Hi Beth,

It's good to know y'all are doing well, despite the disappointing summer weather. I know lots of folks in Arkansas have had lower than normal yields of tomatoes and melons because of your abnormally cool and rainy weather. As we say here pretty often, there's always next year!

My Grande jalapenos have been huge producers as well, as have the Mucho Nacho jalapenos, habaneros and Tepins. The yellow jaloro jalapenos have been disappointing and I may not grow them again. How many peppers have we had? With about 2 months of production left, we've got about 100 chipotles (roasted jalapenos) in the freezer, about 100 jalapenos in the freezer for cooking, 6 jars of pickled pepper rings, 6 jars of bread and butter pickled peppers, and 18 jars of hot pepper jelly--6 of Habanero Gold, 6 of Jalapeno Gold and 6 of regular green jalapeno jelly. I suspect all those numbers will double by the end of the autumn. I've also used oodles of peppers in salsas and we've had jalapeno poppers once or twice a week all summer long. I've given up on using up all of them, so have been sending some to work with DH and DS to give away to their co-workers.

I am making salsa today, and probably tomorrow too, and hope to do about 30 pints this week, or maybe a dozen more than that. So, the salsa-making will use up most of the tomatoes, peppers and onions currently sitting on the kitchen counter.....and then I can go outside and pick peppers again. :) It is, without a doubt, the very best pepper year ever here....both for sweets and hots.

The rest of the garden has been a mixed bag. The 12.4" of rain that fell on April 29th severely hampered the onion and potato crop...a lot of them drowned and died. I had a year's worth of onions in the freezer, chopped and sliced, from the 2008 harvest so that wasn't a huge deal. We're still eating potatoes, and our 2009 harvest ought to last through fall and perhaps into winter. I'll make up for it by planting a whole lot more potatoes next year, and I'll try to plant them on the highest ground we have.

Tomatoes produced exceptionally well once the heavy rains stopped, which for us was in late May, I think. So, the big harvest was a bit late starting--in early July rather than June, but it was a good harvest through late August, although is has dropped off a lot the last 10 days or so.

I have yanked out most of the spring/summer plants and have a handful--maybe a dozen--in for fall, so I'm hoping we don't have an early fall freeze and that we get lots of fall tomatoes. The black-eyed peas and okra produced oddles, and are still producing. The summer corn was good but the raccons got some of it, and I never planted green beans for summer because I felt like, by the time it dried up enough to plant them, it was too hot to expect good production so I didn't plant them. I do have more corn, tomatoes, cukes, black-eyed peas and green beans in the fall garden, along with seedlings of broccoli and cabbage ready to go into the ground if only our temps would stop spiking up into the mid to upper-90s. It currently is 96 degrees on our front porch in the shade and the garden doesn't look very happy.

My melons were good early and not so good later on, and the herbs have done fine. The flowers are looking pretty tired and ragged after a hot August, and I've been yanking them out as they decline.

That's the brief report on my garden. Oh, and broccoli and cabbage were great but late....I harvested in June instead of May. We also had all the squashes and zucchinis we wanted, and then some.

Lots of excitement this summer--I've had two close enounters with cougars (one from about 60', the other from 6-8') near my garden this summer, and our son got married so we gained a daughter-in-law and 2-yr-old granddaughter. We've lost all 27 guineas to the cougar and/or other predators like coyotes and bobcats and 6 of our 7 old hens. Needless to say, our free-range poultry no longer range freely....they are confined to a fenced/roofed chicken run so nothing can eat them.

Our tiny baby chickens from April mostly survived (I think we lost 2 of 25) and have just begun laying eggs, which is good because the old hen, who is about 7 years old, has stopped laying the last few weeks.

That's all the real news I can think of here, other than I got a new 19 cu. ft. chest-style deep freeze which gives me lots more room to put up more of the summer garden's bounty. We had to get it because the other 3 freezers were full and we like frozen veggies better than canned ones.

OK, that's all my news in a nutshell.

Dawn

I just love hearing you talk of your garden... :).
I have come on once in awhile to search a topic, and seen you were having big cat trouble! Making me rethink our move out to the country plan... LOL! No, seriously... we have rumors of a big black cat around here. Whether that's true or not, I don't know... and I don't know if I wanna find out! You stay safe!
You helped me just by replying! I was wondering if I could do a chipolte roast on my peppers and freeze them. I've got about six pints of pickled rings and one bag of poppers frozen... needed another way to do some up. I did a green tomato salsa, but only have two pints of it left. My freezer is mainly full of breaded thai angle gourd and reg ol' okra (five gallon bags of 'em!).
Yeah, we didn't get high yields around here. In fact, when we go to the outdoor flea markets they've got those awful HARD tomatoes out there passing them off as locally grown. UGH. I've bought more canned tomatoes this year than usual... do ya blame me? :)
The main deal is I'm having to realize just how much I can do! With having an almost four year old and an almost sixteen year old, my time in the garden is sparse this year. (Last year I had nap times to work in the garden, this year no such luck.) But, like you said, there's always next year! I'm saving seed where I can and allready have a better plan in place for next year. Let's here it for Garden 2010! :)
Good to hear from ya, Miss Dawn! Take care!

Beth

p.s. OH! We had a surprise a couple of weeks ago! Our pecan trees normally don't produce every year... and since we had pecans last year, I wasn't expecting to have them this year. WELL... I guess all this rain we're getting made the trees wanna put nuts on again! My main tree isn't nearly as big as it was, after the ice storms last winter... but we'll get plenty off them all! I might sell some this year, I still have two gallons of last years nuts in the freezer... LOL! :)

Beth,

Make those chipotles! Roast 'em. Freeze 'em. Then, enjoy 'em all winter long!

It's great you're getting so much okra put up in the freezer too. You never know from year to year what your harvest will do. In 2008, our onion harvest was huge, huge, huge and we had all the fresh ones we needed, plus I froze about a two-year supply. Now, with a partial crop failure in 2009, once the fresh ones from '09 are gone, we still will have the frozen ones from 2008. It generally works out that way.

It has been a horrible tomato year for many gardeners because of the weather. For the folks in the 25 or so states that have had Late Blight striking their tomato plants (and often potatoes, peppers and eggplants as well), those gardeners have gone from lush green gorgeous plants covered in fruit to totally dead plants and rotten fruit in a matter of a couple of days. So, you're certainly not alone in having to buy canned tomatoes...and I don't blame you for buying them! Even in the states where Late Blight (Phytopthera infestans) hasn't been an issue, abnormally wet and rainy weather has been.

You know, it is a very rare year that everything in the garden produces a bumper crop. So, I'm just happy when I have enough of anything to put up for the future. Because of all the rain in April-May, I've probably had a better than average year for most crops since our main enemy here is low rainfall.

When I run out of tomatoes and I want to make salsa, I just go buy tomatoes. I've recently pulled out most of the summer plants, and the few left aren't producing much. The new tomato plants for fall haven't starting producing many ripe ones yet. I still have tons and tons of peppers though, so, while we were in Gainesville, TX, yesterday, we stopped at a Mexican supermarket that we hadn't been to in quite a while. I wanted to see if they had tomatoes at a better price than the other local stores.....and they did. They had 'salad tomatoes' at the incredible price of 4 lbs. for 99 cents. Needless to say, I bought a few!

It's terrific your pecan tree is doing so well. I think ours is producing a pretty good crop as well, which surprised me because I thought a late freeze had frozen the flowers. Well, apparently it didn't freeze them all!

For what it is worth, my son is now in his mid-20s and my veggie gardening didn't really take off like mad until he was in high school. Of course, partly that's because until we moved here, I didn't have endless amounts of space. Well, I had space but it was mostly shady, and the shade was from the neighbors' trees so I couldn't do anything about it. I grew the veggies I could at my house in the semi-shade but it got harder every year as the trees got taller.

I bet your four year old will want to "help" you more in the garden next year so it will be easier. Three is such a 'busy' age and you can't let them out of your sight at that age because they'll be getting into something if you do...and having to keep an eye on a young child can really cut into the gardening time.

Dawn

Dawn,
You didn't have to tell me twice on the chipotles! I allready have them put up! THE SMELL those peppers put off made me so hungry, we had tacos last night for supper... LOL!
I'm beginning to understand the time and effort that's gonna be involved on this gardening thing! I'm loving it! This year was the "experiemental" year... I really wanted to see what I could do on my own with my own thoughts. (Course, reading stuff on GW helped.) I'm calling this year a success! I've had fun, got some stuff in the freezer, and had neighbors coming up saying "Wow! What are you growing?". :)
OH, salad tomatoes for that CHEAP? I'm jealous! :)
My whole problem with shade is in my front yard, and I honestly didn't think much would grow there. Shade from my biggest pecan tree and another pecan that produces TEENY little nuts. BUT, I just put four tomato plants in to see what they'd do, and they're doing BETTER than the ones in direct sun in the side yard. You oughta see the brilliant color of green they've got! So, next year that spot is gonna be full of tomatoes, as many as I can scrunch in... LOL!
The plan for next year is keep it simple, yet bigger. Sweet peppers, Grande jalapenos, and beans in the side yard... tomatoes (surrounded by different herbs), squash, and okra in the front yard. (WITH the wall of thai angle gourds along my carport.) I'm excited about it! I'm also gonna collect as many five gallon containers as I can for special stuff (lettuces for sure).
YEAH, next year Little Bryan will be a better helper than this year... you shoulda seen him destroy a few pepper plants helping me weed... LOL! Momma stopped that as quick as possible! He'll be doing a half year in preschool before kindergarten, when that happens I ain't gonna know how to act! My oldest will be a senior the same year my youngest starts school... LOL! OH MAN, no wonder I'm nuts. :)
The weather has been warmer the past few days, which has helped my front yard tomatoes set fruit finally! I'm not sure anymore what kind they are... LOL! BUT I know the seeds are from you! I'll just save the seed and call 'em "Dawn Maters". :)
Have a good day! Thanks for listening to my garden babbling!

Beth

Beth,

I only bought 11 lbs., put those with a few lbs. of paste-types I had sitting on the counter to give me about 15 lbs. of tomatoes. We added 4 or 5 kinds of peppers, some red onions, 15 cloves of garlic, etc. and bottled 15 pints of a fairly spicy salsa.

I thought about going back to the store yesterday and buying about 40 bs. more of those cheap salad tomatoes (it was their last day on sale) but then I thought about how many bottles of everything we already have in the root cellar (tornado shelter) and decided enough was enough. I'm sure in a couple of days I'll be saying "I really should have bought those tomatoes....." LOL

I have found that tomatoes do better with some shade in our climate. Apparently, 'full sun' doesn't really mean full sun from sunrise to sunset in our zone 6-7-8 gardens that suffer from tremendous heat every year and awful humidity for part or all of each growing season. As long as your plants can get 4 to 6 hours of sunlight, they'll probably be fine. Six hours, of course, is better than four, and likely 7 or 8 would be even better but not required. Other plants that have produced well for me in only partial shade are swiss chard, peppers, lettuce, spinach and all other greens, including most all herbs.

Your plan for next year sounds great.

If you have a local Braum's or something similar, you might ask what they do with their 5-gallon containers. A friend of mine got a lot from Braum's a few years ago. Sometimes bakeries and restaurants will save them for you if you ask nicely too.

Before you know it, it will be Bryan who is the senior in high school! You know what it is like, and you know how quickly time flies! Children seem to go from pre-school to high school so very quickly. I look back and wonder where all the years went.

I have a new tomato variety for you to try. It is a hybrid and it is called Brandymaster. It produces some lovely pink medium-sized type tomatoes and is on the market for the first time in 2010. When I saw it, I had to have it. The problem? The smallest quanitity available from that supplier was 250 seeds. No problem. I figured that a few of my Garden Web friends would help me 'get rid of' those 250 seeds. So, this winter, when it is seed-sharing time, expect Brandymaster. I've linked the catalog listing below so you can read what they say about it. I am hopeful it will be as tasty as Brandywine, or at least almost as tasty.

Feel free to babble about gardening all you want. I engage in garden babbling all the time.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Pink Brandymaster

I don't wanna think about Little Bryan being a senior yet... having the worst time dealing with Chance being a sophmore... LOL! I blinked, and he's now taller than me, with facial hair! GAH! That's a strange experience, that's for sure. When Little Bryan (I say little cuz he's Bryan Jr.) starts school he'll be going just a block away from our house, we live right by the school. He's allready excited about it, we do "pretend school" everyday. I've really been debating on the whole preschool thing, he knows his numbers, letters, even recognition reads many things... just needs to hang out with kids his age and learn how to act! LOL! He'll also be playing tee ball next year, so he'll get the social aspects down soon.
You caught me still on the computer! My window of internet opportunity is small... only works while LB is watching his PBS shows, :).
That tomato does sound intersting, Bryan Sr. tends to like pink tomatoes better because he thinks they're lower acid. They may or may not be, but if it makes him feel better to think that... I'll let him! LOL! Send me any seeds you want to! I'll try 'em all!
Now you've got me wondering what Swiss Chard tastes like and if I should grow it in the front.

Beth,

Look at the Swiss Chard in the photo. It grows almost year round for me.

It tastes kind of like kale, and is great fresh in salads and such while very young and tender. Older leaves and stalks can be cooked in many ways. Basically, you can use Swiss Chard in any recipe calling for Swiss chard, spinach or kale.

I like to grow the color mixes Neon Lights and Bright Lights because they are so beautiful. It grows almost year round for me and I often mix it into ornamental beds. You can 'sneak' swiss chard, perilla, peppers, most herbs, carrots, radishes, tomatoes and okra (esp. the dwarf 'Baby Bubba' and 'Little Lucy') into the front yard and most neighbors won't even realize you're growing veggies in the front yard.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Neon Lights Swiss Chard

Darn - I saw perrilla in an OKC nursery last year and it was beautiful. I could hardly resist, but I had so many flowers I decided to pass. I didn't know it was consumable.

Carol, Perilla is in the mint family, so more useful in herb-like applications or added to salad mixes in small amounts, but also is often put in stir-fry. I knew it first as purple shiso, and not as perilla until I wanted to grow some. It is very beautiful, and VERY invasive...they should call it gorilla because it takes over every inch of space it can.

If you read the Wiki for it, you can see how different cultures use it. There's a green shiso and a purple shiso, but I think purple is prettier.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Perilla/shiso

Dawn,
Now you've got me wanting to add to my basic plan! LOL! I broke out my 09 Seed Savers catalog last night to look at their chard... Hubby looked at me like I had lost my mind, breaking out the catalog now! :)
My house is situated behind a business, so I'm not worried about people thinking my front yard looks odd with stuff growing in it. No one really sees it but me and my neighbor, Vera! Personally, I think a lovely garden looks much better than ratty grass... :).
OH, yesterday I got a email alert from Seed Savers saying to order garlic now... and I'm thinking about doing it. Any recommendations? Thoughts?

Beth

Beth,

If all our garden talk does NOT have you wanting to revise your plans, something is wrong. LOL I had a relatively simple garden until I found this forum. Now, I grow more and more of different things every year and no matter how much garden space I have, it is never enough.

I got that e-mail from SSE too but haven't read it yet. If you haven't already ordered garlic from them, they're likely sold out by now. It doesn't take them long to sell out in September and the same is true of most garlic suppliers. It seems like they never have enough and all sell out quickly.

I'm not a garlic gourmet or specialist. I just plant whatever I can get my hands on....I like it all. I did find and link a previous garlic discussion for you.

If the budget is an issue, just plant grocery store garlic. I did that for years before I started buying named varieties.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Previous Garlic discussion

Dawn,
You know money is always an issue with me! I'm glad to hear I can just plant store bought... but am now confused on how garlic grows. If I planted a bulb of store bought garlic, doesn't it just grow that tall flower with a purple poof ball on top? Where's the garlic?

Beth

Beth,

The only real issue with planting garlic from the grocery store is that garlic is daylength sensitive and the variety you buy in the store might need a longer daylength than we have here to induce bulbing. However, every kind I've ever bought and planted has grown well and bulbed for me, so the chance of that is slim.

The secondary issue is that garlic, like potatoes, is sprayed with an anti-sprouting chemical to keep it from sprouting while in the grocery store on in your kitchen pantry. However, the anti-sprouting agents only last for so long and the garlic does eventually sprout (as do potatoes in the pantry!).

I often buy my garlic for planting at a gourmet grocery store in Texas because they label it with its proper name, and the garlic there is organic and hasn't been sprayed with anti-sprouting chemicals. I've never had any trouble getting it to sprout and grow.

I've linked the SSE instructions for planting garlic. They were written by the late Darrell Merrell of the Tulsa, OK, area. Whatever you do, make sure it is in well drained soil, preferably in a raised bed several inches above the grade of the surrounding soil. If you don't have raised beds, just mound up enough soil above the ground to plant in that mound. Garlic will rot during an excessively wet winter and spring, and according to NOAA, we should be expecting a wet winter.

As long as you break the cloves apart carefully without bruising them and plant them as the guide directs, you'll have garlic bulbs next summer. They key is to plant in the fall. You plant in the fall, cold weather induces growth. In the early summer, the green plant parts begin to turn yellow and brownish and it is time to harvest.

When you planted a bulb of store-bought garlic, did you plant the whole bulb? Did you plant in spring? Either one of those can give you only the green scape and seed head. It could be had you a type that was the wrong daylength for our part of the country. With grocery store garlic, you never know. That's why a lot of people prefer to buy 'seed garlic' that is labeled, etc.

If you plant grocery store garlic, try to find several different kinds...a white-skinned one, a purple-skinned one, etc. That sort of hedges your bets.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Plant and Grow Garlic

Beth,
I'm not Dawn buit will add my 2 cents. I grew only store bought garlic for several years. Most of it will be what is called softneck garlic. It tall stem with a ball on top is a scape. And there are those who say remove it and those who say it leave it. I say it doesn't matter. Those who say remove it say the bulb and cloves will be bigger if you do. I removed some of a few varieties and left the scapes on other to compare. I'm talking about same varieties in the same row planted the same day. I noticed no difference like the man I listen to said. In fact the ones with had the biggest bulbs as often as not. The scapes will have bulbils on top. You can eat them or plant them. If planted they take another year or so to make big bulbs usually. And many like to use the scapes to cook with and in salads, ect. But the main bulb will form under the ground and divide into cloves. Not Elephant garlic doesn't always divide. a person can either use it or replant it in the fall and it should divide the next year. Hope this helps. Jay

Beth,

i'm far from an expert, but i am tulsa, which is close to your climate, and on the two occassions i planted garlic, it was a tremendous success. i purchased mine from the local farmer's market, and planted in late october/early november.

it's really fun to grow for me, because as the winter drags on and on, i can go out to my garden and see something still living.

Thanks ya'll! All bits of information helps, that's for sure! I'll be buying some garlic today to try this.
I've planted a whole bulb in spring before, this will be the first time to do an overwintering thing. I can't wait to see how it does! I've allready got a place picked out, well drained area. Plus, I'm gonna go ahead and do a couple of containers, one of lettuce and one of spinach. If it gets too cold for them, I can bring them in the house that way. It's almost noon here and it's only 70 degrees! I've got a BAAAD feeling about this winter. :(

Beth

Beth,

I share the bad feeling about winter in terms of wetness and maybe an early freeze, but don't really have a feeling "in my bones" about whether it is going to be terribly cold or not.

We haven't had a really cold winter at my house in 4 or 5 years. We usually have a mild winter, and then the real cold arrives around spring planting time. It's happened that way every year for the last 3 or 4 years. Pretty decent weather in Dec.-Jan.-Feb. and then abnormally cold weather in Mar.-Apr. I'm pretty fed up with it! : )

Dawn

Well, two years ago we had a fairly bad winter... with one pretty bad freeze. Then of course last year we had THE bad ice storm. We had a bad ice storm similar to that one four years before that. The frequency of the ice storms is stepping up and I DON'T LIKE IT! LOL!
Just makes me extra wary. We're in an old, drafty house with space heaters in most of the house (ch/a in the den here). I'm allready gathering old blankets from people and stuff like that... :). And we bought a little camp stove the other day and we're gonna stock up on coleman fuel as we can! I'll be more ready for it this year than I was last!

Beth - an old adage I got from the Farmer's Almanac on planting garlic (or was it HGTV?) oh well, anyway - plant Garlic on Columbus Day. Always easy to remember. Then harvest sometime in June whenever you want. It winters over nicely.

pk