Our corn didn't fill out well either, but I suspected it wouldn't when we got three days of rain during pollination. Washed the pollen off the silks

Busyone,

It is, of course the weather, and you cannot control it.

It has been a very rough gardening year for many people in Oklahoma. I don't know that I'd say it is the worst year ever for our garden, but it is one of the worst.

We lost all the tree fruit to very early blooming following by repeated freezing nights.

ONIONS AND POTATOES: The onions and potatoes drowned when Love County had 12" of rain in one day (yes, in one day!) in late April. I had to replant potatoes 3 times since they'd already frozen back twice, and so I haven't even dug potatoes yet. Usually, I dig in late June. Time will tell if the replanted potatoes produced well or if they went in too late.

Some onions survived and produced, but were substantially smaller than in every other year I've grown onions.

TOMATOES. Every plant I planted survived, but a few have died over time. I've probably lost 6 or 7 out of 85. However, I've had a huge issue with foliar diseaes, specifically with a lot of Septoria Leaf Spot and a little Early Blight. The harvest has been late, but I am getting tons of tomatoes (as you should if you plant way too many plants like I do), so am busy dehydrating them, making sauce, freezing them, roasting them, and eating all that we can. I do have new plants for fall and will get them in the ground by the end of the month.

BROCCOLI: I planted it late because my garden was a pond (even the raised beds had puddles standing in them), but it was the best year ever. Oodles and oodles of big heads that we cut and harvested right before the hot weather arrived. Every broccoli year should be this good here in southern OK, but it seldom is.

CABBAGE: Also formed huge heads and greatly benefitted from all that rain. Did have some cabbage looper issues, but it all worked out OK.

OKRA: Planted late in wet ground so slow to take off, but has produced well for the last month or so and continues to do so.

MELONS: A little slow but producing ripe ones now. Flavor is delicious and plants remain healthy.

SUMMER SQUASH: Great year but starting to play out in the heat. Will plant new ones for fall.

WINTER SQUASH: Suffering in the heat but no SVBs.

SWEET CORN: The raccoons got almost all of the Country Gentleman, but we got almost all of the Texas Honey June. Most of the corn pollinated surprisingly well, so it must have just 'beat the heat' since it went in late because of that foot of rain. Actually, the Country Gentleman was planted on time, but some of it died after the foot of rain fell since my corn is at the lowest end of the sloping garden and is not in raised beds. The Country Gentleman corn that didn't die stalled because of wet roots but eventually recovered. So, not the best corn ever, but passable.

PEPPERS: Amazing year. Then went into raised beds after the rain was over and have grown very well. Both hots and sweets have been covered in tons of peppers and we are beyond happy with the harvest so far, with much more yet to come.

CUCUMBERS: Terrific growth and production in May-June, but wearing out now. Since heat is hard on cucumber plants, I replant new ones for fall and it is about that time.

PUMPKINS: Did not survive the flooding rains and I did not replant. The dogs, though, are growing great pumpkins, winter squash and gourds on their dog yard fence. They plant these themselves by playing with/tearing up/burying decoration pumpkins and squash and gourds that I give them when I replace the outside fall decorations with Christmas decorations. The dogs' plants look great, so I hope that will continue and we'll have a good harvest. Sometimes the dogs get excited and pull their own gourds, squash and pumpkins off the vines to play with long before they are mature.

BLACKEYED PEAS: Great, great, great. Nothing takes the heat like black-eyed peas! These went into the ground in early June to replace the broccoli plants, so are just now about reading for the first harvest.

SWEET POTATOES: Planted late and not in the best soil. Doing OK but not great. Probably won't be the best harvest ever but should be OK.

HERBS: All in raised beds, all doing well, and should continue as long as I harvest/cut them back regularly.

BEANS: Ran out of space and time for these in the spring garden, so just saved them for fall. By the time it was dry enough to plant them, I'd put other plants in their space, and it was warming up fast so I assumed early heat would likely hurt productivity. Thus, I saved all the beans for fall, and they'll go into the ground soon in the place formerly occupied by corn.

Have I had more productive years? Yes. Have I had worse years? Barely. Has it been an OK year? Sure. You know me. As long as I have tomatoes, I'm pretty happy, but it has actually been more productive than I would have expected under the conditions we've experienced.

We get another chance in the fall garden, and it isn't too early to start dreaming about next spring either. : )

Dawn

My peppers have also been amazing (like Dawn's) with only a couple of exceptions. They are all in raised beds. My tomatoes have also done very well up until I could not keep up with the water requirements. They are also in raised beds. I got none of my other stuff in due to saturated heavy soil, except for a few melon plants.

Every person who I have come in contact with at our local market has had a bad year so far also, so this appears to be the norm around here.

Scott,

I think 98% of the people here who are veggie gardeners would say it was their worst year ever too. Very few of them have raised beds, and fewer still take the time to improve the soil (horrors!)

After that darned foot of rain fell, I wanted to give up and not even try because I couldn't imagine my poor waterlogged plants could survive, nor could I imagine the soil ever would dry out enough for me to finish planting. But I kept working away at it and am glad I did because it has been fairly successful. So, compared to how I felt at the end of April or the beginning of May, I am a very happy camper.

I noticed here that many people walked away from their gardens and didn't make any more effort after the foot of rain fell. Some of them let their plants die. A few of them watered a bit and still have veggies growing in the midst of 6' tall weeds.

Some, like me, replaced the plants that didn't survive the flood and then saw pretty good growth in the last part of May and early June, but then the horrible heat arrived.

The folks here who have SWC water have had a ban on outdoor watering for weeks and, as near as I can tell from driving around in town, most of them are complying with the watering ban and have lost almost all of their veggie plants. It's a terrible year.

A neighbor up the road from us always has a good garden, and this year is no exception. His big problem at present is that he lives too close to the river and has a higher coyote presence that we have. The coyotes have been getting into his melons, and that is hard to combat. I know he is very frustrated. You know, if it isn't one thing, it is another.

Dawn

So far my garden report:

ONIONS: Dawn's slips have done great. They're not as big as I'd grown in St. Paul, but they're nice sized and taste great. About half are still in the ground "keeping" until I want to eat them.

TOMATOES: I have eaten one tomato so far and that's likely all I'll get for the next couple weeks. My daughter picked two others before they were ripe and sampled them extensively. The Cherokee Purple plants (all 2 of them) are doing well though and both have new fruit set and more flowers forming. Speaking of which, the blossom booster I applied Saturday really made a noticeable difference on the tomatoes. They all look invigorated today! The rest of my tomato plants (20-30 of them) are doing okay and growing steadily. Some have flowers. I think they'll make fine fall tomato plants.

CABBAGE: I only had two plants. One was harvested and was quite tasty in beef and tomato and cabbage soup. The other is just now reaching a good size. The harvested one has subsidiary heads forming. Should I thin those? Or just let them all form? There's 6 or 7 in there, about golf ball size now. Cabbage loopers ravaged the plant that's only now getting good sized but never bothered the other, despite the two plants being about 18 inches apart.

OKRA: Doing great! I wish I'd planted three times as much, because there's not enough for me to get into the house with. I eat the pods fresh, despite how much I love fried okra.

WATERMELONS: Doing great also! I have about 40 watermelon plants. Nearly all have fruits on them ranging from fist-size to bigger than a basketball. I picked one last week and it wasn't ripe, so I'm anxiously awaiting a better sign that they're ready. I have at least 5 different kinds: Black Tail (3 plants), Criss Cross (1 plant), solid dark green (bunches), light green, oblong with lacy darker green (some) and light green, oblong with dark green strips (a bunch). No pest problems.

MUSKMELONS: Doing great, but nothing is harvestable yet. Some plants don't have any fruit at all on them, which is a mystery to me. Other plants have fruit that look nearly full sized. I'm waiting for full slip to eat them. No pest problems.

SQUASH: SVBs have done a number on them, but so far I've only lost two plants and I think I'll lose part of another within a day or two. I have some squash bugs on a few others, but they're not a big problem. The yellow squash are doing fine giving me a squash or two a day. The italian vegetable marrow is only now putting out fruit. I have two mature acorn squash from my compost heap that have nearly ripe fruit and I have a dozen hills of hubbard and acorn squash that were only planted a month ago or so.

SWEET CORN: I have two groups of late season Silver Queen planted. The first and older batch is 25 plants about knee high. The second is 60ish plants, not yet germinated. I had cutworm problems on the first batch that eliminated about half the first planting.

CUCUMBERS: The ones I planted among the sunflowers have done pretty dismally. I noticed Saturday that one had flowers, but it was only a foot tall. I've planted straight eights around my bean teepees, so perhaps I'll have some eventually.

PUMPKINS: Doing okay, though the SVBs have hit them pretty hard. I have one on life support, but it is rooted in two places other than the main stem so parts of it should make it. I has a volleyball sized pumpkin on it that's half orange (probably prematurely turning due to stress). I need to go out today and do another round of rooting in the vines on all of those.

PEAS: My english peas did great. They tasted fine and after my daughter discovered she could just go outside and pull them off the plant and eat them, they didn't last long. Of course, I'd been doing that for weeks before she caught on, so I don't blame her. :) Next year I'll plant more. I'll try to get in a fall crop if I can find a good spot.

SWEET POTATOES: I have about 20 plants all slipped off the same grocery store tater. I've had an ongoing fight with rabbits or whatever is eating them, but most of the vines are now big enough that they can survive losing a few leaves. They'd better be able to, because I've had to take my fencing from around them to put around my bean teepees.

HERBS: Chives, dill and mint have done great. Rosemary has struggled but is still alive. My attempt to root a cutting from it failed. Parsley struggled but looks like it will make it. The plants are good sized now, but I still deal with the occasional rabbit munch. The oregano and thyme from seed never worked, except for one very tiny plant that is finally making something of itself. The sage has done well in one place and I have some struggling sage in other spots. The basil has done fine, not as great as I'd hoped but I've been able to make two ice cube trays of pesto and expect to make a couple more.

BEANS: These have done terribly, but I can report that the survivors of the virus, sunscald and rabbit munching are finally, after months of suffering, sticking up a vine in the air. I'd given up on them and planted cucumbers and lima beans all around them, so who knows what will produce there and what won't. The scarlet runner beans remain troubled by the virus and I don't have any pods yet and few flowers. Might be the virus, might be the hot weather.

CARROTS and BEETS: Both grew very slowly and are only now harvestable. I had one carrot that was six inches long! Sounds silly to be happy about that, as it's really not very long for a carrot. I'm not sure why both have taken so very, very long to get to any size. The carrots don't have great flavor either. I haven't tried the beets. Maybe I will tonight. Mice troubled the carrots a lot, eating their foliage.

LETTUCE: Complete fail. Mice ate it.

RADISHES: Did very badly. I didn't think you could fail on radishes, but apparently you can when mice eat the tops every couple days. Those that made it past that were okay, but very small.

SUNFLOWERS: Awful. I had four areas planted with them and I lost one area entirely to the leaf-rolling caterpillars. Two other areas are struggling badly. They've had pest after pest attack them. Just terrible for them. The flowers they have are mostly deformed and some can't hold their heads up due to bugs inside the stems like SVBs in squash. I'll admit I haven't been as diligent in caring for them as I do for the vegetables.

FRUIT TREES: Pretty awful. I have 8 surviving trees out of the 25 planted. Both pears made it, as did two apples, one peach, two plums and one cherry. The cherry that survived was from Lowes and one of the plums was from a friend. So the Willis Orchard trees were 6 out of 22. Of course I planted them wrong initially, replanted them and took a long time to get mulch around them. Then we had a month of rain followed by a month of scorching heat, so I'm not too surprised they didn't do well, but I expected better than that. I'm going to box up the sticks and send them back this week, as Willis Orchards said for me to wait until July before giving up on them.

ORNAMENTALS and FLOWERS: The iris and lilies have settled in fine. The zinnias and marigolds are giving quite a show in the front beds. I'm pleased and so are the butterflies. The morning glories are doing passably. The hollyhocks never did much, but I have 3 or 4 plants that might make it to next year. Maybe they'll flower then. The nasturtiums have done very well. I need to check them for seeds pretty soon. The hosta have settled in well, but they look a little crowded. I'll have to think about what to do about that. No deer or other pests have found them. The crepe myrtles are doing okay. After a long dormancy for one of them, all four are looking good. The knock-out roses are all doing fine. The dawn redwood is doing nicely and showing some new growth and height. The two banana trees are doing just fine with four or five leaves each.

This is better than I'd expected, really, but not as good as I'd hoped for the first year. I have borders around all the beds and the flower beds are improved, de-rocked and have the major landscape features I wanted in them. I still need to get the permanent garden area done and the orchard going (more than it is now with the 8 trees I have).

I'm always impressed by the variety of veggies that people here try to grow. I am successful with about half of what I attempt, probably because I attempt too much.

This year I only tried to manage the berries, tomatoes, peppers, and a few melons.

My 70 tomato plants are almost done and produced about 500 lbs top quality, 300 lbs seconds, and 200 lbs discarded (darn corn worms and cracking). I think I finally did a good job here except for failing to water thoroughly once I put in an irrigation system. Cracking caused large losses in the last week.

My 40 pepper plants have already produced more than my 30 plants did last year and there are more left to pick than I have picked thus far.

My blueberries produced a ton ( I've yet to add up the totals), but some didn't taste very good due to excessive cropload. Still it was an amazing crop compared to my expectations.

I guess what I am saying is that it is a lot more fun to have a lot of things growing, but I end up a lot more satisfied with my garden when I limit what I attempt. Not having a pecan crop this year gave me a lot more free time and it resulted in my other "hobbies" being more successful.

Well...I concur!
Here's the tally:
10 tomato plants - very fun varieties, but we've had a dozen or so Black Cherry, 1 New Big Dwarf, 2 Black Krim, a handful of San Marzano Redorta, 4 or 5 Bloody Butcher, 1 Nebraska Wedding, 3 Chocolate Stripes (crazy birds managed to decimate those pretty quickly!)...

Corn...probably 2 dozen plants or so..thought we had one ear and it ended up with its shucks stripped down the back and kernels dried up :( I hand pollinated a half dozen or so ears, but...who knows.

Green Beans - bush beans started out kind of rough - one plant survived well and produced well...the re-seeds haven't done a thing and the pole beans have done about 2 feet of growing and then they stopped.

Peppers in pots: one Big Bertha, and about 4 or 5 orange bell peppers coming. Hoping that the Ancho Poblanos are about ready to get busy setting.

Cucumber - one 6 inch

5 miles away from me, my dad's garden is putting out so many cucumbers that he can't give them away fast enough. I've canned 16 pints of Bread & Butter pickles from those already. In a day or so, I'll be picking up dozens of tomatoes from them to can, too...go figure :) They also are still picking spinach (grown under his cucumber arbor and happy), carrots are producing and sweet, peppers are producing heavily...the only thing that didn't work for him was his double row of beets..a bunny had that for breakfast one morning.

I'm thinking...next year!

Game bird,

On the little cabbage heads that sprout after you harvest the main head, I usually leave about 4 so that can reach a decent size. I don't know if leaving four is any better or worst than leaving six or seven because I haven't done both and compared the two.

On the tomatoes, I'm glad the bloom booster worked. I think all of our tomatoes needed a break in terms of some cooler weather and a little fertilizer too. The combination of the two (and for some lucky folks, rain too!) should send them into August in great shape.

With the carrots, high temperatures prevent the sugar in the roots from developing. To get sweet carrots, you have to plant them so they will mature during cooler weather. So, for a spring planting, first figure out when your daytime highs start regularly exceeding 85 degrees, and plant 90 days before that date. For fall carrots, figure out when your nighttime lows start hitting the low 20s, and plant about 90 days before that. If you plant some of the carrots with really short days-to-maturity, you could change that 90 days to 80 days. I get the best carrots here in southern OK from an early March planting combined with a cool, kind of wet (but not soggy) May. If June heat arrives late, that's even better.

Sunflowers have a surprising number of pests here, many more than mine had in town in Fort Worth. I have good sunflower years (2002 was the best and they were just amazing) and bad sunflower years. Planting them early and getting them nice and big and sturdy before the pests arrive seems to help most years.

My ornamentals never look as good as I think they should, but everyone else loves them, so I think I expect too much. : )

Scott, It sounds like your tomatoes and peppers did great. Does allowing the blueberries to carry a heavy crop cause problems with flavor? If so, do you know why? (One day I'll break down and plant blueberries for Tim, but it will have to be in large containers because of our soil, so I need to learn all I can.

I have more success, too, when I limit myself to fewer varieties, but I want to grow everything! I am cutting back more and more on tomatoes every year, so that leaves me space and time for other things.

We're gonna miss the pecans this fall/winter! I bet you will too.

Sharon,

It has been a rough year. No doubt your dad has been gardening a long time and was able to work well around the weather conditions, which is terrific.

Our slogan should be "there's always next year!" Luckily for us, it is true. There is always next year, and we're always sure next year will be better. You know what, usually 'next year' really is better. : )

Dawn

Well, maybe it was'nt the worst but i cant remember if there were any.

I guess i did have some luck with the beets and turnips.Cabbage started splitting from too much rain. white onions did poorly but the yellow did ok. Did'nt plant any red varietys.

I'm probably too early but i planted some broccoli and cabbage and kolrabi today. I fifgured we might get an early frost since the weather has been so different then usual this year.

Anyway i have more seeds to put out if i cant get these to germinate.

I have already been thinking about next year, actually i will be growing all winter in the greenhouse.I have some leeks in large containers right now. Also have a pineapple forming.

bought some of those dwarf containers size citrus plants to try out. So far the tangerine is really growing up. Will let it get a little taller and will probably have to do some pruning to keep in to a managble size.

i will need to do some rearranging in the Gh again. still hav'nt gotten it just like i want.

Tomatoes - Cherry and Plum - growing like crazy and I have made tons of salsa out of them... bigger ones not so good - early girl (with no taste) is the best producing one so far and the others all giving one or two here and there... 38 plants and we only get what we can eat so for me a low year.

Peppers - I only planted 8 plants, I knew how fast and hard they grow for my inlaws and I should have planted MANY more.. there is just not the peppers we need there to eat ourselves and I had to buy peppers for the Salsa.

Peas - Did great

Lettuce - Did great

Turnips - Really great

Radish - did great

Beans - not so good, just one good mess but I did not plant them int he bet spot (did not have the room but tried to anyway)

Onions - nada

Sweet potatoes - All eaten by rabbits

Corn - Dent corn did great

Amaranth - Best year ever - huge stalks almost ready to pick and the greens have been coming off for some time now.

Squash - Green ones did great and are falling off, Yellow ones the plants look like show plants but little to no fruit.

Winter Squash - nothing in the house yet,,, several good looking fruits out there

Melons - 23 plants, nothing in the house yet

Watermelon - nothing in the house yet, one whole row - Moon and Stars is just sitting there with no blooms no growth no nothing - any ideas?

Aside from the little this and thats this is the garden - over all better in some ways then Texas, and yet I am still very dissatisfied with the over all garden. There is many more weeds here then Texas also and that is not something I was ready for.

My melons went through two stages of "sitting there". Once was after transplant and for two weeks or so afterwards they hardly put on a leaf. Then after a really big growth spurt, they waited another two weeks while they put out a few male flowers and did nothing else - didn't grow much more, didn't put out female flowers, just sat there. Then all of a sudden, nearly every plant had a little melon or two on it, followed within a week with a return to normal growth. I've never grown watermelons before so I don't know if this is normal or some reaction to the weather or watering cycles.

it's been a mixed bag for me so far this year, but i'm still quite an amateur. however, my lettuce crop was an embarrassment of riches.

My garden is tiny compared to what most of you seem to have, but I am enjoying growing it a lot!

CUCUMBERS - I've gotten a good half dozen large cucumbers so far from only two plants. I brought one today to a co-worker and have another I'll pick tonight for dinner. Both plants have tons of flowers on them still. Some of the older leaves have turned yellow and then brown, but both plants still have lots of very healthy-looking foliage on them.

STRAWBERRIES - I bought 25 bare-root plants in February and planted them in early March. I've gotten about a half dozen ripe but very small berries so far. I had a lot more white ones growing, but the birds got them all a few days ago! They are now covered with netting over a frame that's at least two feet tall. Hopefully that will keep the birds at bay. There are a few new flowers on some plants.

PURPLE-HULL PEAS - I've harvested about five ripe pods so far and have at least one more that will be ready this week. It's not a lot, but I only have three plants. I saw some more flowers a few days ago so maybe they will continue to make new pods.

OKRA - I have three plants and have picked about six pods so far. I left the first pod that formed to go to seed. There are lots of buds on all three plants so I'm sure I'll have lots more to pick soon. Gamebird, my daughter also likes eating raw okra. Until now she was the only person I knew who would eat okra raw.

TOMATOES - I have three plants each of Better Boy and Traveler 76. I have five Better Boys that started turning red late last week and one Traveler. I should have my first ripe tomatoes sometime this week. There are still several more green ones on both types of plants. The one Traveler that got eaten on early in the year has recovered and looks good, but it's still small and has no tomatoes so far although it does have flowers on it.

PEPPERS - I have I think seven cayenne peppers and two or three jalapenos I'm sure of. There may be more I just can't see because they blend in so well with the foliage. I only have two plants of each variety.

Last Friday a friend helped me construct PVC supports to put around the strawberries and tomatoes and peppers to keep the birds out. I put corn, whole and cut, sunflower seeds, and thistle seeds out for the birds. They don't need to be eating what I grow for me to eat!

I'm hoping I can find the energy to remove the railroad ties or landscape timbers (whichever they are) from the sides of the veggie bed next year and enlarge it. I think most of my plants would have been happier spaced farther apart, plus I'd like to grow more plants next year.

All in all though I'm pretty happy. It's been more than twenty years since I lived in a house where I could plant a garden and then it was a rental. This is my first time ever to grow most of these things, and I'm looking forward to eating my very first tomatoes later this week.

Debra

Busyone,

I feel the same way you do about an early first freeze or frost--it seems like we are way, way overdue for one.

I don't know that it is too early for the cole family plants from seed.....at this point with regards to the fall garden it is sort of a gamble and playing the odds no matter what you do. Some years I plant earlier and some years later and most years it works either way. I try to 'read' the weather and figure out what it is doing and then plant accordingly. We do seem to be having unusually strong cold fronts for summer and that reinforces my thinking that it might be an early fall.

Mitch,

After all the whacked-out spring weather, it is an accomplishment to have surviving tomato plants at all. If you can just baby yours a bit and get them through August, they should produce fine in the fall's cooler temperatures.

I never plant Early Girl for flavor--only for earliness, by the way.

Do you have clay or rocky soil? If so, your watermelons probably are pouting and sulking a little because they prefer deep, loose soil. Other than that, they tend to stall sometimes in the face of environmental stress. It could be the heat, it could be that they got a little too dry. If your soil is heavy and compacted, it would have greatly restricted your watermelon root growth and that would give you stunted plants, poor productivity and delayed maturity of any fruit that set. If you have very sandy soil that drains very fast, the plants might be hungry or thirsty.

I agree with you on the weeds, although to be fair, I was gardening in a 40-year-old yard in Texas so it just didn't have the weed seeds you'd expect to find in a fallow farm pasture in Oklahoma. Isn't this your first year there? If so, the weeds are not unexpected. Just breaking the soil exposes millions of weed seeds to light and induces germination. As you continue to build the soil and mulch heavily, you should see fewer weeds every year.

We've only recently begun harvesting cantaloupes and muskmelons and I am fairly sure you and I planted ours around the same time, so I bet you get melons soon. Our melons seemed to just sit there forever and then--voila!--all started to ripen at once. We're having an "Ambrosia" melon with dinner tonight and it smells so fragrant sitting there on the counter that I almost hate to cut into it. I hope you'll get some ripe ones soon.

Game bird,

Watermelons seem to have a mind of their own. They can stunt and stall if the soil or air temps get too cold (very unlikely here unless they are planted in the ground way too early), or if the soil or air temps get too hot (common here), or if the soil is too compacted and their roots can't grow as extensively as they like (common in clay), or if they are too crowded (common in home gardens). Texas A&M recommends 24 square feet of growing space for full-sized melon plants and 18 square feet for plants that produce the smaller refrigerator-sized melons. Giving them too little space can lead to less productive plants.

If I had to guess this year, though, I'd bet all the melons just became extemely unhappy and their growth stalled when we had that horrible stretch of hot weather with high temps over 100 and very high heat index numbers as well.

Billstickers, Lettuce is a good crop--when it does well, it does very well, and a mixed bag of results sounds normal for this year.

Debra, There's nothing wrong with a tiny garden and I bet it is just as important to you as my large garden is to me.

I hope you thoroughly enjoy that first ripe tomato when it is ready in a few days!

My only real complaint about our garden is that the late cold and wet weather pushed me into planting everything late and at about the same time, so everything is maturing at once which is making it very hard to stay current on harvesting and putting up the crops.

I gave myself a day off from the garden today and went shopping, ate out and ran errands, but tomorrow I will be roasting tomatoes and then saucing them, dehydrating bite-sized tomatoes, making pickled peppers and jalapeno jelly, and getting the onions into the cellar in their storage bags. I also need to dig potatoes, and harvest more peppers, okra and melons, but I don't know if I can squeeze all of that into one day. I'm going to try though because if I get too far behind on the harvest, I can't catch up.

Dawn

Overall my garden has been a lot better than last year. With the continued drought I still have problems but most crops have done well. I planted some later than normal and didn't plant as much or as close together as normal.
ONIONS overall have done well. I had some of both long and short day falter this year. The second year for Red Zeppelin to grow big tops but small bulbs. It won't be back. Contessa and Yellow Sweet Spanish both produced small bulbs. I have had Sweet Spanish do well before. Walla Walla, Candy, 1015Y and Yellow Granex did well overall. Red Candy Apple was real inconsistent. From small to large. No rhyme or reason. Will give it another chance.

Garlic did extremely well. Every bulb of Estonian Red was 3 inches or larger.

Sweet Corn did well after I got a stand. The seed I received from Gurney's for Gotta Have It looked bad and had very poor germination although I waited till the soil warmed up well to plant. Eating it now and it is very good. I filed int he holes with an experimental corm from Harris and it is just now tasseling. Has had big full ears.

Peppers are looking good and just now starting to pick a few.

This was my first year for egg plant and it has done well.

Early radishes did well and will plant fall radishes in August.

Squash and cucumbers were later so not producing much yet but looking good.

Okra in this area this year has been a puzzle. I planted five kinds. All have the biggest leaves I've ever seen on okra and a great dark green color. The stalks are the biggest I've ever seen. They started setting okra when just a little more than a foot tall. Have started growing the last few days. Others growers are experiencing the same thing. Must be the weather and teimps.

Tomatoes. I know many have read my posts on this forum. My plants are from winter sown to late June transplants. Have some growing out the tops of 5 foot cages and others not a foot tall. Just started getting several. And most are setting well now. Have battled the early blight along with some other things and then have killed a few myself unintentionally. Have replaced around 20 overall with around 8 open holes and a few more that will come out in the next few days. I will do a few things differently next year. But have some nice plants and I've pulled have nice root systems. I hope I don't jinx myself by saying that. This is the last year I will grow so many varieties. Will grow 5-6 new ones every year and the rest will be favorites that have proved they will do well here. Too early to make judgements but Amazon Chocolate has done well so far. Jay

We had a GREAT lettuce crop this spring, the chiles are doing great, and the walking onions and garlic also did well.

The tomatoes are now starting to five us a few each day but not near enough for fresh eating, let alone any to put up. The watermelons seem to be doing okay so far.

Everything else just flat out sucks. Beans, cukes, pumpkins, zukes & summer squash, etc, etc.

Next year will be better! In the meantime, I'm looking at this as a rest year. LOL FYI: We may be moving to northern Missouri in a year or two and we are positively drooling at the possibility of living in NOT such a challenging area for gardens.

Diane,

What a year it has been. I wish all your work had paid off with bigger and better harvests, but sometimes Mother Nature wins. After all, she always bats last.

So, do tell about the possible plans for northern Missouri. Zone 5? Better soil? Sandy loam? Better weather? You can't just throw out a statement like "We may be moving....." without saying more. Enquiring minds wanna know!

Dawn

Well, it'll be at least several months before it happens, maybe even a couple of years. We have to get this place finished up and sold. With the economy the way it is, that could take quite a while! And that's on top of the time we will have to put in finishing the construction.

But, yeah, northern MO will be a complete turn-around from here gardenwise! Great soil, good amounts of moisture at the right times (according to averages but we know reality tends to not play by the rules), not having to carve out flat spots, a "normal" growing season, four seasons rather than our current two (Mud and Hell), SNOW!, kids able to ride their bikes without rolling down the hill and over a million rocks, etc...

We'll miss this place after having poured our souls & several years into it but we have much to look forward to as well so we're choosing to focus on the positives.

Diane,

I was thinking of all the blood, sweat and tears (and good, old-fashioned hard work) y'all had poured into the current place.

So, do you have a certain county or city or place in mind, or are you going to be like the pioneers and move there and then figure it all out? It sounds like a wonderful adventure.

I'm guessing you won't miss the rocks and the clay at all, though.

Dawn

It's still far enough away (in time) that we've not yet narrowed it down to anything more than northern MO. NO MO. Heh.

You can definitely keep the rocks and superclay!