Coming soon.... I have my list ready. Yours looks awesome especially the bean list. I am trying several new to me this year.

Dawn, tell us about the non moschata summer squash on your list! I've wondered about tatume.

Amaranth golden giant

bean, tepary Blue Speckled Tepary Bean

Beans, Bush Contender (Spring)

Beans, Bush Tanya's Pink Beans (Spring)

Beans, Bush Woods Mountain Crazy Bean (Fall)

Beans, Cow Pea Haricots Rouge Burkina du Faso

Beans, Cow Pea Lady Peas

Beans, Cow Pea Long Bean Taiwan Black Seeded

Beans, Cow Pea Penny Rile Cow Pea

Beans, Cow Pea pink eye, purple hull

Beans, Cow Pea pigeon pea (If I can get any to germinate)

Beans, Pole Blue Coco (Spring)

Beans, Pole Frank Barnett Cut Short (Fall)

Beans, Pole Grandma Roberts Purple (Fall)

Cucumber Armenian

Cucumber County Fair

Cucumber Diva

Cucumber H19 little leaf

Cucumber Lemon

Eggplant Suraj

Gourds Luffa

Greens, Warm Season Balady Aswan Celtuce

Greens, Warm Season Golden purslane

Greens, Warm Season Jewels of Opar

Greens, Warm Season Malabar Spinach

Greens, Warm Season Melokhiya

Greens, Warm Season Red Calaloo

Ground Cherries Cossack Pineapple

Lettuce Anuenue

Lettuce Black seeded Simpson

Lettuce Carioka summer crisp

Lettuce Cherokee

Lettuce Cracoviensis Leaf Lettuce

Lettuce Drunken Woman Lettuce

Lettuce jericho

Lettuce Midnight Ruffles Leaf Lettuce

Lettuce Nevada. crisphead

Lettuce Fedco summer mix

Melons Ananas

Melons Ha Ogen

Okra Stewart Zeebest

Peppers, Hot CHIMAYO

Peppers, Hot Czechoslovakian black pepper

Peppers, Hot Jalapeno Early

Peppers, Hot Joe's Long Cayenne

Peppers, Hot Mild Jalapeno

Peppers, Hot Tiburon Ancho/Poblano Hot Pepper

Peppers, Sweet Alma Paprika

Peppers, Sweet Anneheim

Peppers, Sweet Calif Wonder

Peppers, Sweet Chocolate Bell

Peppers, Sweet Figitelli Sicilia, Sweet Pepper

Peppers, Sweet Red Cheese Pepper

Peppers, Sweet Revolution Sweet Pepper F1

Peppers, Sweet sweet banana pepper

Spinach, Summer Malabar spinach

Squash, Summer C. Moschata Early Bulam summer squash

Squash, Summer C. Moschata Meot Jaeng I Ae

Squash, Summer C. Moschata Teot Bat Put

Squash, Summer Partenon f1 (parthenocarpic)

I might not grow winter squash, I have these varieties

Squash, Winter Black Futsu

Squash, Winter REBA acorn hybrid (bush)

Squash, Winter Thai Kang Kob Winter squash

Squash, Winter Seminole Pumpkin

If I grow sweet potatoes, it will be whatever I can get a hold of.

Kim, I just adore green beans so I grow tons of them. My bean list easily could have been 4 times as long, but I saved a bunch for fall.

I look forward to seeing your list when it is ready.

Amy, That's a nice, long list. How are you going to squeeze all that into the space you have in a way that will keep your DH from losing his mind? You know, I can picture you two with separate gardens. His would be neat and tidy (OVERLY neat and tidy, lol) with everything lined up in perfect little rows like soldiers. If my DH had a garden, his would be exactly the same way. Your garden would be a glorious, massive jungle of craziness just like my garden is every year. Guess whose gardens would produce the best? The jungles!

All the non-moschata squash on my list have to hurry up and grow quickly before the SVBs arrive. Since we didn't have any SVBs last year, I shouldn't see any until at least July because it takes them longer to find us when they are traveling "in" from elsewhere as opposed to having overwintered on our property. Some of the varieties are small enough (and Cavilli is parthenocarpic) that I can grow them inside low tunnels covered with micromesh or biothrips netting. That worked out really well last year, but then in a way it was irrelevant, since we never had an SVB at all, not even on the plain old yellow crookneck squash that was not protected by insect netting. Of course, it is hard to say if we didn't have any SVB moths fly through, but if they did, they might have kept on going since almost all the squash plants were under netting.

If we had had squash vine borers or squash bugs last year, all my non-C. moschatas would be starting out under row cover or netting, but since we didn't, I'll leave them uncovered until the threat appears.

Tatume is really unique. I remember it from the Mexican grocery store in my childhood neighborhood, but it was sold as Calabacita back then. When I first found Tatume seeds years ago, I didn't know if it was the same thing as Calabacita or if it was something new, but I soon learned it was the same thing. It is an OP. It is a C. pepo, but unlike other C. pepo varieties it is almost immune to damage from SVBs. I'm not sure why that is, but the vine is smaller in diameter than many C. pepos, so maybe it is too small for the grubs to bore their way through. That's just a guess on my part. It is a really vigorous vine, so does need a lot of space. It is perfect to grow on a fence or to train on wire run up and over a garden shed or chicken coop, where it will provide lots of shade in the hot weather. It flowers prolifically and fruits pretty prolifically (as long as you have pollinators around).

You harvest the round, green squash when they are approximately the size of a baseball. The larger you let them get, the more they begin to resemble winter squash and not summer squash. (Remember, all squash can be used as summer squash if harvested young or as winter squash harvested much later and when much more mature.) The flesh is more dense and firm than that of your typical yellow summer squash or zucchini. It has good flavor. If desired, you can leave it on the vine and let it become winter squash. I don't believe I've ever done that or, if I did do it in my early years of growing it, I let it mature and used it as a decorative squash on the front porch with other pumpkins and squash and never ate it. It matures to a beautiful gold and gets maybe 6-8" in diameter if you don't harvest it as summer squash. You essentially treat it like zucchini in terms of preparing/eating it.

If you direct sow it, expect to be able to harvest your first green,baseball-sized fruit after about 2 months. If you raise it to seed inside for a week or two and then harden it off and transplant it into the ground, expect your first harvest in roughly 40-45 days.

And that is pretty much everything I know about Tatume. Oh, and it loves heat!

Dawn

I have my list compiled, it's just not handy. This year will be pared down. Way, way down!

With needing to break ground on the new house, it's the only way I'll survive!

Trying to stay with 4-5 varieties of tomato, about the same on peppers and very basic on beans, squash, cabbage and okra.

I got these today. I got the 15 gallon size. They're for the spill over, Dawn, the things I can't squeeze into the beds. We decided to do potatoes in bags again this year, too, so that frees up an early bed. The big deal will be keeping the stupid chickens out of MY produce. My scarlet kale, which survived the cold that killed everything else, and has a piece of welded wire fencing over it to keep them from scratching it up has pretty well been picked clean of leaves.

Amy, Those look handy and the nice thing about growing potatoes in containers is that you don't have to dig (unless the containers are too heavy to turn over and pour all the soil and potatoes out onto the ground).

Chickens are a challenge. Are they flying over a fence? Would clipping their wings take care of that issue?

Chickens just love kale. I grow plenty to share with them in the regular growing season, but only had one large plant left to overwinter and they have stripped it bare so many times that it shocks me that it keeps trying to put out new leaves. I think tomorrow I am going to close the garden gate (before I let the chickens out of their coops and runs to free range) and put an end to the daily hen party in the garden. Enough is enough. Good luck reining in your girls.

Dawn

I really thought the kale was protected. Next DH will pronounce it dead and yank it out. We've (DH) been letting them out. Their wings are clipped. Everyone but Speckles will stay in the pen if the gate is shut. Speckles is just an escape artist and she goes straight to the places I don't want her. I had SOOO much kale planted for winter, but it didn't survive the cold. I had planned to feed it to the chickens (on my terms, not theirs). Something has to change soon. DH has elaborate plans for fencing the beds, but what is going to happen is I won't be able to get into them, and what good is that? Mutter, mutter, mutter.

I have 2 bags designed for potatoes (I wonder where those ARE?) And dog food or chicken feed bags work great, because you can just tear them open and toss them when you're done.

My big pots have deteriorated, so I hope the grow bags will work. I have one mineral tub, too.

Tatume. That's now on my list for next year.

What a dream it would be to have a year without SVB and squash bugs. If one could know in advance, she/he could grow all sorts of fun pumpkins. AND so much yellow squash and zucchini! Yeah...a dream...

okoutdrsman, it's good you're keeping your garden simple this year. We only did a remodel (not a completely new house) and our garden barely hung on. Hopefully a pared down garden will help prevent extra stress.

I've mentioned that we need to work on our front flower beds. I've thought of planting Kale there, as it can be very pretty. What's some of your favorite kale...and what is the prettiest? Also, is it weird to put kale in a flower bed. How will it look when I harvest it? Not that anyone out here cares...but I sorta do.

And I just realized that our chickens have had the run of our property. That will end soon and they will be so sad to stay in their pen. We must get fences up around our garden.

Y'all put my warm season grow list to shame!! I'm not doing very many tomatoes because I was able to put up enough Annie's Salsa last year that I don't need to can any this year. I want to can several batches of Salsa Verde so tomatillos will replace some of the tomatoes.

Amy - Your overwintered greens look so good! I don't think anything like that would have survived winter here because we hit -12 one morning and got slightly below zero a couple other times. I have to be content with my 'indoor salad garden' for now and I do have some 3 week old onions growing from seed to scratch my growing itch and a couple yogurt tubs of leeks that should sprout today (day 6).

Muir and Rhazes lettuce

Garden pictures · More Info

Garden pictures · More Info

Onions from seed: Red Cippolini, Pontiac, Evergreen White bunching

Garden pictures · More Info

Here is my warm season list:

* indicates new to me.

TOMATOES:

Sungold

*Black Opal (bred from Black Cherry)

*Orange Jazz

*Black

Big Beef

Bloody Butcher

TOMATILLOS:

Tamayo R

*Toma Verde

PEPPERS:

Carmen (Red bulls horn)

*Escamillo (Yellow bulls horn)

Anaheim

El Jefe Jalapeno

*Ace (Red bell)

Gourmet (Orange Bell)

Canary (Yellow bell)

SUMMER SQUASH:

Elite Zucchini

Multipik yellow straight neck

WINTER SQUASH:

Waltham Butternut

CANTELOUPE:

Sarah's Choice

MELONS:

Sugar Baby (if I can find a spot)

BEANS:

Provider

Maxibel

Contender

Rattlesnake

CUCUMBERS:

*Sweet Success

Vertina

Amy, One possible problem with potatoes in grow bags is that potatoes are temperature-sensitive and tuber initiation can stop once soil temperatures reach a certain point. With the grow bags lacking the insulation the ground would provide, this may affect tuber production. There's no way around that, but being sure to plant the potatoes as early as possible would at least give them time to form tubers before the summer heat starts adversely affecting the temperature of the soil-less mix in the grow bags. When I grow anything in grow bags I always position them so they get shade during the hottest part of the day. I think growing the potatoes in grow bags will work and you'll be happy with the results, but just remember that anything grown in any container above ground is subjected to more temperature fluctuations in both cold and hot weather. I don't think the cold will matter much to the potatoes, but the heat will. For the best results with grow bags, it might be ideal to use early potato varieties to get the best tuber initiation before the heat sets in.

I am a little worried about your DH's plan to fence the chickens out of each bed if he intends to fence each bed separately. t can work to fence beds individually, but it can be a PITA for the person who then needs to weed or harvest a securely fenced bed. Some years I put deer netting over the low tunnel hoops that cover my onion bed, attaching the netting to the hoops with zip ties. I do this to protect the onions from large hail since it seems like we have a chance of damaging hail in our forecast about 4 days out of 7 during the onion-growing months. When I want to weed, I have to lift the hoops up enough on one side so that they are sort of suspended in the air. Then I work my way down alongside the bed, weeding the half of the bed that I can reach from that pathway. Then I put the hoops back in place on that side, and work on the other side. It can be awkward, but it does protect the onions. Eventually I remove the hoops completely once the onion plants start growing through the netting but by then we generally have made it through the worst of April and at least part of May. Ironically, by the time I remove the hoops and have easy access to do the weeding, I generally don't need to pull weeds any more because by then I've weeded and mulched and weeded and mulched and there's not any weeds left to deal with. However, I've never lost onions to hail, not even in the year when it hailed 11 times during the spring and summer.

Hazel, I agree that it would be nice to know what years the SVBs and squash bugs are not going to show up. For me it is about 2 years out of 10, but I never know which ten and I never know why it happens. My last two good SVB-free years were exactly 5 years apart---in 2011 and 2016. In a perfect world where bug invasions are perfectly spaced out, my next one would be 2021, but it doesn't really work that way. I was able to grow all the squash and pumpkins I wanted for 6 or 7 years before the pests ever found us, and I grew up to 30 varieties of them each year just because I could, and because I knew I needed to enjoy doing that as long as possible before the pests arrived. It was wonderful while it lasted.

I have friends who grow all the pumpkins and squash they wish to grow merely because they spray their vines with chemical insecticides. They do, at least, spray in early evening after the bees are gone from the garden. I understand why they do it, but I prefer not to poison my garden with chemical pesticide use. Sometimes, after the SVBs arrive, it certainly is a tempting thought to do what they do, although, of course, the time to spray would be before the SVBs arrive because once they arrive and you notice signs that they are there, it is too late to spray anyway since they're already inside the vines. Growing squash and pumpkins under netting and hand-pollinating the flowers daily is about the best I can do organically. Spraying the plants with Bt 'kurstaki' could work, but because the Bt breaks down quickly in sunlight and/or washes off in rain, you have to spray constantly and I don't like spraying anything on my garden constantly, even when it is organic in nature. Among other things, who has time to be spraying two large garden plots constantly?

Bruce, I understand the need and the desire to keep the garden simple as you break ground for the new house. I just hope the act of keeping it simple doesn't drive you crazy because you're so using to growing so much.

Hazel, Most kales are very pretty. I like the purple and red ones (which are purplish and not really red) but all kales are pretty. Many kales have a blueish color to the foliage that is also attractive. Just Google kale images or kale leaf images to see the wide diversity in the kale family. Some leaves are very curly and frilled, other varieties have reddish or purplish stems and veins. I think there's nothing prettier than a bed of mixed kales in all the various colors available. I grow mustard plants as much for their beauty as well, though sometimes I eat the young mustard leaves.

As long as you keep harvesting the kale leaves, that has the effect of pruning the plants and keeping them a manageable size. They are not unsightly at all. However, as the heat sets in sometime in June, the plants begin to enlarge and elongate as they prepare to go to seed. If you don't like the way they look at that point, you can do what I do and cut them back to within 3 or 4" of the ground. Doing this usually diverts them from their effort to make seed and they go back into a vegetative growing stage again. I usually can keep kale going all summer this way as long as I keep it well-watered.....which didn't exactly happen when I abandoned the garden last summer to remodel the kitchen, and yet some of the kale plants survived anyway.

People commonly grow ornamental cabbage and kale plants as bedding plants both in home landscapes and commercial landscapes due to their beauty, so why not grow edible kale instead of the ornamental ones? (The ornamental ones are edible too, but I've never tried eating the foliage of any of them.)

Amy, Your purple bed is so pretty. I wanted to grow a blue-purple-scarlet bed of greens last fall but then didn't get it planted after I ordered the seeds because of the kitchen remodel, so I'm planting all those varieties this spring. I love having lots of purple and blue plants in the garden and (ironically) growing greens is one of the easiest ways to get those colors in the garden. I grow lots of purple basil in order to have the contrast between the green and purple basil too, and I always have at least a couple of ornamental purple sweet potato plants growing in containers in the front garden just to squeeze in a little more purple foliage. I strive to not only have a highly productive garden but a pretty one as well.

Dawn

Lone Jack, Your inside garden looks great.

I can well over 200 jars of Annie's Salsa each year because we give away so much of it. It is a tradition that my husband takes gift bags to work at Christmas time to give his co-workers in his current division, and each bag will contain a jar of Annie's Salsa plus 1 other jar of something else from our garden, generally either candied jalapenos, spicy bread and butter pickles or some kind of jam or jelly.

It is a lovely tradition and, when it started, I believe his work group was around 35 people. Then, his work group kept getting bigger and bigger and he also wanted to include people from other divisions who taught classes for him at the Citizens Police Academy or that he worked with on other special projects and eventually the whole project got massively out of hand.

I tried to cut back in 2015 because he had moved to a smaller work group (the Special Operations Division/SWAT team) and many people who had been on his gift list for many years were so sad that they were dropped off the list in 2015, though they understood that he was only bringing in salsa for his current work group. I hated disappointing so many people, so this year I canned a whole lot and we did the bags for everyone again---around 150 of them, and I probably should have done about 15 more. It is exhausting. So, now that he is an assistant chief over an entirely new division, I have to figure out where we go from here with the Annie's Salsa as Christmas presents. It is such a dilemma. I'm almost afraid to ask him how big his current group is because I am sure it is larger than the previous group.

I would be perfectly content to only do the bags for his new division and that seems pretty appropriate, and then of course, gift bags for his bosses and for the 3 other assistant chiefs, and even for the lieutenants. Oh, and for all their secretaries. And all the folks in Dispatch. See where this is headed? That's how we end up at 150-175 gift bags of canned goods a year even when I try to cut back. It just gets completely out of control.

On the one hand, the fact that I have to make so much salsa for so many people gives me a reason to grow tons and tons of tomatoes, but then doing all that canning, storing all those jars, and then putting together all those gift bags is a massive undertaking. My son just laughs every winter and tells me that since we're already giving gift bags to practically everyone in the police department that maybe I should make a few dozen more and give them to everyone. Well, that's not my goal! I keep trying to cut back on how much I can, and Tim keeps wanting me to can as much as always or even more. I've toyed with the idea of just sending the excess fresh tomatoes and peppers to work this summer and sharing them that way instead of canning them into salsa, but at this point that might not even go over so well as I think everyone automatically expects the salsa at Christmas.

One day I am going to retire from canning for everyone else and start canning only for us! I enjoy canning, but not as much as I used to and I'd really like to do less of it instead of more of it. It would be fun to be able to grow less of the ingredients that go into canning salsa and to grow more flowers instead. For a while Tim was talking about retiring and I could see the light at the end of the canning tunnel, but with this new job, I think he'll work for a few more years. If he retired, he'd just get bored and have to go find some kind of job to keep himself busy....so he might as well not get in too big of a hurry to retire early anyway. And, he's having so much fun now that I think thoughts of retirement have flown right out of his head. If he still was a street cop and I had to worry every day that, in this current environment, he might get shot, I'd probably be encouraging him to retire. Now that he spends most of his days in meetings and such, more often in suits than police uniforms, I can relax a bit and breathe a little easier but it still doesn't solve the Annie's Salsa canning issue. And, of course, there are worse problems to have.

Dawn

All the greens....the pretty kale, lettuces, beet greens, turnip greens, etc., are so appealing to me. I have lots of seed that I can grow, but just one problem: I am on coumadin/warfarin now, and it is very restrictive with respect to greens. I am going to talk to the doctors, and hopefully I won't have to be on this stuff forever. I think I can eat it, but it has to be a consistent part of my diet so that the medication can be adjusted around it. I have to have my blood drawn every two weeks to measure the levels of medication, and it can't fluctuate. So, there's that. lol. If that weren't bad enough, I'm fluid restricted, salt restricted, and am supposed to be fat restricted. I think that pretty much eliminates most of my diet! ;) Sadly, I'm not very compliant, because there is only so much cardboard sprinkled with Mrs. Dash that I can eat.

I am going today to get some index cards and graph paper so that I can try to get organized. I am primarily (but not totally) a kinesthetic learner, so things like concept mapping, and just the act of writing and drawing help to lay things down in my memory.

I just want to tell everyone how much I enjoy reading all these posts. I have learned so much from everyone here, and I always look forward to the latest posts. If I forget to say it, and I probably do, thank you everyone for all the ideas, suggestions, help, recommendations....everything.

Dawn - I think there should be a law or something against giving away Annie's Salsa. It just doesn't seem right to give away something that tastes so good!! That being said I did give away a few jars of Annie's Salsa and pickles at Christmas to some of the outlaws.

I can't fathom canning as much as you do. I only did about 35 pints of Salsa last year and about 60 pints of various pickled veggies. Even if I did grow as many tomatoes as you do, I would have to take all 5 weeks of my vacation in July and August to have enough time to can everything.

Mary, I am pretty sure that the vitamin K in a lot of greens will prevent you from being able to eat many greens. I have a friend with an LVAD to keep him alive after his widow-maker heart attack and he cannot eat greens. I do think there are some alternatives to coumadin, like heparin, that may allow more diet flexibility and, from what I recall, you do need to keep your eating consistent---not suddenly raising or lowering the amount of vitamin K in your natural diet. I am sure you and the medical professionals will find a way to work it out so you can eat as healthy and balanced of a diet as possible within whatever dietary restrictions you're told you must operate.

Lone Jack, The problem with giving away Annie's Salsa is that nobody is happy with just one jar and they constant hint, beg, wheedle and cajole, trying to get another jar. We do the same gift bags with all the members of our Volunteer Fire Department at Christmas (Tim is the chief, so about the same situation as at his work) but I also give our firefighters jars of salsa here and there throughout the year. It seems a small way to say thank you for their service to our VFD and our community.

When Tim was still in the Patrol/Rescue division, every now and then the day shift folks would come in to work a little early and make breakfast burritos for them all to sit down and eat together before their shift began. It is a lovely tradition. Guess who always had the job of bringing in the salsa (and, of course, it had to be Annie's Salsa) on breakfast burrito days? It makes me laugh when I think about how obsessed folks are with this salsa, but I understand the obsession---it is that good.

I am a gardening and canning fool all day every day once my big harvest period begins in late May or early June. I literally get up, work all day with our animals, the house and, mostly, the garden and canning. Day after day, week after week. The canning is usually heavy for about 2 months. Unfortunately, the peaches and plums generally are ripe at the same time I'm making salsa and canning pickles so it is a lot at one time. There is, though, a certain satisfaction that comes from looking at all those filled jars and knowing they came from our garden and our fruit trees. Generally, making Habanero Gold (loved almost as obsessively as Annie's Salsa by all our friends) doesn't happen until August, and that's perfect because by then I'm done with the salsa and the pickling and have time for all the dicing of veggies into tiny pieces for the Habanero Gold Jelly. One year I skipped making Habanero Gold jelly (it was 2014 or 2015) and people about had a nervous breakdown over not getting Habanero Gold for Christmas. It makes me laugh!

There is a reason I rarely--almost never, in fact--post photos of my garden. It is because I don't even take photos. When I get up and go outside in the morning and head to the garden to work each day, I have a To Do list in my head that involves about 30 hours work of work that must be squeezed into a whole lot less hours on that day. The last thing on my mind (and it isn't even on my mind at all) is taking photos. I'm trying to figure out how many hours I can devote to harvesting before I need to start canning. Then, while canning, I am trying to figure out how many batches I can get done before it is time to make dinner, etc. It is too much. It is much too much. Yet, I find it impossible to stop.

I can around 600 jars of stuff per year---mostly Annie's Salsa, Habanero Gold, Candied Jalapenos, Bread and Butter Pickles, Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles, and peach and plum jelly, jam and spiced fruit butters. In a year when the fruit trees really produce well, that might go up to 700 or more jars. Once I've made enough Annie's Salsa to more or less please the masses, I switch over and can tomatoes, tomato sauce, pizza sauce, pasta sauce, chili base, etc. When I'm through with that for the year, I process some tomatoes through the tomato mill so they're ready for cooking and then I freeze them. When I have still more tomatoes to deal with, I freeze them whole. When the freezer is full, I yank out 90% of the tomato plants, keeping just enough to keep us in fresh tomatoes, and I use the space for something else.

I'm like a hamster on a wheel during gardening season. I can't get off the wheel. I don't even want to. However, for my own sanity, I have to taper off on canning so much one of these years. I've been a stay-at-home wife and mom since 1993. Tim always says that I work far harder at home than he does at work, and that is true, but I don't mind it overall because I love doing it. I may not love it so much on a Wednesday when I'm looking at a big pile of tomatoes, and I already spent Monday and Tuesday canning and know I will spend Thursday and Friday (and sometimes Saturday and Sunday) canning tomatoes as well, but I love the end result.

A friend of mine gave up canning when she was in her 80s. She'd canned (and a lot more than I do) all her married life, had multiple health problems and knew it was time. I felt simultaneously horrible for her because I knew she didn't really want to stop----her body just wouldn't let her keep doing it----and, yet, also relieved for her that she wouldn't be slaving away in the kitchen every day. Her giving up canning about killed her rancher/farmer/gardener husband. He really really was unhappy about it, but he understood it was a health decision that was in her best interest even if he didn't like it.

Honestly, I cannot imagine I'll still be canning when I am in my 80s. I'm almost 58 now, and I'm not even sure I'll still be canning when I hit my 70s. Maybe I will, and maybe just on a smaller scale---only enough stuff for us.

Dawn

Lone Jack, I have had Muir lettuce on my Things To Try list for a couple of years. What do you think of it?

I wish my kale beds still looked like that. Our cold spell did most of them in. Scarlet kale survived the cold, but the chickens have gotten to it, despite our efforts to avoid that. The Arkansas Purple in the bucket in the green house is still going strong.

Dawn, when I grew potatoes in bags before they were up against the house on the east side. I might look for a way to insulate the bags, maybe just card board boxes (you might be a red neck if you have potatoes growing in boxes alongside your house...). I remember I had a pest or disease issue, but I can't remember what, LOL.

I hate having to fence my beds. If 2 feet of chicken wire would keep them out it would be ok, but it doesn't. There is a design DH is looking at from Square foot gardening, a chicken wire cage http:www.melbartholomew.com/more-pets-and-pests/. But I have 8' beds, and I've already fallen out there. I don't want to have to maneuver stuff like that. There's a you tube video of a cage on hinges that lifts out of the way. But, it's more expensive and complicated. NONE of the options are tall enough to protect tomatoes. And we have to remember that Speckles squeezes under or through ANY open or loose spaces. I could fence the garden area, but there are beds along the fence line and beds in the middle of the yard with a grassy area that is an easement with buried cables in between. DH drove a T post in there and we lost phone service for 3 days. If the chickens would JUST behave and stay in the paths! I have read that you put a sprinkler on a motion detector so it sprays them when they come around. I don't like sprinklers, and I hate to put water on tomato leaves, and I expect it wouldn't be cheap.

Mary, I hope you can get off the blood thinners soon. Cardiac diets are very unappetizing.

SVBs found me the very first year I grew squash. And they show up when it's too hot to be fighting them.

I don't like individually caged beds all that much. Yes, it protects them but it is a huge hassle. You don't need anything that will trip you up and perhaps lead to another injury.

The scarecrow type sprinklers may or may not work for you. Our poultry like to play in the spray from regular lawn sprinkles. In fact, on hot days I turn on a sprinkler on the lawn for a little while just so the chickens can play in the water. They love it, and tons of wild birds join them on hot days, so that our front lawn becomes a bird refuge for a little while. Maybe in colder weather the water would repel the chickens, but in hot weather, our chickens love that water. The original Scarecrow Sprinkles were pricey but the prices have come down a bit. I've sometimes seen the on clearance at Wal-Mart for about half their regular price, but that's at the end of the gardening season. Other companies now make similar motion-alert sprinklers that go off when the motion detectors signal something is in the area. Lowe's carries one made by Havahart. I've seen other ones at other places. The effectiveness of all of them varies because sometimes the wildlife or target animals get used to them and no longer run off when the sprinkler comes on and sprays them with water. In hot dry areas during times of drought, the water may, in fact, attract thirsty wildlife.

SVBs sometimes do find gardeners in their first year. Usually, the closer a new garden is to existing gardens or farms where squash family plants are grown, the more quickly they find new gardens. It helps me a little that the nearest gardens to me are about a half-mile in either direction, but it doesn't help enough.

OK, all of this is assuming I can get any of it to sprout. I reserve the right to amend the list if I have to buy plants.

Beans - Jade, possibly Triomphe de Farcy

Squash - Bush Table Queen acorn, Ponca Baby butternut (because it's for my mom, it's a bush-habit plant, and she was born in Ponca City), Dixie crookneck or Saffron Yellow straightneck (mom has already told me that she doesn't care what I have to do to the plant or what I have to put on it, she wants squash this year) (really, she isn't as demanding as she sounds, promise).

Peppers - NuMex Joe E Parker, Cayenne, Ancho, Red Pimento, Yolo Wonder, Charleston Belle, Habanada, TAM heatless jalapeno

Spinach - Space, Teton

Okra - Baby Bubba

Cucumber - H19 Little Leaf, General Lee (Boston Pickling and Sumter as backups)

If you want to be more or less guaranteed to get squash for your mom and you don't mind spraying it with a chemical pesticide, then spray the plants (in the late afternoon or evening when the bees are gone) with the chemical pesticide of your choice that is labeled for use to kill squash bugs and squash vine borers.

Some people use older products than contain carbaryl (Sevin) as the active ingredient and others use newer types of pesticides whose active ingredient is either permethrin or bifenthrin. I think bifenthrin is the active ingredient in Bug-B-Gone, for example. The label of the product you choose should tell you the spraying interval that is recommended. I imagine it would vary from 7-14 days. Follow all label precautions carefully.

Remember that all of these are broad-spectrum pesticides so use them carefully as they'll even kill beneficial insects. I have no idea how well these work on either squash pest, but know people who use them and who rarely lose plants to SVBs. Not sure if those folks have continued issues with squash bugs. I suppose the best advice would be to select two pesticides with different active ingredients and alternate using them so that your pests do not develop a tolerance of or resistance to one single product. That is a good gardening practice whether you're using pesticides that are synthetic or organic in origin.

Thanks, Dawn. I do prefer non-chemical things for the garden, but I'm not rigidly married to it. I'll probably just use something on those plants, and wash the squash well when I harvest it. Keep to my usual safer things on everything else. She does not mind chemicals at all, but I think I can do it with minimal usage, and it will still be much less chemical exposure than what we buy at the store. I asked at Stringer's today when I picked up my pepper seeds what they use for SVBs, and they just shook their heads. I am going to have BT around, and I have insulin syringes left from when I had a diabetic cat, so I can use that as well. I'm just afraid I'm going to inject myself with the BT in the process, lol.

3 packs of tomato seeds followed me home from Stringers. Ahem. Creole (which I've been dying to try), Ace 55, and Jellybean grape. I think I only have room for 24 plants, so I think some tough decisions will have to be made.

Squash bugs and SVB found me the first year out here. There's a garden about a half mile from our property. She grows squash, but is not organic.

Thanks for posting the pretty pictures of the kale, Amy!

I started cabbage seed and pepper seed today. This is my second year of starting seed in the little jiffy pods. I had a bit of an issue with them last year, but (I think) I let them get too dry. The directions say to keep the trays in a warm spot and once they sprout put them under the lights. Is it okay to put them under the lights now? It's what I usually do when starting seeds.

I always start mine under lights too. You don't have to but the extra warmth cant hurt plus it gets me in the habit of turning them on and off. I don't turn my fans on them until the leaves show up. I had problems with the jiffy pots to the point that after I started my seeds all over in the tray I took all the jiffy pots and threw them in the compost. I had a lot of them I got at $gen for 90% off but they did not work for me at all. Now I use the 72 cell trays and pot up to styro cups I buy by the case at sams for 15$ for 500. It works pretty good but I want to go to soil blocks. When I get the greenhouse I will, maybe next year. Since I still have about 50 trays I cant justify not using them. I use them until they start cracking really bad.

Rebecca, It makes me laugh that the folks at Stringer just shook their heads over the SVBs. I understand why though. Organically, it is so hard and so time-consuming to battle them, and some folks would rather not recommend anything at all than to recommend a synthetic pesticide. I feel like people need to do whatever makes them happy and makes their garden productive, so I will suggest synthetic pesticide types to a person if they ask. I just don't keep up with all the synthetic products as well as I used to since I stopped using them a couple of decades ago. Fred does his best to keep me educated about what chemical does what, but since he farms and ranches and is a licensed applicator, he sometimes mentions things I've never heard of because he is mentioning the names of registered pesticides.\

I did use Bug-B-Gone with its active ingredient of Bifenthrin one summer to save my tomato plants when the grasshoppers were eating the plants down to bare stems. It was so hard to do it, but I felt like I needed to save the garden. Had I not sprayed when I did, I would have lost everything that was left in the garden. I hated everything about it. I wore a HazMat suit while spraying, but just spraying the pesticide made my skin crawl. I worried about how many good bugs I'd kill (a lot, as it turned out, but they rebounded the following year). I didn't even know if spraying would help because grasshoppers are notoriously resistant to pesticides. As it turned out, the grasshoppers either died or went away. So did many of the good bugs, but new ones flew in, some of them just a few weeks later. I hated the way the garden smelled. I hated the way it looked. For as long as that chemical smell lingered, I hated being in the garden and avoided it except to go in and harvest. That's the only time I ever have sprayed my entire veggie garden with a broad-spectrum pesticide and I cannot imagine I'll ever do it again, but in that very difficult drought year (might have been 2013, but could have been 2014), I did what I had to do to save the tomato plants. It was a quick fix, but a temporary one. Within 2 weeks, new grasshoppers were flying in from all over and I did not spray again. That is the inherent issue involved in spraying any pesticide---it is not a one-time fix and must be repeated over and over again. I just choose to grow the most vulnerable plants under insect netting or row covers nowadays, but you cannot grow an entire garden the size of mine with everything covered up because of the cost and the time involved in putting covers on, taking them off, hand-pollinating, etc.

I hate SVBs with a passion.

Dawn

Hmmm, BT inoculations? That might be interesting!

My 2016 yellow squash and zucchini production was probably to lowest I've have had, ever. I managed to stay on top of the squash and leaf-footed bugs and kept them at a minimum. SVBs on the other hand, snuck in and hit me a little harder than normal. Daily inspections and red cedar mulched helped, but I found the little demons in vines that had no visible entry hole. Very little flass to give indication of affected plants made it difficult to deal with them before it was too late.

I lost count of how many of the adult moths, but it was several. Thinking back, a video of the crazy old man running through the garden in pursuit, may have been somewhat amusing! Fortunately few plants were trampled in the process...

I chased them with a can of hairspray one year. I'm not fast enough to knock them down. I got one of those hand held electric bug zappers, but this old woman can't catch them to zap them.

Amy - I really like Muir lettuce and it does very well for me. It is the most heat tolerant lettuce that I have tried in my garden. The only complaint I have with Muir is that if I leave it to grow to full size which is over 1' wide then It has a tendency to get some bottom rot. If I harvest the outer leaves periodically as it grows I don't have a problem with the bottom rot. I really like it for growing inside under lights in the winter. I can harvest it for 4-6 weeks before it starts to get root bound in the 3 1/2" pots that I use.

Dawn - We would really like to see a few pictures of your food jungle sometime! I have my son take most of mine.

I always say I'll try to take photos, and I always intend to do it. Then I never do it, so I'm not going to make any promises, but I'll try. I am completely technologically challenged and once I have a photo on my cell phone, I never know what to do with it in order to put it someplace else, like on Facebook or on this forum or even on my computer. And, truthfully, I rarely take photos of anything. I just don't take the time to do it. When I hit the garden, I am focused on what I need to get done that day, not taking a photo of something. I think either a person is a visual, photo-taking type person or they're not one. I'm not one. I am a 19th century woman living in the 21st century, and personally, I like being a 19th century woman. Technological stuff drives me crazy. Just give me a trowel and a shovel and I'm in my element. Any photo I've ever had posted from my garden (and I think it only has been tomato harvest photos) has been taken and posted by my son. He always says he'll teach me how to do it myself, but then he never has time. Or patience. He's a professional firefighter, so he works horrible 24-shifts and has to sleep on his first day off to make up for going for most or all of that 24-hour shift without sleep. He'd probably have more time and patience to teach me technology stuff if he worked normal hours. What happens is he tries to tell me how to do something with my phone or computer and it flies in one ear and out the other and I look at him with an obviously dazed and confused expression, so he grabs my phone or computer and does, in about 30-seconds, what he just spent 5 minutes telling me how to do with me not absorbing or understanding it. My husband isn't much better with the phone and computer but he might know how to post photos. I'll have to ask him. When I first joined facebook last year (I'm always the last person to adopt new technology and may have been the last person in American to get a cell phone too), he showed me how to post a photo from my phone to FB and I did it for a day or two. I haven't done it since and I don't even remember how I did it. Some people, like me, just don't do technology well.

I hear you Dawn. I thought I was the last person in America to get a cell phone! I didn't carry one until my work gave me one about 7 years ago and told me to carry it so they could bother me when I was at home. I am still carrying the old flip type phone and it doesn't have a network connection so no internet.

I just borrow my sons smartphone and take some pictures or have him take them and he sends the pictures to me on an email. Then I just have to unload them to Houzz which is pretty simple. Once they are in Houzz you can add them to a post by just clicking on the Houzz photo button and select the picture.

I'll have to give it a try, but I'm not going to promise anything....and, crap, I think our fire pagers are about to go off because there's a cop investigating a report of smoke coming from the roof of a house in town. I hope that house is not on fire. Anyhow, like I said I start every gardening year full of determination to take photos and post them prolifically, but when I get busy (and every day is insanely busy here since I have a large garden and only me to tend it), that's the last thing on my priority list. I'll really, really try this year.

For a long time we had two very unusual neighbors on our road. One of them belonged to this forum. I was advised by locals when we moved here to steer clear of both of them. I believe words used to me at the time included "creepy", "troubled", "weird", "sick", etc. if you get my drift. So, I was very careful to avoid being overly friendly with them in person or online. I also always avoided posting photos in order to try to keep them from figuring out which house was ours. I think they figured it out anyhow. I know one of them did, and the second one came here and was prowling around our house one day while I was working in the garden. Enough said. Anyhow, both of them are now deceased, relatively recently, and I am feeling a little safer while out in the yard and garden. So, maybe I'll also feel like I don't have to be so cautious about posting photos. We'll see.

Dawn, I completely understand your concern with the photos. Having said that, I'm selfish and would LOVE to see pictures of your garden. Maybe you could post some that didn't reveal anything that identified the location. It's a scary world now, and I don't even do facebook.

I agree Dawn. I don't want you to post any pictures that you are uncomfortable with.

I have a good imagination and you paint really good pictures with your vivid descriptions so I can imagine how glorious your garden is without seeing it!

Since those two creeps are gone, I feel safer about posting photos. One of them came up the driveway in his vehicle one day a couple of years ago while I was working in the garden. He did not know us and had no business being here. I was bent over and he didn't see me. My garden sits between the road and the house. When I stood up and walked out the garden gate to walk up to the house, he quickly accelerated his speed and almost ran over me in his haste to get out of here without having me confront him. We've kept the driveway gate locked, even when we are at home, ever since. I am as careful as I can be because--when you are a woman home alone in the country with no neighbors within screaming distance, you have to be extra-careful and very cautious. I generally carry a gun with me everywhere I go on our property so that I can defend myself.

Taking photos seems like fun, y'all. I just don't ever remember to do it, or find time to do it, or I take them and then never do anything with them. Sometimes during gardening and canning season, I barely take time to eat. Taking time to do one more thing that isn't essential just flies out of my mind at times like that.

I take pictures of everything once a week. I can go back later and tell within a week, when I set plants out or seeds came up. (I have gone back to see when onions or garlic were harvested when planning summer crops). You probably don't need that, but I do. I "crop" pictures I post on line so usually you can only see plants, which makes it harder to identify the location (and you don't see unmown grass or cluttered junk areas). I try to do it on Tuesdays, which is just a random day I started with.

I walked my 85 year old mom through resetting her modem last week, I was quite proud. If you need instruction let me know ;).

Dawn, you are right to be careful out there by yourself. That's actually quite frightening that he was bold enough to come up the way he did. Obviously, he was up to no good. We hear stories every single day, and we always think it will never be us, so you keep that peacemaker with you. I don't own a gun, but if I were in your position and location, I'm sure I would.

Amy, you go, girl! I know where to come for advice now. I use to keep up with technology, but at some point I stopped caring about it. I have a DVR, that for 5 years now has sat under the TV and has never been hooked up. Not once. I have my computer, but I lost the cord to my printer 3 years ago and have never replaced it. I have an older semi-smart phone, that barely works. Someone stole my really nice Olympus camera about 15 years ago, and I eventually bought a cheap digital, which I haven't used in about 7 or 8 years. Everyone uses their phones now, but I've found that I never take it in to get photos developed. I managed one day to upload them into the 'cloud' on Gmail, and I was proud I did that. I've gotten to the point that if I know I'll want to take pictures, and get them developed, I just buy a disposable camera, and that way I am forced to take it in.

Normally I call a kid to hook things up. DVRs are kind of nice, are you paying extra for it? Or do you mean VCR? I have to translate for my mother, even if kids are around.

I'm sorry you have to worry about that Dawn. I got in my car today and things from the center console were on the passenger seat. There wasn't anything they were interested in, but it ticks me off.

Amy, it's a VCR/DVD player, not anything that I pay for. See? I don't even know the correct word for it! lol

I'm bad about not locking my car at night, but I need to be diligent about it. I have a garage, and normally I keep the car inside during the winter. I just haven't had it inside regularly this year. We've had a rash of car burglaries here. I have absolutely nothing of value in my car, but I'd hate to see it vandalized or something.

That's so odd, Dawn. (Your neighbor situation). He was a gardener, because he was on this forum, right? I wonder if he was just nosing around--seeing how you did stuff. But then why wouldn't he just make contact with you in a normal friendly way (with your husband around) and ask to compare garden notes. So strange.

The less I say about those two, the better. I wouldn't want to say anything that would offend their family members or friends who might be lurkers here. The one who lurked here and occasionally though rarely posted was not the one who came to our house. The one who came to our house was a very unusual person, probably either mentally ill or a druggie, or both and some friends of ours who lived very close to him were very afraid of him, and for good reason. They kept their doors locked at all times and their curtains closed and blinds drawn because he bothered them and contact with him was very unwelcome from their point of view. That's all I'll say about that.

Having issues with local residents like that merely served as a reminder to me that sometimes it is not good to post too much information or photos online that might lead criminals or mentally unstable people to you. That's all. I was stalked once when I was a young adult and it was a terrifying ordeal. For a very long time thereafter, and perhaps forever, I was/have been/likely always will be very cautious about posting photos that might lead someone to me or my garden. It probably doesn't help that I'm married to a cop and have a very high level of awareness of how social media is used by criminals to find and victimize people.

I also think I just am not a photo person, though I was when Chris was a kid. Even on its best day, when I walk into the garden and it looks as close to perfect as it ever has or ever will, the thought of taking a photo of any part of it just never even enters my mind. It just doesn't. Perhaps it is because the garden is so big and I am so small by comparison. From the moment I step out the door shortly after sunrise in gardening season until the moment I come in, at dark, the day is a constant whirlwind of work, work, work. All too often, I skip lunch and don't even eat dinner until very late. To me, taking photos is play, and it is something that just doesn't fit into my day, even though I always intend to find a way to make time to take photos. I just don't succeed at actually doing it.

It's strange how this topic came up. Recently I was contacted by a freelance reporter to do an article about my experience with the drift and t d a ..

During the interview which may or may not appear in a big magazine:0 he mentions that he found me here as he was pre investigating me/the situation? !?!?!? I called him a stalker lol but it made me realize how unprivate things are anymore. They even took pictures which I told them they could use as long as they kept my head out.

luvncannin: Oh, my! You will have to let us know when it's published! We never know who lurks, and that's one reason I don't do "faceplace" lol

Whew, you guys have been so busy!!! Haven't been able to get on the web for awhile so I am just now catching up. I feel like I am so behind on everything. I will have my grow list soon after I filter out some. It's so difficult to decide what NOT to grow. I could grow it all really, but then I couldn't take care of it all myself. So, I have to be picky as I'm sure you all do too.

lonejack, your pics are awesome!! My goal within the next week is to get my shelves cleaned off so I can use at least 2 of them for seeds. I might have to grab another shelf though that isn't as wide as my current one. I need to get me a couple of shop lights too. Getting my garage cleaned out so I can put the shelf on the wall closest to the inside of the house so it will be the warmest and most protected.

Amy, I really like those bags. Have you tried them before? I want to grow some potatoes so I might just get a few of those as well. I am going to plant yukon gold potatoes, sweet potato centennial, and possibly red norland.

Dawn, I completely understand you being cautious. You have to now. Remember when we could just leave our front doors unlocked?! Geeze, it feels like an eternity ago. My parents never locked their backdoor, which was the main entry into their house. We'd just go over and walk in and the kids would run into the living room, no biggie. But now, I always lock my doors. When I still lived at home, we had a weird, scary incident happen. When walking in the backdoor there were about 6 stairs that went up to the main level and stairs that went straight down into the basement. Apparently someone came into the house, went into our basement and took themselves a nice nap. We think they were there when we came home and when they realized we were home, and upstairs, they quickly left but left their little nap pallet on the floor. Very weird and scary.

Back to gardening......my general list includes tomatoes, peppers, green beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, and squash. Just need to get more detailed now. :)

Kim, That sort of pre-investigation can be close to stalking and makes me uneasy. I think people should have a right to privacy, but in today's social media and media world, that privacy is almost impossible to maintain. It drives me stark raving mad when people post photos of their new lawn furniture or new, fancy TV or new vehicle all over social media and than are stunned when their new items are stolen just days later. Duh. Maybe they shouldn't post photos of their lovely new things to show them off. Criminals love using social media to find stuff worth stealing and everyone who uses social media needs to understand that! A person may know who their FB friends are, but that doesn't mean they know who all the friends of their friends are.

Melissa, You've seen my grow lists. Clearly I fail at figuring out what not to grow, so I just grow it all. It is funny. When I pick green beans, for example, there might be green beans in the bucket or basket I use while gathering the harvest, but there's also purple, yellow, pink and bicolored bean pods most years. It used to drive one of my old farmer neighbors insane. He'd rant and rave about it and ask me "why don't you grow the right things", meaning only red tomatoes, only yellow corn, only green beans, etc. He was very much a traditionalist and really wasn't my favorite person, but I always tried to be kind and respectful anyhow.

Now, get everything cleaned up and start those seeds. I'm already at the point where the light shelves are getting full enough that soon I'll be moving plants to the greenhouse. It is kinda early, but I started early, so now I just have to keep moving plants out so I can start more.

My parents never locked their doors either. After a female classmate of my sister's from high school was murdered (I think it was the year after they graduated from high school) in her rental home a couple of blocks away from my parents house in the mid-1980s, my parents finally began sort of half-heartedly locking their front door because we kids insisted they lock their doors. Half the time, though, they didn't lock the back door! I tried to explain over and over how this made no sense at all. They didn't get really good about locking their doors until at least the mid-90s.

When we were shopping for land here around 1997, we stopped at the courthouse to look at an aerial photo they had on file of a land parcel we were looking at. I noticed that people would park at the courthouse in Marietta, leave their keys in their vehicles with the engine running and the doors unlocked. I was astonished! Of course, their vehicles were sitting right there when they came out of the courthouse. About the only thing they had to worry about was that if it was summertime, someone might leave a bag of squash or zucchini in the back seat of their vehicle. Nowadays, folks don't leave their vehicles running in town like that any more.

Also back to gardening, my list involves growing plants. Lots and lots of plants.

And, on a non-gardening note, RIP to Mary Tyler Moore. In my mind, she'll always be young and tossing her cap into the air just like she did at the beginning of her show.

Dawn

Melissa, I have not used these particular bags, but they are nice heavy bags about the size of the big pots I have. I have a Big Bag Bed, we used it 2 years (it takes a lot of soil to fill it.) It worked fine, filled with a Mel's mix sort of combination and still seems to be in good condition. This and Smart Pot brand are headquartered in OKC by the way. These bags I just got were about 4.30 a piece with shipping. I can't get 15 gal pots for that price. I also have bags meant for potatoes, they have openings in the sides for harvesting new potatoes. I have used those and large dogfood bags for potatoes before.

DH told me when we first started he didn't want to grow anything exotic. Ha ha ha! The more exotic the better for me. But when he tasted a Cherokee Purple, I had him, LOL. We'll see how the Korean summer squash go over this summer. He does like his zuchinni.

I was sorry to see Mary Tyler Moore passed.

The longer you grow, Amy, the more you'll convince him that exotic colors and flavors are cool, add interest to meals and taste great.

CBS News had a great piece about MTM on the evening news. Of course, most of her career I remembered, except her early years prior to her appearing on The Dick Van Dyke Show, so I learned new stuff about her early years. It is hard to believe she was 80. We are losing so many entertainers from our lives now, and it makes me feel old. When some rock-and-roll singer from the 1960s or 1970s dies, it always shocks me to see how old they are. Then, my next thought is how old I am! The only thing I could think after hearing about her death was that (a) she isn't suffering any more because she'd had such severe health problems and (b) her soul would be reunited with that of her son.

Now I need to find a way to convince DH the boxes don't need bottoms! We went there again today. Because the square foot gardener put bottoms in his box he thinks that is the way it should be. Sigh.

Stillwater Milling finally got some of their seeds out. I bought several 1oz. bags of things I didn't have in my collection. One bag was "Armenian Cucumber" (which some of you grow) and another was something I'd never heard of: "Chinese Climbing Okra", which turns out to be a cucurbit with long trailing vines. I'm betting some of you have grown it before. Another one new to me was "early blood beet", and I thought I'd give that a try. I was hoping they'd have their 1oz bags of flower seeds out, but they didn't. I was just planning on a haphazard sowing of flower seeds...here and there....a little light raking, and hoping for the best. I did grab a bag of onion sets for green onions. They had their Dixondale plants out, and it looked like they had several different kinds; candy and red candy, 1015y Texas Sweet, and Granex. I didn't buy any, and I didn't see the price. I may have to go back and get some of the Granex. I still need to go and buy some of that cattle panel from Atwoods. I keep putting it off because it's going to be a bear getting it on the roof of the jeep.

Armenian cucumber is a melon that Americans harvest and use as cucumbers. When you harvest them early enough, you can eat them like cucumbers or even pickle them. If you let them get really big, they're like an odd melon that isn't sweet. I let them get big and feed them to the chickens every day in July and August to ensure the chickens are getting enough moisture. They love Armenian cucumbers. Armenian cucumbers love heat so they're perfect for our climate and are vigorous viners and producers.

Chinese climbing okra is an angled form of loofah/luffa gourd that vines prolifically and blooms prolifically. You can boil them, steam them or deep fry them, slicing off the angles. You can add the angled gourds to soup.

It's too bad they can't deliver the cattle panels to you.