nygardener, I feel your frustration. It's the same every year: some things still hanging on, and other things seemingly still gaining strength, and meanwhile you'd like to start prepping things for next year. For example, I just pulled out five huge broccoli plants that looked like they wanted to grow forever, side shoots popping out all over the place. But this is the time when the leaves are raining down and the temperatures are still moderate, making this the best time to do the prep work, so I yanked them out, threw them in the hole I dug, and filled in the rest with leaves. I see it as a sacrifice that will pay off next year. However, I'm still giving my bell peppers the benefit of the doubt. They got a late start and are coming into their own now so I'll give them a little more time, ready to pull them out if the weather turns cold.

I have raised both A. bidwillii and A. australis from seed. Here are my thoughts: 1. Seeds must be very fresh - they fall off the tree when ripe 2. Seeds should be cleaned and soaked overnight in water. 3. Seeds should be planted with the pointy side down, with the top of the seed above the soil line. Use a well-drained mix and don't keep it too wet or let it dry out. 4. Keep the seeds in a warm place and keep squirrels away. 5. The Agathis will germinate quickly, but must not be too wet or they will die from dampling off. 6. The A. bidwillii will germinate very slowly - essentially they form a tap root and a "second seed"(see web-site) and then they will eventually produce a shoot. IT MAY TAKE A YEAR before they do this. Once they come up, they will grow rather quickly. If anyone has fresh seed of either, I would be very grateful for some or would trade. Send me an e-mail.

mcnucci, were bouts are you located in NC? I'm in Charlotte. Figs are awesome! And you are in luck with so many figs. I make fig jam with my figs and eat them fresh. Whenever I see a "Figs for sale" signs out in the country rural roads, I try to buy them. You can try to sell them, but when they are ripe they can spoil and mold quickly. And lately we've had wet humid weather here. I got hooked on figs after buying a jar of fig jam that was just sugary syrup and ONE fig! After finding figs on a side road market, I made a case of Fig Jam and it was totally awesome! Nine years later, now I have over 20 fig trees and over 10 different cultivars and just finished building a greenhouse to protect my trees from the weather. Also, freeze them and use them later. Good luck.

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