We're drying out a bit too. And, the temps have been alright. Tonight we may go down to 38 F. But after that, for the next several days, night time temps are going to be warmer.

George
Tahlequah, OK

George,

Our cold night was last night---actually, early this morning, with a low of 43. Tonight we are supposed to go to about 50.

After being about 10 degrees below normal for most of October, we are now running about 10 degrees above normal---it was a toasty 78 degrees here today.

I just looked at the weather map, and a frost advisory has been issued for counties around yours....so I'm gonna go post a message about that.

Dawn

And we're about ten degrees lower than ya'll... LOL! Ten degrees at the worst, that is. Our highs have been in the low to mid sixties... might have hit 70 on one day I think. The lowest at night we've had was either 36 or 38. Due to schedules and all that I've gone ahead and pulled my peppers and okra... wanted to get it done!

Poor Miss Dawn and her never ending pepper plants... :).

Beth

Oh! My first planting of garlic is up! Planting more this week.

I am loving the beautiful weather. All I have left are the grape tomatoes that I think will hang on till Christmas.
Dawn, I love everything about the leaves. I have been raking them and chopping them with the old-fashioned push mower I got at a garage sale for $5. (No emissions, lots of calories burned.) Unfortunately, I think I aggrevated a torn rotator cuff I have been trying to ignore so have not been able to push that baby for the last couple of days. It has not stopped me from "gathering leaves" from the neighbors tho. I just grab their bagged leaves and throw them in the back of the van. I even got my 5 yr old granddaughter into it on the way home from pre-K today. I was afraid she might be embarrassed but she jumped out of the car to "help". Start 'em young, I say.
Patty

Beth,

I may pull up the okra plants today. I believe I've harvested my last pod. The plants are alive (somehow) and still forming blooms and blooming. However, the blooms cannot form pods because almost all the leaves fell off the plants a day or two after the overnight low dropped to 35 degrees. With no leaves, there's no photosynthesis so no pods.

The pepper plants are aggravating me. I ought to just pull them up and be done with it, but deep, deep down, I'd regret that if we have another month or two of above-freezing temperatures and could continue having fresh peppers for that long. There really is such a thing, though, as too many peppers and I've hit that point. (There is NO such thing as too many tomatoes, though.)

Patty, I need to gather leaves, but I cannot until it freezes because we have too many copperheads and rattlesnakes that like to blend in with the leaves. Actually, most of our leaves remain on the trees, although the early-turning leaves like those on the native persimmons and cedar elms have turned yellow and fallen. Some of the oaks are turning a golden-brown or red though, so they'll be dropping leaves fairly soon.

I hope your rotator cuff doesn't stay aggravated for too long. I was reading something a while back that said we baby boomers seem to be having more rotator cuff injuries that the generations that came before us, and probably because we're more physically active into our 50s and beyond than our parents and grandparents were.

I'm glad you're starting her young! So far, our two-year-old granddaughter is dangerous in the garden...she likes to pull the flower heads off the flowers and scatter the petals. I'll be glad when she's old enough to understand the flowers are prettier if left intact. LOL

Dawn

Dawn,
You just have to rub it in to those of us that are less fortunate!! Really I'm glad many of you are still harvesting. We are having warm days and with little wind till today. They are saying some upper 70's. Then maybe cooler by early next week and a chance of moisture again. Things are drying out so hopefully I can get the garden worked this weekend and garlic planted. Have been getting home too late with the time change and also battling sinus and maybe a little cold. Time to get things planned and ready for spring planting. Counting down days to winter sowing and onion planting. LOl. Jay

Dawn, what kind of peppers do you have? I'm STILL waiting on mine to get ripe!!! I talk to them every day but they do not listen. wah.

Jay,

Well, I am not rubbing it in, not intentionally at least. I am kind of in-shock that the garden just keeps rocking along and producing after all those cold, rainy days and nights in the mid- to upper-30s.

Tim keeps trying to talk to me about Christmas and holiday plans (because we give gifts to all the firefighters and their family members and also plan the big department Christmas party, and because I make up gift bags of homemade goodies for all the officers who work for him---and it is a very time-consuming effort) and I am not ready to think about it, much less discuss it all and start planning it or working on it. I think I need to try to focus less on the garden harvest and more on his Christmas plans......but I'm just not ready yet.....and the holiday count-down clock is ticking away merrily while I'm out picking green beans or whatever. This is really ironic. Usually the garden is done and I am busily working on Christmas and he's the one who can't decide what kind of gift he wants to get the firefighting bunch, etc. and I am the one stomping my foot and saying "we need to get busy now!" LOL So, the shoe is on the other foot and Christmas will roll around eventually whether I am still busy with the garden or not. In a way, a hard freeze would be a blessing because then I could move on from garden projects to holiday ones.

I'm counting the days until onion planting time too. It will be here before we know it. One of our forum members here who lives only one county east of me told me this spring he planted his onions in January last year. I've done that here in a warm winter, but usually wait until February. And, you know, February is not all that far away.

Dawn

River,

I'm sorry. I forgot to list my pepper varieties. I didn't grow many this year because I thought it would be a dry year (the year started out that way) and I didn't want to have to water if the drought continued. The ones I grew were: Orange habanero, Caribbean red habanero, Tepin, and these jalapenos: Ixtapa, Jaloro, Grande' and Mucho Nacho. I also had a lot of sweet bell peppers, and think the varieties were Mini Belle Mix, Orange Sunshine, Chocolate, Lilac, Red Beauty and Blushing Beauty. The ornamentals were Purple Flash, Royal Black, Marbles and Riot. See there---compared to most years, I barely planted any peppers at all.

Because of the recurring cold fronts accompanied by rain that we saw for most of the growing season (except from mid-July thru late-August in our county), these plants put on round after round of peppers. I'd say we easily had 4 times as many peppers per plant as we do in the drier years that are more common here. Of course, a bountiful harvest is always a blessing, but this year's just overwhelmed me. I have preserved peppers every way I can think of, and still have 2 bags in the refrigerator that I need to use for something.

I am grateful I cut back a lot on how many I planted this year. If I'd planted as many as I usually do and they'd all produced heavily, I think I would have had a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with the harvest.

I hope yours start turning soon. Did you grow Bhut jolokia and your usual assortment of hot, hot, hot peppers that would burn my taste buds right off my tongue?

Dawn

Dawn, I just don't know how you keep up with your (what must be) massive garden.

I just gave up on tomatoes this year cuz I can't seem to grow them well. I have datura for my hornworms, so that will do. They will also eat pepper plants you know, Hee Hee!

I still have a few butterfly chrysalises yet to eclose and am amazed they waited this long. Due to weather, but I thought for sure they were goners.

Congrats to all on their gardens. Saw a gorgeous small space veggie garden on Gardening By The Yard this morning, with big trellises covered with tomatoes, lots of vertical planting. Maybe once I have finished my host plant garden. Got 2 new butterfly bushes in, liriodendon tulipifera for Tiger Swallowtails, Baptisia australis minor for Wild Indigo Duskywings, Ruellias for Buckeyes, artemisia for American Ladies. Was fortunate to raise some Tawny Emperors this year. Rarely find them unlike the Hackberry Emperors.

Instead of GD picking flowers. go around with her an fill a bucket or vase with flowers she likes. My GD knows not to arbitrarily pick on her own, so we've turned it into a joint venture. She has learned to appreciate the flowers now. She also helps raise butterflies and moths. She got a bonus grade in science for her bug collection she took to school, as well as leaf collection. So much fun!

Susan

I'm still harvesting too -- jalepenos and my bell peppers are doing better now than all summer.

I got all the garlic planted that Jay was kind enough to send and I'm so excited for that - it's just been a beautiful week.

I have been seeing Monarachs all week and I thought they would be long-gone by now.

I don't have much garden left, but what I haven't taken out is still producing. I picked enough green beans for dinner, and I could see ripe cherry toms on the Sungold vines but I had dirty hands, then forgot to go get them later. All my cole crops look strong and healthy but I don't think it is possible for them to mature enough before the really cold weather comes. Of course, when I was taking out the peppers, I thought the season had ended then also.

I having been making myself leave the beans on the vines I got from George and they are filling out nicely. I hope they can mature enough for seed before the cold comes.

Being a DoD employee for 20 years, the wife of a 23 year veteran, and the mother and M-I-L of others that have served in the military, my heart is heavy tonight. As I looked at the flag at half mast, I thought that was about the condition of my heart as well. So sad.

Susan,

Since the totally unexpected occurred and rainfall actually fell here almost all summer long, the garden went crazy. You just cannot imagine what it was like. Remember the crazy rain we had in 2007? Well, we've had more rain than that here at our house this year and I have been a food harvesting/preserving maniac.

Because 12" of rain fell in one day at the end of April, everything I had in the ground then--including tomatoes and peppers--stalled and some of the plants, especially potatoes, died, but I replaced all I could and eventually ended up with a great harvest that continues to this day.

I coped with it all by turning into the ant (not the grasshopper!) and putting up food for the winter. In the root cellar (aka tornado shelter), we have over 300 jars of tomato sauce, salsa (six kinds, I believe), several kinds of pickled peppers including nacho-style jalapeno rings, bread-and-butter jalapenos, mixed sweet/hot pickled peppers, habanero rings, 3 or 4 kinds of pepper jelly, bread and butter pickle slices, dill pickles slices, dill stackers, bread and butter stackers, dill relish and sweet relish, and a lot of fruit jellies and jams.

We bought a new 18 c.f. chest-style freezer this summer to give me more space for frozen stuff (that's our third freezer) so in the freezers we have: sweet corn, broccoli, black-eyed peas, chopped onions, sliced onions, chopped sweet peppers, sliced sweet peppers, green beans, okra, stewed tomatoes, pureed tomatoes, whole tomatoes for cooking (skinned and cored), whole (but seeded) bell peppers for stuffing/cooking, jalapeno pepper halves for making poppers, whole jalapenos, whole habaneros, chopped habaneros, minced jalapenos/red pepper blend for Habanero Gold jelly, and....last but not least....chipotle peppers.

Then, I dehydrated thousands of bite-sized tomatoes to eat all winter long and I dehydrated hot peppers and turned them into ground peppers and pepper flakes.

The harvest is winding down, but I am still harvesting tomatoes, peppers, cukes, green beans and some herbs. I have winter squash still coloring up and fall potatoes still to be dug and more herbs to harvest. It has been almost ridiculous.

So, Susan, now you know a lot of what we'll be eating all winter. Every year is not this productive since every year doesn't give us 48" of rain (so far), so I did my best to cook fresh from the garden daily and to put up as much as I could for winter.

Hornworms can in waves and I mostly ignored them and just moved them to the daturas. However, closer to the end, I had to kill a few because they were attacking the best tomato plants I had left. We still have had oodles and oodles of sphinx moths though. It was a pretty good butterfly year here Susan with tons of all the usual ones, but I didn't see the monarch migration---as you no doubt know, it went more west of us this year---and I only saw 1 or 2 luna moths this year.

I had a lot of wildlife incidents and lost a lot of poultry and some cats (felines) to them, and we're hoping for a better year in 2010 in that area.

I bet you have had fun with your dear granddaughter this year! Our son married a young woman who had a 2-year-old daughter, so we became instant grandparents and have been loving every minute of it. Well, I'm not loving being exposed to every cold virus she brings to the house with her, but otherwise it is terrific.

I guess M. is quite the young lady now.....how quickly she is growing up! I suspect she'll always have 'extra credit' in her science classes.

Dawn

Yessssss - I am hoping for a future botanist or lepidopterist or maybe even a doctor......dreamin'.....

Are chipotles mild? I recall a very nice smokey flavor.

I had tons of butterflies and my very first spring batch of Monarch caterpillars this year. My Asclepias incarnatas were only up about a foot tall when Mama layed about 200 eggs. I didn't think I would have enough food, but they ate the plants down completely. The milkweed grew an abundance of foliage after the melee and I pretty much had them all summer. It was a fantastic summer for butterflies here. Yes, the migration did occur mostly to the west of us this year due to the prevailing westerly winds in September and October. But I am glad that the western part of the state was able to witness the event.

Sandy in Tulsa found lots of Cecropias on Buttonbush (cephalanthus occidentalis) this year and the overwintering cocoons will emerge next spring. I would love to have some of the silk and/or royal moths, but have yet to have any. My plants are not large enough to sustain any yet either. I don't think many are found in the urban areas. But I have still raised about 12 different sphinx moths to date and that is pretty miraculous considering I have a small garden (but lots of trees, honeysuckle flava, and Virginia Creeper).

I had horrible grasshoppers this year, some big enough to pick up and carry off small mammals! They even ate a couple of chrysalises! Geez! But, you told me last year that this year would be worse. Will they be bad again next year?

Dawn, our rainfall in the city exceeded the 2007 amount, too! My verbesinas once again bit the dust. They have excellent drainage but simply cannot take that much rain over a sustained period of time. I'm not complaining cuz it really cut the water bill.

Congrats on your new GD! They are so much more fun than I could ever have imagined.

Susan

Susan,

The nice thing is that she can be whatever she wants to be as long as she's willing to work for it. When my now 24-year-old niece was 3-years-old, Tim asked her "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and she replied "Barbie!" Well, she didn't grow up to be a Barbie doll after all, but she is a mom herself now and that was her real dream all along.

Chipotle heat varies depending on which kind of jalapenos you use to make them. Chipotles are just roasted jalapenos and you can roast them in the oven or on the grill. I freeze them but they also can be canned in adobo sauce.

It sounds like you had an amazingly successful butterfly year. After having very low butterfly numbers in 2008, everything seemed to return to normal this year, and I still have tons of butterflies here in the first week of November. There are all kinds, but especially the sulphurs. In August and September, it was mostly swallowtails. If I pay attention to what is going on around me, I'll see butterflies here almost every month of the year....although not too many in January and early February.

I am not sure about the grasshopppers for 2010. We saw their population make a strong resurgence all over Oklahoma this year but we won't know for 2-4 more months if their numbers will climb higher and peak in 2010 (likely) or if 2009 was a peak. A very cold and very wet winter works against them, so let's hope for 'cold', since the El Nino pattern more or less guarantees 'wet'.

For us here in southern OK, there are years we start seeing grasshoppers hatching out at the very end of January or in earliest February. In a year when that happens, I make a mental note to buy one of the natural baits with nosema locuste (Grasshopper Attack or Semaspore or Nolo Bait) in it and scatter some once the hoppers are 1/4 to 1/2" long. It kills them quickly when they are in the younger instars. I only put out a little if I am seeing early hatchings, but I put out more every couple of weeks through about early May. If you can catch them early, they are easy to deal with.

If I don't see a lot of grasshoppers hatching out until March or early April, that's a good sign and likely we'll have lower populations. So, by mid-Spring, we'll know for sure. And, of course, it goes without saying that there's not much we can do about the other grasshoppers that migrate into our yards during the summer since they grew up elsewhere, but I do think it helps if you've been able to keep the native population very low before the migrating ones arrive.

Because grasshoppers were bad, blister beetles were bad too, although they were bad late. The blister beetles eat a lot of things, and I believe grasshopper eggs are one of their food sources. So, if we are seeing lots of hoppers, we'll have to brace ourselves for lots of blister beetles.

We had prolonged heat in part of July and part of August which did make those water bills pretty high, but the rest of the year the water bill was just a dream. The important thing was that the rain came along every so often and kept the garden in heavy production a lot longer than normal. I can justify the high water bill if I'm harvesting oodles of produce, which I was. For once, I didn't have to just give up on watering and walk away and let the drought take the garden from me, so it was very nice.

The amazing thing about our rain, Susan.....here in Love County we had 23" in 2008 and, so far, about 48" in 2009. I guess you can see where our average annual rainfall (36-38") comes from. I have to say that I prefer the 48" years to the 23" years.

Grandkids are fun. We just should have had them first!

Dawn

Hey Dawn!
I have spoken with you in previous months! Hope all is well! I am in Lawton and just finished my first year of gardening (just a small scaled one 10 x 20)and I was pleased with results! Had a question on how to keep the weeds out of the garden throughout the winter months! I have cleaned everything out and noticed that tons of weeds already have begun to take over the bed! Also, I have a good supply of oak tree leaves I spent the weekend mowing up.....is there a good use for them for the garden or should I just get rid of them....I am new at this, can you tell?! Thanks for the advice!
Denise

Hi Denise!

It's good to know you survived another long, hot summer in Lawton. Everything is fine here...the garden is STILL producing and I am still picking and I'm starting to hope for a frost, and may get my wish on Tuesday.

Piling the leaves on the beds is one of the best things in the world you can do, so go for it! I spend my entire winter collecting oodles and oodles of bags of leaves from our woodland and then I shred or chop them and put them on all our beds as mulch.

As the leaves decompose, they basically break down into compost which improves your soil. One of the great things about leaves is that they also contain the micronutrients, aka trace elements, that all plants need....and they generally contain the trace elements in the ratios the plants need.

If the leaves start to blow around, just wet them down with a hose so they'll stay in place.

How many leaves to add? All that you can. I like to put a nice layer of 4-6" of chopped and shredded leaves on the beds. By spring they break down significantly, so starting with a deep layer is important.

The difference in beds (and garden paths) mulched with leaves or other mulch versus unmulched beds is phenomenal. If I leave a bed or pathway unmulched, it will have weeds 1-3' tall by February. Mulched paths and beds will have few to no weeds.

Leaves are so important that some members of this forum ask the neighbors for their leaves (if the neighbors aren't using them as mulch or on a compost pile) and other members of this forum (and I won't name names) drive around the neighborhood and pick up bags of leaves set out on the curb for trash collection.

In addition to leaves, you can use spoiled hay or straw (straw tends to be less weedy), grass clippings, manure, etc.

Feel free to ask us questions any time....and you are welcome.

Dawn

...and other members of this forum (and I won't name names) drive around the neighborhood and pick up bags of leaves set out on the curb for trash collection.

heh, heh... That would be me. I don't mind if you use my name. The headlines might read,

LOCAL RESIDENTS REPORT THEFT OF BAGGED LEAVES BY GIANT BEE!!

Ilene,

And you're not the only one who collects leaves, although you might be the only one who does it while wearing a bee costume.

I just want to scream when we drive by someone's place and they are burning a big pile of leaves. Those leaves would be so much more useful if shredded/chopped and used as mulch.

Dawn

I hate to see the wasted leaves also, and I really hate to have the smoke while they are burning. I could have leaves stacked to the top of my garden fence if I wanted them, but I don't have a way to shred them. One of my neighbors saw another neighbor taking a shreader to the dump, and rescued it. He brought it to me and DH took it to the mechanic today. I do hope he gets it running. I am about the only one in the neighborhood with leaves left now but next year I could pile them up.

Well typically a chipper-shredder is a you-know-what to get started.

We had a cheaper one that DS got in a trade, it had been left out in the weather and DS worked on it and got it running. But every time we wanted to use it, we had to get him over here to start it for us.

So we found a really good one at a garage sale, and DH was able to start it right up. So we sold the one we had at our garage sale to a young muscle-bound guy that won't have any trouble getting it started. But even this new one probably wouldn't start up for me. If I didn't have DH around to get it started I'd probably have to sell it, too, and just run over the leaves with the lawn mower. And I've already had to mend and reinforce the heavy woven nylon bag that came with it. I guess even the high-dollar folks don't make 'em like they used to.

I don't really wear my bee costume when I'm collecting leaves, y'all. I was just messin' with ya.

I have trouble starting all kinds of power equipment that has pull-cords. When we bought our last push lawn mower, we got one that starts with either a pull-cord or a key, so I can start it with the key and that makes me happy. Of course, the lawn tractor/mower starts with a key, but I just won't use it. I make myself use the push mower so I get some exercise every time I mow. Tim uses the riding mower because he runs and lifts weights so he gets plenty of exercise

I didn't really think you collect leaves in your bee costume, but you could do it if you wanted to....who are we to judge? LOL

I'm going to have to show this last part to my Katie...she still has vivid memories of a "grab and run" last fall when I needed leaves (under cover of dark, of course)! She was so relieved when my brother brought me two giant bags of already shredded leaves and grass last week :)