Week 4, May 2017, General Garden Talk
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years ago
Featured Answer
Sort by:Oldest
Comments (102)
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoMacmex
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Week 5, May 2017, General Garden Talk
Comments (111)Rebecca, Well, that is what caterpillar frass does look like, so I don't think it is eggs of any sort. However, having said that, life is full of wonderful and not-so-wonderful surprises so perhaps there is some sort of egg that looks like caterpillar frass, though I've never seen one. Usually frass of that size indicates a very large caterpillar, often a hornworm, so if I had big piles of frass like that on a plant, I'd search that plant carefully for a hornworm. Alexis, I only worry about you being out in the heat because I know how much you truly love gardening and might find it hard to stay indoors during the hotter weather. I'm relieved to hear you are in Mama Bear mode and taking care of yourself, Wren and your baby so that none of y'all get overheated this summer. Congratulations! You now have more tomato plants in the ground than I have, so I will pass the title of Crazy Queen of the Tomatoes to you. I am not sorry to relinquish it as I've been trying very, very hard the last few years to cut back, and not always successfully either. This year I was somewhat successful. I think my original main planting in March was 80 plants. Then, later in April, I put in 10 more plants. Then, in May, three more cherry tomato plants, so I have put at least 93 tomato plants in the ground that I know of. I'd like to cut back to about 50 plants but when it comes to seed-starting time, there's always so many varieties I want to grow that I never manage to cut back that much. I used to work like crazy to keep all the tomato plants producing as long as possible, but I am older and more tired every year than the year before, so nowadays as soon as I finish all the canning I want to do, I am yanking and tossing tomato plants right and left. Once two years worth of canned tomato products are done, there's no reason to try to keep up with a huge number of plants. We can only eat so many fresh tomatoes, so I keep enough for that and no more than that once I'm through canning. I have found it makes my life much easier in the summer to treat 90% of the tomato plants as canning/production plants that are expendable at a certain point. For me, that point often is late June since I plant early in order to harvest early and can early before the insane July heat sets in. Even with most of the plants gone by late June, we still get too many tomatoes at times and when that happens I just wash the harvested tomatoes, toss them in gallon-sized ziplock freezer bags and freeze them. They are great for cooking in winter when I want to make pasta sauce or some sort of soup from scratch with tomatoes instead of using jarred/canned tomatoes. Nancy, Just reading about all your rain turns me green with envy. At least we got some rain, but down here in summer it becomes increasingly rare and we never get enough, so it hurts that we are entering summer with only about 60% of our typical rainfall so far. Even if we'd had exactly average rainfall for the year-to-date, I'd be dreading the start of the summer dry spell. Well, we had plentiful summer rainfall in 2015, but that was the crazy exception to all of recorded history in our county. My Yankee husband actually was born in Virginia, so he is a southerner by birth, as he likes to point out to anyone who accuses him of being born a Yankee, but his family moved to Pennsylvania when he was about 18 months old, so he grew up near Pittsburgh. He moved to the DFW metro area after college to begin his career here as the Pennsylvania economy was in quite a severe slump back then. We lived in Texas until 1999 when we moved here to escape from the constantly expanding concrete jungle down in the DFW metropex. I love Texas, but you know, we are Oklahomans now and intend to live here for the rest of our lives. At least here you can still live out in the country without having to worry that a developer is going to buy the ranch across the road and turn it into a high-density housing development. I hope our area stays rural forever, and it wouldn't have if we'd stayed in north Texas, where rural areas continued to be gobbled up right and left by development. I'm not naive either, and do expect the continuing development in Texas will spill over into southern Oklahoma eventually, but we'll enjoy rural life for as long as it still can be considered rural here. There's tons and tons of people here just like us who were fleeing the concrete jungle and seeking a quiet rural lifestyle but who still commute to the DFW metro area to work just like Tim does. I'm actually amazed at how many folks there are making that long drive, and our son and some of his friends are among them. My garden is in full riotous bloom. There's almost nothing left that hasn't bloomed already, but of course, we've already hit 100 degrees here, so even the true heat lovers were kicked into high gear by that and burst into bloom. Last night as I stood in my kitchen and looked at 5 large bowls filled with tomatoes, my heart kinda sank. Not, of course, because I am unhappy to have a kitchen full of tomatoes. Not...exactly. I have just what I want, and what I plan for, and in fact, what I plant for..... But, the day arrives every year, where I look at the ever increasing piles of summer squash, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, peppers and tomatoes and ask myself "How did this happen?" as if it all is somehow a mystery to me. It can feel overwhelming to have so much food coming into the house from the garden at once. I have to kick the food preservation work into high gear this week and it will keep me busy for a good month or two, almost insanely busy, but then we'll have the canning jars all filled, the three deep freezers filled, and the walk-in pantry full of onions and potatoes by the beginning of July and I'll be able to kinda, sorta coast a little bit after that. In the case of both onions and potatoes we have so many that I'll need to preserve quite a lot of them as well because there's so many we'll never be able to eat them all fresh before they start sprouting. I am not complaining, not exactly. It is more just a sense of awe that when the garden is producing well, it can produce this well. And part of it is almost a sense of panic, like I'll never ever be able to get all this food processed in a timely manner. That's garbage, by the way. I always manage. It is just a matter of having the will power (and using it) to stay indoors and process food when I'd rather be outside in the garden. As hard as I try to spread out the harvest (for example, I deliberately planted most of my cucumbers and all of my beans late this year so I wouldn't have them at the same time as the aforementioned main early harvest), somehow there's still always too much food at once. In the midst of harvesting/preserving mania, I always promise myself that I'll plant less next year, a promise that I fail to keep. Even if I cut back on one thing, like tomato plants, I just plant more of something else, like squash. So, having said that, it is time for me to head out to the garden and work in the cool morning air for an hour or two before I then spend the rest of the day in the kitchen. Y'all have a great day and now I'm headed over to start this week's thread. Dawn...See MoreWeek 1, June 2017, General Garden Talk
Comments (100)I came back this morning and read all of this thread to try to catch up on everyone's news that I missed while we were without the internet. Y'all know I couldn't read it all without commenting at least a little, so here goes: Amy, Flea beetles are only an issue here very briefly, usually in the February-March time frame, but sometimes a little bit into April as well. Are they a problem for you in hot weather? I hope they don't find your eggplant, but your plants are large enough now that they ought to be able to withstand the flea beetle damage anyway. Jay, Without seeing the yellow striped bugs, it is hard to guess, but my best guesses would be one of the more obscure striped varieties of Colorado Potato Beetles, Cucumber beetles or blister beetles. Sorry to be so late to reply but our internet has been out and I've largely been cut off from the world. Lots of folks in OK are reporting various striped versions of pests that they normally do not see. Here at our house, it has been striped cucumber beetles in huge numbers. We normally only have the spotted ones. I have no idea why 2017 is the year of the striped pests. Amy, I wouldn't let my DH near a restaurant supply store! When we redid the kitchen, I planned a space for everything....but I did not plan a space for random impulse purchases from restaurant supply stores. Tim even has his own drawer for all his BBQ tools, which is a first. At least that way, his BBQ stuff isn't cluttering up the regular drawers of everyday kitchen utensils. Eileen, You can learn canning at the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. This is the government-funded source for safe, approved canning procedures and it is awesome. Also, in the summer months, canning classes often are offered by local community colleges, the extension service and sometimes through other community groups. The most important thing to know about canning is that one must follow the canning recipes explicitly. You cannot make a recipe your own by changing things because any change you make can render the food unsafe when canned and can lead to illness and even death via nasty pathogens like botulism. When recipe changes are permissible, they are clearly stated. Not many canning recipes come with a lot of approved substitutions because of all the work involved in testing to ensure the safety of each approved substitution. Kim, I'm so glad you've been having fun with your little man. Man, he sure is growing and getting tall now! Rebecca, Even before I read down to George's post, I was getting a sinking feeling about your tomato plants. Verticillium normally is a cool-season disease and not seen here in OK nearly as much as fusarium. However, May did turn back cool for various parts of the state, so I think it certainly could have happened in this case. Normally, it would be more likely to be fusarium wilt here. I hope these plants are in containers so it cannot spread. I wouldn't reuse that soil. Well, maybe you could if you pasteurized it in the oven (which will stink up the house). Or, put it on a hot compost pile and cook it to high temperatures this summer to kill the pathogens. There now, I feel a little more caught up on what I missed last week. My week, especially without the internet, was an endless round of mostly harvesting tomatoes, squash, peppers, and onions. I'm glad I dug all the potatoes before the heat arrived. I haven't weighed them (who has time?) but there's more than we ever can eat before they all sprout. I'll likely dehydrate and freeze some. The frozen ones can be used to make quick mashed potatoes over the next year. The onions still standing in the garden (one intermediate daylength variety, all of the .ong daylength variety Copra, and most of the other 2 long daylength varieties, Red River and half of Highlander) need to hurry up and flop over so I can harvest them. It is an epic onion harvest this year thanks to the lack of cold weather in February and March. I'll be able to chop or slice about 3 years' worth and freeze them, and then still have enough long daylength types in dry storage to last us through next year. I'd like to get something else growing in the onion space before we start hitting 100 degrees again. Dawn...See MoreWeek 2, June 2017. General garden talk
Comments (112)Amy, It is a PITA to find places to stash things when you buy in bulk, but the upside is that when you buy in bulk, you tend to not run out of things so quickly. CostCo is so far away that I'd like to only make that drive down there once a month, but most of the time we make it twice a month. I'm trying to always remember to keep a list running and to not forget to take it with me. Really, though, just the act of making a list, even if I forget to take it, usually means I do remember everything that was on it. I get tunnel vision during canning season and don't even want to leave the house to go get canning supplies, so I try to stock up ahead of the start of canning season and then I never have to drop everything to go get lids, pectin, canning salt or just whatever. It is funny---on our way down to CostCo I'll be thinking that I want to stop at a Barnes & Noble, and then pop into Hobby Lobby or Michael's for this or that or whatever, and by the time we're through in CostCo, all I want to do is get home. I'm not much of a shopper any more unless I need to get something specific. Most of the time now, if I 'need' something and cannot find it at CostCo, Sam's Club, WinCo or Walmart, I figure we don't need it. Well, except for gardening stuff, but that's a whole category unto itself. About once every month or two we'll make a short side trip to Central Market to get something special but their produce section just kills me and you almost cannot avoid walking through it because the main entrance brings you in there. They have the biggest, most diverse produce section you'll ever see, and tons of organic stuff, and it isn't so much that I am buying much there.....but, rather, I'm looking at things and whispering to Tim...."Look, organic Habanero peppers are $6.98 a pound...." or whatever, just in awe of the fact that people will pay that price when they could be growing their own. It is like a trip to Disney World for me, and then when we get to the meat and seafood area, it is the same thing there for Tim. I get my Dr. Bronner's Lavender soap there, and a few food items, but we could live without it if it wasn't there. They do have the biggest selection of cheeses you'll ever see. I could kill an hour in there just looking at stuff, but there's always that nagging feeling that I ought to be at home working on something. They are one of the few stores that have pickling cucumbers, and they tend to have them all summer long. It isn't the same as homegrown pickling cukes pickled the same day, but if a person has a crop failure and absolutely, positively needs to buy pickling cukes, at least you know a place to find them. I'll try to weigh the potatoes tomorrow to see what we actually got. It won't include, of course, the ones we already ate. The year I planted too many and had to dig over 300 lbs. of them myself from pretty dense clay (it was amended, but it was a drought year and the sun/heat had baked the clay into concrete anyway) in immensely hot weather surely did break me of planting too many potatoes. I said 'never again' and I meant it. I still plant too many, so will try next year to reduce again and plant only about 50-60% as many seed potatoes as I did this year. I also need to plant fewer tomatoes. The good news is that Tim's new work group means I only need to can about 60 jars of salsa for him to give away at work, and that is so much less than I usually can for Christmas that I am almost giddy with joy. Except.... Well, what about the what if's? What if I can enough giveaway salsa for Christmas gifts to cover those 60 people and then his boss rotates the Asst Chiefs around to new areas (this job rotation is very common in his department) and suddently he has an area with 150 people and maybe tomato season already has ended? So, even though I am going to can less, I'll have that nagging worry in the back of my mind. Next year, I'd love to cut back the number of tomato plants I grow by 50% but I don't know if I have the self discipline to do it. No matter how hard I try to cut back, there's always more plants in the ground than I ever intended. That results in tomatoes piling up everywhere and me feeling stressed by the need to hurry up and process them all. Tomorrow will be a long day in the kitchen with tomatoes, but then I'll be able to breathe much easier after it is done. Still, silently and under my breath, I am starting to chant "die,die, die!" to the tomato plants every day when I am picking tomatoes. I know that is wrong. I know it is a sign of tomato overload and tomato burnout, but still, I can't help doing it. I dream of only having 10 or 12 tomato plants and not even doing any canning at all, just one summer, to see what it is like to not wake up every day in June and July with harvesting/canning/food preservation goals first and foremost in my mind. If it doesn't rain soon, I'll likely get my wish for plants to start dying, but with Murphy's Law being what it is, the wrong plants will die and the tomato plants won't die. That would be so funny, and so sad. So, after having believed for many years that it is impossible to have too many tomatoes, I've noticed increasingly that we have too many and I'm tired of having too many and I'm more and more ready to cut back. Of course, in June I see that, recognize it, understand it and acknowledge it, but in the hard winter months of December through February, all logic and rational thought flies out the window and I want to grow everything, and lots of it. If Bigfoot shows up here, I'll just throw tomatoes at him and scare him away. Or, I'll sic our big, bad, mean black rooster on him. Whatever it takes. Millie, Bears would be too scary. My first face-to-face encounter with a feral hog while at a wildfire near Thackerville one night was horrifying. It was huge and my mind couldn't even process what I was seeing. I'd seen them before in state parks while out camping and such, but the first time you see one up close and personal still is a shock. I remember my first thought was "what? Is this a hippo? a rhino?" I laugh at myself now, but I was so flabbergasted when I saw it that I couldn't even process what I was thinking. After about 30 seconds and when I'd had time to calm down a little, I realized it was a feral hog. A couple of years later we were driving from Marietta to Durant to have lunch with our son when he was a student there, and we saw this big dead animal on the side of the road near Lake Texoma. It looked like a small bear or a very large bear cub. We were flabbergasted, so we turned around and went back to look at it. So did everyone else. As each vehicle pulled up and people got out to look at it, someone would say "feral hog" and the new arrivees would say "oh, we thought it looked like a bear" and we all would laugh because we all thought the same thing. Now we see them so often that no one even bats an eye at them, and that's not a good thing. There's too many of them now and they don't stay down in the river bottom lands like they used to---they are right here in our rural neighborhood. We have them a lot at the back end of our property, which is about 1000' west of our house so we rarely even go back there any more. Sunnydew, I grow a lot of hollies but don't have any inkberries. I do know that spider mites like them though, so watch for those. Maybe your web is just some sort of spider. We live on rural acreage and it seems like we have about a million spiders per acre, and each and every different kind has different forms of webs and put their webs all over plants, more so further out....not right up around the house where humans, dogs, cats and chickens will walk right through their webs and bust them up. Spiders can do some odd things some times. Dawn...See MoreJuy 2017 Week 2, General Garden and Harvest Talk
Comments (129)Amy, You are a saint. I hope all the fun the kids had makes up for all the pain and tiredness you had to endure, and I hope you're catching up on your rest. Being too tired to sleep is the worst thing on earth and I get that way a lot during planting season. My dad, having Alzheimer's, hit the acceptance stage early, probably when he was in his early to mid 70s (he lived to be 85). He knew what the AD would do to him as it progressed because it ran through his family like wildfire (one reason we kids are so glad we were adopted and didn't have his family's genetics) and, since he was one of the youngest of 9 kids, he'd witnessed it killing many of his older brothers and sisters. While he was very early in his Alzheimer's Disease, he and my mom did all the right things with DNRs, medical power of attorney given to my oldest sibling with me as the backup if anything happened to him, making their wishes very clear and in writing, etc. I don't think my mom reached acceptance until the last couple of years of her life, and my dad has been gone since 2004. When Daddy was put into hospice care in the last week of his life, then my mom freaked out and wanted to rescind his DNR and medical power of attorney (thankfully she could not reverse his earlier decisions that way because he had suffered long enough). So, from watching her I think I have learned the importance of accepting the inevitable and of knowing when to fight and when to let go. At least I hope I have. I'd never try to prolong the life of a loved one needlessly if they were terminally ill and the quality of their life was extremely poor---I think we do too much of that in this life as it is. I hold my grandmother in my heart, soul and mind as an example of a strong woman who did everything in her power to stay healthy and live a long life but who also was ready to go when the time came. Nancy, Our gardens teach us so much if only we listen to them. My garden has taught me that there's nothing on this earth that grows and invades as relentlessly as bermuda grass. lol. Digging it out and staying on top of it is all that has worked for me. I'm glad you're going 'home' to visit your mom even though I know it also is hard to be away from everything/everyone here for a prolonged period as well. Tim's mom had an atypical case of Lou Gherig's Disease that did not present with the typical symptons and which was, therefore, not diagosed during the three or so years that her health was in a steep decline. Tim's sister, who worked in a field related to the medical industry, was taking her mom to one specialist after another seeing answers, treament and a diagnosis and, quite honestly, wasn't getting anything helpful from them. At one point I remember telling Tim "I think it is Lou Gehrig's Disease" (we were driving someone and I was reading a newspaper article about someone else who had LGD with the same nontypical symptoms as his mom's) and none of them could see it like I could, so my amateur diagnosis was ignored. I think that was because they were so close to their own mother emotionally that they couldn't objectively consider that LGD might be what it was since she did not have the usual symptoms. So, anyhow, when a doctor finally diagnosed her and put her in the hospital, his sisters told him her time was going to be short and that he should fly up and spend time with her while he could. They were talking in terms of months, not days or weeks at that point. He immediately booked a flight for the following week and made arrangements to take time off from work. He was going to fly up on the following Wednesday. He even figured he'd try to go up there for a week here and there over the next few months. The doctors thought she'd last at least another few months but instead she died the night before Tim was scheduled to fly. It was heart-wrenching. He, of course, would have flow up immediately if anyone had said she might not last another week. For all that medical science knows and can do, we still just never know when somebody's time will come. Of all 4 of our parents, my mom was the one who didn't care about trying to be healthy---she didn't eat properly, didn't exercise, etc. My dad and Tim's parents all tried really hard to eat healthy, stay active, etc. So, I guess in one way it is ironic that she outlived them all by well over a decade, but she was a decade younger than them so that may have played a role in it as well. Dawn...See Moreluvncannin
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agofitzjennings
6 years agoMacmex
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoMelissa
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoRebecca (7a)
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
6 years agoluvncannin
6 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years ago
Related Stories
KITCHEN DESIGNNew This Week: 4 Ways to Punch Up a White Kitchen
Avoid the hospital look by introducing a bit of color, personality and contrast
Full StoryLATEST NEWS FOR PROFESSIONALSTalking About the Budget Doesn’t Have to Be Awkward
These 4 tips can help when you’re discussing project costs with clients
Full StoryKITCHEN DESIGNNew This Week: 4 Kitchens That Embrace Openness and Raw Materials
Exposed shelves, open floor plans and simple materials make these kitchens light and airy
Full StoryDREAM SPACESGet the Details: 4 Grand Dream Kitchens
High-end materials and spacious floor plans are the stuff dreams are made of
Full StoryLIVING ROOMSNew This Week: 4 Casual Living Rooms Moonlighting as Formal Spaces
Designers share their secrets to creating comfortable double-duty spaces with projects uploaded this week to Houzz
Full StoryLAUNDRY ROOMSNew This Week: 4 Envy-Inducing Laundry Rooms With Clever Storage
These spaces feature dedicated solutions that handle multiple tasks
Full StoryEVENTSDesign Calendar: May 10–May 31, 2012
London's calling with a garden party, New Yorkers can marvel at the Kips Bay show house and Californians get an inventive treat
Full StoryKITCHEN MAKEOVERSKitchen of the Week: Rich Materials, Better Flow and a Garden View
Adding an island and bumping out a bay window improve this kitchen’s layout and outdoor connection
Full StoryKITCHEN DESIGNKitchen of the Week: Rustic Space Opens to Herb and Vegetable Gardens
Well-chosen recycled and repurposed features create a North Carolina cottage kitchen with a distinctive look and personality
Full StoryLIVING ROOMSNew This Week: 5 Fully Decorated Living Rooms That Don’t Go Overboard
See how designers filled these recently uploaded spaces with the right amount of furniture and accessories
Full Story
Okiedawn OK Zone 7Original Author