Mike,

I'm sorry. As I often say, I am totally incompetent at such basic tasks as using a camera and a computer. It takes every inch of computer skills that I have to manage to turn on the computer, log in to Garden Web, post a message and log out again without doing anything that causes the hard drive to self-destruct or something. Heaven help me (and my laptop) if I hit a wrong button and get myself hung up in something I can't get out of.

I will try to pry one of our two cameras out of DS's or DH's hands (or unearth it from whichever firetruck it is buried in) this week and take a couple of photos, but then dear son will have to teach me what to do from that step forward because I know nothing about cameras and even less about doing stuff on the computer.

My camera problem is mostly the fault of DH and DS. DH is a career police officer who also serves as the fire chief of our local VFS. DS is a professional firefighter/paramedic who also is a volunteer firefighter here in Love County. Do you know what that means? It means that we have two cameras full of pictures of airplane crashes, motor vehicle accidents--esp. those involving extrication, wildfires, house fires, training exercises, cool-looking fire trucks, amazing firetrucks from trade shows, etc. Just try finding one single photo on any computer, memory stick or camera that has a non-firefighter human being in it. To get these two guys to take a photo of my garden I will have to steal a camera away from them, or....set my garden on fire. LOL

I will try, OK. I will try to get photos this week and post some. No promises because we're having fires here lately.....and I think you know what that means around here....most likely more photos and not of the garden either.

I think another photo problem I have is that I look at my garden and it looks 'ordinary' to me, so I don't think there's anything special to shoot a photo of. Some of you who have smaller gardens or less space or something might disagree though, and I do understand that. However this is probably the worst month of the year for taking photos, with temps over 100 for days and days and little rainfall, so things are starting to look pretty bad.

I'll try to get some photos and figure out how to post them. I will, but every day this week is full until at least Wed., so expect nothing earlier than Thursday.

If there is something special you want to see, tell me. The tomato plants? Peppers? Flowers? Melons on a trellis? Herbs? What is it you want to see?
And that Garden Ph.d of mine......it is from the School of Hard Knocks!

Dawn

Both of my grandmothers lived not too far from you (Madill). One had a green thumb. She could stick a dead stick in the ground and it would grow. Dad says she would go to the pastures and pick up horse/cow pies, put them in a barrel that collected rainwater, and would use that in her garden. She died when I was in the 7th grade. I wish she were here to teach me some of her tricks.
One thing I would like to see is how close to place plants. I planted my plants way too far apart and wasted a lot of space.
Another thing I would like to know is how peppers/squash/pole beans can be stored without canning them.
I bought some cow panels and placed them next to my "Contender" Bush beans. I thought they would grow on up the panels. I guess bush means bush. Like I said I'm am still learning....
mike

Mike,

What you Grandmother did in Madill was brew her own manure tea fertilizer. You can google manure tea or compost tea and get 'modern' directions for how to make either one, and the only real difference is that one uses manure and the other uses compost.

Which plants do you think you spaced too far apart? If you'll list them, I'll tell you about how closely I space mine, although you'll have to adjust your plant distances a little if your soil differs significantly from mine--mine is very well-improved red clay in mostly raised beds.

For beans, you can dry them on the vine or you can harvest as green beans and freeze them. If you want to freeze them, let me know and I'll describe how I do it.

For peppers, you can dehydrate them or freeze them. With sweet peppers, I either slice or chop them and freeze them, and then use them in the non-gardening months in stir fries, soups, stews and in other recipes that require the peppers be cooked. We can hot peppers though, although you probably could slice them, freeze them and use them in cooking. Peppers also can be dehydrated and used in cooking, or dehydrated and ground into a powder (but you must be VERY careful not to inhale the powder). You can dehydrate using a dehydrator or even your oven on a very low setting (140 to 160 for most things). I am lucky because my convection oven has a 'dehydrate' feature.

I've also dried hot peppers by string them in ristras and hanging them in the barn to dry. If you hang them in a dusty location to dry, put a sheer fabric around them to help keep dust off them. You also can make pepper jelly which does not require a pressure cooker and which is very easy to make and quite tasty. An in-ground tornado shelter makes a good place to hang and dry peppers as long as it is dry, and not one of those tornado shelters that has issues with water standing in it.

With squash, I'm not sure if you mean winter squash or summer squash. Summer squash can be slice and dehydrated, or sliced or diced and frozen and used in the non-gardening season for recipes that involve cooking it. Zucchini squash can even be used in zucchini bread and in chocolate-zucchini cakes, muffins and cookies. Winter squash, if grown and harvested at the right time, can be kept in storage for months at a time before it is sliced and used. If you harvest the winter squash in the fall after its skin is fully hardened, you can store them easily for 3-6 months, and I've had some winter squash store well in a well-insulated but unheated barn/garage or tornado shelter or 9 months or so. Some pumpkin varieties (pumpkins are in the squash family) also store for months in a tornado shelter. (Since I don't have a root cellar, I use my tornado shelter as my root cellar.)

Bush beans really are bush beans and most of them stay a little over or somewhat under 2' tall. Some are significantly shorter. Half-runner beans get a bit taller than that, but for beans that will grow on a trellis you need runner beans or pole beans.

Hope this helps.

Dawn

Mike....
Dawn is a super woman of gardening indeed. Don't know what we pupils would do without her here on the Okie gardening web, an that's a fact!

Barbara,

My back hurts because I tried to put a 2-year in her car seat in the back seat of the pickup yesterday and I am not, it seems, as strong in the back as I used to be. She's grown a lot in the last month....mega-growth spurt, I guess, because I could lift her fine in May or early June, but she seems kinda heavy now. She's our 'borrowed grandchild' and I adore her, but guess I'd better be more careful when lifting her up high. I don't know how her mom picks her up and carries her without hurting herself because she's a pretty slender young woman, but then she's almost 30 years younger than I am, so I am sure that's part of it. LOL I'm sure my back will feel better in a couple of days, and in the meantime I will take it easy. It is too, too hot to do anything very strenuous anyway. I think we're headed for a high of 104 here which isn't that unusual in this state today----a lot of y'all probably will have hotter temps than us.

I do push myself too hard sometimes, but normally in spring during planting season more so than at this time of year. I know it is unsafe to push too hard in the heat. The job function I fulfill with our volunteer fire dept. is one called "rehab" which means I take the firefighters cold water, Gatorade, iced tea, snacks and meals, and on very hot days, buckets of wet towels and cool collars. Sometimes when I have a firefighter who is clearly overheated or overly stressed/exhausted, I have to alert the on-scene incident commander to call for medics if they are not already on scene. Clearly, I cannot take care of the firefighters if I don't take care of myself, so believe me, I have learned to pace myself. I've also learned that I can't overdo it in the garden and come inside and collapse on the couch expecting to spend the afternoon "recovering" because the fire pagers could go off at any minute and I might be racing off to a fire.

Getting older is hard though! When I was in my 20s and 30s, I thought nothing of staying outside from sunup to sundown no matter the weather. In my 40s, I started getting smarter, and partly that was because of my brief battle with cancer, which forced me to take better care of myself. I turned 50 this year, and while I still feel young "inside", my body tells me "you ain't as young as you used to be". LOL So, I pace myself carefully. The back strain was just stupid...trying to lift a 2-yr-old who had become too large to lift easily. I just should have waited a minute for DH to do it.

I just came in from plugging in a fan in the chicken coop to keep the chickens cool. At least we had the good sense to put the coop in a location where it is shaded for most of the day. The cats are inside and the dogs are about to come inside where they will lie around on their doggie beds upstairs and sleep away the hot afternoon. It is a lot of work to keep everyone cool. The plants are looking kind of miserable and we can't air condition them, so I expect they'll look pretty pitiful by the end of the week. This heat just sucks the life out of them.

At least we have power here. Across the river in Gainesville, TX, about 1/4 of the city has been without power after a substation failed this morning. I cannot imagine being without power on a dangerously hot day like today.

I guess we'll have to mostly "talk" gardening while not really doing much of it this week, because it is too hot to be out in the garden.

Dawn

Dawn, No photos??????

Mike,

We have the flu here so I am so far behind just on regular stuff that you wouldn't believe it. There's a reason for no photos, in addition to no camera (cause the guys have it), and no idea how to use the camera or upload the photos if I ever got any taken....I have no time.

Two of us are over the flu, but the third one who came down with it (me) is not. The fourth has gone out of town, but she doesn't have it yet, and the fifth (my spouse) has no flu symptoms yet. I don't think the flu in summer is as bad as the flu in winter, but my son might argue with me. He seems to have had the worst case.

I did go outside several times today and pick tomatoes, but I just didn't have the energy to get it all done. Having picked tomatoes, tomorrow I have to wash, sort and process 20 gallons of them. I don't know when I'll squeeze it in because I have a full day planned away from home tomorrow, flu or no flu (I'm almost over it and think I'll be as good as new tomorrow), tomatoes or no tomatoes. Maybe if I get up at 5 a.m., I can do the tomatoes extra-early before my real day starts. Maybe tomorrow I'll at least have time to fuss at DH and DS until one of them finds at least one of the two cameras.

I don't think you realize how busy I stay....I have 14.5 acres to maintain, although a lot of it is left pretty wild except for pathways cut through the woodland. Just mowing and weedeating 3 or 4 acres takes a whole day and then there's the garden and the flower beds and all the animals....and the house and the people. I need two of me to do it all, but there's only one of me.

I know you'd like to see photos and I'd like to accomodate you, I really would, but I have no time right now. Stay patient and I'll try to get some. There isn't going to be a lot to photograph for the next month since I'm in the process of stripping out the spring garden crops and replacing them with fall crops. Except, perhaps for tomatoes. I always have tomatoes.

Because I raise a whole lot of veggies and preserve them for winter, this is my busiest time of year. I used to think spring planting was the busiest time, but I think that once the big harvest starts, life really is busier. I normally have about 9 things going on at once during the harvest season and struggle to get everything done.

Although I harvested tomatoes today, I need to harvest (and process!) okra, potatoes, peppers and black-eyed peas tomorrow. Keep in mind I won't be home tomorrow. I have two big bowls of peppers to can, and those 20 gallons of tomatoes....and the cured onions are ready to go into their onion bags and go into the cellar, which will leave the drying tables open for the potatoes as soon as I dig them. And then I have someone wanting me to find a camera, take photos and post them....keeping in mind I don't really know how to use a digital camera and I don't know how to use photobucket or something like it and I don't know how to put photos on GardenWeb....and I don't have time to learn. There's a reason I don't do photos, and all of the above is it!

I'd probably have time in January to do photos, but there wouldn't be much to photograph. January is my slow month, sandwiched in between the winter holiday season and the start of the planting season in February. I really like January.

I did take a photo of Emmitt Smith (the cat, not the professional football player) sitting in the 2-year-old's wading pool today. He wasn't sitting in the water...but on a little blue plastic chair sitting in the water. He looked sort of cute there. Unfortunately, it was with a camera phone and the quality is poor. Still, I took a photo....it just isn't one anyone would be interested in seeing even if it was good enough quality that you could tell the black furry blob in the middle of the photo is a cat in a blue chair in a blue wading pool. My husband was uimpressed with my photographic attempt, but I never claimed to be a photographer. LOL

I thought I was going to have some professional garden photos last year when a professional nature photographer stopped by, saw the garden during one of its really good months (probably May) and said she'd love to shoot photos of it 'sometime'. Well, I told her that was fine but never heard from her again.

This is my stressed-out month. Can you tell?

Dawn

Dawn, You are too busy to get sick. I have had such a busy year that I told my husband that I should have asked for a cloning machine for Christmas because if there had been 3 of me this year maybe I could have gotten it all done. LOL

Just a little warning about this flu....it doesn't go away quickly. I would feel better and start working again, then the next day I would be "throw up sick" again. I did that over and over until finally I just had to have a "do nothing" week to let my body recover. It has been weeks since I had it and I am still coughing although I feel fine otherwise.

My 10 year old grandson was here last week and went home Saturday night. Our son and his family from Nashville came in on Sunday. They will be here until the weekend and friends from Nevada are arriving Sunday. I just barely have time to change the sheets. LOL Then I think I have about a week before the next family arrives.

Last week my grandson, and my DH helped in the garden and today my daughter-in-law spent hours cleaning vining things out of the chain link fence around the garden. I have a few things that haven't been quite killed out yet, but it is looking pretty bare out there. My GS planted cucumber seeds last week and they have already sprouted. We moved some basil from pots, and decided to put the potted peppers in the ground instead of trying to keep them watered in their containers. They were really too big to transplant, but only a few got a little droopy and the rest didn't show signs of stress at all. The droopy ones have been getting droopy by the end of the day anyway and they were pretty rootbound in the container so I think moving them was a good thing. I hope to get the other half in tomorrow unless more rain falls tonight. More rain is a strong possibility from looking at radar tonight.

I also planted more squash and some pole beans (actually my grandsons did). I am kind of pushing the envelope to plant this late, but maybe we will have a late frost. It doesn't look like I am going to get back to Tulsa, so I guess I have to settle for the tomato plants I can find locally. WMart has some, but they have been very picked over. I hated to pay $3.50 and $5.00 for plants that I really didn't want. I will check Lowes and then check Wmart again when a new shipment comes in. I told my DH that I would only plant what I could fit on one cattle panel. My grandsons planted one full cattle panel in Blue Lake pole beans today and tomorrow I am going to plant the ones I got from George on another trellis. I have a lot of "greens" to plant, but I don't think I need to rush on those.

The cantelope vine that I got from you at the swap is trying to take over my side yard. I had seen a few melons on the vines and had been checking periodicly to see how they were growing. The two I have been watching are about the size of a baseball. Today I found two more that are almost full size melons and I hadn't even seen those before. It is growing in a large container and vining over the blueberry pots, the lilac bush, the smoker, and a few tomato pots. It really has a vigorous vine and a lot of fruit set.

I hope to spend a couple more hours in the garden this week but other than that, I am just going to play and enjoy my company. We took our Oklahoma grandson out on the jet skiis for awhile last week, but the water was very choppy that day. The two Tennessee grandsons have been on and off of the skiis all day today and they aren't even in the water. The kids did go down and swim a couple of times today though. Looks like the later part of the week will be the best lake days, when all of these storms pass. We are grilling hamburgers and hot dogs and trying to keep things simple so we have time to play. I don't do enough of that.

I have been thankful for the assistance in my empty garden and hope I can continue to make improvements over the winter so it will be super ready for spring.

Take care of yourself and don't try to go back out in that hot sun too soon. Give yourself time to recover.

I also love to see photos of great gardens, but rather than putting Dawn on the spot, we might just start a thread for people with time and energy to post images.

My garden is suffering from the heat some, something common to us all. July might be a bad time for it lol.

Anyway, maybe Mike or someone can get a thread up with some great garden images!

Carol,

You're so right that this flu does not fade fast. I overdid it in the garden yesterday, but I simply had to pick all those tomatoes, and then I was coughing and congested and awake all night. Today, I have been very careful to take it easy. We ate brunch out and then went shopping for such exciting things as a copper fungicide for the tomato plants and some Spinosad spray (I had the granular on hand, but no spray) for the blister beetles that appeared in the garden sometime while I was sick. I only saw 2 or 3 blister beetles while picking tomatoes yesterday, and I cut them in half with my Fiskars Garden Scissors before they could get away (LOL!), but I bought some spray just in case I find more of them.

I also bought a new book--the revised edition of "The Joy of Pickling". How's that for exciting summer reading?

I'm so envious of your rain! (And all the garden help too!) We had rain last night but while the Burneyville mesonet station recorded about 8/10s of an inch, we only had a quarter inch here.

You know, my potted peppers have been droopy too and don't look as good as the ones in the ground. My habaneros in pots are doing better than the red sweet bells in pots. Usually I have good peppers in pots, but not this year. The ones in the ground look twice as big and are 10 times as productive. I've moved my potted peppers to a shadier spot to see if that will help them.

Isn't it amazing how fast cucumber seeds sprout in the heat? It always surprises me how 'eager' they are to sprout and grow in this heat.

I bet you get beans and squash. Most years, plants make great growth in August if you can just keep them watered.

I think that cantaloupe was Hale's Jumbo Best or Best Jumbo or whatever, and it is a very vigorous grower. Mine are taking over the garden too. They are trellised, but have outgrown the trellis and have gone everywhere and are covered in melons. I love it when a plant goes wild and produces like mad! It makes up for the sulky plants that sit there and do nothing.

It sounds like a terrific visit with the grandkids. I hope y'all get as much nice weather as possible so they can enjoy being there at the lake with y'all. It is hard to 'wish away' the storms when rain is so needed, but y'all could just tell those storms to come down here to Marietta. You'll have nice vacation weather for the kids and we'll have rain--that's a win-win proposition.

I am going to chain myself to the kitchen tomorrow and put up a lot of produce which will keep me out of the garden and the heat. Tim's trying to do as much of the mowing and weedeating today as he can to give me a break from that.

OKFella,

Thanks for chiming in to take the pressure off. I am just really super-busy at this time of year.

Although the garden doesn't look as good as it did in early June, it doesn't look bad. I just don't have time or camera/computer skills. I did mention the need to take garden pictures to hubby today and he said "Oh, yes, we'll get the camera out and do that today." Well, today is almost over and I haven't seen the camera, and I'm not going to drag him in from mowing to do it, because then I'll have to finish the mowing tomorrow. LOL

I want to take and post photos. My garden looks very good for July and I am proud of it and don't mind showing it off, but the harvest is coming all at once. If I only had a small garden and if what we harvest just went from the garden to the table that would be one thing, but I am filling up three freezers and a cellar and it takes a lot of time and energy. Last week, or maybe the week before, I hurt my back putting a heavy 2-year-old in the back seat of the truck and then I came down with the flu last week, so I have gotten really behind in all my 'chores'.

I am struggling to keep up with the harvest and canning/dehyrating/freezing/cooking all the produce and I am further behind than I've been in years. Right now is such a critical point in terms of getting the summer stuff 'out of there' to make room for the fall stuff.

When we moved here, I thought I'd have all the time in the world to do all kinds of stuff. Instead, the garden devours my time. I'm not complaining--it is, after all, my choice and I love it. At this time of year, though, it doesn't leave time for anything else.

Dawn

I'd have pictures too, but my three year old knocked the camera off the shelf where I'd put it to be out of her reach, last year when she was two. I haven't had the cash to get one since then. I ought to go borrow my mother's for a round of pictures. They're always interesting to look back on later.

Dawn,
I read a bit about you back problems which can indeed be very frustrating for a gardener. You might try some yoga. I do some yoga each morning (along with the treadmill) and it does make a world of difference. I'll be 67 this October. Two tapes I particularly like for an aching back are Back Care Yoga for Beginnings with Rodney Yee and a.m. Stretch from Gaiam. There is no DVD player in the room where I work out so I use the tapes. you can get them super cheap from Amazon.com
Bella

Bella,

Thanks for the concern and suggestions. I do yoga and pilates, I walk, I work out (we have a weight room with a weight machine, treadmill, free weights, etc.). I think I am in pretty good shape for my age, but that doesn't make me invincible. LOL

I simply pulled a muscle trying to lift a very heavy two year old from the ground to the child safety seat in the back seat of the truck and I must have twisted or turned wrong as I was doing it. I don't even think it was her weight, because I lift bags of hen scratch that weigh more than she does. I just think I turned wrong or funny or something. I also have found that my body at the age of 50 is not as forgiving of such things as it was a few years ago. : )

I have stacks of workout DVDs too, but use them more in the winter when I can't be outside as much.

I will say this....our family has had a very wicked flu running through it and passing from one person to another, and I got over it, basically, in half the time of the younger folks who are half my age. One of them said "Man, you sure bounced back fast", and I told her I thought maybe it was all the working out/gardening/dog-walking (8 dogs so lots of walking, except in the worst of the summer heat) and that being in good shape helped me make a faster recovery. Well, that and the fact that mom has to keep on doing mom things even when she's sick cause people and animals (and plants!) still need attention, food, water, laundry done, etc. Moms, I think, never get to lay around and be sick as long as everyone else!

Dawn

Yikes! Gardening with the flu and a bad back. I understand. My 3 year old grandson is built like a tank and picking him up is not an easy task.
We had 1" of rain and cooler weather. The plants are loving it. The rain came just in time, since the creek I water from with a pump has gone almost dry. I must be living right.
Bella

Bella,

You must be living right! I'm glad you got rain. We did get the cooler weather...I bet it either hasn't hit 90 yet or hasn't gone much over 90 yet today, so that's a pleasant change.

I'm in the kitchen processing tomatoes, though, so haven't been outside lately except to throw some stuff on the compost pile a couple of hours ago.

I wish it would rain right now. All my tomato plants have been stripped of anything remotely ready to ripen so there's nothing left to crack and split. I do have a huge number of large green toms that haven't reached breaker stage, and suspect the rain will arrive around that time.

My flu was relatively short-lived and the back hurts less every day. I suspect I'll be back to myself, and my usual routine, within a couple more days.

Dawn