My plans now are to plant corn and potatoes early in hope of crop before it gets so hot and dry. I may try to grow more peppers and freeze or can them.

I need to amend my soil more, still waiting on soil test.

I will try yardlong beans and yardlong cucumbers again.

I will have my irrigation system in better shape next year (if time permits).

Still too many projects and family health issues to devote a lot of time to the garden.

I hope to learn a little about herbs and grow some next year.

If next year starts out like this one, I hope to give up before I waste so much time and money on the garden.

There is still too much time between now and then for me to have a solid plan. I'm still cleaning garden, planting cover crop, and waiting to harvest sweet potatoes and peppers.

I did not have anything this year to brag about. My cherry tomatoes did pretty well but my heatwave tomato produced very little.

Larry

Luffa. I had a volunteer come up, just as the furnace got turned up in June. I hardly watered it. Yet it grew and thrived, producing edible fruit. It is still producing now. I've decided I will ALWAYS plant luffa.

George
Tablequah, OK

For flowers, what did the very best was Autumn Sage, Salvia greggii. I am seriously thinking about adding more of those in my driveway beds. They bloom all summer, and the butterflies, hummingbirds and moths all love them. I will say mine were well established and I did water, but they are really the only thing that looks decent in either bed. The nepeta is coming back and the russian sage did pretty well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Autumn Sage.

Larry, I'm disappointed that your Heatwave tomato didn't do well. I was hoping that would be a solution if we have another year like this one.
And Lisa, you're right on about the Autumn Sage. Mine did well, too, with very little water. I also planted lots more sedums for groundcover this year.
George, I've never grown Luffa. Are they really that useful? Tell me what uses you put yours to.

I grow the angled luffa variety, also sometimes known as Chinese Okra. It can be picked young and then sliced and cooked as okra. Doesn't taste like okra, but rather more like a cross between a cucumber and a zuchini. But it makes an alright veggie when nothing else will produce. Mature fruit can be turned into scrubbies for dishes or bath. The vines tolerate HEAT, blooming in the late afternoon and on into the night. The flowers are attractive too. Luffa is great for trellising.

George

four o clocks, crepe myrtle, Russian sage and this sage.

Nice pic of your sages. Love the ball, and the dog!

I am picking ripe Early Girl tomatoes again. Several other plants also put back on after it rained and cooled off in Aug, but this year Early Girl bore longest through the heat and sooner after the cooloff, so I will always have Early Girl. Better Boy and Rutgers are right behind it and Thessaloniki behind them. And the Black Cherry tomatoes bore all summer. George gave me some southern peas--Kentucky Red--and they bloomed and set on heavy after it rained in Aug. Sweet potatoes have struggled to regrow after deer have eaten them at least 3 times but are looking good and I expect to have a decent crop again. And the Stewart's Zeebest okra that George gave me is still going great. The Clemson Spineless succumbed to some kind of disease--maybe rootknot nematodes--after it rained good.

In the flower beds the crepe myrtles came through and are blooming. A rose of sharon that got a gallon of water a week during the heat is now blooming. The red spider lilies are gorgeous right now as is the sweet autumn clematis. The oxalis that I thought was dead has come back and is blooming. The four o'clocks are in full bloom too. Dianthus planted last spring and barely watered all summer are blooming now. I always thought of them as needing a lot of water, but not so. The fancy petunias planted with them died out in the heat. Selfseeded cleome, zinnias and petunias have bloomed all summer with almost no supplemental water during the heat and none for two months. And the purple morning glory that comes up and covers the garden gate every year came up very late--in Aug after it rained, but is now in glorious bloom. The huge climbing rose--perhaps New Dawn--has lots of flowers again.

The Datura, Passion Flower, Sunflowers, Cosmos 'Cosmic Orange' and 'Cosmic Red', Golden Crownbeard (Verbesina enceliodes, a reseeding native annual), Cleome, Salvia 'Lady in Red; Salvia darcyi (the largest Salvia blooms ever), Dicliptera suberecta (another hummer fave), Pyramid Bush (grey foliage, hot pink flowers bloom continuously; in the Chocolate family), Gazanias, Flame Acanthus, Mullein, Asters, Pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa), Cuphea 'David Verity'.

I hsve a few plants that really do need regular watering, like Hibiscus, Hydrangea, and False Nettle, but most are very drought tolerant.

Susan

My number one plant that is a winner each year regardless of the weather is Mexican Heather. I looks good all year,and as an added bonus, attracts all kinds of pollinators. James

I love Mexican Heather. Just haven't managed to keep it through the winter.

Another winner, through the drought was Lambs Quarters. This is getting to be on my "must have" list. For months, this year, it was the only vegetable coming out of our garden. I even learned to strip leaves from older, woody stalks to extend the seaon at least a month beyond what is normal.

George

I left a few lambsquarter plants too but didn't think to eat them in the heat. Definitely wanted them to set seed, because it is one of our favorite spring greens. Have a very large, very red amaranth that Jerreth told me the spanish name of but didn't see it written down, so don't know now what it was. It's edible too, but I just grow it for ornamental purposes. The perrenial onions and leeks that I started from seed in the spring did great and I will be making potato leek soup soon, and sauteeing the onions--scallion type, never make bulbs--with the fall radishes and bok choy that are coming on now.

The best survivor on our property was Gomphrena (Globe amaranth) "Strawberry Fields". We have received slightly over 14" of rain in 2011 and it has received no irrigation because it is 300' from the house. The gomphrena bloomed all summer long, finally dying out last week. Other really tough plants that did well all year but received some irrigation are these: four o'clocks, portulaca, Texas hummingbird sage, autumn sage, 'Laura Bush' petunia, datura, verbena bonariensis, malva sylvestris 'Zebrina' and 'Mystic Merlin', morning glories, Texas Red Star Hibiscus and Swamp Mallow (but only because the Mallow received steady irrigation). The trumpet creeper vines that received some water near the house bloomed all summer long, but the trumpet creeper and American Cross Vine that were too far from the house to irrigate hung on and survived but haven't bloomed very well. The coral honeysuckle 'Pink Lemonade' looked good until about mid-August but has gone downhill since then. I'm not sure it will survive if rain doesn't fall soon.

All the pasture grasses dried and either went dormant or died. The Johnson grass, which is a horrible weed just about as annoying as bermuda grass, lasted longest and I doubt any of it is actually dead though it definitely is dormant. The bermuda grass around the house didn't die, but didn't look good even though it received some irrigation.

With a lot of the trees in the woodland that have dropped their leaves and gone dormant early, we won't know until next year if they've survived. I think most of the large trees will be fine if it rains some this fall and winter, but a lot of the smaller understory trees may not make it.

The hoped-for autumn rains haven't really materialized here although there's been some patchy, scattered showers here and there, so everything is in pretty bad shape. Normally we'll get 3.5 to 4" of rain in September and we've had only 0.7" this month, so everything still looks dry and pitiful and we continue to have grass fires, brush fires and wild fires.

Most of our native grasses and plants in the pastures scorched, dried out and went dormant or died this summer. They received no irrigation. The toughest survivors (some of them actually greened up and began blooming after they received 1.2" of rainfall in August) included greenthread daisy, lazy daisy, liatris, goldenrod, native sunflowers and frogfruit. The frogfruit plants in the front pasture lasted all summer, until temps in the 112-115 range finally got to them in early to mid-August, but the frogfruit plants that received a slight amount of moisture in a location close to the wildlife feeding area stayed in bloom until early September. They're still green but aren't blooming.

The toughest shrubs were the Burford hollies, native Possumhaw hollies, sumac and southern wax myrtles but they all received some irrigation. The trees that tolerated the drought with the least damage were the native Red Oaks, post oaks, burr oaks, pecan trees (they, along with the native persimmons, did better than anything else), desert willow and chaste tree. The native roughleaf dogwood did fine in partial shade, and not so well in full sun. Older, larger and more well-established trees showed drought stress but little damage. Younger trees stressed much earlier and some have dropped leaves and gone into dormancy early as a drought survival mechanism.

Lambsquarters did great even where not irrigated as did, unforunately, the pigweed. Basil, rosemary, catnip and mint held on longer than any of the other herbs, but ultimately the heat and drought killed them. Well, with mint you never really know---we'll see if it comes back next year.

In the veggie garden, the tomatoes that produced best were those planted earliest. The plants put in containers in February and carried into the garage at night produced ripe fruit beginning in late April and continuing through late June or early July. The tomato plants put into the ground in earliest April produced very well before the heat got to them in late June or early July. Any tomato plants that went into the ground later than early April didn't set and ripen much fruit before the temps got too hot for fruit set in late May. The container tomatoes that produced well were Big Boy, Better Boy, Husky Red Cherry and Big Beefsteak. The best producers from the early April plantings were Early Goliath, Cluster Goliath, Goliath, JD's Special C-Tex, Gary 'O Sena, SunGold, Ildi, Jaune Flammee', Russian Persimmon, Mountain Magic, Black Cherry and Matt's Wild Cherry. Even though I haven't watered the garden since late July, one SunGold plant has held on stubbornly and survived and is still producing fruit, albeit they are smaller than usual. Their flavor is great too. I've never been impressed with any of the heat-set type tomatoes. They are bred to set fruit in slightly higher temperatures, but their flavor always has been poor in my garden. The best heat-set type I ever grew was Merced, but it was taken off the market a few years ago. Other veggies that produced well in the heat were onions, potatoes and lettuce in the cool-season crop category, and okra, sweet corn, green beans, southern peas, cukes, watermelons, muskmelons and peppers in the warm-season category. Nothing but the okra produced much after I stopped irrigating in July but I had planted everything pretty early so got good early crops.

I planted a lot of interesting tomato varieties from Brad Gates' Wild Boar Farms but they went into the ground later than the varieties listed above so didn't get a chance to set many fruit before the heat got to them. I'll try them again next year. I still have lima beans growing in a cattle trough near the barn and they are blooming and setting beans. They have received regular irrigation, and when they are through producing I will replace them with lettuce and other salad greens for winter.

Hopefully the arrival of the cold front late yesterday marked the end of summer weather for us down here. Now, if only rain will fall....but none is in our 7-day forecast. We have had some cooler, milder weather in September, but hit 107 earlier this month and it was 102 degrees yesterday before the cold front finally made it this far south.

I'm going to overseed the lawn with rye grass today and overseed one pasture with a deer forage mix in the hopes that I can irrigate both of them enough to get the seed to germinate and the plants to grow.

We still have a lot of snake activity, with the ones I'm seeing the most lately being the Timber Rattlers and the non-venomous rough green snakes and the racers. So, with the Rattlers out and prowling around, I haven't started any garden cleanup yet. Obviously, with the extreme heat, drought and wildfires, I didn't plant a fall garden at all.

I'm ready for October and ready for 2012---assuming rain falls in decent amounts in 2012. The local stores have pansies, ornamental kale, and snapdragons out in the garden centers but it is still too hot to plant them here. I always look at them and then sigh and walk away. Even if I planted any of them, the deer would get them....and I can't blame the deer because they're really hungry. I'll probably plant some amaryllis and paper white bulbs in pots indoors around early November just so I'll have something growing.

The flowers that have done pretty well here are gaillardia, coneflower, gaura, Laura Bush petunias (I'll never plant any other type of petunias after seeing how these survived the heat), portulaca, zinnia (self-seeded from last year), penta, and salvia. The morning glories and four o'clocks grew but didn't start blooming until the weather began to cool down, and finally they started blooming like crazy but the grasshoppers are doing their best to strip them ... ugh! The moonflowers and hyacinth bean vine that I planted together are beautiful. The columbine seem to have died out completely but I'm hoping they'll come back next year. Between turning brown from the heat and being chewed up by blister beetles, the hostas look terrible. The cosmos didn't do well at all. One little marigold that must have been planted by a bird is thriving in spite of getting very little water. And as far as shrubs, the crape myrtles were very pretty when they finally recovered from that shock they got last winter.

As far as the vegetables, fruits, and herbs, the basil that re-seeded from last year is the number one winner. Eighteen tomato plants (almost all different varieties) yielded approximately a handful of cherry sized tomatoes. Cucumbers, squash, and zucchini did pretty well until the squash bugs won out. We got a little okra and eggplant, and the peppers did pretty well, except for the bell peppers. The sugar pie pumpkin yielded one pumpkin ... the rest shriveled up, as did the watermelon. We did get nine beautiful and delicious cantaloupes, they were Hale's Best. We laugh about the fact that our first attempt to have a real garden in years turned out to be one of the worst gardening years ever for almost everyone. But we'll try again next year.

Suzie

The only tomatoes I got were Juanne flamme (a few still, very few, but tasty), and sungold (a friend's). I'm not very good with tomatoes in the best of years. The Brandy Boy tried, it really tried. All the eggplants and peppers did ok, with periods of stall, then resurgence. It was a great spring/early summer for greens. Next year I will pick more and freeze/can. The Armenian melons were a hit with friends & family, even as refrigerator pickles. Nothing stopped those things until it got cooler.

My flowers didn't act too differently. The only surprise was that the old time daylilies did so poorly in the heat. They got to looking so bad I pulled up most of them. However, now I think they were just dormant, as some are coming back. The nicer ones did fine.

I read an article this week that suggests Texas may be in for several more years of drought (like in the 50's when they ended up building all those lakes), so I'm just going to assume we are too.

My eggplants have done well, once I got spider mites under control. Now that we're under 105, I finally have some peppers starting to set. Looks like I'll have an enormous bumper crop in the next month, after being without any but a few jalape�os all summer. The habaneros are blossoming like crazy, as is the Anaheim and the jalape�o " tree". I need to plant some more jalape�os next year, we use so many of them and I also like to can with them. I also enjoyed the tiny " Thai" pepper which fruited all summer. I may pot it up and find a better place for it.
Okra struggled but survived and is now starting to produce better with cooler temps ( we were still 107 on Friday!), and I had one Armenian cucumber survive, not producing until last week. It started to put on tons of cukes last week, then one day I came out and it was nearly dead, along with my red rippers and long beans. I think the spider mites may have finally gotten to them.
Long beans and red rippers did finally give me something last week before nearly croaking. They're still trying but not looking so good. We have had quite a few good meals of long beans, though, when nothing else was producing. I fix them steamed, just like regular green beans, we don't like them stir fried.
Tomatoes, I was two months late planting. Surprisingly, I still got about 150 pounds. Not nearly what I'd hoped for, I wanted to can enough for the year and I reduce my sauce so much it takes a ton of tomatoes, plus I wanted to do salsa and ketchup, but, we still ate our fill of fresh for three months and I got enough sauce to last at least four months.
Basil has done well, as always. I managed to kill my chocolate mint, I've never gotten it to survive the summer. Thyme and bee balm also died in the end of our record hot August.
I do have some self sown leeks growing nicely. Otherwise, haven't even planted the fall/ winter garden yet. Have some things under lights and just started hardening some things off.
I've been slow getting my gardens ready for fall, the heat has been brutal. This week looks good, although I'm in the middle of canning plums and chicken stock. I have to fill my raised beds as they really settled and I have two that aren't filled yet which I'll need this winter. I have four, 16x8 beds and my manure/ compost is 15 miles away. It takes so many loads with my little "Bantam" trailer and my poor bad neck really has a hard time scooping that much but the poop needs moving and the gardens need filling. I just couldn't do it in the 110 degree heat. I'm also shredding a bunch of prunings and I'll toss them into the two " lasagna" beds.
I found an area of one of my established gardens where I'd used vermicompost before my worms died from the previous summers heat. Apparently, the worms survived in the ground as I found a bunch of red wrigglers and some of the prettiest soils you ever saw in an area that was mostly wood mulch, manure, shredded paper and packed clay just last fall. It's now 12" deep of coffee ground textured black vermicompost! I harvested some of the worms to start a new worm bin, now that it's cool enough for them to survive in a bin.
One herb that I learned really loves it here is lemon grass! What a beautiful ornamental grass! Now, I just need to learn more things to do with it. I'm going to try growing some ginger in the shade. If I get brave, I may stick some horseradish off where it can't get too invasive.
An herb I killed in the heat was bee balm. Apparently I need to plant it in shade. My pineapple sage also expired, even though it was looking beautiful until July.

My red worms perished too! I never thought they would, as I had them in our tool shed, out of the sun. Hopefully, by digging around in our manure pile, where I believe I have released some before, I can find a new start.

Dorothy, the "Spanish" name (actually Aztec) for large red flowered Amaranth, like what you have, is Quintonil. That's pronounced Keen-toe-kneel, with the accent on the last syllable. Ours also survived quite handily.

George

My volunteer purple and white petunias. They started blooming in May and they're still covered in flowers. They just came up all over the place, I didn't even plant them. I think they came from next door, but the old lady that lives there never even comes outside, so she's not really taking care of them either. I think I watered them maybe 3 times this whole summer, and even then they didn't seem to need it. I just couldn't believe they were staying alive through that drought.

Wow, what a lot of great info has been posted!
I will have to make careful notes for next spring.

Tracydr - I'm really interested in how you were able to
Get 150 pounds of tomatoes when most of us couldn't
even get fruit set until late August. Any tips to share on
that? I've read recently to add 1 tsp Epsom salts
at planting of tomatoes for healthier plants and I'll try that
next spring. It sounds like you use a lot of composted
manure also. What tomato varieties did well for you, and
what part of Okla. are you in?