane heat has sucked up some of that moisture from the ground. I hope you get more rain and if it will cooperate and fall in lower temps then maybe your heat index won't get so high. Kim, I haven't planted salsify this late in years, but since our overall weather pattern is hotter than it used to be, I think it has a good chance. Last winter was so hot that the only really cold spell I remember was the first week in December when it was very cold for the downtown Marietta Christmas parade. We thought that was the beginning of winter, but looking back, that was just about the beginning and the end of winter weather all in the same week. Of course, since I am planting salsify and counting on fairly warm ground through at least the end of December, we'll probably have an early winter and a long, cold one just to make me crazy. That's okay. If fall salsify doesn't work, I'll plant it again in spring. Most of the more ususual seeds I get, I cannot find locally and I order them so I can have the specific varieties I want to grow. All you really can find in the stores here is the same-old-same-old hybrids with a few heirlooms and open-pollinated varieties, and I don't necessarily want to grow the standard varieties. I like a lot of the open-pollinated and heirloom varieties bred with flavor in mind rather than earliness or uniformity or shelf life. With a lot of my fall plantings, I had seeds left from summer, but for the Wild Garden seed mixes and some of the kale and root crops, I ordered from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Bountiful Gardens. The "Wild Garden" mixes are not actually wild plants, they are just mixes of anything/everything from the breeding program at Wild Garden Farms. A few things I choose are season-specific. For example, for Spinach I choose some varieties that do better in fall and winter than in spring. In spring, we often go from 'too cold' to 'too hot' in about two days and sometimes spinach doesn't get to gtow for very long before the heat sets in, so I choose varieties that make smaller plants that mature faster. With a long, mild autumn I can grow some varieties of spinach that get larger, but which also have later DTMS and would likely be hit too hard by the spring heat. Sometimes it is a very subtle difference but it does matter. Winter Bloomsdale Spinach withstands cold and winter moisture a little differently than Bloomsdale Longstanding, which is why I choose it for fall, for example. Last year I planted a forage mixture for the deer and rabbits since there were so few native plants alive after the long hot summer and the wildlife was so starved, and it included turnips and collards that never froze all winter long, so this year I thought I'd plant more of them for us. It is not a bad wildfire year at my end of the state, and that is what determines how much of a fall garden I have most years. If the fires are bad in late summer and fall, I am too busy to plant a fall garden. Since the fires here haven't been too bad since late July, I have time for a fall garden. I just try to work with whatever the weather and real life allow me to do. Our "normal" wildfire season actually is in the winter months, but not much has been normal the last couple of yeas. Back in June and July when I was canning like a maniac, every day I hoped I could have just "one more day" without fires so I could get a bit more canning done. It used to be the fires only interfered with spring planting time, but lately they are a problem at different points year-round. Last summer, between the drought and the almost-daily wildfires I didn't can anything all summer long. This year, I canned day after day after day. I'm hoping for a quiet autumn, fire-wise, so I can work in the fall garden day after day in the same way. Ezzirah, I think it was wise to choose cool-season stuff. Now, if only the cool weather will arrive and cooperate with us. After suffering through these last two hot summers, I am determined to have a good fall garden. Having to hang out so much inside to avoid the heat all summer long for two summers has driven me crazy, because I'd much rather be in the garden. I've mostly dabbled in fall gardening in the past without getting overly serious about it, and a lot of that has been because of us being busy with fire department stuff in the fall, but there's been some major schedule changes to routine fall VFD fundraisers and community activities, so I ought to have more time free for the fall garden. Yay! I'd be remiss if I didn't add this last part for anyone considering a fall garden. Without a way to protect your plantings from wildlife, you have to share the plantings with them. Because I am surrounded by plentiful wildlife, my big garden has an 8' tall garden fence around it. Without that fence, I wouldn't even attempt a fall and winter garden because the wild animals would get it all. Even now, I have deer that come and nibble anything that I grow on the fence, but I don't mild sharing that little bit with them since they can't reach anything else, and they are hungry too. Dawn

Well, here is a revised version of my grow list. The entire thing is 9 pages long, so I think I'll leave off the flowers for now : ) HERBS: Basils - Red Rubin, Genovese, Lime, Mrs. Burn's Lemon, Sweet Black Cumin Chamomile, German Cilantro, Slow Bolt Dill Feverfew Lemon Balm Marjoram Oregano, Wild Zaatar Parsley, Big Italy Perilla, Moonlit Seas Stevia Summer Savory Tagetes lucida (aka. Mexican Tarragon, also called Sweet Mace) - I've read it can be used for pesto Thai Red Roselle - 2nd attempt, not much luck last year LEAFY SALD STUFF: Amaranth, Red Leaf Arugula Lettuces - Freckles, Nevada, New Red Fire, Mascara, Simpson Elite, and Tom Thumb Orach, Rose BEANS: Haven't got these figured out yet. Probably have over 40 kinds to choose from. CARROTS: Jaune de Doubs, St. Valery, Touchon Long, Lunar White, Tendersnax, Nutri-Red CUCUMBERS: Homemade Pickles, County Fair, North Carolina Heirloom, either Mexican Sour Gherkin or West Indian Gherkin (any recommendations on those?), and still trying to decide on a long slicer, maybe Armenian? GROUND CHERRIES: Aunt Molly's, Giant Cape Gooseberry, and Pineapple MELONS: this is another work in progress, but I'm leaning towards Honey Rock, Sierra Gold, Noir de Carmes, Collective Farm Woman, Rocky Ford Green Flesh, Cream of Sascatchewan, Blacktail Mountain, and maybe Sweet Siberian PEAS: Sugar Ann, Sugar Snap, Super Sugar Snap, Lincoln PEPPERS: I have spent WAY too much time on this list, and I'm still unsure, but here is where I'm at now. (The more I work on narrowing the list, the more things get added!!!) Alma Paprika - this is a definite, love it! Anaheim Beaver Dam Boldog Hungarian Spice (paprika) Botinecka Zuta Cascabella Chervena Chushka Chinese Giant Keystone Giant Feherozon (paprika) Giant Szegedi Gourmet (orange bell) Healthy Lipstick Mariachi Poblano Patio Red Marconi Red Cheese Senorita - one of my favorites last year Soroksari TAM Jalapeno Sweet Pickle and maybe Tollie's Sweet Italian RADISHES: Cherry Belle, Early Scarlet Globe, Easter Egg, French Breakfast SQUASH: Bush Zuchini, Bush Buttercup or maybe Delicata, Gold Nugget, some type of acorn squash, and a pie-type pumpkin ... so now we are down to the really troublesome list ... the tomatoes. Honestly, I only have room in the garden for 8 plants, and can fit a couple in an earthbox, but I may be able to squeeze a couple more in at the community garden. TOMATOES: Reds: Neves Azorean Red Pinks: Giant Belgium Caspian Pink Earl's Faux Lancaster Pink (maybe) Soldacki Rainy's Maltese (trying again) Blacks: Amazon Chocolate Black from Tula Cherokee Chocolate Indian Stripe Orange/Yellows/Bicolors: Hillbilly (maybe) Gold Medal Striped German Cherry: either Chocolate Cherry, Brown Berry, or Black Cherry ... can't seem to decide Paste: Amish Paste Okay, folks, there you have it. The almost complete growlist for 2010! Whew! I need another cup of coffee Bonnie