A few tomatoes but they are not liking the heat so I wont have as many as last year. Strawberries did not flower, ants got the 2 blackberries that ripened, lettuce is bitter. Veggie gardening is proving a steep learning curve for me! On the other hand, flowers are doing pretty well.

Hello lois,

For me it is the opposite, :-(

I am pretty good with vegetables. Maybe I can learn about flowers from you and vice versa...You can message me on my profile and we can meet.

I will bring my thornless blackberry cuttings to the this fall swap,

They are amazing. we had a bumper harvest... Nice juicy berries. same with straw berries.

Bali tomatoes right now, Pink Accordion and Black Mammoth on their way! I just planted some strawberries I got from a friend about 2 weeks ago; no fruit, but some flowers and lots of runners!

Lois, I am the same way... For the most part, I stick with ornamentals, not edibles. This is actually the first year after many years of trying that I am getting tomatoes! I am also trying to grow blueberry and raspberry bushes, but they are not as well as the tomatoes and strawberries. Not sure what I am doing wrong... I moved them the other day to a partially sunny spot as I had them in full sun before and they seem a little better. I guess we'll see! :)

I scored a peony in the spring swap( Adriana?) . I moved it twice!! it just is not happy Same with the 2 peonies I bought at a local nursery, they looked great and then not too good.. I will post pictures tomorrow.. maybe someone will be able to tell me what to do... to get them back to health..

I got one cherry tomato yesterday. I had six big ones on my big plant but something ate them all in one day! they were still green! Sabji, peonies are tricky. they like to be a certain depth. I had some that I kept replanting. I would dig them up, then put back in the ground. After 4 years I must have finally gotten them the right depth, because they bloomed! This was great for two years, then we had a really wet spring and I lost everything that was in that garden....except the variegated yucca. Weird!

Hi Country girl.

Just one Cherry tomato?? Sorry!! You need to track down the critter :-) This year, I see the Crows, attacking my pear trees and pretty much eating all of them.. they are looking for food and moisture sources.. I have put big dishes of water in the yard for them. I also put watermelon rinds with enough flesh on it for them to peck on..

The peony is very sassy!!! Just takes a long time to decide where it like to be.. hehe. I cut all the browned leaves .. lets hope it will do better when i will find a better location for it in the fall.

This year, I have dedicated to fruits and flowers after growing vegetable for over 20 years.. I needed to do something else.. he he I will need all the help and advice on the forum on this new hobby.

I have been successful at marigold and Gardenias. ... I just bought a jasmine ... lets hope i do not kill it again!! I buy them pretty much each year and then.. end of story.

My Wish list is to grow fragrant flowers, Perennial flowers, Pollinators. pretty flowers. tropical flowers.........

Talking of rain, we just got a nice amount of rain after a long time.. My plants are gonna love it!!

Country girl.. I messaged you!

check in your profile page...

I didn't get an alert. maybe I have it turned off, but I have answered you. I got about a dozen cherry tomatoes over the weekend! had them with breakfast. LOL

I got the message. Thanks!

The tomatoes stopped due to high temps.. for me too

They are coming back slowly as the temps cooled..

The larger tomatoes seems to be having an issue though.. Taking their own sweet time..

Eggplants, banana and hot peppers have jumped production... same with Purslane and malabar spinach. Love them in curries..

I am now harvesting the huge bottle gourd / squash. called opo too.

One was almost 3 feet.No kidding see the foot ruler in front of it.

eggplants, lima beans, peppers, and too many yellow tomatoes

Hello Dottie, Welcome!

The yellow tomatoes, are they the small ones or the large ones? I seem to have no luck this year with any large tomatoes..

More bottle gourd, Luffa is just ramping up ready to harvest in a couple of weeks, Cherry tomatoes, Eggplants, flat small indian beans, malabar spinach and hot peppers and a few Okra. No Bell peppers to talk about this year.. However, the thai and cinnamon basil; both have out done everything else. they are huge.. plants ..lovely smell.

The bitter squash is shy this year.. not sure what is happening.

Backacha, Sabji. I hate this new site. Bad enuf when Spike sold the original Gardenweb but this one feels like the red-headed stepchild or the orphan of what was a really exceptional forum devoted to helping one another and sharing knowledge. Not sure if I'll stay but glad to see a few from the old site. dottieincharlotte

The downpours (many) of this past 2 weeks scent the garden with Wild Magic basil I planted more for it's pollinator attracting flowering than for harvesting. What is it with the peppers this season? Crinkly leaves falling off, thin stalks and no fruit set unless I tickle the flowers with my fingertips. Weird year. Yellow tomatoes are slow to ripen (heat) then develop bruises very quickly after picking. Setting smaller fruit but continuously that are mushy when half ripe.

Don't know if interplanting the bell peppers with stevia and gomphrena brought something evil to blight the peppers. Just trying to get attractants to the pollinators. Peppers usually thrive in the hot weather. Only the eggplant is thriving (getting sick of eggplant).

Oh Dottie, I hear ya,

I just call it the teething trouble and the terrible 2 's ; the new website i mean..It is a bit confusing, to say the least, at first, trying to figure where the message button is,, you have to allow others to message you or, you post to the person out in the open.. And so on....

Having said that, ...Someone had to take care of it, or we would have no way to communicate. I guess it is better that Houzz got it than someone else who would have shut it down.

Hang in there; friend, and you will be a pro...hehe.

The peppers... the bells are just not happening..Symptoms same as yours , on plants. I have given up but will hang on to the plants till end of september... I am not sure what is going on..

Too many eggplants. I wish I was close by.. I have a solution, if you have any indian friends, give it to them to fix you some yummy curries. if you like some indian food

The big ones, I grill, peel skins and freeze them for later.. . the small and long ones are all eaten up pretty quickly.. You can also make pickles of Eggplant.

The down pours??? just one for a few minutes is all we got yesterday. I am happy with that too. we need more of that, every other day, till end of harvest or late summer whichever happens later. :-)))

Are you coming to the Fall swap? the more the merrier..We are a great gang. you know that already. John has posted the fall swap date.... See if you like something from my list. Let me know..

Dottie,

This wild magic basil... is it usable for pasta salads? if yes, I would like a few cuttings, please, that is, if you can spare them.. I will root them .

I have cinnamon and thai basil and holy basil too. if you like i can keep all three aside ..

wild magic is different because it is in continuous flower production. Leaves are rather small and ordinary but the plant in total is highly aromatic if touched. As I said, I just planted it to attract pollinators. One I like for pasta salads is boxwood basil. Small, tidy plant with small leaves you don't need to chop (therefore no bruising blackening in cold foods).

They ,like a lot of plants I don't actually plant, are set in a scuff in their original pots and doing fine. Once time to bring them in I will just slice under the pot to disconnect from the growth roots and repot in a slightly larger container with well draining mixture and some vermiculite.

Honestly, I don't attend swaps but you should be able to find Wild Magic basil at a non-big box garden center.

Lastly, I find it quite amazing that this new incarnation of GW only has 4 pages of activity since the switch-over. Where'd everybody go? Nice they saved almost 150 pages of this forum.

Paw-Paws.....The first fruit off my trees, and my first taste of the "magic fruit". The first taste met my expectations, with the only unusual thing being the peel. I guess I was expecting a heavier peel, but it was a bit like a banana with an apple peel covering it. Kinda difficult to get to the thing without mashing it all to pieces. Overall its a keeper.

Bill

Hi Dottie,

Awesome!! I will look it ( the wild magic ) up in Lowes and home depot. I have not been in there in a long time. It will also to my list of pollinators that i am trying to add. Having spicy fragrance is a huge plus. I will also grow the boxwood basil. Nice to know you do not have to chop.. saves time!!

That reminds me John, You never did tell us the taste of your harvest of Pawpaws.

Was it good??

They're good. I ended up with a ton of them so I have pounds upon pounds of them in the chest freezer in the basement. At some point I will make ice cream with them. I get tired of mushy fruit and they are at their most flavorful when they are super ripe and mushy. I can bring some over for you to taste. Like a lot of things in my garden - everything is ripe at the same time, so I spend what precious little spare time I have trying to pick and process whatever is at its peak. Figs, pears, raspberries were ripe at the same time the pawpaws were, as were the watermelons and cantaloupe and the sweet corn, then the bell peppers and the last of the tomatoes. I do every trick there is to try and get each crop to space out the ripening to give myself a break between each one but it fails every year. By September I sick of picking anything and super sick of my kitchen. The freezer is full. The dehydrators are full. I think I'll make it through the winter until next year's harvests without starving.

Oh,,, and I forgot to mention the greenbeans and squash...

Awwwww

Thanks John, I am dreaming of the flavor now..

John, do your paw paws have to stay on the tree until fully ripe or can they be picked earlier and continue to ripen indoors?

I never was able to get any more paw paws of the native variety from my back forest. The fruit was there and then it was gone overnight. Every year the critters take it all and even the crows go after them. dottie_in_charlotte

Dottie - my trees are stubby compared to the wild trees I've seen. They are 5 years old and maybe 11 feet tall and 8 feet wide. One of the four trees makes really large fruit and those are the ones I focus my attention on. I check them every day until I see some fall to the ground (even though their skin is very thin they never seem to get damaged falling to the ground). Once they start falling I check the tree every 3 or 4 hours and never let them stay on the ground for long. The wildlife in this area seem to eat them when they find them on the ground and they leave the ones on the tree alone. In the past (long long ago) a tree I had was always raided by squirrels, which ate the fruit long before it was ripe. There is a feel to them that changes when they are ripe enough to eat. If I can reach them and feel that feeling (like a soft ripe pear) I will pick them before they fall. To me they improve in flavor after a week or more in the fridge.

Thanks, John. Great information. Are yours grafted? The natives formed groves from the roots of the mother tree. During that hard drought we had , the paw paw children were sacrificed and their trunks would just fall over dead but the mother survived but blooming less each year that it's not overly wet. They are understory trees in a flood zone.

Do yours require a good deal of water and sunshine?

No, mine are seedlings from a commercial orchard. So they are of mixed varieties, but none of the parents are wild types. I have them in a row along the shady side of my vine area (kiwis and muscadines on trellis') which is where I think the septic system laterals end up. The main tree is at the top of the slope and it does fine no matter what. The trees get weaker and smaller as you go downhill - so I think they are further and further away from the septic lines. The house is old and the neighborhood is in an un-incorporated area of the city so there are no records of where the septic laterals are or if they were even installed properly.