AK, the chickens got one of mine, a big one, so now DH and I are arguing over weather the chickens get to free range or not. Rebecca, I'm familiar with the Tomato Man's Daughter. She has a good reputation. I skimmed over her 2016 plant list and recognized many of them. I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. Some of them intrigued me because they were bred in OK. There are many threads where Dawn lists tomatoes she's grown and that do well in OK. As far as grown in containers, I've not had the best of luck with that, but I am trying dwarf varieties this year in pots, which I just realized are small enough to bring inside at night to cool them off.

I did find Dawn's previous lists. Going through them now! My goal is to get a raised bed done just for tomatoes, and have the big indeterminate types there, and determinates or dwarves in pots. I loved her 7 Dwarves year and am tempted to recreate that, including other dwarf plants than tomatoes. Then another raised bed for cukes, squash, eggplant.

I'm hoping TMD does more Sioux for fall. I'm intrigued by her story behind it. Cherokee Purple, Rutgers, maybe a German Johnson...WTH, I want them all!

I'd go ahead and try frying them. I've never fried any that small, but they should be fine.

It is not that open-pollinated tomato varieties do not have any disease tolerance or resistance. It is, rather, that they have not been tested for it. Why not? Because they are open-pollinated, come true from seed and belong to the world at large, rather than to a specific breeder who tests for disease tolerance so they can use it as a selling feature. So, no one is going to bear the financial burden of running disease tolerance/resistance trials because it won't benefit them financially in any way since anybody can grow O-P types, harvest the seeds and sell them. Some of the open-pollinated varieties I grow tolerate some diseases better than many of the hybrids, but that is something you learn by trial and error as you grow them.

Darrell Merrell was legendary, not just in OK but all over the country among not only tomato afficianados but garlic maniacs as well. I'm glad Lisa has carried on his legacy and his calling to provide Oklahomans with the best possible O-P varieties.Since I live at the complete opposite end of the state, I've never been to their farm or shop to buy plants, but recommend the Tomatoman's Daughter regularly to people from that part of the state wanting to buy tomato and other seedlings. Duck Creek Farms is another great source in NE OK, and there's not a better place in OK to find heirloom sweet potatoes than on the website of Duck Creek Farms. Its owner, Gary, is a member here and occasionally posts, but usually in the off-season as he is too busy growing and selling during the actual gardening season. He sells at Farmer's Markets and festivals most years. instead of doing direct sales from the farm.

We only get local TV channels down here that are based in Ardmore OK and Sherman-Denison TX that cover a large region of Tex-oma on both sides of the Red River, but I try to keep an eye on all the OKC and Tulsa stations when I have time so I know what is going on everywhere in the state. I make a point to try to read Alan Crone's weather blog every day because he was the local weather guy here at KXII-Channel 12 when we moved to OK in 1999. I hope Travis Meyer is right, but cooler than normal still could be hot. We'll see.

I don't know how our forefathers did it either. My dad grew up in Spanish Fort, TX, just across the Red River and a bit southwest of the southwestern most corner of the county in which I live (Love County) and he was born in 1919. They were a poor white sharecropper family (totally busting the myth that all sharecroppers were black) who farmed on land that belonged to a man back in another state (I think it was Tennessee) who'd tried farming in Texas and gave up and moved back home. They farmed, I think, on 50-50 shares, so he got the dollar value of half of what they raised, which means a lot of years he got almost nothing. How they survived the drought years of the Dust Bowl years and the Great Depression years is beyond me. I know that in every photo of them from those years (and there aren't many photos) everyone was painfully thin and the adults looked like they were twice as old as they were. It was a hard life. My grandmother and aunts could can anything, including some weeds, to ensure they had food for winter, but they still struggled to put food in their stomachs. My dad told me about those kids carrying water from the Red River, one bucket at a time, for more than a mile one way, to water fruit trees to try to keep them alive after the well dried up. Can you imagine? There's nothing I grow I'd walk a mile to water with one bucket full of water (really two miles since you had to walk a mile to get to the river!), but then again, my life doesn't depend on me getting a crop, and theirs did. My dad said that World War II gave them all a way to get off the farm and survive. Otherwise, he said, they might have starved to death, which is a sobering thought. When he and he brothers went into the U. S. Navy, they got something they'd never had before---three square meals a day. They thought they were in heaven. Our lives our so easy in comparison to them.

When we moved here and I grew things in my usual crazy quilt way, mixing in flowers and herbs with veggies and fruits, one of the old timers gave me so much grief over wasting space on "those weeds". He would argue with me that I couldn't eat those flowers and herbs (ha! yes you can!) so they were a total waste of space. I did understand where he was coming from. When he moved here a few years before statehood as a young child, his family had to devote all their land to raising their food, so growing flowers was not allowed. I had a hard time convincing him that my family was not going to starve just because I devoted some space to flowers. I pointed out that things had changed---that we did not rely on a horse and wagon for transportation, that we did not live in a dugout on the banks of the river, and that we did not have to rely 100% on the food we raised, but he didn't care. He was kind of old-fashioned and stuck in the past because he had worked so hard for so many decades to raise enough food to feed his own family and to make a good cash crop. Thankfully, times have changed!

Yum, yum, yum, basil and pesto! Making pesto is on my to-do list but I don't know how I'm ever going to get around to it. Today I snapped beans and blanched them and froze 5 quarts. I cut up enough jalapeno peppers for 28 batches of salsa and froze them, and then cut up enough bell peppers for about 20 batches of salsa and froze them. Tomorrow I'm going to cut up the garlic and onions and run a whole lot of tomatoes through the tomato strainer. Oh, and I need to shuck all the corn. And make pickles. And can the two different kinds of sauerkraut that have been fermenting for a few weeks and are done now. That's all. Other than that, I have nothing to do tomorrow. I hope to find enough time to pick cucumbers so I can pickle them before they get too big, and the first mess of purple hull peas is ready to pick. If I cannot get to them tomorrow, that's okay. They'll last another day. I feel like my peak harvest is happening right now and there's not enough hours in the day. In a couple more weeks, though, things will slow down some as I finish up canning the tomatoes and keep yanking out the plants. By July 1st, just in time for the start of the planting of the fall garden, I'll have some space to fill.

Wanting them all is what got me in the mess I'm in where I spend all summer canning. If I could find away to want less of them, I'd grow less and avoid the huge surplus of fruit that comes flooding into the house every June. Is that going to happen? I don't know. I tried cutting back this year and failed miserably. Apparently cutting back on how much of anything I grow is not my strong suit.

I'm trying to enjoy this summer's garden as much as possible despite the early heat. Next year is likely to be worse, especially if we get a stronger La Nina than they're currently forecasting. I have not forgotten the last strong El Nino (1997-1998) which was very similar to the El Nino that just ended and the fact that the following two summers were horrifically hot and dry with huge swarms of grasshoppers. I don't want for us to have that in 2017, but I cannot help thinking it might happen. Every El Nino is different and so is every La Nina, but the memories of that horrible period makes me dread hearing them say that a La Nina is coming.

Everything in my garden has been early this year, so I have had the fastest food preservation progression ever, rolling from preserving one crop to another in rapid succession and pretty much staying caught up on everything until June arrived. Now it is a struggle to keep up with it all, but I must try. Luckily, potatoes and onions will sit in dry storage and wait until I can chop and freeze some of them, and that gives me time to focus on the cucumbers, corn, beans, southern peas and tomatoes. I think my cucumber days are slowly coming to an end, but I've about run out of different kinds of pickle products I want to make anyway. We've got two years worth of pickles already, so now whatever I do is just for fun or to give to friends. Other than the next batch, which will be Jalapeno-Cucumber Relish, I don't have specific plans for any future cucumbers because I've already made plenty of things that we do like. By the time the southern peas are producing heavy harvests, and the squash and okra as well, I should be finished with the tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn, etc. Peppers are starting to produce heavily, so I guess I'll be canning peppers on their own after salsa-making is complete, and pepper jelly is usually more of an August thing, but it might be a July thing this year.

I didn't find my four little feral kittens out by the garden this morning. Only 1 of them was there. I don't know if the others wandered off or if something got them or what, but I fed the little one all day and made friends with it. By this evening, it let me pick it up (it almost fell asleep in my hands as I carried it) and bring it inside. It is upstairs in the guest room, sleeping like a baby in a big dog crate that has a food and water dish, a small litter box and a blanket in it. So, from the garden today, I also harvested one small and apparently abandoned kitten. That's not an everyday harvest (thank goodness) but we have a garden full of catnip so maybe that's why stray cats always seem to end up in the garden.

Aww, Dawn, your kitten stories are making me sad. :( But I'm glad you got the one, and maybe the others will come back. My kitty Audrey was adopted from a rescue as a skinny, sick 6 week old, and while she is a born huntress, she's also a spoiled indoor cat, and I can't imagine letting her out. I get why you have farm cats, though. There is some kind of new sickness, I think passed by ticks or fleas, that is killing outdoor cats up here. It was on the news last week, but I didn't pay enough attention as Audrey is indoor. Might want to keep an ear peeled for it. It kills very fast, too fast to get treatment and there really isn't one that works anyway.

I plan on scoping out TMD when they open July 15, and I'm even getting excited for NEXT year. Hopefully, you're wrong about La Nina next year, but from what I read, you're weather sensitive and you pay attention to patterns in everything, so I'll bet you're right. I'd already planned my raised beds for the part of the yard where they'd be shaded from about 2pm on, and that would be good in the heat. One hour of our sun seems to be about like 2 hours of sun in the northern part of the country. The planets are starting to align...

I'm also starting to see the pattern in 'if you harvest, it will grow'. Cukes keep coming (but they get nice shade, so I think they'll keep producing, although I've got backup seeds sprouting now), jalapenos keep coming, tomatoes are coming slowly with lots of cage wiggling (except the Sweet 100, which doesn't need my help, and the Better Bush, which got another serious conversation about blooming), there are tons of blossoms on the zuke (going to go give it a firm shake tomorrow morning).

Going to deep water and fertilize everything before I leave for Texas for 3 days Friday morning. Fingers crossed nothing will die while I'm gone!

I think you're probably referring to Bobcat Fever which has been running rampant in some areas for about a decade now. Sometimes if you use Frontline on your cats, that will protect them from contracting it, but some cats that routinely get Frontline applied to them still get it and die from it. When you live in the country, you just do all you can to protect the cats, short of making them stay indoors, which our cats would truly hate. Our cats largely are old and lazy and stick close to the house, and they only go out in the cool morning hours at this time of the year, so I hope their limited time outdoors will keep them safe. Our chickens free-range and eat ticks, so we don't have a tick issue in the yard. The couple of younger cats that roam far and wide probably are at more risk, but there again, I cannot imagine keeping a cat indoors against its will when it has been used to going outside every day. If I was going to make the cats indoor cats, I'd keep them indoors from birth so they wouldn't even know what the outdoors was. I guess if one of our cats ever gets it, we'd quickly make the other cats into indoors cats, but they'd surely hate it.

Some vets are having luck using a new protoccol that involves using some anti-malarial drugs and antibiotics together, but you have to catch it early for these to work. Our vet has been a miracle worker with snakebit cats though, so if anyone possibly could save a cat with Bobcat Fever, it would be him. I would be more worried if the cats roamed more, or if we didn't have chickens free-ranging all day long eating ticks. Of course, the prospect of a cat getting bobcat fever is horrifying to contemplate, and we do live in a really wild area populated by bobcats, but what can you do? Maybe just cross your fingers and hope for the best.

We just went through a big thing a couple of summers ago where coons in Texas (which is just a hop, skip and a jump across the river from our back property line) were contracting distemper and spreading it to pets. For instance, if an infected raccoon drank from a pet's water dish, it could leave the germs there and then the cat or dog or whichever was being affected could contract distemper. It was a scary time, and I was ultra careful to never leave the cat or dog water dishes (or, in fact, the chicker waterers in case a cat were to drink from one of them) filled with water at night...pouring out the water and bringing in the dish. Many coons died, and some big cats at a Texas wildlife refuge/rescue place died after coons apparently walked across the fencing type top of their enclosures and either urinated or defacated while up there and their output fell into the big cats food or water dishes. It was a horrible year. However, we haven't had many coons around since then, and haven't lost the corn to them since then. I think that must mean the population almost got wiped out, even though the issue mostly seemed to stay on the Texas side of the river. (All sorts of things do cross the river freely though, so I am sure tehre was some of the distemper affecting coons on this side of the river too.) I also think it is likely the Red River flooding repeatedly last year and this year might be keeping coons from freely crossing the river like they do when the water is low.

On any given day a coyote or bobcat could get our cats while they are outside, so I've just had to learn to accept that somtimes pets have a hard time surviving in the country. I am pretty protective, though, and have been pretty successful at chasing off (or killing) wildlife that is after our pets. The issue with the ticks that spread Bobcat Fever is that they can infect a cat and then drop off the cat before it even comes indoors, so even if you check the cats for ticks when they come indoors, you may never see a tick on them and have no idea they've contracted Bobcat Fever in time to save them.

We had drought here, or at least abnormally dry conditions, almost continually from 2011 through early in 2015, and then were very wet in most of 2015 and moderately wet this year. The one thing I know from experience is that our dry spells often last for years and our wet spells do not, so that alone probably means we are more likely to be dry next year than wet. I hope I'm wrong about that. When you watch the climate closely, you sort of see recurring patterns, and that helps you plan and prepare for what is most likely. It is pretty common in southcentral OK for drought to hit us out of nowhere even after a very rainy spring. I can gauge it pretty well by how often our fire pagers are going off for grass fires and hayfield fires and, at the present time, activity is escalating but not enough yet that I am overly concerned about it. A month from now, I might feel differently.

I hope your plants survive your absence. I've been surprised at how well container plants can handle being ignored or at least watered less often than they'd like as long as they are in a large enough container. Enjoy your trip to Texas!

Dawn, I got my Salsa Screen yesterday, so this morning I made a batch of Annie's Salsa, using the screen vs. chopping. Pretty sweet;) It is a finer texture than my chopped version, but that's no biggie. It went fast, too. My only complaint with the Sauce Master, is the chute where the waste products go out. Unlike yours, mine doesn't have one of those plastic "extender" things, so I have to be careful that the waste doesn't accidentally fall into the good bowl of tomato product. Otherwise, I give my Salsa Screen a 5. I've got enough tomatoes to make one more batch, so I guess I'd better get back to it.

Mary

Yay! It is too bad that there isn't a plastic extender because it works perfectly to drop the waste into a separate bowl from the screened tomatoes. I am so swamped with the non-tomato harvest that I don't have enough hours in the day to actually make salsa. I keep trying, though. So far, I've mostly just run a bunch of tomatoes through the machine, measured and poured one batch's worth into a freezer ziplock and tossed it into the deep freeze. I think I have completed five actual batches of salsa in the last week, and have enough frozen, processed tomatoes for 10 more batches. Unfortunately, I have a small wheelbarrow's load of more tomatoes in all stages of ripening so no matter how hard I work, I cannot catch up.

A couple of days ago I pulled some really sickly looking tomato plants after I had removed all the usable fruit from them. My goal for the next two weeks is to continue doing a lot more pulling out of the plants once I strip them of all the ripe fruit. I could leave them, cut them back, feed them, etc. and likely get regrowth and more fruit for fall but I am at the stage where I'm sick of harvesting and processing the tomatoes, though I never get sick of eating them. Huge hordes of stink bugs are moving into the garden from the fields and they just ruin the fruit for fresh eating, and I am not going to spray my plants with the kind of synthetic pesticide that likely would kill them, so my tomatoes and I are sort of stuck with the stink bugs.

My current plan is to finish processing all the cucumbers, beans, extra jalapeno peppers (the ones above and beyond what will go into salsa), squash, pink eye purple hull peas and sweet corn today and then to can as many batches of salsa as possible tomorrow. The key to success tomorrow is that I absolutely, positively must not step foot in the garden, or I'll just bring in enough stuff to disrupt the salsa canning plan. I know this will happen tomorrow if I go into the garden because it is also what has happened every single day this week so far. The plan I have in my head just falls apart when I go into the garden and start harvesting. So, as hard as it will be, I'm going to ignore the garden and stay in the kitchen tomorrow and see how far I get with the salsa-making. I picked all the tomatoes today that were at breaker stage, so I am sure the garden will be fine if I don't step foot into it for one day.

Good gracious, I couldn't keep up with all you've got on your plate. My squash/zukes are awful. I've pulled 3 plants, and need to pull a 4th due to SVB. I've got backups, but it is so hot!!! What's funny to me is that I've not seen a single squash bug! Not one. Just the SVB. I have seen a few stinkbugs over in the blackberries, though. Some of my tomato plants are pretty bad. The foliage is dead and brown halfway up on a few. I'm trying to get the fruit off of them because all I can do for them at this point is totally defoliate them.

Sadly, I just don't want to be in the garden right now. It's just too hot for me, and although I'm picking what needs to be picked, I haven't weeded nor have I picked berries for a few days. I'm just letting the birds get their fill. I did put chopped onions and peppers in the freezer, and I've got quite a few bags of tomato sauce in the freezer, and not quite enough tomatoes in a bag so that maybe tomorrow I or the next day I can run another batch of Salsa. I better get it while the gettings good, before I lose my plants.

Hope everyone stays cool and hydrated.

I can't seem to get to the point where I actually make the salsa. By the time I harvested, watered, etc. today and came indoors, it was too late in the day to really think about making salsa, so I ran enough tomatoes through the machine for 5 batches of salsa, put those 5 batches in the freezer and swore to myself that the number one goal tomorrow is to make salsa and put it in jars and can it. Then I made an icebox pie for dinner, shelled southern peas for dinner, shucked corn for dinner, chopped onions for the meatloaf, made the meatloaf, cooked it all (except the icebox pie, lol) and made a batch of cornbread. Then, while waiting for everything to finish cooking, I decided at the last minute to make mashed potatoes. Tomorrow, when I am wondering where the day went and why I didn't get any salsa canned, I'm going to come back and read this!

Partly my inability to focus on the salsa-making is that pretty much every other veggie is being harvested, if not daily then every other day, so there's so much demanding attention at once that it makes my head spin.

No squash bugs or squash vine borers here yet as well. Woo hoo! I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts, but we're making up for it by having huge hordes of stink bugs, both green and brown, and they are so destructive to tomatoes.

A lot of my tomato plants are looking really bad, Mary, and I don't care. They have done their job. They've produced more than I can keep up with in terms of harvesting, eating, cooking and canning, so I cannot fault the plants at all. I just think that in a year like this with heavy disease pressure and heavy pest pressure, the plants have done their job and produced and that's where their energy has gone---to making fruit, not to fighting pests and diseases. Once the stink bugs have arrived and are causing many cloudy spots on each tomato, I don't even want to eat the tomatoes any more.

It is too too hot to do anything and, oddly, I start feeling that way around the third week of June every year. I guess we gardeners really know exactly when summer arrives because it sucks all the fun out of being out in the garden.

My Sungolds look awful but they are still giving me tons of little tomatoes. Yesterday I took bags of tomatoes to all my neighbors. This heat just ruins the out door fun. I just sweat and go on.

I want some harvest.

Maybe even a new kitten. Our cat, Charlotte, is feline leukemia positive--not showing signs of illness yet. She's four years old and does go outside but stays close to the house. My favorite cat, Harry, died nearly three years ago from complications from feline leukemia. He was 10. I loved him so much. I won't bring another cat into the house until Charlotte passes, because feline leukemia is so contagious. And I am a cat person for sure.

I wouldn't mind my plants looking like crap (because they are) if I had and was getting harvest from them. Oh well. I keep thinking I must suck as a gardener. I'm trying to stay positive and keep going.

There was a mama duck in our old "community garden" at church yesterday. She had been sitting on her nest and daddy duck wasn't showing up to relieve her. I took some of our chicken food to her today, but she was gone and the eggs were all broken. I hope they hatched and she moved them.

There was a wooded area next to the church until a few months ago when people decided to chop it all down. For what reason I don't know.

The community garden is a bit of a joke. I had a bed there 4 years ago because I lived in town and didn't have a place to garden. Small backyard. It went to poop after the tornado 3 years ago. Our church was a relief center and the garden has been neglected ever since. And I moved to a place with plenty of room for a garden or two.

I'm worried about Mama Duck, though.

The Box Farm is all tucked in for their long weekend home alone. Good watering plus feeding, and a bit of picking at yellow leaves, basil flowers (WTF, I just cut it back yesterday...), grabbing a weed or two, and cage wiggling. Ready to harvest! Gotta get as much in the ground on April 15 next year as I dare. Give them more time to produce. Also moved one of my lettuce pots and found almost a dozen 6-8" long earthworms underneath it. Beautiful sight. Lettuce is unhappy, but we are supposed to cool back to the upper 80s next week, so maybe I can get more started. I have some good heat tolerant varieties. 4 new tiny cuke plants are up, so I'll have to hurry and get them repotted and a trellis made next week. Y'all have a great weekend!

Stockergal, The heat just ruins much about summertime, doesn't it? I wish I was a kid again at times because the heat didn't seem to bother me then and I stayed outside all day every day and hated when the summer ended. Now, it is just the opposite.

Hazel, You should get some harvest soon. Hang in there. The waiting can be hard, but also so very worth it. Remember that I push as hard as possible to plant as early as possible (sometimes ridiculously early) because I am not a patient person and I want the harvest to start as early as possible and last as long as possible (or until I get tired of dealing with it, but summer heat usually solves that problem anyway)....and I am way further south than you, so my harvest likely always will run a few weeks ahead of yours, if that helps any. In the spring when I am planting into soil that is barely warm enough for what I'm planting, and when I'm covering up plants with row cover on cold nights, I hate the concept of early planting because it is a lot of extra work, but I do it anyway so that the harvest is occurring when I want it. Simply put, I'd rather be out in the June heat doing heavy harvesting that can take hours per day when everything (but especially tomatoes) is ripening all at the same time. While June heat is unpleasant, it is not nearly as brutal as July and August heat, so planting early helps the plants and I bet the heat, at least partially.

I am so sorry to hear about your cat, Charlotte. I hope her health remains as good as possible for as long as possible. I'm a cat person too and our cats add so much joy to our lives. The tiny kitten I found and brought indoors is loving the air conditioning and also loving having regular meals and plenty of cool water. He is so appreciative. Interesting, our one intact male, a Silver Tabby named Casper, (he was once feral and has resisted being touched by human hands as it makes him nervous still, though just in the last couple of months he has let me pet him a few times before he anxiously moves away and hides) seems to be very fatherly towards this kitten. As soon as he came in from the outdoors and saw the kitten he went to it and washed its face and ears. Now, I'm wondering if he might be its father, as one of the other 4 kittens I saw that first night was identical to him. I don't know if the other three kittens went back to wherever their mother might be (maybe she is a local barn cat?) or if something got them, but this kitten is sticking to Casper like glue while sort of ignoring everyone else. We had coyotes howling in our yard very close to the house at 4 a.m. when Tim let the dogs out into the dog yard to do their doggie business before he left for work, so it seems doubtful that the other kittens would be surviving on their own in our woodland or yard. The coyotes will howl trying to get the dogs to chase them, and then they'll attack and kill the dogs, so the minute he heard the coyotes, TIm called the dogs to come back in immediately, and they complied because they are terrified of the coyotes. The oldest dog, Jersey, tangled with coyotes once and that was all it took for her to learn to avoid them always. Our dog yard fence is only 4' tall and I wish we'd made it taller. I'm not worried about our dogs jumping over it to get out, but am concerned the coyotes might jump the fence to get to the dogs.

To address the idea that you suck as a gardener, I want to scream NO, NO, NO! You do not. You work so hard and try to do everything right. I know that by the things you do and the questions you ask. The thing is, that we as gardeners do not have total control over the plants or the environment they grow in. We can build the beds, enrich the soil, sow the seeds, transplant the plants, mulch them, fertilize them and water them. We do our best to protect them from pests ranging from spider mites to tobacco or tomato hornworms to moles, voles, gophers, squirrels, groundhogs or whatever. Guess what? We still cannot control what pests creep, tunnel, crawl or fly in. We cannot control the heat or the cold, or the amount of moisture that falls from the sky, how hard it falls, how much falls at one time or the fact that maybe we go for a month or two when almost no moisture falls at all. We cannot control the wind, the dust storms, the severe weather or the ozone levels. Mother Nature is both our ally and our arch enemy at times, and since she rules the outdoor rule, she always bats last, which increases her chance of winning. Despite everything we do, both Mother Nature and the plants operate in their own way and on their own schedule and we just have to live with that. Some years you can do everything right and still not harvest much and that is just the way things are.

Also, I'd like to point out that every single gardener I've ever known did not come out of the womb with two bright green thumbs, and I have known many gardeners in my life. Gardeners are not born, they are made. Every year that you grow plants, you grow right along with them, learning more and more and becoming more proficient as you go along. It is incredibly rare for anyone to take up gardening and have instant success. While I generally have a lot of success in the garden now, do you think that always was the case? Oh no, absolutely not. One way I have learned so much about growing over the years was because I had to troubleshoot every thing that wasn't working or wasn't producing or wasn't even surviving, and then learn from that experience and try something different the next year in order to fix what I thought was wrong. There was a lot of trial and error along the way, and sometimes, there still is. Every year there is something that just doesn't produce well no matter what we do, and it generally relates more to the growing conditions than to us. I am happy with the garden if 75% of the edible crops produce a harvest because I know better than to expect 100% of the edible crops to do so. Every now and then you get a year when every single thing you plant produces a nice harvest, but that is rare. I just try to learn from the crop failures and enjoy the successes.

The nice thing about growing edible plants here is that we get two chances a year with most crops, so the fall garden offers redemption for a gardener who had crop failures in the spring garden. Sometimes I don't even plant a fall garden, which I guess could be interpreted as me feeling like there's plenty of produce preserved and stored away to eat over the next year or more, but it also can be interpreted to mean that the weather is too dang hot and I don't want to be out there slaving away planting new crops in July and August. And, of course, sometimes it just means that we are in drought and I do want to run up a huge water bill trying to get a fall garden going in drought, and also, if we are in drought, my time generally is being occupied by summer season grass fires and wild fires, which leaves little time for growing. So, for me, even though I know that a fall garden is possible, it isn't always practical, and that may be why I heavily overplant in the spring garden, trying to ensure a good harvest by planting too much of everything.

I hope mama duck and the babies are okay. It is exceptionally hard to keep ducks here in our rural area (we and several of our neighbors have tried it) because of the predators. I hate that the woodland was cut down. We won't hardly take out a tree (except for the cedar trees) because we love the trees so much and know the wildlife of all kinds need that wooded area to survive. I hate it when entire woodlands are wiped out.

You have the space, you and your husband are building the raised beds, and you have a garden. Every year you'll have a better garden than you had the year before. I had big dreams when we moved here in 1999, and I am still, after all these years, working hard to make those garden dreams come true. Our gardens are a life-long journey, not a destination. I feel like I'll never arrive at the point where I feel like the garden is "just right", but I am having fun trying to have a better garden every year than I had the year before. Every year there are new struggles that I have to diagnose and attempt to solve. It keeps me on my toes and keeps me learning.

Here's a quick example if you're following the "copper tomato" thread. Even though we have been here since 1999, we never have had tomato russet mites, as far as I know, even though we have two-spotted spider mites in huge abundance as they move into the garden and reproduce every year as the fields dry out. Normally they become an apparent problem in June, though I might see damage from them as early as May. This year? We had spider mites show up in March. I'm guessing that the winter of 2015-16, which really wasn't wintery at all, stayed so warm that the spider mites got a head start this spring. Though spider mites were present, they didn't seem present in large numbers and I wasn't that worried about them. Then, about a month ago, the population at the south end of the garden exploded, quickly decimating the bush beans and the three rows of tomatoes planted closest to the bush beans. I've never seen mites damage plants so quickly or so badly that early in the season. Maybe I was just being clueless. If I could go back and do things differently, I would have yanked out those bush beans immediately as they seemed to be incubators that were producing tons of spider mites that were quickly dispersing all over the garden. Lesson learned. I'll do something differently next year. And, for some reason, tomato plants that normally will look like crap and outlive the regular spider mites are going downhill fast and dying now, some of them seemingly overnight. When Turbo Cat mentioned bronzing or coppering on her tomato plants, a bell went off in my head because I am seeing the same thing. Diagnosing her issue as a probable case of Tomato Russet Mites made me realize that even though my plants have regular spider mites, they may have TRMs as well, which would explain the plant mortality I'm seeing as well as the very rapid deterioration of plants. Today or tomorrow, time permitting, I'll search my tomato plant leaves with a magnifying glass to see if I can find Tomato Russet Mites, which are so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. If I find them, I need to contemplate what I'll do with the fall tomatoes, because I won't want to plant them in the front garden if it is infested with TRMs.

So, nearly 20 years into our gardening adventure here in this specific location, new problems still arise, and they always will. If edible gardening were simple and easy, everybody would do it, and everybody does not. Gardening is hard and challenging and frustrating and yet, despite that, doing it still feeds my soul. I just view it as a baseball season----some games you win, some games you lose, some games get rained out and some games are a tie, but the season overall is long and enjoyable.

Dawn

Dawn, those are encouraging words! I also feel like my gardening outcome does not equal the effort I put into it and that makes me feel like a really bad gardener. My best tomato harvest was my very first one in my yard 31 years ago. I specifically remember this because I have a POLOROID PICTURE (haha) of my 9 month old daughter after she crawled to one of my buckets of tomatoes and double fisted them! Back then, I just cleared a long strip of space and threw in some plants I'd found at the store, watered them and that's it. Period. Of course I didn't bother to tend the patch, maybe I did yank out the Bermuda when it got long but really, a great tomato harvest from a mostly neglected plot. Now I amend the soil, have yearly tests, spray organic fertilizer every other week that I mix myself, trying to be my own soil scientist and it seems like nothing really THRIVES, except my hot peppers, which probably would do well anyway. I badly want peas and green beans, but haven't had a bit of success the past two years I've planted. Last year my first ever corn was a big joke and although I love a good buttered ear of fresh corn, will probably not try that again for a while. My potatoes were small and got so many beetles I am wary of trying that again as well! I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing that I could go out there and plant my magic seeds and watch everything sprout, bloom and produce, maybe even sing a beautiful garden chorus of "hallelujah" while they bask in the bright but not scalding rays of sunshine, but instead I'm handed up a heavy dose of reality and am left crossing my fingers while each plant suffers its own setbacks and I really am left wondering where I went wrong and what I should do different next year. I have 'googled' till I'm red, yellow, blue and green in the face and it leaves me feeling like a goofus when all I want is to be a gallant! But I will do it all again next year and see what happens! I need to just lighten up and not fret so much. Yeah, that's it.

Dawn, you mention your water bill going up, please tell me you have a well! My mind keeps going back to "600 tomato plants" and I cannot fathom! Seriously! I haul buckets of water to my plants, I have my rainwater and also get bags of ice from work which magically turns into water after a few hours. So that's another thing I'm wondering. I do feel I give all of my plants sufficient water but am I fooling myself?? One inch per week is what I've read and strive to do that, at least an inch but it's kind of hard to tell. I pour several small buckets around the plants' base, I don't use my garden hose for my garden, only because of the cost and I can get it for free elsewhere. And hauling water (not really haul, I'm just being overly dramatic) is not all that easy but I do it anyway. I mulch with lots of straw which helps the soil retain the moisture, I try not to let anything get too dry between waterings.

Now a question on soil-less mixtures. Do you make your own? What do you use? When you use containers for plants (not just seed starting) do you always use that mixture? I've got a few molasses feed tubs I'm planning on planting in next year. This year I planted carrotts and beets in containers and used bagged garden soil and my beets were like radishes, size wise, although I don't know if that's because my soil wasn't great.

Thanks, Dawn and Hailey.

I really am happy with my garden. I can see my vision taking shape, it's just discouraging sometimes is all. And this heat seems to make everyone feel more stressed out about whatever they're dealing with at the time. For Dawn, it's finding the energy to deal with an abundant harvest. For me, it's "where's my food?!". And honestly, it is probably a good thing that this is a learning year for me and not a bumper crop year. With the house torn apart, I can't preserve it really. And the house being torn apart and the many decisions we need to make regarding that (how many shades of beige are there in the world anyway?!) is another factor in the stress. Also, we're heading out to Branson for a few days. Planning a trip is always stressful for me...mostly because of the animals. My neighbor is a good guy and will take care of them, but it's just one more thing to think about. AND I know that the animals will be stressed by this. AND our daughter isn't going with us because she has her first grown-up job. She's coming out and watering a couple of times. BUT...I don't think she was really paying attention when I showed her how to water everything.

See how I'm making everything negative when it's really positive? I'm blessed with getting to remodel my house. I'm blessed because I get to take a small vacation with my family. I'm blessed to have the pets that I have and someone to look after them while we're gone. I'm blessed with a big garden--something I've always wanted. It's a blessing that my daughter has a grown up job right out of college--all blessings but this heat has a way of making me grumpy.

Amen to grumpy from the heat. I always try to grow too many tomatoes because I want to try them all. I have GOT to spray BT. I found a lot of fruit worm damage today and something that appeared to be eating the leaves (scissored to death...). Some varieties are overwhelmed by spider mites. The first year I grew Black Cherry it wanted to take over the world. Last year it was the first to die, from too much water, I guess. This year it has been blighty and spider mites are bothering it. The Large Red Cherry sitting between two plants with mites looks pristine. Go figure. I pulled a plant today that never thrived. And the Czech Bush (I'm a quarter Czech) that I really wanted to do well is mitey, in between the Rutgers which look good and some others that also look ok. Just 2 plants in the middle that are going to have to go. I decided I am too old to care for as many tomatoes as I have. Some would have done better if I had checked them sooner. I buzzed the new blossoms with my tooth brush, but there were many aborted blossoms that would have given me a lot of fruit.

I can see the difference between old and new beds. The older beds have better plants. I need to fence the chickens out, but I have some greens that I was seeing frass on, but since they've been out, the frass is gone.

The heat is over whelming to say the least. I am getting a few tomatoes, squash, sweet corn & okra. I am done with the beets and still have a few turnips to pull. My blackberries are finished. Where I had some Irish potatoes I planted 14 sweet potato slips a week ago, yesterday a gopher had gotten one, so 13 now if it doesn't get anymore. Of my 1015Y seed onions I harvested 190 baseball size onions, 160 tennis ball size onions and about a 3 gal. foot tub full of smaller size onions most of which have been chopped and put in the freezer. It has been to hot the last 2 days for me to want to do anything. Oh, I think there is a skunk moved in under my house.

Oh, NO! Not a skunk! When you all talk about your wild life I am kind of glad to be an urban gardner! Snakes and coyotes and skunks, OH MY!

Hailey, my first tomato was a Sweet 100 that came inside a magazine. It grew like crazy and produced like crazy. And never has been that good since.

Hailey--cute baby!

My first garden--many years ago--was at a duplex that we were renting. We were newly married. My husband's dad helped us till up a garden and we planted several things that all did well except the row of corn. It looked good, but when we harvested it, a bug had eaten all the corn. ALL that to say--my tomatoes were fabulous! They were still producing in September when we moved. I've never had a harvest like that since. It was 1994.

Hailey, Often when a gardener finds their output doesn't match their level of input, the problem can be that you are treating the garden plants too well, i.e. giving them too much fertilizer and/or too much water. I keep mine ever-so-slightly hungry and ever-so-slightly thirsty. Know why? Plants produce fruit for a simple basic reason---to produce seed to ensure that the next generation will be there to grow and carry on their species after they die. When the living conditions are great and the plants are well-fed and well-watered, they can slack off and sit around and enjoy being pampered. Thus, they get in no big hurry to form fruit and set seeds. Why should they? It is summer time and the living is easy. Let them be kinda hungry and kinda thirsty and their need to produce seed for the next generation seems to kick into over drive. I used to feed and water my plants a whole lot more than I do now, and I wasn't always thrilled with the results. So, I cut back and I get huge yields. Sometimes being too kind to your edible plantings can backfire.

Sometimes it is more a matter of timing. It is very important to get the warm season plants in the ground at the very earliest opportunity. I push, push, push like a crazy woman to get my plants or seeds in the ground just as early as I can. Even planting a week or two later than recommended can result in timing issues, like maybe the beans and peas don't produce flowers because the weather has gotten too hot, or they produce flowers but the blossoms drop without forming beans. Or, the tomatoes don't start flowering until about the same time the high heat arrives, with the predictable poor fruit set resulting. So, be sure you are planting as early as you reasonably can. Sunlight is important too. Often, in urban and suburban back yards, gardens get less the ideal sunlight (often due to shade from adjacent buildings or from neighbors' trees) and this can have a severe impact on their ability to produce. I always try to choose varieties with short DTMs to ensure we get a harvest too. If I am choosing bush bean varieties, I try to choose those with 44-60 day DTMS, not 65-75. In our climate where we go from too cool to too hot overnight, we have to use every trick in the book to get the harvest we desire.

We belong to a water co-op and don't have a well. I am not one to overwater though. Even in drought, I only water once (deeply) about every 3rd or 4th day. If the drought gets bad enough, I stop watering and close the garden gate and walk away from it and let the drought have it. I'm not one of those people who water daily, other than containers that often need frequent watering.

For a soil-less mix I sometimes make my own using Al's 5-1-1 mix adapted to suit me for our area, and sometimes use Miracle Grow Moisture Control Mix, which is ideal for containers in our dry and hot summer weather. I tried the MG Organic Potting Soil Mix when it first came out and it was truly awful and I'll never use it again.

What an adorable photo!

autheray, So, you're growing a skunk under the house? That's not at all good. I agree about the heat. I'm done with it. If I can't do what I need to get done really early in the morning, then I'll try in the evening. It is too hot to stay out there past 9 or 10 am. I do like to get outdoors right at sunrise, but some mornings I just don't move that fast any more.

Amy, Every time I think that I have had it with the wildlife and start thinking that city living sounds better than country living, I'll see an eagle fly over, or a bunch of tiny baby cottontails playing in the meadow, and then I realize what a privilege it is to live surrounded by wildlife. I do wish we could pick and choose which wildlife we have, but life doesn't work that way.

Hazel, That's a good point that an abundant harvest this year while y'all are remodeling the kitchen would be driving you stark raving mad. In my own life, I always feel like things work out just about the way they were meant to work out, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

Maybe counting your blessings will make the heat more bearable, not that I really think there is anything that can make the heat more bearable. We just have to try to survive it and get through it. July and August are a waste of time in a lot of ways because everything is such a struggle in the heat.

I canned all day and my feet are killing me and the kitchen was hot and steamy and I just kept thinking all day that I hate tomatoes, I hate canning, I hate onions, I hate peppers and I hate, hate, hate making salsa. Ha! I told Tim that tonight and I told him I am going to retire from canning sooner rather than later. He had that scared deer-in-headlights look when I said that. I'm sure that when I wake up tomorrow, I won't hate anything, but after working in a hot, steamy 83-degree kitchen all day (even with the AC on and the rest of the house much cooler), I am not liking anything about our harvest this week or the need to do something with it. Tomorrow I am absolutely positively not going near the garden or the kitchen. I don't know what I am going to do, but I'm going to have a day off tomorrow to make up for canning 8 batches of salsa today. For some reason, Chris' chickens kept jumping into the dog yard today, or crawling under the fence or through it or whatever. The dogs didn't hurt them (though they surely wanted to) and I managed to get the dogs indoors and the chickens out of the dog yard, but it was several ridiculous interruptions that I didn't need while in the middle of a canning marathon.

I don't even remember my first garden. It was so, so, so long ago. I've never had a problem getting good yields though, even when my garden was tiny and too shady. That doesn't mean that there aren't challenges along the way, but there's always a way to work around the issues once you figure out what is causing them. First gardens usually are beginner's luck, I think, which is good, because if someone's first garden performs poorly, where do they get the motivation to try again the next year?

Dawn

Ah, chickens. Ever seen the Rocky scene where he trains by trying to catch a chicken? Imagine Mr. Flywrap chasing Miss Independent around the yard tonight since she was the only one who wouldn't go in the run, even for meal worms. Sigh. I thought they would both have a heart attack.

Another chicken got into the dog yard today. At least when they are in there (as long as the dogs are not also in the dog yard at the same time), we can eventually corner them, pick them up and toss them back over the fence. I'm still not sure if they are coming over the fence or finding a way underneath it or thru is somehow, but if they are, why can't they take themselves back out the same way they came in? I know their brains are the size of a peanut, but really now, how do they have enough sense to stay alive? Isn't there some "danger, danger" signal they should get that tells the flying into the fenced dog yard is a bad idea?

Amy, That's our night every night. If we wait until darkness is just about to descend, 99% of the chickens will put themselves in the coop voluntarily. It is that 1% that is a pain, and the cause of many entertaining chicken foot chases over the years. Herding chickens is bad enough, but guineas are a 100 times worse and that's why we don't have guineas any more. There's a limit to how much poultry nonsense we can endure, and guineas push you past that point.

Dawn

One of the chickens was missing when we went to shut the coop tonight. Not the one from the night before. We were kind of late, it was dark already. Sigh. They were all there an hour before. I guess you don't have to be in the country to deal with wildlife. Unless it was urban hunters.

Lost chicken was in the yard this morning. No clue where it spent the night.

Amy, I really am relieved for your chicken!! So many of the animals we care for are defenseless out there! Dug my garlic today and am letting it "cure" for several days, it's my first, so I'm pretty much winging it. I didn't plant a lot, and now have 5 bulbs, only one of which is a decent size, I think anyway, all of the stems were brown and dried so I figured I need to pull them. So, can I just pick a few of the cloves and plant them for the next year? I also just pulled up my Independence Day tomato plant, it gave me a few decent size fruit but all but 3 were affected by those weird splotchy patches. I picked those three and they are pink, so I'll ripen them inside and cross my fingers. I've been crossing my fingers a lot lately! It was a short, stubby plant, never got over 18" tall and that's being generous. It's not worth my efforts. My three cherry tomato plants are well over 6 feet tall and producing like champs! Still picking a few yellow summer squash every week and fewer zukes. My buttercup is wilted in a few areas and fine in others. It's too hard for me to get into that mess of a squash patch to trace the vines back to the problem, but the main stem looks just fine and I still have seen no pests. I have several fruit that are growing quite nicely so I will not bother to uncross my fingers, and just hope the plant can hang on till they get ready to pick. I think some of the vines have rooted themselves somewhere so I'll see if that saves them. When I uncovered them this morning so the pollinators could have at them, (btw, they were swarming with bees, I LOVE that sound!) I heard a noise and knew something was trapped in my sunken watering bucket, I got up in there with a flashlight and saw two little eyes on a frogs body that seemed to be asking for a hand out! When I scooped it out, it looked up at me with gratitude. Yes, I actually saw gratitude in a frog's eyes. So, I gave everything a good watering, will wait a couple of more hours, cover my squash again and let the sun and heat bring on what it must. I am headed to Broken Arrow, squash, tomatoes and one cucumber (terrible cucumber harvest) in tow, for a visit with my daughter and son-in-law! Hope everyone has a great Sunday!

I think the rule of thumb is to harvest garlic when a third to half the leaves have died. The green leaves run down to a layer of cover for the cloves and they keep better that way. I try to use ones that didn't have green leaves first, in case they start to sprout. I read that sprouted garlic is actually more nutritious, but It can be bitter. Let it dry out of the sun for a while. I expect your seed cloves will last till fall when you can plant them. Did you plant soft neck or hard neck?

I planted softneck. I hope I didn't pull them too late, the leaves were mostly brown but there are a few with a not so brown greenish leaf! So who plants garlic and whats with all the raves about homegrown garlic? I probably will find out after mine cures but I'm really curious to know what everyone thinks!

I'm glad your chicken showed up, Amy. When ours stay out at night, which of course we try to avoid allowing to occur, they usually hide in a tree. That keeps them safe from most everything except bobcats and owls. Chickens can be surprisingly sneaky. We had one hide inside an empty litter bucket once. I think Tim had placed the bucket between the two chicken koops to keep the chickens from running down the narrow space between them when he was trying to put up the chickens in the coop. It mostly worked except for the chicken that sat quietly in the bucket and apparently stayed there all night.

Hailey, I like to harvest garlic a little later than most folks, when the leaves are maybe 50-66% brown and withering. You can save cloves and plant them. Every one has their own faves, so it really is a matter of finding a kind you like. To me, the main advantage of growing my own is that I know it is grown organically, unlike the majority of garlic sold at places like big box discount stores that largely sell garlic grown in China. I don't trust imported produce as it can be raised with serious chemicals not allowed in the USA. Who wants to risk eating food sprayed with whatever is allowed in other countries (where, often, toxic chemicals are used). I also like garlic (like potatoes and onions) that has been harvested in the current year, not which was harvested months and months ago and kept in storage for ages. Fresh is best.

The weird splotches on your tomato fruits are mostly likely stink bug damage, and certainly are not a reason to toss the fruit. Otherwise, go ahead and yank out your plants now, because once the stink bugs arrive in large numbers (which are present in my garden now), they will feed on every tomato you have if they get the chance to. They insert their sucking mouth part to suck moisture and nutrients out of the fruit, and at the same time inject a toxin that causes the little splotches on the fruit. This sort of damage is called cloudy spot. If your splotchy spots aren't cloudy spot, they may be tomato yellow should disorder or blotchy ripening disorder, both of which also are common at this time of the year. Photos with fruit with all these issues can be seen at this webpage:

MOBOT Tomato Fruit Problems

I'm glad you found the frog, and hope you enjoyed your visit with your son and daughter-in-law.

Hailey, I'm no expert on garlic, but I'm trying to figure the best ones out, too. First year I planted grocery store softneck. It kept till Feb, when I used it up. Last year I got "gormet garlic" from a farmer's market. But we got so much rain, I think it diluted the taste. I was not impressed, really, with most of what I grew and it didn't keep like the previous year. I'm looking forward to seeing how this year turns out.

I picked tomatoes again tonight, and I feel like Old Mother Hubbard right now, except instead of children, I have tomatoes. The kitchen table is consumed, with large plastic bowls full everywhere (so the cats can't knock them off), and now the living room has a pile of its own. I've got grandkids tomorrow, but the six year old likes working that tomato mill, so that might be good. Or not. Thankfully, these are in various stages of ripeness, so that buys me a couple/few days.

I did a batch of candied jalapenos today, and I am getting ready to blanch and freeze squash and ice down some cukes for another batch of refrigerator pickles. I'll do another batch or two of salsa tomorrow. I can't imagine being Dawn and doing a gazillion batches of processed pickles, while making salsa and putting up corn, etc.

I am sure that there are others here who, like Dawn, have big gardens and stay busy, and I'm in awe. My garden is only about 650 sq. feet, but I kept to tomatoes, peppers, onions, squash/zucchini, herbs, and cucumbers this year. That space gave me 55 tomatoes, 40+ peppers, over 300 onions, 6-8 squash/zukes, and a trellis on the north end of the garden that is about 25 feet long, where I have the cucumbers (I only have 10 cucumber plants, and 5 of those went in a couple weeks ago). Herbs are stuck in between tomato plants, and at the end of rows.

Well, the mower is calling my name.

It is the same here. I know I should feel more grateful about the harvest, but mostly I feel overwhelmed. I looked at the bowls, baskets and storage tubs of tomatoes piling up everywhere last night and knew I could not face the idea of standing in the kitchen and running a bunch of them through the strainer after the busy canning week I'd already had, so I washed them and put them in ziplock bags and filled up the freezer with them. I still have too many and tomorrow afternoon I'll have to face the music and deal with some of them, but since roughly 40% of them went into the freezer, it feels like much smaller mounds of tomatoes today. Of course, I didn't do any harvesting today and won't do any tomorrow if I can help it. I think tomorrow I may feed pickling cukes to the chickens. I'm over them now. For a while I worried they'd stop producing before I could pickle enough of them, and now I'm worried they'll never stop producing.

You grow a lot in the space you have. You're like me---you pack a lot into the space you have available to you. I tried to trick myself by planting tons more flowers so they'd eat up space and I'd have less veggies, but then all I did was come back and squeeze in more veggies pretty much on top of the flowers. I need an intervention for people who grow too much. At least right now, as I yank out tomatoes I will sow winter squash seeds of all kinds, and those plants won't give me a harvest for a few months yet. That should give me a breather when I finally catch up on the June and early July harvest. Every single July 4th I'm always in the kitchen making salsa, and I am bound and determined to finish up the salsa making before the 4th this year. Usually Tim works on July 4th and so does Chris, so I don't mind being in the kitchen. This year Tim is off, though, and I'd like to be off as well and not even thinking about salsa-ing.

Peppers are so easy by comparison. Slice em and mix up the brine and can them. What makes salsa so time-consuming is the sheer amount of veggies you have to chop and mince for each separate batch. I'm kinda at the point where I can't stand to look at one more onion. I have gotten to where I wear my onion goggles on top of my head (the same way you perch sunglasses on top of your head, you know) on long canning days, and then I forget they are there and people start looking at me strangely like "what is on top of your head?" When someone knocks on the door and I am wearing an oilcloth apron and onion goggles, well, can you imagine their reaction? I probably look like a demented scientist or something. A demented tomato scientist.

What I'm harvesting lately is tons of tomatoes, copious amounts of cukes, sweet, small amounts of peset-free summer squash, pretty peaches and purple plums, piles of pole beans and my beloved perfectly purple pink eye purple hull southern peas----six varieties, all producing at once instead of one after another as they should have based on their DTMs. When you hear later this week that a woman in southern OK had a nervous breakdown after shelling PEPH peas all week and went totally berserk, you'll know that I am that woman.

Mary, We have created our own harvesting and food processing nightmare and we're just going to have to live with it, I guess. That makes us our own worst enemies. It is too early in the summer for me to be silently willing drought to return and to kill the garden (because, you know, I would refuse to water) but I am starting to mumble about stuff like that while in the kitchen. Where's a venomous snake to scare me out of the garden for a few days? Why can't one ever show up at a time that's right for me? That would help me catch up on the inside-the-kitchen stuff anyhow. I do appreciate that everything is producing well, but when it does it all at once, keeping up with it becomes a rather dicey proposition.

I won't be in the garden tomorrow if I can help it, but I hope to be back home and in the kitchen by mid-afternoon. We desperately need rain, and I am hoping that tomorrow or tomorrow night we'll get some. Enjoy your day with your little helpers. I've tried all weekend to give myself as much of a break from food preservation as I could, and I think it has helped. I almost feel ready to face the piles of produce by tomorrow afternoon or possibly Tuseday morning. That's a good thing as I was losing any enthusiam for salsa-making that I had at the beginning of the salsa-canning season.

Dawn

Okiedawn, have you ever heard of "burnout" ?

Heard of it? Certainly! Do I have it? Big time. Can I fix that? Maybe.

Between the cucumbers and the tomatoes, I'm drowing in a sea of garden produce. If that was all we had, I'd be okay, but it is the dozens of ears of sweet corn, the snap beans from the pole bean varieties, the yellow summer squash (why oh why haven't squash bugs and SVBs shown up and killed my 9 plants already?), the hot peppers and the southern peas all maturing now and filling up any space not buried under cukes and tomatoes that make it so challenging. After 4-6 weeks of canning cukes several times a week, it was kind of nice to move on to tomatoes until everything else began to catch up with the tomatoes. At this point, I am the beneficiary (or victim) of having a pretty successful harvest season....and, so is Mary. I'm certainly not the only person trapped in the kitchen by a successful garden seaon.

I needed a break. I mostly had one over the weekend, and I let it continue through today. Tomorrow I'll be up at 4 a.m. and will be back in the kitchen all day and all evening paying for the weekend off, but that's ok. It is safe to say that I feel like I'm tanned, I'm rested, and I'm ready. Maybe all I needed was a few days off.

I am quite determined to be through canning salsa (I hope) before the weekend arrives.

Today I took 16 jars of salsa from our garden/kitchen to a small gathering of public safety employees at the courthouse and gave salsa to some of our favorite people after the event had ended and everyone was heading home. I wish I'd taken more because a lot more of our friends were there than I had initially expected. Their joy at receiving jars of home-canned salsa helped remind me why I do this every year, even when I'm severely burned out by the amount of work involved. Sharing food from one's garden always is fun and sharing something like Annie's Salsa that is so universally beloved is even more fun. It's why I do what I do. It is just that sometimes there is too much to do at one time.

If I wasn't canning tomorrow, I'd be outside mowing or using the string trimmer to tidy up the fence lines and such, so at least I won't be doing yard work out in the heat.

Dawn, giving away all the things you've worked hard to produce and can, to the people you love and the others who so appreciate it, is one of the things that makes this so rewarding, isn't it? I so enjoy having others to share it with. It isn't nearly as much fun sitting here by myself eating ANYTHING as it is knowing that somebody else is enjoying it with me. I have no doubt that everyone who got salsa was tickled to death:)

The grandson and I milled, bagged, and froze enough tomatoes for two batches of salsa (he'd had enough fun by then). I thought I'd finish tonight or tomorrow, with at least another batch or two, but his dad called and asked if I could keep him until tomorrow night. So, I am putting that on hold until at least tomorrow. I did chop and freeze enough peppers for 5 batches of salsa, and I took what zucchini I had left and made zucchini bread (this child can eat a loaf of it in a day). I took the squash that I picked, and I shredded and froze enough to make 6 loaves of squash bread, and I stewed the rest with onions for dinner. After I got him fed, bathed, and settled down with a video game, I got out in the garden with the snippers and tried to cut off dead/dying leaves and branches from the tomato plants. It's still hot (92 here) and I didn't last long. Bless their little hearts, most are hanging in there. Those Big Rainbows are coming out this week, with the exception of one. I'm beginning to wonder if this ONE BR is a mislabeled seed (or the others are mislabeled) because it's got about 12-15 tomatoes on it right now, and it's much bigger than the others. I noticed I've got a soaker hose that isn't working right, and I'm gonna have to replace it. Lucky for me, it's on the last row, and where the the squash/zukes are coming out, so I'm not in danger of breaking tomato plants trying to get it out of there. Dawn, I am not nearly as over-worked as you are; I have much less to contend with! lol If I wasn't such a big whine bag about the heat, I could probably get a little more done!

Mary

Mary, Of course it is very joyful to share the fruits of our labor with others. I totally agree with you that it is more fun to share it than to enjoy it alone. I just think that I have to find creative ways to avoid being overtaxed at the main harvest season, which for me, in terms of warm-season crops, is May through July. From sometime in July onward, it slows down a lot and I can coast my way through the rest of it.....practically with both eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Well that is an exaggeration, but July's workload never comes close to June's.

One of these years, we'll have another 2011 when the rains seriously fail us big-time and the temperatures stay in the 100s for 2 or 3 months straight and life is pretty miserable. The crops will struggle and the harvest will be scanty and you and I will barely can, freeze, dehydrate, root cellar or ferment anything at all., and I suspect most people on this forum will be in the same boat. The kitchen will be oddly quiet in terms of processing the harvest, or even in terms of having much home-grown food for fresh eating. And when that happens, oh how we will miss it! Last week, though, before I took a break from canning, I was kind of longing for another 2011, if only for a little while.

Being able to freeze processed food for use in canning and fresh cooking has saved my sanity a number of times. Sometimes I feel like if I had to do it all right then while it all is ripe and ready, that I just would lose my mind, or whatever I have left of it by this time in my life.

Your Big Rainbow issues are intriguing. Perhaps there was a seed mixup with the grower, or perhaps he doesn't grow each variety in strict isolation so got a little insect-induced crossing. Time will tell when you get to harvest some from that one plant that has so many on it. Hopefully they will be Big Rainbow so you get to evaluate it fairly based on the ripe tomatoes it finally gives you.

I think a bonus day with the grandson is peachy keen. The food processing and gardening always can wait for another day. Every day with him is so precious, and the fact that the two of you get to spend time together gardening, harvesting, eating the harvest and processing it is just a bonus. You're growing a new generation gardener yourself every time he gets to help you with the task of the hour, and that's terrific too.

Dawn

"but then all I did was come back and squeeze in more veggies pretty much on top of the flowers. I need an intervention for people who grow too much. "

Sorry to inform you but you are in the wrong forum to get an intervention. Lol

I am harvesting quite a bit and some bonus fruit too. A lady gave me all the apricots I want and her tree was not sprayed so I am putting those up and beautiful loads of sand plums. What a surprise to have all this extra fruit.

I'm so happy that she gave you the apricots and that you are getting sand plums. The rest of this week is all about food processing at our house and I'm really hoping to get caught up on everything. Ha ha ha. I doubt I'll get caught up, but I'll still try in case something happens and I accidentally get caught up.

Dawn, I try to picture your garden(s), and what I conjure up in my mind is a beautiful, manicured veggie/flower paradise/animal sanctuary, and 16 hour per day job, from about February to November.:) I hope you get to scale back this next month and take a breather.

Yes, I am enjoying my grandchild(ren) and I am very thankful for the time spent together. My daughter and son-in-law are separated and divorcing, so this has been a challenging time for all of us; two households, in two different towns, and two people with very busy schedules, not to mention, two children whose hearts are broken and who don't understand why it has to be this way. I think grandma's house is a "safe place" for them (especially the youngest), and the things we do afford a "break" from the reality of it all. We "do stuff", and it doesn't really matter what it is...they just seem to be happy with someone being in the moment with them.

Luvncannin, I remember my mom making sand-plum jelly; I haven't had any since I was a teenager.

I FINALLY got to eat one of my own tomatoes (that was actually ripe). I picked 7 unripe tomatoes this weekend that the birds had gotten to, most of them hadn't even started to change color yet, and made some pretty tasty fried green tomatoes. But I was excited to eat my first ripe champion tomato today as part of my lunch.

Looks delicious!!!

It is not beautifully manicured now. It might have been fairly well-manicured in April and May when I was staying on top of the weeding. Right now it is a jungle, a grasshopper-infested jungle, and I opened the gate this morning and sent in the chickens to try to clean out the hoppers.

My whole day is messed up because I worked from 7:30 a.m. or so until about 1 p.m. raising much of the dog yard fence from 4' in height to 8' in height. I did it all alone, using scrounged materials, and standing on a ladder on our sloping property. It was hot and humid, and about 30 minutes before I finished, I was getting way too hot and hating every second of it....and during that time the local paramedics were treating and transporting to the hospital a man just 2 years older than me who apparently had either heat exhaustion or heat stroke. I had tried to stay in the shade as much as possible and I was drinking a lot of water and tea to stay hydrated. So, I called it a day after getting the two long sides of the dog yard done---the north fence and the south fence, figuring if someone near us was getting a heat illness, that was my cue to get myself indoors1 Hopefully having the fence taller will keep the chickens from jumping into the dog yard, and maybe tomorrow I can do the west fenceline and the east fenceline early in the day.

Of course, the cats were hating I was in the dog yard (with the dogs part of the time, and without the dogs for the rest of the time because dogs colliding with a ladder while you're standing on it is not a good idea), so they proceeded to show me they can climb an 8' tall fence and come into the dog yard if they want to. That's how the cats ended up indoors in the air conditioning. Our little orange cat, Pumpkin, is not a cat, He is a monkey. I don't know why he is still alive because he constantly gets into trouble, largely because he goes into places he is supposed to stay out of. I'm hoping he won't climb over the fence and into the dog yard while the dogs are in it. At one point, I finally figured out I was out there in the heat alone---so that makes me the dummy.

Mary, I'm trying so hard to scale back. Today the chickens are going to get cucumbers for an afternoon snack because that will leave me one less thing to can.

I hate to hear about your son and daughter-in-law's divorce. Divorce can be such a trying period, but often the people involved are happier afterwards, once the pain and hurt has healed. It is hard on the children because it disrupts their lives, but children are resilient and I suspect they'll come through this okay in the long run. It is a good thing they have your house to retreat to as a safe zone where things remain the same because I think that does give them a real sense of security.

On Saturday we walked into a restaurant where our former daughter-in-law apparently works, though we didn't know she worked there. She came straight to us to give us a big hug, and we got to chat with her for a long while. All I could think to myself was how much we adore her and her daughter and how I wish she and our son had been able to make their marriage work. They still are very close friends, though, so we do still see her occasionally, though we hadn't seen her much in the past year.

I made sand plum jelly about a month ago, although our sand plums are growing in dense red clay and perfectly happy there, so we jokingly call it clay plum jelly. Yesterday some friends of ours were talking about buying and adding abother 250 acres to their ranch and said they'd been busy clearing the land, cleaning it up and fencing/cross-fencing it. When they said they'd been yanking out all those native plums, a little bit of my heart broke and I gave them a hard time (all in fun) for removing trees that would make them wonderful little plums for jelly. I guess everyone is not a fan of canning.

ak__ok, Congrats on you yummy tomato. I hope you get many more. Champion produces all summer for me when I grow it, as it did last year, so I hope it does the same for you. It does not slow down in the heat as much as some newer varieties do.

Dawn

That is awesome Turbocat. My little man almost 4 has had a difficult time with the separation new stepdad new brother new houses.

Granny is same ol same ol.

I haven't canned anything yet. I just keep throwing stuff in the freezer.

Baby Bunnies, are so cute until you go out in your garden and find a dozen nice tomatoes 6- 8 in. off the ground with chewed places on them. I saw it chew on one. They will also eat sweet corn shoots down to the ground. I also saw it stand up on hind legs and yank off a corn leaf and eat it like spaghetti. Oh! and they will eat okra & beet leaves. They will also cut whole cowpea vines down. I didn't know they would eat onion tops, but I witnessed this too. They get belligerent and refuse to leave the garden when you follow after them trying to make them get out. At first I didn't mind it being there but as time went on I started to get fed up with all the bunny antics. There is no place in a garden for critters.

Y'all I just got in from Branson and harvested several red and beautiful tomatoes! I can't wait to have them for lunch tomorrow. One of the Brandywine have even set a tiny little fruit. It really happened!

Something ain't right with the tomatoes in the back garden. They have lots of green fruit in varying sizes--but the plants just don't look right...or healthy.

I also got a bowl of strawberries and some korean squash.

I missed my garden.

Why is it so hot, though?

I have a handful of Sweet 100 ripening on the kitchen windowsill. Lost one to birds, looks like. Time to re-spray with the pepper spray. Also had one Solar Fire disappear (green and hard) right off the plant. I'm blaming the squirrels. Dammit. It was the biggest one too. Going to move the 'maters in out of the sun tomorrow. Maybe I can get some fruit set if it's a few degrees cooler. I'm rattling cages every day.

Also got a couple more cukes. They're in the fridge in a quick pickling solution. Dill needs to grow faster. :)

Lots of boy flowers on the zuke, so just waiting for some girls to come along and get busy with them.

autherray! The buggers have eaten the lower leaves off my bean plants. And they totally mowed down my cowpeas, munched on the Okra (probably decided something else was tastier). I sick my dog on them when I'm out there and one strolls up to the buffet oblivious to my monster nature. I swear!

DH and I were just discussing fencing. I have to keep the chickens out and he's not warming to the idea of fencing them in their own pen. my dogs usually stay out, but we have grand dogs that don't. I've had a baby rabbit 2 years in a row. So I guess it is plastic chicken wire around each bed.

Kim, I've been throwing a lot in the freezer too, but the freezers are filling up fast, so the canning goes on and on and on. I hate it while I'm spending too many hours per day doing it (my feet are old and get tired fast!!!), but later on, when I think of all the home-grown food stockpiled in the freezers, pantry, etc., then I'm glad I took the time to preserve it all.

autheray, I haven't seen our baby bunny in a few days, so I think either something got it or it left the garden when I left the gate open. I've never allowed a rabbit to stay in the garden before, but it was really small and appeared to be all alone so I wanted it to gain some size before it went out into the cold, cruel world. There's no longer any fruit low enough on our tomato plants for a bunny to reach them, so I suppose it wouldn't upset me if it was still in the garden. It might have nibbled a couple of cucumbers that were low on the trellis, but it didn't eat any plants. As rabbits go, it wasn't too destructive. I wouldn't want a rabbit of any size in the garden when peas and beans are sprouting as they sure do mow those down.

Hazel, I hope the trip was fun and am excited for y'all that you got ripe tomatoes!

None of my tomato plants look good. They all have something wrong with them. It doesn't matter. We don't grow them as ornamentals. We grow them to produce tomatoes. So, as long as they are producing tomatoes, I ignore how ugly they get as the season goes on. Tomato plants that look like crap, they have foliar diseases, spider mites and stink bugs galore still are producing huge harvests in our garden and I'm still canning and freezing tomatoes as fast as I can. So, I think that ugly tomato plants are okay, and I'm not willing to use the many kinds of chemicals that might keep them looking better. I think that once plants are supporting loads of tomato fruit, that's where their energy goes---to producing and maturing that fruit. I'd rather they expend their energy on that than on maintaining pretty foliage.

Why is it so hot? a) It is summertime. b) It is summertime. c) Refer to a and b. It isn't hot if you stay inside in the air conditioning. Well, it it hot, but the heat is out there in the garden, not inside in the house. It felt pretty nice outside this morning around 7 or 7:30 a.m. when I went out to harvest, but by 9:30 or 10:00, it already felt too hot. Some days I am out by 6:30 a.m. and it feels even better, but I canned all day yesterday and had a hard time getting myself awake, alive, alert and enthusiastic this morning. Well, I was alive, but had to work hard on the rest. I'm supposed to be in the kitchen canning right now, according to the plan I had in my head when I got up this morning, but I'm putting it off as long as I can because I know that once I start canning, I won't stop until dinner time.

Rebecca, I let my dill self sow and pop up all over the garden and yard. It seems to germinate sporadically which means I always have dill whenever I have pickles ready to pickle, at least until sometime in July when the dill tends to burn up in the heat. Our first dill plants this year popped up out of the ground in February and have long since gone to seed, but others kept popping up through at least May and those still are providing dill heads for canning and dill weed for drying. Some of the older ones are now going to seed to ensure we have dill next year.

Amy, Our chickens ignore fencing. One flew over the 8' fence around the dog yard while I was out in the garden this morning and the dogs killed it. The garden is a long way from the dog yard and I got there as fast as I could when I heard the commotion, but it was too late for the chicken. We have deer netting roofs over all our chicken runs to keep them from flying out of their own runs if they are locked up in them, but I am not going to try to put a deer netting top over the large dog yard. You would think that chickens that have almost 15 acres to room wouldn't go to the trouble to invade a dog yard with 3 dogs in it. Hopefully all the chickens that witnessed the death of their compadre learned from it and won't go into the dog yard. We do all we reasonably can do to keep the chickens safe and yet still allow them to roam, dig, scratch and chase bugs like chickens love to do, but they don't make it easy.

Today I only harvested the usual stuff...tomatoes, peppers, green beans PEPH peas and cucumbers, but when I walked up one row picking PEPH peas, I noticed that Lima Beans have set on our Violet's Multicolored Butterbean plants across the pathway from them, so then I went one row over and checked the trellis where we're growing Sieva lima beans and found they had set beans too. That's a relief. I was worried the heat was impeding them, but apparently it isn't. I'm getting tired of having too many tomatoes, but am hoping to have too many butterbeans!

Dawn