Chandra, I truly hope you enjoyed your day off and were able to get a lot of those tasks done. Please tell Priya how much we are thinking about her and hoping that all goes well for her with the pending birth of your twins. She is so tiny and petite and I am amazed that she has carried the twins so well and so long. She must be amazingly healthy to accomplish that! Tanu looks so darling surrounded by the veggie harvest. I hope she is enjoying the wonderful harvest and her wonderful play area in the backyard too. Your entire yard and garden are a masterpiece. Every area looks so good and so right and so beautiful. I hope you have been able to enjoy the visits from all your sweet, loving friends and family who have visited to help Priya in these last few weeks before the babies arrive. Now, to address some of your gardening concerns: Watering: This has been a big concern for most of us, except for Carol, Michelle and a few others who have had plenty of rain (in fact, too much rain at times!). Just do the best you can and don't fret over it too much. Remember that infrequent slow, deep watering is better for the plants than shorter, more shallow waterings done more often since it encourages the roots to go deeper. If life gets too crazy after the babies arrive, you can put soaker hoses or sprinklers or drip irrigation systems on a timer. Red Candy Apple is a little hard to manage as it can be slow to grow and doesn't size up nearly as well as Candy grown in identical conditions. It has superb flavor but seems to be a slower grower. I read Bruce Frasier's advice on the Dixondale website to northern growers to give Red Candy Apple extra nitrogen to push it to perform better and grow bigger, so I tried it, even though I'm obviously a southern gardener. I gave Red Candy Apple a standard pelleted all-nitrogen lawn fertilizer (33-0-0) sometime in May when we were having all that rain. They really increased in size, for the most part. I think next year I'll try to give them more nitrogen earlier in their lives. Some of my Red Candy Apple onions were the same size as some of the big Candy and Super Star onions, but not all were. That difference in sizes might be an indication that I didn't distribute the pelleted fertilizer evenly. I normally don't use pelleted chemical fertilizers, and I just scattered it by hand. Still, I was pleased with the difference it made, and think using it earlier next year will make an even bigger difference, so I'll likely either rototill it into the soil before planting or will top dress it after the onions have been in the ground 3 or 4 weeks. Cool Season crops have suffered greatly from the very early arrival of abnoirmally hot temperatures this year. We get a second chance with cool season crops in the fall, and all we can do is hope for the weather to be better in the fall or next winter. Blackberries and raspberries may have had issues with late freezes freezing their blossoms. Or, if you just planted them next year, they just need to make some growth and ought to do better next year. It wasn't a great berry year here either. Telow gave you great grape advice. I'll try to pull up the OSU grape growing guide and post it in its own thread. It is incredibly hard to grow grapes here without preventive spraying for diseases. The peas had the heat issues to deal with. For comparison's sake....last year was a great pea year in our garden because the weather stayed cooler longer and we harvested about 35 lbs. of sugar snap peas. This year, we got maybe 6 or 8 lbs. We got too hot too early this year, and all the rain in May also caused some disease issues (mostly powdery mildew) for some Oklahoma gardeners with their peas. Carrots that mature in warm weather do lack sweetness. When carrots are able to mature before the heat arrives, they will be much more tender and sweet. Lettuce performed really well here too. Remember that you can plant it again in the fall, and some people grow it indoors in the winter. I think you can grow it in containers this winter in your greenhouse if you want to. I don't grow fava beans but I think Mrs. Frodo (Andria)does. Maybe she'll see this and tell you her secrets to growing fava beans. I think they are cool season and may need to be planted in the fall. Likely the heat is what is damaging your fava bean blossoms. It has been a great potato year here too. I am glad you got such a good harvest. If you had any small potatoes that you didn't use for eating purposes, you can save them to use as seed potatoes for your fall crop. Your corn sounds right on schedule. Silver Queen is a very late corn and I imagine it will tassel and silk soon. Tomatoes: My feeling is that I don't care how the plants look as long as they are producing. Tomatoes get every foliar disease that comes along, pests love them and the high temperatures are hard on them, but as long as they are flowering and setting fruit, all that other stuff doesn't really matter. High temperatures can impede pollination, fertilization and fruit set, but that doesn't mean it permanently shuts them down. Whenever we have a day with highs less than 92-95 degrees and lows less than 72-75, you'll still have some fruit set. Patience pays off. Some summers I've seen my plants sit there and drop blossoms for 3 or 4 weeks, but then a cool spell comes along and they do set fruit on whatever flowers they have at that time. The plants that produce bite-sized tomatoes are not affected by high temperatures nearly as much as the varieties that produce larger fruit. Peppera often have foliage issues and there are several diseases that cause the puckering and curling of foliage. I generally just ignore it and it either corrects itself or the plants just keep on producing anyway. I don't see any difference in production between plants with perfect foliage and plants with puckered or distorted foliage. I don't pinch off blooms usually because I don't think it is strictly necessary. In our climate, I try to let the tomatoes and peppers set all the fruit they want before the heat shuts down production. Eggplants are virtually indestructible, at least in summer heat. Just watch how they perform all summer. One year, during exceptional drought, I stopped watering the garden in June. Despite that, the eggplants produced until the first frost in November in an almost total absence of rainfall and irrigation, which I think is remarkable. I fully expected them to wither and die after I stopped watering. All your "hot season" crops like sweet potatoes, okra, etc. ougt to be exceptionally happy in this weather! Thank you for sharing all the beautiful photos of your garden with us. I am so proud of you and so proud of how well your garden is performing this year. I know you spent many, many hours on research and never hesitated to ask questions and to carefully read the answers and glean from them all the info you could. Your efforts certainly have paid off as you have a fantastic garden. Your garden must be giving you great joy this year, and I am happy that so many of your friends and family members have been visiting y'all this spring and summer and have been able to see your garden and enjoy it too. The beautiful rainbow of crops in many colors that you're growing are something to be proud of, and just think.....a year or two from now, Tanu will have to share those sugar snap peas with the twins, so you're going to have to plant a lot of them! Happy Gardening to you, and give my best wishes to Priya for a restful, quiet week and for a happy delivery next week (if not sooner). Dawn

Kelli I got the package!!! Woohooo we are gonna fool those little squirrelies. :-) Thank you so much. I love feeding the birds and we do have trouble keeping the squirrels out of the food. My DH thought it was pretty cool too...he is the one that fills them for me. What a wonderful surprise! Plusssssssss it came with binoculars!!!!!! Can't wait until this weekend to spy on some birdies. I had a new guy come to the feeder when we had cold weather the other day. A red breasted sap sucker. Very brightly colored fella. Thanks so much again. You really didn't need to go so far out of your way to do that but it's much appreciated. Your packaging job was perfect. Hey...PS..My last name doesn't have an h in it :-) It's Tompkins! It's one of those names that people often add or drop letters from so no big deal. Just thought I'd let you know.

Thanks MKRuby, I look forward to the 6th to see who I'll be trading with, I have already started on my May box in an effort to be on time this month. I hope you can use some of the plants I sent to you. Your in a climate similar to mine and everything I sent does well here. I am excited to see my first trade box too. I will post when it arrives and let everyone know about the goodies I get. Thank you for doing this monthly trade, I know it is a huge undertaking and your very appreciated for doing it.

Hi I just wanted to express my thanks for YaYa and my pal for checking in on me. I truly appreciate it more than words can say. My pal has asked me to guess who she is....I emailed the person whom I thought it could be....I am not sure I am right as my pal doesn't talk about children in her letters but does in the posts. Hummmm Well soon I will know! I emailed her as I didn't want to post here as I don't want to be the cause of someone finding out who their pal is if they don't want to know!! My pal included scilla "White City" is my package this month!! Can't wait to see them bloom!! I don't have anything like them. Plus the fact that they are white makes me happy to add them to my angel garden in memory of my special nephew. Thanks my special pal for being so kind to me and taking the time not to only send a surprise package my way but always finding the time to write. My pal trains puppies to become therapy dogs which I think is so wonderful!! What a special person. I thank you for doing that as there is such a need for that. I admire that you are able to let the pup go after being trained. Bless your heart as I know that can't be easy! Hugs! Take care and enjoy your weekend!! Looks like some more warm weather! Yippie I may just get caught up on my planting yet!!