Wow, that all sounds awesome! It sounds like my garden is about two or three weeks behind yours on most things, which makes sense since I'm north of you.

PEAS: I picked my first handful of snow peas and shell pea pods yesterday. Unfortunately the aphid population has exploded on the pea plants. The ladybugs are there, too, but there seem to be way more aphids than ladybugs. I was hoping for the downpour that never really came this weekend to knock a bunch of them off, but I guess I'll need to hit them with the water hose instead.

LETTUCE: Um, I planted WAY more lettuce than we could ever possibly eat. I have a 2x10 foot patch of black seeded simpson that is growing faster than I can pick it and then about half a 4x8 foot bed of Green Star and Two Star leaf lettuce that I haven't even touched yet. I don't think any of it has bolted yet at least, so I'll have to tell my queasy stomach that salad is a good thing. :p

CARROTS: The early carrots I planted (Danvers I think) are growing well. The biggest one is about 8-10 inches high now. The late carrots I planted have struggled, though (Nantes 'Miami'). They're still only a few inches tall and don't seem to be growing much above ground. That spot tends to dry out easily, though, so maybe that's the problem.

ONIONS: The intermediate day sampler I got from the Dixondale order is doing great! None of them have bolted yet and they've really put on a lot of growth in the past few weeks. I think a few of them might just be starting to bulb. They're still planted a bit too close together for my liking, so I need to eat some more green onions soon.

STRAWBERRIES: I've been picking all the flowers off the june-bearing strawberries ('Jewel') that I planted a few months ago. Even though I have had a chance to fertilize that bed at all, the plants look very healthy and are starting to send out runners.

RASPBERRIES: I planted a mix of 'Heritage' and 'Sunrise' red raspberries and 'Black Hawk' black raspberries in the same bed with the strawberries a few months ago as bare-root, foot-long canes. All the black raspberry plants are doing great, and several of them have begun setting fruit. Only about half the red raspberry canes survived transplanting, though, and they seem to be sending up new primocanes rather than leafing out on the older cane that was planted. I'm not really sure what happened with them. :/

BLUEBERRIES: My one lone 'Berkeley' blueberry bush is nearly ready for picking. I think the berries should start turning in the next week or two. There really isn't much to pick this year compared to last year, however, and I'm guessing the heat and drought have something to do with it.

GREEN BEANS: I planted my bush beans and pole beans on the same day several weeks ago, and other than one or two falling victim to cutworms they're doing well. The pole beans are just now starting to grab onto the trellis and climb. The bush beans are still a long ways from being ready for harvest. I don't even see any pods growing yet. I think I might plant a second round of bush beans in one of the cuke beds this weekend.

CUCUMBERS AND SUMMER SQUASH: I planted both of them about a week ago, so they both only have one or two true leaves at this point. I don't have row cover or hoops to cover them, so I can't stop the bugs from getting to them. I guess I'll just see what happens and try to be diligent about checking the leaves. I'll be planting the butternut squash very soon. It's the last thing I haven't planted yet.

TOMATOES: I transplanted my own seedlings a week or two ago, and the planted the Brandy Boy I got from fling yesterday (THANK YOU!). They're still only about a foot tall at this point, but they've been LOVING the heat and are putting out lots of new growth. One of them is flowering already, but I'm not sure if it's the Beefsteak or the Cherokee Purple. I didn't label any of them, lol.

PEPPERS: I just got my sweet peppers planted yesterday. Not much to report there except that it was a mixed pack of sweet pepper seeds and I have no clue what color or variety they're going to be.

HERBS: The chives have struggled since I transplanted them weeks ago, but it looks like they ones that survived are finally starting to grow again. The peppermint has put out some new growth but it's not really going crazy or anything. I direct sowed basil a week or two ago in the tomato bed, and even though it's up it's still VERY tiny. I'm probably not watering them enough. I tried starting catnip from seed, and that was a massive failure. Only three of the 12 seeds even germinated, and they barely grew at all after they sprouted. I think it was a problem with the potting mix I used. Next year I think I'll just buy a catnip plant and transplant it into the garden.

With my morning (actually all day) sickness I haven't gotten to spend as much time in the garden as I want to, so I'm falling behind on pulling weeds and watering the smaller seedlings. At least I was able to finish installing the drip irrigation system so that I don't need to spend a lot of time moving hoses around.

My cold season crop is doing pretty well. Some of the onions and all or the Elephant garlic are bolting. The thing I am most excited about is the way the Chinese cabbage and broccoli have done. It looks as though they will produce (thanks Dawn and Carol). This is the second time I have tried to grow them from seed, but the first time I have tried these types of seed. I think both are starting to head up. I am also happy about the way the Red sails lettuce looks, but I doubt it will last much longer.

The summer crop is running behind because I could not get the ground ready. I have 29 tomato plants and 32 pepper plants, two plants of each have fruit on them. I have two cantaloupe plants that are blooming but no fruit set. My Early Sunglow corn is up and growing, but is a little disapointing.

I will try to post a picture of the "Blues" chinese cabbage, I think it is starting to head, if it is bolting I will start eating it now.

I will show a picture of my two largest tomato plants. (these are not the ones with tomatoes on them) These are Parks whopper, the soil was treated heavily with compost and potting soil because this is a Rootknot nematode infested area. I will have to wait till later in the year to see how much the organic matter helped.

Larry

I don't think I will show pictures of mine because after seeing Larry's mine is not impressive. Beautiful Larry.

CUTWORMS ARE EATING EVERYTHING. That pretty much sums it up. I'll break it down anyway, though.

POTATOES: My potatoes were looking so good. They've already bloomed and they're about four feet tall. The cutworms must have also thought they looked really good because this is where they started. It went from a few holes in leaves to no leaves almost overnight. I spent about an hour a few nights ago handpicking and ended up with over 150 in a 4x8' bed. I can't find anything locally except Sevin and I finally gave in and bought it. I'm not going to use it on anything else, but the potatoes weren't going to make it a few more days.

TOMATOES: They haven't grown a whole lot since I planted them, but they've finally started to pick up. They're blooming and I've got a few little tomatoes. A few plants have cutworm damage, but most have no damage at all.

PEPPERS: Also slow growing, but they've also picked up the pace. They're all blooming and I've got a couple little peppers. No cutworm damage at all, but this bed is full of ants.

GREEN BEANS: Pole beans have started climbing, and I've got bush beans started inside that are ready to be planted out. I need to do it soon.

CARROTS: These are looking really good. I hope they taste as good as they look, but with as hot as it's been...probably not.

BLUEBERRIES: This is the first year with actual blueberries, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I think they look good. There are tons of blueberries, so I'm excited.

BACKYARD: I need to mow, but maybe I won't have to because the cutworms are eating my grass. If I go crazy, it's the cutworms.

OTHER: I have seeds started for cantaloupe, cucumbers, okra, bush beans and maybe something else that I can't remember. I need to put them out, but I don't really want them to get eaten, so I think I'll delay until I can get the cutworm problem under control. I've ordered some Bt, so hopefully it won't take long.

Leslie

Larry, your veggies put my flowers to shame!!! They are beautiful.

My veggies are not in the ground yet, but the flowers are doing beautifully! And there are more butterflies than I can count!

Lisa

Mulberries, it is all about mulberries right now. LOL

and clearing out bermuda grass.

I dug up a bunch of BG yesterday, even though it was kinda wet. I am taking today off, cept for the mulberries. I already had a nice snack of them.

Today, I am doing laundry instead.

:)

Moni

LOL you alls' garden sound lovely! My little porch bucket garden isn't doing a whole lot other than trying to recover from some stressors.

Tomatoes- Cherry is producing nicely. The patio toms are about a foot and half tall and starting to flower a bit, but mostly still growing. My poor Romas from seed are still wittle bitty, but growing none the less.

Broccoli- Packman bolted a while ago, but have a few that haven't yet. Next time will try heat tolerant variety.

Squash- Both Zuchinni and Crook neck are doing a bit better, though still recovering. They are small, but have several flowers a piece, not sure if that is good or not since they are small. I'm thinking about planting seeds of some more in case these don't make it.

Lettuce- Never has grown much at all....staying small... And now it is being got by pests. Going to apply Neem oil to plants soon though.

Strawberries- Have been putting off berries for a while, but slowed down the last week or so. Got a few big ones coming on now! I never knew how sweet they were until I started growing them :)

Basil- Had a few pests, but doing great now.

Flowers- Roses are putting off tons of flowers. Petunias are doing great....Pansies are dieing.

Not the best results, but a lot of that is due to chemicals being sprayed near them (not by me). And also the poor soil in containers situation. Other than that things are doing good. The things in the new soil seems much happier.

I ate my first Early Girl tomato this evening...

That's about it.

Wow after looking at comments and the pics I believe my garden sucks!! It got washed away once so I have started a raised bed using cinder blocks. I have mint and rosemary that look good. My lettuces in my cold frame with garlic look great but my spinach looks bad. I have giant southern curled mustard growing crazy but man that stuff is hot (not sure what to do with it). Cutworms had a feast on my new sunflower sprouts and my on my dixon dale onions. I planted trees that look great but my shade tree leaves are turning black and fried looking as well as my bell peppers that have 3 bells growing. The peas are looking great so I built some tripods for them to climb but it made my garden look like a indian reservation haha. I believe I am not a strawberry grower as I am on my 6th and 7th plants. I have a lot to learn I guess (only my 2nd season to try to grow)

tigerdawn - I should have known you'd be right there with the other Dawn getting the first tomatoes. You go!

My report is not all that and a bag of chips. My Dixondale onions that survived a few frost are okay. If I'd get the durned crabgrass out of there, they'll do better.

FRUITS: - Blueberries have lots of bitty berries on the 6 plants. Wild plums are LOADED! Each branch is loaded with Peanut M&M size green fruit. Some branches are laying over from the weight. Strawberries pretty much died out after 2 bad winters and then the drought. Blackberries & dewberries look promising.

Thanks to the generosity of my garden buddies, I planted/caged 24 tomatoes and 29 peppers this weekend!

My Packman broc is doing well. I've got 5 heads forming and evidence of more on my 10 plants. The cauliflower isn't far behind. The radishes are doing glorious as is the Swiss Chard. The carrots and parsnips look really good too. I need to thin them.

My plans for the rest of the garden have been really scaled back. Hope to plant some okra and sweet potatoes before the end of May....but that's going to be it for me this year. Is it bad/sad that I'm already thinking "next year"?

Paula

Wow! Everybody's garden sounds like it is doing super terrific! I still have so much planting to do, and some will have to wait until the end of the month when I can purchase more soil.

TOMATOS:

I have greenies on pretty much everything. Juliet is turning out to be a monster of a plant, but it is a beautiful tomato plant - I would consider it pretty ornamental aesthetically speaking. Lots of tomatos coming on. Cherokee Purple has a megabloom, which I have read is not unusual for this plant. I have been trying to pollinate it so I will get a huge, ugly tomato, lol! Bush Goliath has large green tomatos just waiting to blush. Chocolate Cherry, Better Boy, Big Beef, Black Cherry, SunSugar, all have tons of fl, flowers and little green maters, too.

I still have seedlings coming along - well, they're bigger than seedlings, that I will plant a big later - maybe for fall harvest.

PEPPERS:

Doing very well in their new containers. Early Jalapeno, Mucho Nacho and Jalapeno producing fruit, and the bells - green and orange, flowering now.

LETTUCE:

Red sails is sailing thru the heat. I need to harvest.

CUKES AND SQUASH:

I need to put in large containers. Squash, Spineless Beauty Zucchini, Yellow Straightneck, Balmoral Scallop, all need to be potted into their big containers, all getting ready to flower. They are huge for their styrofoam cups. Cukes Spacemaster 80 and Homemade Pickles the same.

GREEN BEANS:

Not planted yet. Well, I planted a couple vines in cups, but need to get inoculant for remaining seeds of Rattlesnake, Louisiana Purple Podded, Dragon Tongue, Romano, Blue Lake.

OKRA:

Little Lucy is up and growing, I need to plant Lee.

STILL TO BE PLANTED:

Watermelon - Yellow Doll
Canteloupe - Minnesota Midget
Pumpkin - Windsor

HERBS:

'Provence' Lavender blooming
Spanish Lavender, Madrid Pink, blooming like crazy
Oregano - probably close to blooming
Fennel - bronze and green - large and lush
Mountain Mint - gorgeous as always
Garlic Chives - nice clumps

FLOWERS:

Blooming:

Coreopsis 'Jethro Tull'
Lantana 'Texas Red'
Verbena bonariensis
Asclepias speciosa
Salvia 'Hot Lips'
Salvia 'Cherry Queen'
Mullein
Dianthus
Gaillardia suavis
Aristolochia macrophylla (pipevine)
Hydrangea
Acanthus mollis
Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Susan

I didn't plant anything this year, but I have some things growing that we are enjoying despite complete neglect(herbs and berries).

I have sage, oregano, chives, parsley, cilantro, and thyme growing.

My strawberries are going CRAZY and are producing enough for four children (mine and the neighbors) to eat their fill every single day. With some left over for the birds and the pill bugs, lol.

I have had two raspberries ;).

My blackberry bushes are LOADED, I mean loaded!!! I have 20 or so bushes, and I expect to have thousands of blackberries in the next few weeks. I can't wait!

My grape vines are also loaded with teeny tiny clusters of grapes. I need to pick up some Daconil and start spraying before anthracnose wipes them out again.

All of my little fruit trees survived last year with the exception of three apple trees. So one of these days I will have figs, plums, asian pears, nectarines...The trees are still small, and I have no idea how long it will take them to become established enough to start producing, but I am excited.

Jo

Actually, I was thinking of installing a rock border and dumping some gold fish in my garden. I hear water lilies are very pretty. Toads are happy.

bon

I have mostly rain happening in mine also. We got 1.04 inches Sunday night, and .95 last night. The rain is good, but last night it came behind extreme wind, lightening, and thunder. The weather was just a little too active in NE Oklahoma last night. Some areas along the Kansas line had around a foot of rain in about a 30 hour period, according to TV6. I know my son got 4-1/2 inches Sunday night.

I haven't been outside yet, but I can see that my potato plants are really laying over. The beans and peas seem to be loving it though. I'm almost afraid to go check the tomato plants because the wind was really hard.

Except for the hostas, my Fling plants are still not planted, but they have been well watered. LOL Everything here is green, green, green.

Dawn, have you checked your pecan tree to see if it has the female flowers at the end of all the shoots?

I was near Davis last weekend and all the ones I saw in the area had almost 100% of shoots with female flowers, which indicates a huge crop if weather cooperates.

Leslie, I hope the Bt you ordered arrives soon. I looked for it in about 12 or 15 stores before I found it. Both it and Sevin (not that I'd spray Sevin and kill my beneficials) were sold out for pretty much all of April. This week I saw both of them on a store shelf for the first time since the cutworms hit. After I sprayed with the Bt, the damage stopped almost immediately in every area I sprayed, but the damage continued wherever I didn't spray.

If you go crazy because of the cutworms, you won't go alone. I'll be right there in the Land of Crazy (located right next to the Land of Oz) with you.

Tigerdawn, Ooohh! What a yummy day you had! We've now harvested 2 Early Girl tomatoes and have 4 or 5 that will be ready to pick probably tomorrow. After they all stayed green for so long, now they're turning color rapidly.

lizgyrl, Please don't compare your garden to anyone else's and find yours lacking by comparison. We all garden in different soils, with varying amounts of rainfall, wind, hail, pests, etc. and we all get different results. A lot of us who are harvesting already are in zone 7 and we planted early because of the warm winter.

Also, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, a new gardener often will not get the same results as very experienced gardeners. That's just the reality of gardening. There is a learning curve, and as you gain more experience, your results will improve. All of us were first-time gardeners once upon a time too, and we've been in your shoes. Just stick with it and learn all you can as you go along, and your results will improve every year. Remember, too, to enjoy the journey. Even if my garden produced poorlh every year, I'd keep planting it anyway because I love the process of sowing and growing a garden. The harvest is just the icing on the cake.

Paula, I'm so excited you got all that planting done. You've had a busy and eventful year and I am amazed you've found time to garden at all. It is not bad/sad that you're already thinking ahead to next year. It is human. Don't forget you get a second chance for many cool-season crops in the fall.

Jo, I am glad you have something growing. I could not imagine you without some sort of garden plants to tend. Hooray for the great berry year y'all are having!

Your little fruit trees will get big and produce quickly. If they were planted from something like 3-gallon or 5-gallon containers, you often get a decent harvest their 2nd year, or definitely their 3rd from most stone fruits. I don't know how long apples and pears take. Fig trees can produce their first or second year. Mine produced figs last year while still in their 1-gallon pots. (It was so hot I was afraid to transplant them into our dry ground.) I potted them up into 20-gallon containers where they remained in a location all summer that gave them 3 hours of morning sun and then shade for the rest of the day. I potted them up to 20-gallon containers last fall and they are now 5' tall and covered with figs. I hope to put them in the ground any time now. I just haven't had time to put them in the ground. Right now they are getting 6-8 hours of sun a day and growing rapidly. I would have been happy if all they'd done was survive last year, so having fruit this year is a happy bonus.

With all the stone fruits, your harvest in any given year will be heavily dependent on when the last frost occurs. Often they bloom too early and a 'late' frost knocks the blooms or young fruit off the trees.

Bon, If you are on the outskirts of town where there's lots of wildlife, think long and hard about water lilies. We have a water lily garden right beside the screened-in porch. We've had it there for 12 years now and I love my water lilies. However, the last three years we've had huge issues with cottonmouth snakes getting in it and eating our frogs. It has been horrendous. For many years, the cottonmouths stayed in the big ponds and creeks far from the house, but in recent years with all the recurring droughts drying up the big ponds and creeks, our lily pond became the place the cottonmouths move to as the ponds and creeks dried up. We have a little pathway that runs alongside the pond as we walk from the house to the detached garage, and when there are cottonmouths in that pond, I hate walking on that path. If I had it all to do over again, I never would have put the lily pond in the yard and am thinking seriously about taking it out.

Carol, Rain is a good thing. We just had the driest April (less than an inch of rain) we've had since moving here in 1999, and it is stunning how quickly the muddy ground has dried up and started cracking, the ponds are drying up, and the pastures are browning. (It is great for all the ranchers who were able to get a great first cutting of hay in April though.)

We were green, green, green a month ago like y'all are now. How quickly it changes. I guess "my" foot of rain fell elsewhere this weekend, sparing us a repeat of 2009.

Scott, Yes, our trees are very heavily loaded. It is amazing. But, about that whole idea that the weather might cooperate....you're kidding, right? You know the weather will work against us in every way that it can. (grin)

If the trees somehow manage to mature the load of nuts we're likely to have, it will be because they somehow outsmarted the weather!

Dawn

Carol and Lisa, thanks for the compliment on the vegges.

I have been a little out of pocket, the storm that came through Monday morning knocked out phone and internet, but we did get 1.2" of much needed rain.

Larry

Picture can tell thousand words! Here is pictorial update of my garden (pics taken today May 1, 7am)...please see photos from 127 to 152. you can also go back to see previous photos.

Dawn, Thanks for heads up on this thread, I wanted to ask about your garden during the spring fling, somehow i could not get chance. was expecting your update us soon and you did it:-) Your updates are like a kind of standard measuring stick to see where our gardening is standing. If it reached at least 50% mark of your stick, I feel I am doing great. Larry, your garden looks beautiful.

Dawn, -Chandra

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Update May 1: Photos from127 to 152

Chandra, thanks, your pictures are beautiful, you seem to do every thing perfectly.

Dawn, thanks to you for the update.

This forum is so wonderful, I have only met two people from this forum, but I feel like I know you all. I love seeing other gardens and getting other ideas.

Larry

WOW!!! Larry's photos are making me soooo jealous!!

Onions and carrots seem to be growing well. I thinned the carrots a bit yesterday.

Peas and wax beans seem to be stunted. They are growing, but oh so slowly.

Watermelon is growing and looks adorable.

Canteloup seems to have had a growth spurt this week. YAY!

Cucumbers are growing.
Bell Peppers Growing and one plant seems to have something eating the leaves. Just the one plant and I have not caught it in action in the early morning or in the evening... Two of the pepper plants have flowers.

Banana Peppers Growing, nothing too exciting though

Tomatoes: Grape tomato plant seems to be stunted. I do not think it has grown in the last week. The others are flowering like crazy, but I do not see tomatoes yet.

Basil, lettuce leaf basil, thyme, oregano, lavender and mint all seem to be very happy and I am clipping away to use in recipes.

Lettuces are indoors in a south window and seemed to have survived a week of neglect. I will be cutting from those tomorrow for salads again.

I will not insult myself by posting photos. But I will keep following your tips and tricks!! :)

Brenda

Chandra, Your garden looks splendid.

Larry, Updates are fun. I love hearing about what is going on in each person's yard and garden. Maybe we should do a weekly "update" thread, starting a new one each Monday after everyone's spent a lot of their weekend in the yard or garden and, thus, has a lot to report.

Here's the latest after I spent most of today in the garden:

Hot, hot, hot: Our forecast was for 84, I think, and we went to 90. It was windy and humid and the plants became progressively less happy as the day went on, as did I.

Snakes! It was an awful snake day. I've already seen more snakes this year than I saw in all of last year, so I expect it is going to be a bad snake year. The good news is I'm mostly seeing non-venomous ones so far. I had a Rough Green Tree Snake (to the extent that I like snakes at all---I tend to hate them---this is the snake I like as I think it is pretty and seems non-threatening) wrapped around a tomato cage I picked up. I did gently place the cage back on the ground so the snake could slither off of it, which it did. Then, a minute later, I found a shed snakeskin on the adjacent tomato cage, so maybe that's why the snake was there. I told Tim and he took me and showed me a very large snake skin on the fence that surrounds the chicken run attached to the big chicken coop. It was a really big snake skin and likely came from a rat snake or chicken snake because of its size, and the fact it was near the chicken coop. I've seen 6 or 7 snakes in the last couple of weeks.

GRASSHOPPERS: I saw a new hatch of teeny-tiny hoppers in the garden today. The ones I saw were about 1/4" long. So far, there are not a lot of them.

LADYBUGS: There's oodles of these around right now, though I'm seeing more of them outside the garden than inside it. I'm still not seeing a whole lot of black or red wasps, yellow jackets or bumble bees. That is sort of odd.

TRUMPET CREEPER: Orange-flowered trumpet creeper began blooming today. This is a favorite plant of the hummingbirds so they'll be happy about this.

GREEN BEANS: The Tanya's Pink Pod beans are the first snap beans to be harvested, and they beat Speedy, which isn't the Speediest, I guess. They went from teeny-tiny beans you barely could see to full-size and ready to harvest in just a few days.

BROCCOLI: This is maturing like mad, probably because it is so warm. I'm cutting main heads and waiting to see how the side shoots do. Last year, Piricicaba lasted all summer long but I had it in morning sun/afternoon shade. This year, it all is in full sun. I hope that wasn't a mistake.

LETTUCE: Having reached the 90s a lot lately, the lettuce is making its final stand. We have 5 or 6 heads left in the cattle trough garden and 1 in the main garden. I expect all will bolt by the end of the week. Since we're running 4 to 7 degrees higher than forecast almost every day, I'm worried about what our high temp will be on the days later this week when it is forecast to hit 90. If it hits the mid- to upper-90s, the lettuce will be done.

TOMATO PLANTS: Our oldest tomato plants are in that rapid growth stage where they grow about an inch a day. It happens every year, but usually it is closer to mid-May or late-May when it happens. It is happening early since the temps got hotter earlier.

WILDFLOWERS: These are going nuts. Everything is earlier than normal. We've have Indian Blanket blooming a couple of weeks already, and it usually is a May wildflower here.

CACTI: The Prickly Pear cacti on our property are in bloom. That always makes me feel like it is summertime, even though they bloom in spring.

CHIGGERS: Somehow, somewhere, Tim and I both got into chiggers today. We weren't working in the same areas most of the time, so I am not sure how it happened. I wasn't even in any tall grass, but he was mowing in tall grass. Either way....be aware.....they are here now.

Dawn

OOOPS! I knew I was forgetting something!! I am growing potatoes in bags this year and they needed a lot more dirt this morning! They are growing like crazy!!

Corn, I have to say, is doing well, as are the sunflowers and other tall flowers I have planted, but I am sorry I wasted the garden space on corn. Next year I will do better.

Soooo thankful it rained a couple of times this week. We were in ICU for several days as my husband had a major heart attack, so I couldn't get home to water. Now to get the garden to produce so that we can have lovely fresh vegs for him. :)

Haven't had time for photos tonight, had to go get Grandma's dinner together tonight as my Dad is out of town this week.

TOMATOES: Got my fling plants put in tonight, bringing my total to 21 or 22. Eep! Original plants are Early Girl, Yellow Pear, Sweet Cherry (2), Husky Cherry Red, Chocolate Cherry, Lemon Boy and Roma (4). Fling plants include Cherokee Purple, Tess, Indigo Rose, Yellow Submarine, Black Cherry, Matt's Wild Cherry, Medovaya Kaplya, some kind of White Cherry, a Beef something (Beefeater?) and one other I cannot think of right now. Need to finish my plant tags and write down the ones I've garbled and forgotten.

Of the original group, many have green fruit and are about 3 ft tall. others are about a foot but really bushy (the romas) with loads of flowers. These were from a tiny four pack so I would guess they are behind. I've got everything caged, and need to go out every few days and train the limbs to keep them in the cage growing up. If you neglect even a little bit, they get too rigid and I can't get them threaded in neatly. Two of the new tomatoes got planted into the onions, presumably I will harvest them before the 'maters get too big.

PEPPERS: Planted my eight fling plants, and added them to my original five. Feeling good about peppers! Some are already sporting teeny peppers, and others have flowers.

ONIONS: Some of the white ones are bulbing up now. Are they supposed to almost be out of the dirt? Feel like I need to pile some more dirt on, but am withholding.

GARLIC: Last year's fling garlic (transplanted from old house) looks great, going gangbusters. I found some neglected elephant garlic in the mess of honeysuckle and blackberries left by our seller, so am trying to figure that whole thing out. I saw the giant scapes and it led me to them. Huge!

HERBS: need to start from scratch except the new rosemary I planted. Have seeds for basil, thyme, etc.

VINES: like cuke, zukes, cantaloupe, etc. plan to seed these in the onion bed so they can start growing before I harvest onions.

FRUIT TREES: Woefully unthinned. They will have to fend for themselves this year.

Dawn;
I was trying to be funny and make light of the flooding. However, that's very good to know as I surely did think of having a watering hole but I do not need those types of snakes around my babies! and I'm suddenly thinking carefully of what type of watering hole I provide for the birds and butterflies. Raised platform bird feeders make sense now! I just took some pot bottoms and scattered them throughout the yard atop some stumps, rocks, etc. I guess I'll move the one from the rocks!

bon

Mia, This is from the Dixondale website.

Sometimes, it can be hard to tell when an onion is bulbing, since the bulb itself may not be entirely visible. Your biggest clue is that the ground will start cracking at the base of the plant, as the expanding bulb pushes dirt out of its way.
"If you've planted the onion too deep, you may not be able to tell when this starts to happen, and you'll end up with smaller bulbs because the soil will restrict their expansion. Therefore, we recommend you plant the onion no more than one-half inch to one inch deep. About two-thirds of the onion bulb should be above the surface as it matures. Sunscald shouldn't be a concern if the plants aren't planted too far apart, because the foliage should shade the bulbs"

Brenda, I'm sorry to hear about your husband, I hope he is better soon.

I dont like wasting space on corn either, but DW like to have some each year. I seem to be on pins and needles when I am growing corn because everything wants to eat it.

Dawn, I planted 4 kinds of regular sweet potatoes ( over 50 slips) and 4 or 5 kinds of ornamental sweet potated (over 20 slips). I have more slips in the house of regular and ornamental but dont want to use up any more space. I will give the extra slips away.

I hauled 7 or 8 cu, yds. of shredded leaves to mulch the garden.

I have seen a few snakes but only killed one of them, I didn't know what kind it was.

The garden is looking good but I have not spent as much time out there as I had hoped.

Larry

Larry, your garden looks beautiful and it makes me very very hungry. The brassies are my favorites foods. I'm looking forward to beginning the fall garden where I'm certain I'll get SOMETHING to grow. My broccoli sprang back from the recent cool-down but so I fertilized them but now they're swimming in water.

I'm seriously just thinking of minimizing my garden and raising what little good soil I have up 3 foot off the ground and not bother with anything garden until it's all raised up with good soil. Yes. I really think this would be better.

bon

Brenda, I am sorry to hear about your husband's heart attack and hope he will make a full recovery. You certainly have had a lot of stress the last few days.

I love sweet corn and devote a lot of space to it, but I have a pretty large garden. I didn't grow it when I lived in town and had a smaller garden. This year I have four kinds and wish I had space for more.

Mia, You're so sweet to take care of your grandmother while your dad is out of town. Yes, onions do pop up out of the ground as they bulb up. It is normal, is expected, and is not an issue as long as your onions have plentiful foliage to shade the bulbs enough to keep them from getting sunburned. If something happens to your onion foliage that reduces it significantly, then you might have to mulch the bulbs to keep them from sunburning. The onions will grow better if you leave them alone and let the bulb pop up out of the ground than if you cover them up, especially if it is wet (because if it is very wet, rot can set in).

I bought some elephant garlic at the store the other day, and the size of the bulb freaked out the cashier. It was funny.

Bon, lol. I thought you seriously were going to build a pond. I had three lily ponds in our backyard in Fort Worth, but it was an old, established neighborhood and we didn't see snakes very often, except for an occasional garter snake. Here, we're in snake central and a lily pond was a bad idea.

Carol, I know that is what Dixondale says, but I freak out if more than half of any bulb is above ground. I am just so sure it will sunscald (not that it ever actually has).

Larry, That's a lot of sweet potatoes. I've been sweet potato-challenged the last couple of years. I've planted new fruit trees in the only area we have with sandy soil where I should grow sweet potatoes. Then I went and planted tomatoes, bush beans and herbs in the area where I used to put sweet potatoes until the last couple of years. I could plant them in some of the scant unplanted space in the garden, but it is pretty tough clay that is not in raised beds. Since no rain is falling, that soil is as hard as a rock and I cannot imagine sweet potatoes would grow well in it. I'm sure I'll find a way to squeeze some in somewhere, but I just haven't figured out where yet. The whole situation is complicated by a vole who is tunneling around at the sandy end of the garden eating a plant here and there. He'd be having a real field day with sweet potatoes if I had them in the usual place.

Bon, Three feet is pretty high. Most of my raised beds are 4-6" above grade level. If you raise them too high, they drain too well (sigh), and you will spend a small fortune watering them all summer long.

I do have one raised bed that is 16" above grade level and I grow potatoes in it. It does require a lot of water but it is worth it to me because it is a thousand times easier to dig the potatoes from a tallish raised bed with excellent soil than to dig them from the dry, baked, improved native clay soil in summer.

If the trend towards hot and dry weather continues, I don't know if I'll even put a succession crop in the potato bed after the potatoes are dug in early- to mid-summer because I think it would be hard to keep it as moist as it would need to be. I might just sow a cover crop like buckwheat into that bed.

Dawn

What has survived the thieves, the birds and the heat is doing fine. I am picking broccoli this week, and peas need to be harvested! This year I have a ton of them and I am so happy! (thanks to everyone on this board!) I also actually have carrots that are coming up well! My onions are doing good and what is left of the herbs is doing well. The tomatoes are really growing as well! For that I am very happy!

Not bad, really...

Ezzi, It sounds great. So I guess that means the thievery stopped? That is good news.

Dawn

I'm late to this thread, but just haven't had time to post.

My garden isn't as hot as Dawn's but it is too hot. The lettuce is getting taller. I planted too much as usual and some plants have never been picked. But we like wilted lettuce so will use a lot that way. I have lots of radishs and onions to go with it.

The SSS peas are just beginning to bear although none have made it into the house yet and the broccoli will be ready a lot earlier this year than most--in about a week tops. Should have the first Wakefield cabbage shortly after. The beets in the greenhouse are finally bulbing up. Well I've been picking in there for a month. I left them too thick and have been picking and watering to give them all a chance. The beets in the garden are starting to bulb up. I will pick baby beets to thin and leave the others to get bigger.

I didn't get a good stand of spinach outside, but we've been eating spinach since last Oct so it's ok. The few outside are going into salad instead of into the freezer. With the greenhouse don't need to freeze spinach in the spring anyway.

I saw blooms on the yellow straightneck so we'll be eating squash soon. Something ate off part of the cucs so had to replant. Only one plant of the Armenian was left and of course that is my favorite.

The bush beans are starting to bloom and the pole beans are climbing.

The 6 tomatoes I started in Jan are loaded with fruit and some of what I started in Feb has small fruit too. A lot of others are just now starting to bloom. Tomatillos are also starting to bloom. A few of the peppers are starting to bloom. I'm concerned that I planted them too soon. They survived a near frost. (At the low end of the garden a few pole beans did get nipped.)

The okra broke ground today.

The sweet potatoes I planted are looking good, never even wilted

We've quit picking asparagus much earlier than normal because we started picking in mid March instead of early to mid April

We've mulched everything in the garden except the late corn and that will get done tomorrow.

The annual herb bed has a good stand of herbs--cilantro, dill, arugula, fennel, basil, parsley--but it needs weeding badly. The perrenial herb bed is doing fine. Even the very large sage plants we moved into it settled in and bloomed. And the thyme and rosemary is doing well too. The oregano pot that overwintered in the greenhouse has already had it's first haircut and been dried.

I'm wondering why my old, big inground fig bush that did not freeze back at all this year hasn't put on a single fig. It's not fair; Dawn has figs.

Dh spent two days thinning peachs. Now if we can keep the Japanese beetles and brown rot off them maybe we'll get some.

The plum tree put on a few plums but they've disappeared. The Montmorency cherry doesn't have nearly as many cherries as last year, but there are some. The AR Blacktwig apple has apples for the first time as does the Winesap. The Fuji and Yellow Delicious have good crops for young trees. And I think we are finally going to get pecans.

I planted a new bed of Earlyglow strawberries and didn't let them bloom. They are putting out runners. We have had a few fresh strawberries from what is left of last years berry plants. There are a few blueberries on the bushes but they were hard hit by last year's heat.

And that's my garden. Thanks to my dogs the rabbits haven't done as much damage this year. I got a young Border Collie mix and he keeps both the rabbits and the deer run away. Hope that lasts. The older dog has killed several rabbits too; he robs the nests and so far has killed at least 7.

Dorothy,

I'm sorry you don't have figs. I believe most fig varieties need a moderate amount of chilling hours below 50 degrees to set fruit---maybe 150-200 hours or so? If your area didn't have enough cold weather, maybe that explains the lack of fruit set. Otherwise, I think it would take a massive overdose of nitrogen keeping a fig tree growing vegatatively to prevent fruitset, and I cannot imagine you'd ever give excess nitro to a fig, so that takes us back to the weather.

I'm glad to hear the dogs are doing a good job with rabbit control. We have a mama cat who apparently performs that function for us. She kills them and she and her kittens eat them, and then she brings the head and puts it on the welcome mat by the front door. I guess that's her way of bragging and showing us she can feed her children herself if she has to. The entire family showed up, feral and as wild as could be, last year in the heat. The kittens were a couple of weeks old. Mama and 3 babies are now tame enough that if you open up the front door at twilight, they run inside and up the stairs to the guest room to sleep, and then go back out in the morning. Just don't try to pick up one of the kittens, although mama likes to be held and petted. One female kitten refuses to come inside. She sleeps on the porch swing. All of them hunt rabbits, moles, voles and gophers in the early morning and evening hours. Without cats and dogs, we'd be so overrun with pesky varmints that it wouldn't even be possible to garden.

Dawn

We're north of you so I'm sure our figs got as cold as yours. In fact two young ones planted last fall (from suckers of my old one) froze to the ground. If there is a problem with fertilizing it may be not enough nitrogen. DH weeded it well last fall and put a heavy layer of chips around the plant. So maybe that's the problem. Usually if the canes don't freeze to the ground they put on figs at the same time they leaf out. Not this year. Lots of leaves, no figs. No more compost either so it will have to get commercial.

Dorothy, Could the figs have just barely started to form after the trees leafed out and then a frost got them? I just cannot imagine they wouldn't set figs. Even when the trees freeze to the ground, if they regrow from the roots they can have fruit that same year. I find this whole fig thing puzzling. Mine originally formed a few fruit at the tips of the branches. That was maybe 6 or 8 weeks ago. Now, new growth is putting out figs, which isn't "supposed to happen" when you have fig trees in pots. Another garden rule that tells us how things are supposed to occur just bit the dust, I guess.

Also, I keep forgetting to mention this but the sweet corn is silking. It looks like we'll be harvesting the early corn pretty early. Maybe as much as a week earlier than most years. Of course, that's assuming a hail storm or something doesn't get them. You never can count your chickens before they hatch here in OK.

I may have planted the mid-season and late-season corn too close together both by distance and silking time. I kinda overplanted tomatoes which resulted in the corn space being partially filled up with squash because the tomatoes are in their "spot". I don't know why I plan things on paper because once planting time rolls around, I just put tomatoes everywhere and then everything else gets scrunched together in whatever space remains.

An acquaintance of ours stopped by yesterday while I was working in the main garden out front, and he commented on how lovely the tomato plants were. Well, you know how that goes....I had to say something like "Aw shucks, it is just because I planted early...." and then I reached over and pulled a handful of cherry tomatoes off the Terenzo plant and we ate them. For a second there (especially considering it was in the mid-90s and the heat index was over 100) it felt like summertime, and it was a great feeling. Anytime that I can share a tomato from the garden with a friend, I feel "rich" in the things that count.

Dawn

We did a big garden expansion this year so I'm trying a lot of new crops. We have six raised beds and 20 short in ground mounded,mulched rows. Plus a cattle panel, scarlet runner playhouse for my toddler, and several cattle panel arches.

NEWBIES:
HARDY KIWI: We planted a male and female in March. They are still small but they are bushing out nicely. I'll start training them up the fence soon.
ASPARAGUS: All of the root stocks have nice big ferns now!
APPLE, Native and Hybrid PLUMS are all leafing out and looking nice.

TOMATOES: The tomatoes went in Mar.1 and are really taking off now. I've got fruit set on the cherries (yellow, red, and orange), and flowers on everything else. The heat waves are WAY behind in growth but they are growing fast now that the temps are warming up.

STRAWBERRIES: I've been getting a great harvest from my ever-bearing variety. Although I've only eaten a few of these my daughter makes a bee line for that bed as soon as we go outside :)

GRAPES: I've got a nice harvest forming on the grapes for the first time in years. I've been diligent with the Neem oil and I think that's made a big difference. I've also finally got them re-trained into a good formation which I've been working on for the last three years or so.

APPLES: The trees that have not been killed by fire blight are loaded.

PEACH: This tree gives me fits! It had lots of blooms, and a decent fruit set. I read on this forum that thinning it is helpful so I went out to check on it and the fruit was already sparse. At this point I've got maybe half a doz. fruits on it and I doubt they will mature. The tree is healthy and at least 5 years old. I'm stumped on this one.

GREENS: I chose heat tolerant lettuce varieties like Jerico and they are doing great. I've already done a whole sale harvest on the arugula. The kale that I direct sowed in February is getting big, we are all looking forward to kale chips.

CARROTS,BUSH BEANS,ZUCC.,CUKES,SWEET CORN,ONIONS,SOY BEANS,ZINNIA,PEPPERS,HERBS, are all doing well they are big and green, but no flowers yet.

The EGG PLANT and WATERMELON were hit hard by cutworms but they still have new growth so I'm hopeful that they will produce well, they just might not be as early as I had hoped.

We are hosting a wedding this fall so I am waiting to plant the pumpkins, fall squash, and some potted sunflowers until June so that they will be ripe at the end of Sept. for the wedding. (I admit I'm a little nervous about timing, and am hoping that the garden won't be totally brown by then.)

A little off topic, but I just finished a pallet table for the garden too!

Grn_Grl- Amanda

Dawn, to give you an idea of how far ahead your garden is, yesterday a neighbor and her daughter stood in my garden and the only thing I shared was snow peas. LOL The six year old loved them, and her mother said, "Yum, next year I am planting these." I told her to come back and taste the Sugar Snaps before she decided.

I am not disappointed in my garden though, because most things are doing just fine. My early crops have had a lot of insect damage, and I have had to replace a few tomatoes. One was broken off at the ground, and two had little but stems remaining. One of my container tomatoes had leaves striped off a couple of times but it has recovered. I thought it was pretty funny because nothing else was touched except "Pork Chop". I thought maybe I had a carnivore bug.

Amanda, It sounds like so much of what you're growing is doing very well.

The peach tree? Do you remember which variety it is? And, after it bloomed did you get a lot of fruit setting at that time, but now there's only a handful of them left? Or, was it just that out of all the flowers that bloomed, only six set fruit to begin with? There's got to be some reason a five year old peach tree is producing so poorly. Usually it is because a late freeze knocks off the blooms or fruit, but it sounds like you had good blooms and then good fruit and now few fruit?

Carol, As far south as I am, and as early as I planted, I'd better be ahead! Planting early to beat the heat is my only hope of getting the kind of harvest that makes me happy--which is to say a harvest that allows us to eat all we want fresh, preserve tons for the future, and have plenty to give away as well. Even in a bad year, though, we usually have plenty to eat fresh, so I surely cannot complain.

I have seen two armyworms crawling in the driveway. Of course I stepped on them. After the battle with the climbing cutworms, I am not in the mood to do battle with armyworms. I've been in and out of the garden all day, coming in periodically to cool off, and there's remarkably few pests out there (knock on wood) but a veritable army of parasitic wasps and lady bugs. The change from about a month ago to now in terms of pests is amazing, and I am glad the carnivores are feasting on the herbivores.

Every year there seems to be some variety of tomato in my garden that pests hit repeatedly. I guess in your garden this year it is Pork Chop. In my garden it is Dora and Merced.

A small storm was moving past our county for a little while. It got darkish to our west and I heard thunder for about 20 minutes, but I guess it has passed on now. Of course, not a drop fell here, but maybe far western Love County got some rain out of it.

What is not happening in my garden is rain, so I took a trowel and dug down into several raised beds to see how far down I had to go before I hit moist soil. I had to go about 6 inches. We need rain, and hopefully we'll get it, but without that pesky hail that seems to accompany it so often.

Dawn

My Bt should be here today finally, so no more going out in the middle of the night to pick cutworms off of my plants! I'm going to be so busy this weekend planting all of the things that I've been delaying. I should probably wait until Sunday after it's cooled off (now it's supposed to be 106 tomorrow), but I don't really have time for that.

Leslie

Yes my garden is doing great. The fruit trees are my challenge. The peach tree was here (along with another one that didn't survive the blight I regularly get) when we bought our house over 5 years ago. So I don't know the variety. What I do know is that it is around 6 feet tall, lush, no signs if fungal infection, there are a few leaves that curl up every year but this year it looks remarkably good. It bloomed heavily and set fruit. The fruit set wasn't what I'd call loaded by any means but it was more than the measly 6 that remains. I have seen ants on it but nothing else. I haven't had the time to reallystudy it though so an insect peach pest isn't out of the question. I have never gotten fruit that survived to maturation. I've seen a few grape sized fruits start to turn color but they never make it. As far as I know the fruit doesn't shrivel or get wormy but it just falls or is eaten. I'm totally perplexed.

Forgot to mention that I have really good production on my Blueberry bushes this year. Throughout last year's drought, I watered and fed (2Xs) them, but I didn't do any pruning. Guess it paid off. The Cardinals are gonna have a feast and if I'm lucky, so will I.

Susan

Dawn, I know I will get figs by fall. Last fall we had a few on brand new canes that came up from the ground after the old ones froze out. But we should have some setting right now and we don't. So we are going to fertilize and see what happens. And it is possible I guess that the light spotty frost we got a couple weeks ago wiped out the early ones.

My husband, like yours, was programed by where he grew up--Southern California. Even after more than 40 years in OK he can't seem to take humidity into account. He's always saying things like, "What do you mean you're hot? It's not even 90 yet," willfully ignoring the fact that 88 with 80% humidity feels a lot different than 88 with 20% humidity. We have a window unit and every year I fight with him to get it installed when I think it needs to be. (Of course he worked in a hot shop with no AC for 30 years so he really is tougher than me.)

Amanda, There are several reasons a peach tree as old as yours wouldn't set fruit, but it is not necessarily an easy issue to troubleshoot. If the tree is not in full sun and if it receives significant shade, that could be an issue. If you do not spray regularly (and I confess I do not spray at all), plum curculio pests could be the issue. Too much nitrogen (i.e., lawn fertilizer, etc.) could keep the tree strongly vegetative. With peaches, they have perfect flowers, so normally it isn't a pollination issue with them like it can be with some plum varieties. I don't know of a disease that would make the fruit drop off every year without showing other symptoms, like brown rot, for example. So, I guess I am baffled about it too. If you have deer regularly wandering through your yard, maybe they are eating all the young fruit. However, I have a whole herd of deer who live on and around our land and they regularly walk right beside the fruit trees without bothering them at all.

Dorothy, Oh don't even get me started on humidity! Tim's family (and I love them all) back in Pennsylvania used to always say to me "but you get a dry heat, it isn't humid like ours" until it made me want to scream. 70 to 85 degrees with high humidity probably is bad, but we do have a lot of humidity here at times, and with much, much higher temperatures. I remember well the summer of either 2009 or 2010 when we were very hot in our area, as y'all were in yours, and also had very high humidity. That summer was so miserable.

My parents cooled their house with window units until the late 1980s. My dad worked at Bell Helicopter in a factory building that wasn't air-conditioned, so he was used to being hot all the time. When they finally put in central air, both my parents were astonished at how much more comfortable the house was and kept saying "we should have done this years ago". As a former child who grew up sleeping in a room with a swamp cooler, all I could say was "yes, you should have done this 20 years ago". lol Better late than never, I guess.

The older I get, the more the heat bothers me. By the time I'm 80 years old, I'll have to do my gardening by the light of the moon when it is cooler.

Dawn

I was so excited this morning to see dozens of wonderful miniature tomatoes and peppers! Hoooray!
My onions seem to be quite a bit behind everyone elses. Or perhaps mine just are not going to do well. I will leave them alone and hope for the best.
I wash wishing this morning that I had added garlic to the garden.

My herb garden seems to be doing very well. I have used a LOT of them this weekend as we are cooking for the week.

My husband has one more surgery, and then I will be able to breathe a little better, but first he has to get strong enough for that one. Hopefully later this month. He is now eating vegetables gratefully. I am impressed with his changes. My daughters and I eat fruit and or veg with every meal, so it is nice to share with him.

I'm just so happy this year's garden is going so well!

Brenda

Dawn, sounds like your inlaws got Oklahoma confused with Arizona.

Brenda, Hooray for the tiny tomatoes and peppers! They won't stay small for long.

If your onions seem behind, try giving them a shot of nitrogen fertilizer. They are heavy feeders. You can give them dried blood/blood meal if you garden organically or any pelleted form of lawn fertilizer that contains nitrogen only. They also need a consistent amount of moisture even if no rain is falling. Otherwise they stall and just sit there and refuse to grow.

You can plant garlic this year, but just not right now. In our climate we can start planting garlic in the September-October time frame for harvest next June or thereabouts.

I am so glad your husband is hanging in there and making his way through all the surgeries. Hopefully he'll soon be strong enough for the third one.

I am glad to hear he's making good dietary changes, and that you make it more fun and more meaningful for him by growing fresh produce yourself. Fresh is so much more nutritious because nutrients degrade as 'fresh' produce is shipped across the country, and even around the world, to reach store shelves. I also think there is something that just "feels right" about eating food you've grown yourself whenever you can.

Dorothy, I know. It made me laugh out loud at first, but after a while I was tired of it. When we got married in September of that year so very long ago, it was 102 degrees. I think they thought they'd gotten on an airplane and flown to H-E-L-L. After we moved here, my brother and sister-in-law and their kids came to visit that August. They were here for 3 days and our high temps while they were here were 110-111-112. It was a drought summer, so that year the humidity was very low when they were visiting, but it still was miserably hot, even if it was a dry heat (grinning). They can't stand our heat 'cause they aren't used to it, but then I can't tolerate their cold weather either. We were there on Memorial Day weekend one year, and it was 26 degrees in the morning when we got up early to go trout fishing. Another year, it was 70 degrees and misty on the Fourth of July. I had typical Texas summer clothes with me, so all I remember about the Fourth of July was that I was freezing and that the fireworks show was cancelled because of the rainy, foggy, misty weather.

Dawn

Dawn,
Thank you... I will try to add something to the onions. I never had added fertilizers before... just really good compost and occasionally manure, but this year, I used seeds and I think that must be more challenging.
Garlic in September, Got it...
Does broccoli grow in Oklahoma at all? I have been considering adding broccoli later this year if I can do it in the fall.

Brenda

Brenda, if you do a search, you will find lots of info on growing broccoli. And yes, you can grow it in the fall. I would start Packman seeds midJuly, transplant early Sept and you should begin to harvest mid to late Oct. The challenge in the fall is keeping the seedlings damp and cool enough. They can use some shade early on.