Week 5, May 2017, General Garden Talk

6 years ago

last modified: 6 years ago

Happy Monday, everyone.

Here's this week's new garden talk thread. Let the conversation begin!

I don't necessarily plan to work in the garden today as we have other plans, but I might find time to at least harvest tomatoes and peppers.

I'm thankful that rain fell this weekend so at least I don't have to worry about watering.

I've been worried because traffic at the hummingbird feeders has dropped drastically, almost to nothing, but then I walked through the yard and garden and realized that the trumpet creepers are blooming in 5 different locations around the yard, the honeysuckle is in bloom on the garden's entry arbor, and there's 5 or 6 kinds of salvia in bloom in the garden along with criunum lilies, daylilies and a gazillion other kinds of flowers, and the mimosa tree is blooming as well. So, considering all that, I'd be shocked if a hummingbird was skipping the flowers to visit the feeders. Once I realized that, then the abandoned feeders didn't bother me at all.

Every day or evening, for whatever reason, an occasional hummingbird sits on the electric line and watches me work in the garden. Perhaps, in their mind, I am just their garden slave, tending to their plants for them so they can feed in the garden. I only think that the garden is mine. They know that it is theirs.

Have a great day!

Dawn

Featured Answer

luvncannin

6 years ago

I saw my first monarch in ages. She wasn't on the milkweed but I have lots of wildflowers too.

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Comments (111)

Macmex
6 years ago
Nancy, I still have a whole lot of sweet potato slips. It's been a very light year for sales. This is the best time I know for planting them too.

Jerreth is studying a masters in instructional design, which is for making Internet courses.

By the way, I got to bring her home today, around noon. She's still very sore. But she's doing great now!

I am seriously thinking of using cowpeas as living mulch in much of the garden. I think it's worth an experiment.

I only have two varieties of tomatoes left to plant out. Then I'm done with tomatoes. I'm glad that only one variety showed any adverse effect from the barn scrapings mulch. Though, yesterday I pulled a number of lambs quarter plants, from near my pumpkins, which, after I thought about it, were showing some herbicide damage. So far everything which showed damage was mulched from my rabbit shed.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
Wondering if all that rain to the south west of me will hold together till it gets here. I need to go back out and water if it's not... Dawn, hope you got reasonable amounts. I'm pretty sure my tomatoes have deep enough roots not to be bothered, but the top 4 to 6 inches of my beds are dry. Flower beds were like rock. They need fertilizer, and to be mulched, now that I can almost tell what's flowers and what's not.

I put several peppers in the ground today. Put herbs around them. Anyone ever grow nepitella (calamint)? wonder what my reason was for getting it, other than I hadn't heard of it before, LOL. It's minty, probably shouldn't have put it in a bed. This is why "Savory Mediterranean herb used in Italian cuisine, also known as calamint, relatively unknown here in the United States. Unusual but inviting flavor, like a mix of mint, basil, oregano, thyme and licorice; traditionally used to flavor meats, soups, stews along with mushroom, tomato, potato dishes. Great border or container plant with 12” mounds of oregano-like leaves. Lavender pink tubular flower spikes arrive later in the summer, lasting well into fall." The Tulsi is volunteering like crazy in that bed. It was very happy there last year and brought in many, many pollinators. I'm letting most stay for now, trying to get the ground covered. Also put several flower seedlings in the ground today. Dug up what I HOPE was chamomile from the rock hard lawn and put it in my perennial onion bed. I hope I didn't plant a weed. I kept meaning to get a picture. Also put a Shoo-fly and a calendula in that bed. There are two giant parsnip plants going to seed there. There will be more room when they are done.

Tapping my toes because I want the onion bed freed up. I can plant the cucumbers, they will be along the edge anyway. I guess I could start everything in cups. But the peppers are WAITING.

DH mowed today. It was more like brush hogging!

Yes, the scare crow lady pied piper gets a scene in the onion muppet movie, for sure.

H/J, supposedly you can make broccoli slaw with a spiralizer. I considered it, since I pulled some broccoli today to make room for peppers. But the chickens won, they got it. They don't eat the stalks. Maybe I should spiralize for them?

Rebecca, Brussels sprouts are my nemesis. Who can think about brassica in June? I keep trying, but if I don't figure it out soon, they aren't that expensive to buy. There's a meme on facebook that is something like: Homegrown tomatoes, investing 3 months of your life to save 2.48. WE all know the taste is the reason we GROW tomatoes. But substitute Brussels Sprouts....

I saw a squash bug on the Korean Squash yesterday, so today I looked for eggs, and watered the base of the plants, but nobody came up. You will hear me scream when I see the first SVB. Didn't grow squash last year, maybe they've forgotten how to get here. If DH wants Zucchini this year, he's going to have to fill a big pot and I will put netting over it. The spot I was going to grow it is taken.

I threw my mildewed pea plants over the fence to the drainage ditch area. That's where I throw old plants I'm not sure I should compost. We used to have a pile where I threw weeds and questionable stuff, but DH got rid of it and hasn't replaced it. We have a tumbler he composts chicken litter from, but bulky stuff I don't have a place for. He says he's going to build something. He's got an awful lot of stuff on his to do list before that.

Melissa congrats on the onions, cute helper!

No, Nancy, I'm not looking at select seeds either, nope, nope, nope.

George, I'm glad Jerreth is home and feeling better. So what variety of cow pea would you use as mulch? Most I've tried get so tall. A tall one grown on the ground? I have more cow pea varieties than I have room for. My intention was to only grow okra and cowpeas during the heat. I'm looking at the garden knowing I'll waver on that.
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Week 1, June 2017, General Garden Talk
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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
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Week 3, June 2017, General Garden Talk
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Nancy, I used to wonder aloud, even here on this forum, how it was that 10 of our 14.4 acres are heavily wooded and yet we rarely saw a squirrel. It wasn't that I was complaining, but it just seemed odd. I suppose the dogs we had in our early years scared them away. Well, the old dogs don't scare them and this year we have tons of them. I agree they are just rodents with bushy tails. I have been ignoring them in the yard, but if they start getting in the garden, they are going to be in trouble. Long, long ago we raised a baby squirrel using kitten milk replacer and the tiny bottle that comes with it. We never knew what happened to its mother, but had had a vicious thunderstorm and this baby probably fell out of a squirrel nest and she didn't come find it. It was so small that Chris, who was probably 13 or 14 at the time, walked around wearing a pocket t-shirt with the squirrel riding in the pocket. It spent the rest of its time in a hamster cage or being bottle fed. Later on it transitioned to a nut/fruit/seed blend meant for birds. Finally, when it seemed large enough to release, he'd put the squirrel outdoors in the morning for ever-lengthening periods of time (just like hardening off plants, lol), but whenever he went outside to check on it, it would run to him and come back indoors. One day, it didn't come back and we knew it had successfully gone back into the wild. That was a relief. I didn't want to have a pet squirrel in a cage in the house forever. Nowadays, I don't know if anyone in this family would want to get up at night to bottle feed a tree rat. Y'all do seem heavily overpopulated by squirrels this year. If the nut-bearing native trees up there produced as heavily last fall as they did down here, that's the reason why. We had so many acorns from the oak trees that walking in the yard was like trying to walk on marbles or golf balls, depending on the oak variety. We swept and raked up and composted acorns by the thousands all autuman and winter, and those were just from the yard, not the entire woodland. If the hickories, walnuts and pecans produced as heavily in the woodland as the oaks did, I'm surprised we don't have 1 billion squirrels. I'm afraid your battle with the voles and moles (and do you have gophers too?) will be constant, but I'm glad you're seeing fewer of them. I haven't found much vole damage in the garden yet, but they've been in there. Every now and then Pumpkin catches one and brings it out of the garden to play cat-and-mouse with it in the yard (endlessly) and I rarely see a dead vole, so I'm worried he is doing catch-and-release when we gets tired of playing with it. The good thing is that vole populations cycle up and down in roughly 2 to 5 year cycles, so some years will be better, though other years may be worse. Kaida sounds absolutely so precious and it touches my heart so much that she clearly adores you and trusts you and will sit and open her heart up to you and share all her thoughts, dreams, feelings and more. Someones when somebody remarries later on in life, the family is not so accepting of/loving towards the new spouse, but clearly they all have embraced you as their own and that is special too. Kaida herself sounds like she is such a precious gift and I know you surely treasure her in your life. I'm glad you're a sucker for kids. I know you will not regret one moment spent with her this summer and, hey, now you've got two more hands available for weeding! You certainly inherited a fine bunch of folks in the younger generations when you married Garry, so surely your life overflows with many blessings. I know it doesn't make you miss your son and his family back in MN any less, but it is nice to have the new kids, grandkids and great-grandkids geographically closer to you, isn't it? Millie, I didn't know that. What a horrible thing to use around edible plants! I do know that many, many products that once sold and widely used have been banned. When I was a kid, they sprayed DDT as the solution to everything. I always hated that stuff, but we were stupid kids, and when the big tanker truck was driving up and down all our local streets spraying for mosquitoes in the 1960s, we idiot children road our bicycles behind in the mist coming from that truck. It is a wonder we aren't all dead. My dad never used many chemicals, and as he got older, he progressively used them less and less until he was almost to the point of being organic by the time Alzheimer's Disease stole his mind and he gave up gardening because he no longer remembered how to do it. The few chemicals he used, he kept in a chest in the garage and we knew we were not even allowed to open the door to that thing. Our government does a lot of crazy things, and I just try to ignore it and them as much as possible. The tobacco thing is perplexing, but it is what it is--a sign of how dysfunctional our federal govenment has become, not that our state government is any better either. Hazel, If I had to choose between garden time and internet time, the garden would win every time. Since I'm home all day, I usually have time for both. Peppers are prone to sunscald in our climate. The plants can produce more fruit than their foliage can cover. When I see that happening, I try to remember to give them some extra nitrogen and extra water to push more foliar growth. When you first notice sunscalded peppers, if you bring them inside, you can cut out the bad part and use the rest of the pepper. If you don't notice the sunscald until later on, often the fruit will begin rotting inside from the damage. I harvested a laundry basket full of peppers last week and threw away maybe 3 bell peppers that had sunscald so badly that they were unusable, but was able to salvage and use most of several others that were only mildly sunscalded. I'm sorry to hear about the SVBs. It seems to be happening a lot in your part of the state over the last week or two. I keep thinking every morning as I walk down to the garden that today will be the day that I lose my first squash plant to an SVB, but it hasn't happened yet. It will happen any time though. There's some squash bugs and I'm trying to control them, but it is an annoying and time-consuming task. Hand-picking squash bugs and drowning them is effective, but while I'm doing it, there's a little voice inside my head screaming "ain't nobody got time for that". lol. It is true, but I take the time and do it anyway. Right now the temperatures are cool enough that I don't mind spending some morning time on squash bug destruction, but the deeper we get into summer and the hotter the weather gets, I know I will mind doing it and at some point I'll just stop doing it. We just do not have enough good natural pests of squash bugs, leaf-footed bugs, blister beetles or stink bugs, so keeping a garden free of them is virtually impossible. Well, maybe people who use chemical pesticides can do it, but that's not me and I won't go that route. In my newly open spaces, I'm planting fall tomatoes and more southern peas. Always, always southern peas because we like them and because they tolerate heat so well. I've already got too much okra, winter squash, watermelons and melons, so southern peas it will be. Is there anything you want more of but haven't planted yet? If so, that's what I would plant in your newly available garden beds. You could go ahead and plant green beans now for a fall harvest. It is a touch early for them down here, but I've had good luck some years from a late June planting of them. At the worst, they'll start blooming in hot weather and not produce much until the weather cools in late August or early September, but if we get periodic cool and rainy spells, sometimes they will produce all summer long. I hope rain finds y'all soon. It is ridiculous how long your part of the state has gone now without meaningful rainfall. Here's the map that illustrates it pretty well: Consecutive Days Without 0.25" of Rain It is shocking that the month of the year that generally is the rainiest has brought central OK somewhere between nothing and next-to-nothing in terms of inches of rainfall. The end of May wasn't much better, was it? We slipped into Moderate Drought 2 weeks ago, then two good rainfalls brought part of our county back out of it and back to Abnormally Dry last week. Oops. I never did the Drought Monitor post last week, so here's the latest Oklahoma Drought Monitor map: OK Drought Monitor And, for forum members who live outside of OK, here's the US Drought Monitor Map: U S Drought Monitor Map Honestly, as a gardener, by the time that the powers-that-be show us as being Abnormally Dry, we already are so dry that I almost cannot water enough to make a difference so to some extent, it doesn't matter to me what stage we're in each week, because they're all bad and all challenging to the garden plants. However, once we hit Severe Drought I stop watering everything but the perennials because I can't water enough to push production out of annual veggie plants once we are that dry. Even in Moderate Drought, sometimes it feels like the watering is only keeping plants alive, but not really keeping them in production. The good news is that summer is actually here now, and it doesn't last forever, so we can start hoping for an early autumn cooldown and the return of more plentiful moisture. Keeping plants happy in July and early August in OK surely is incredibly challenging even in just a normal run-of-the-mill year, much less in a drought year. Dawn
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July 2017, Week 3, General Garden Conversation & Harvest Talk
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Comments (103)
Amy, I avoided the kitchen all I could this weekend because of the heat. We either ate cold meals, ate out, or cooked on the grill outdoors. It is too hot to can, but I'll be doing it this morning anyway. At least the weather today won't be quite as hot. My purple pole beans still are producing too, but I'm tired of picking them (because, you know, then I have to process them or cook them for dinner, lol) so I am going to let the ones still on the plant dry for seed. Nancy, The cooler air is just so nice, even without rain. Rebecca, I cannot believe how hard the squirrels have come back after the tomatoes after they figured out they still could get to them despite the stockings covering them. It is too bad you aren't rural and couldn't let a neighbor just shoot the little furry rodents. That would solve the problem. For what it is worth, I've been watering the zinnias 2 or 3 times a week, and they still manage to wilt and twist and look bad every afternoon. It is sad when the heat is too much for them. I'm hoping to be able to get them through the next couple of hot weeks so they can continue to bloom into fall. The butterflies love them so much that I'd hate to lose them. Melissa, Congrats on getting the home projects done. This is the time of the year when I usually start working on projects indoors in order to give myself a reason to avoid going outdoors in this heat. Even though my garden has had squash bugs for a couple of months, they really haven't been doing much apparent damage until the last couple of days. I know it is time to yank out squash plants now, if I can make myself stay outside long enough to do it, so the squash bugs will perish for lack of something to eat. The danger in doing that is that the surviving squash bugs might move to the muskmelon and watermelon plants in order to survive, so maybe I'll take out the squash plants one by one---maybe one per day---so I can continue to harvest melons for as long as possible before the bugs move to those plants. There are times (and this is one of them) when I wish I could just not care about being organic and instead just go nuts and spray all the squash plants with a synthetic pesticide to kill the squash bugs, but as much as I fantasize about doing it, I'm just not willing to use those chemicals in my garden. Sometimes peppers are slow in the heat and then produce very heavily in the autumn. Since yours haven't done much yet, I'm assuming they're saving themselves for the cooler fall weather. Sometimes putting out shallow pans of water for the birds will deter them from eating the tomatoes since what they're really after is water. Sheets will work only if they completely cover the plants like a tent and are held down firmly to the ground to keep birds from getting up underneath them. Bird netting works, but only if the birds cannot find a way underneath it. Those fake owls absolutely do not work so save your money there. Anything that moves in the sun, preferably something highly reflective, often will startle the birds and keep them away. You can use bird flash tape (our Walmart had it earlier in the season, I don't know if they have it now), aluminum pie pans, old CDs, etc. Tie them to the plants or to the cages using thread, string or fishing line and leave them loose so they can twist and turn and move in the wind. Eileen, Those cucumbers are diseased, which is not uncommon because there's tons of diseases that affect cucumbers---they are disease magnets and cucumber beetles spread diseases right and left all summer long. If you haven't fed the plants lately, you might feed them the water-soluble fertilizer of your choice to see if it pushes out a lot of new growth. Then you could remove all the old diseased foliage. I'm not sure what your cucumbers have. You can go to the Cornell University vegetable MD online website and compare your plants to photos there of cucurbit diseases and see if you find a match that helps you figure out what it is. To me, cucumber diseases look so much alike that I rarely bother trying to figure out which one a plant has---it largely is irrelevant because once they're sick and we are this hot, it is hard to save them. I just yank out the cucumbers in late July or early August and plant new seeds for fall. Here's the cucurbits page from vegetablemdonline: Cucurbit Disease Info At Vegetable MD Online With cucumber diseases, you often get multiple diseases at the same time, making diagnosis by photograph really tricky. You can cut off the sunscalded parts of the cucumbers and eat whatever is left. H/J, Normally the spider mite population peaks around late July and starts falling. Hopefully that will happen in your garden (it would help if some rain would fall since spider mites like it dry and dusty). The spider mites I had on my peppers earlier in the summer never did much damage and seem mostly gone now. Perhaps lady bugs or green lacewings or some other beneficial insect ate them. My tomato plants look like crap but are still producing too. That's really all we can ask of them when it is this hot and dry, and when pests and diseases galore are everywhere. Tomatillos do not fall off the plant while very small unless some insect or disease is infesting them. With tomatillos it usually is because some very small tomatillo grubs, sort of like tomato pinworms, infest them. I haven't had them here, but lots of people in OK have a lot of trouble with them and cannot get a tomatillo crop because of them. Spraying the plants in general with Bt might help. Ground cherries are edible, but I found myself unimpressed by them the year I grew them and never bothered growing them again. YMMV. Jerry, I bet it was all the rain that affected your watermelon flavor. I have had heavy rainfall do that to mine some years. I hope the watermelon jelly gels, but even if it doesn't, you'll have yummy watermelon juice to drink. My garden is burning up right along with yours. I could keep watering and maybe keep it going, but there's no point in this heat. I'm going to focus on keeping the peppers, the flower border and the fall tomatoes alive and let everything else go. In a few weeks, I'll plant stuff for fall......if it seems like it might rain again some day. I'm not big on trying to start a fall garden in vicious heat if there's no rain, so reserve the right to change my mind about fall plantings. Really, with lots of canning done, tons of potatoes and onions in dry storage, and the freezers just about full, I can walk away from the garden and know we have had a really productive year despite the weather. We did have 1/3 of an inch of rain yesterday evening. It was nice, but I'm not overly excited about it---today's sunshine probably will suck up all that moisture right out of the ground before the sun sets today. In the overall scheme of things, 0.33" isn't enough to get excited about. Now, if we'd had 1 or 2 or 3" I'd be deliriously happy, but that didn't happen and it almost never happens in July or August, so I'm not getting my hopes up. We've been dry all year and, while that 3" of rain that fell in early July helped a lot, it is long gone and the soil is dry and cracked and parched and it is going to take a lot of rain over a prolonged period of time to turn things around. I just don't see that happening in July or August. So, thinking about how dry we've been most months of the year just made me wonder what things look like statewide in terms of year-to-date rainfall...you know....who's had above average rainfall (Jerry? Nancy? anyone?)....who's had below average rainfall (Me? Amy? Melissa? Eileen? anyone else?).....is anyone sitting right at average rainfall? So, I'm going to go get the average rainfall maps and post them here and we can all look at them and ponder why the weather does what it does. Here's the year-to-date rainfall in inches: OKMesonet Year To Date Rainfall in Inches Of course, the rainfall map in inches is more meaningful if you know how much rain each area receives because there is a huge variation in average rainfall totals across the state. So, here's the map that shows rainfall as a percentage of average rainfall for the same time frame: Year To Date Rainfall As A Percentage of Average The numbers on the above map surprised me. Even folks who have had plentiful rainfall at times aren't doing that well overall. So, one final measurement is the map that shows how large of a rainfall deficit (or surplus) there is at each Mesonet station compared to what would be average rainfall for the same period. Here's that map: Year To Date Rainfall Departure From Average The above map is pretty self-explanatory. Blue is great, orange is awful, and everything else in between could be considered various shades of good or bad. And, really, for our gardens, what matters most is what has happened in the last month, but it has been so dry, I refuse to look at those maps because it would be too depressing. July is the hardest month. Dawn
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November 2017 Week 2 General Garden Talk
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Rebecca, OMG--the pie! Don't tell Tim. That cherry cheesecake pie is his absolute favorite holiday dessert and I didn't buy the stuff to make him one this year since we are trying so hard to eat in a more healthy way (we aren't getting any younger, so we are trying to make up for that by being more disciplined). I'm hoping there will be so many pies at my nephew's house that Tim won't notice that specific one is missing. It is yummy and a longtime favorite of mine too. I'm taking both a sweet potato pie and a pumpkin pie since both are at least veggie-based and somewhat less sugary and guilt-inducing that some other pies. Reading about all your veggies is making me hungry! It is hard on Thanksgiving to have room in one's tummy for all the yummy food, but I try to take small servings of everything so I don't miss out on any of it. I'm not a big eater anyway, so I get full pretty fast. I don't know how these men who go through the buffet and eat three plates full of food (before they even start out on desserts) do it. Where do they put it all? One plate full more than fills me up and makes me sleepy. Jennifer, Tim used to be that way about food, but slowly has come into agreement with me that food is an issue of quality, so he seems more willing now than ever before to select the healthier foods. I've tried to get him to focus on quality not quantity or cost. Granted, it has taken me 35 years to get him to the point that he understands that it is smarter to pay more for healthier food instead of filling up on junk, but I do think that if he were doing the grocery shopping, it still might not matter to him that he buy organic dairy or pastured meats in the same way that it matters to me. He reverts to his "thrifty Yankee" ways really quickly if I'm not with him. I always tell him I'd rather spend our money eating right to begin with than to spend it on pharmaceutical products to fix whatever is wrong as a result of eating a poor diet. He always agrees with me in principle, but then if he is doing the shopping, he may just be price-driven (which is why I do most all of the food shopping). I'll give him credit--he is trying harder to eat healthy, but I think if I went out of town for a week, he'd revert back to his old habits and just live on chili dogs, nachos and sodas or something similar. Rebecca, I wish we had a Central Market here! I'm resigned to the fact that we will, always and forever, have to drive 85 miles one way to shop at CostCo, Central Market and Whole Foods (really, Whole Foods is in Irving, so it is another 10 miles further than the CostCo in Lewisville). It takes the better part of a Saturday to make that shopping circuit on a Saturday once or twice a month, but then, on the other hand, we rarely have to go to another store in between the major shopping trips so I feel like that helps---I hate having to pop into a grocery store for 1 or 2 things because then you cannot get out of there without buying 10 or 12 things. I'd like to think that someday Denton will at least get a CostCo and maybe either a Central Market or a Whole Foods, but that's still gonna be a long drive. On the other hand, when we moved here, we had to drive to either Denton or Sherman just to go to a Lowe's or Home Depot, and now we have a HD in Gainesville and a Lowe's in Ardmore, so that's a hopeful sign of retail progress. Maybe decent grocery stores will keep migrating north towards us (eventually). Nancy, You're welcome. Four o'clocks are a very sentimental favorite for me. My dad had them in our back yard (in morning sun, afternoon shade), though he generally didn't grow a lot of flowers, so I always think of him when I see them. I agree that guys who y'all charged to come and hunt likely were more trustworthy and careful that some of the locals. You know what I mean! It drives me up the wall. As deer season approaches, we hear loud trucks going up and down the road all night long---guys spotlighting or at least hoping to. We don't hear those vehicles at all the rest of the year and it makes me sick that those so-called macho men (as they think of themselves) show so little regard for the law and no regard for personal property rights. We have, upon occasion, driven our car down to the end of our driveway and just sat and watched them, cell phone in hand, to make it clear we are watching and will report them. If they are going to break the laws, let them go somewhere else---we have people's home and animals scattered around here and don't need jerks firing indiscriminately into our pastures and woodlands. My other gripe? As soon as hunting season starts, we begin getting lots of fires in wildland areas and I blame careless hunters for starting those fires. There's 5 VFDs out on one of those now on a game reserve, a sixth VFD on stand-by (oops, we'd likely be next up after that!) and the game warden is on his way to another area in the game reserve to check reports of a second fire. If these guys are old enough to go out and camp and hunt, they are (or should be) old enough and mature enough to make sure all campfires are thoroughly extinguished. Not all of them are---hence the sudden spike each year in fires at the exact same time the deer hunting season begins. I think the toy trick could work. I do that with Pumpkin, who is more kitten than adult cat even now, and he's a lot younger than the other cats so he plays like mad. He does scatter the toys around, and I gather them back up and refill the toy box...and he removes them again. Yesterday I had a delivery that came in a large cardboard box, so after it was empty, I put the box in the cat room, and three of the six cats slugged it out for control of the box. They all three slept together in the box last night as none of them was willing to cede control of the box to anyone else. Who has to buy cat toys? Give Pumpkin and the other cats a cardboard box (even better, sprinkle it with a little dried catnip) and a couple of old socks and they can play for hours, or even days. I don't want to say they are easily amused, but sometimes they are. Pumpkin can amuse himself for hours just chasing leaves as they fall. I guess they are a substitute for chasing mice or something. Kim, I've only been in WInCo 3 or 4 times, and I do think I've seen the Aldi in that general area somewhere. With WInCo, I think it depends on what you're buying. They have had some good prices on fish and pork when we've been in there, and a friend of mine has switched a lot of shopping from Sam's to WinCo because they eat a whole lot of pork. I mostly went into WinCo this summer to get the Dixondale Farms melons whenever they had them in stock, which was for at least half the summer. Once our melons were ripening, I stopped buying theirs, so maybe they had them all summer but I didn't go in there after midsummer because we had our own. They also had a low-carb, low-sugar type sports drink that Chris likes better than Gatorade and Powerade, so I would go in there to buy a couple dozen bottles of that drink when he was still living here near us. He liked them for his CrossFit workouts. I don't think we have a long enough growing season for Cassava as it needs warm weather for 8-10 months. I also think that grinding down the roots into flour would be a ton more work than I'm willing to do----and you'd have to first grate the tough roots (might be possible to do it more easily with a very good, sturdy food processor) and then dry them out...and maybe grind them into flour after that? I'd be worried I wouldn't process it 'just so' and would end up with too high of a cyanide content in it. I have grown some of the ornamental varieties of Esculenta manihot, like 'Variegata', in containers and they are gorgeous plants but frost will kill them, so I think they only do well here outdoors, even in containers, for roughly 6 or 7 months. I cannot imagine it would be possible to grow cassava in the ground this far north, although....it might be possible with a hoophouse or high tunnel that is heated in the winter time. I wonder if cassava is grown in the parts of south Texas where they can plant onions as early as mid-October? They might have a long enough growing season for it down there. I kind of suspect all the cassava used in products we buy here may be imported, but haven't read the labels to see that...and our fire pagers are going off---gotta go. Dawn
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Melissa, Congrats on the onion harvest. Your daughter is beautiful and has such a sweet smile.

Amy, There's different species of leaf-footed bugs and all of them likely do not lay eggs that look the same, but the ones I see are usually copper colored and often are laid in a straight line, single file. Maybe mama leaf footed bugs have an OCD thing going on. Here's an image of the eggs and newly hatched nymphs:

Leaf-footed Bug Eggs and Nymphs

Nancy, I have loved Select Seeds for many years and it is fairly easy for me to ignore such plant sales in June because we are just too hot...and if we aren't too hot when we get the sale info and order, we'll be too hot by the time the plants arrive. There. Did I talk you out of looking at it?

George, I am so glad Jerreth is home. I hope the soreness doesn't linger too long.

That's interesting about the rabbits. Do you feed them a pelleted feed that would contain some sort of grain that might have been sprayed with one of those persistent herbicides? When I think of rabbits, I think of alfalfa, but alfalfa is a broadleaf legume so it couldn't be sprayed with those herbicides. What else do rabbits eat?

Y'all, for a moment there, we had a duck pond. I opened the back door and scurried outdoors in light rain to check the rain gauge (we're up to about an inch, which isn't that much, because the rain is falling slowly and lightly). Anyhow, there's big puddles everywhere and as I walked down the porch steps, four mallard ducks flew up into the air from one of the big puddles. I have no idea why they were here. The puddle is only about 4" deep. Maybe they saw the chickens and flew in looking for hen scratch. Ducks wading in a puddle? That's not something we see very often around here.

Tim's having a hard time getting home from work. There's lots of high water and flooded low spots and such in the D-FW metro, where some areas have received up to 5" of rain in the last few hours. Traffic is barely moving.

I hope our rain moves on to y'all and everyone gets some rain. We don't want too much at one time, not when tomatoes are about to break color. I harvested all the breakers before I came indoors this afternoon. I wasn't going to leave them out there for excess rain to mess up.

We're under a Flood Advisory until 9:15 pm, which kind of surprises me. One measly inch of rain shouldn't cause flooding, although they did say we might get 1-2" more. I know that some low water crossings in town are getting quite a bit of water and folks are reportin 8-12" of water in those locations. Great night for the Frontier Days parade and festivities---rain and flooding.

Dawn
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
George, I was so sure I had the email with the sweet potato flyer. . . but I cannot find it anywhere! (Got my emails cleaned up though). Would you mind terribly resending it?

George--never mind! I found it!

Gotta go read up on stuff now. . .
luvncannin
6 years ago
George I will definitely contact you after market and order some purples. I have lots of great orange and white slips coming along nicely.

Dawn I had to back a mile to see what I was going to respond to. Lol

Mr critical is not the only one. Most of the fellow produce vendors think it's a big competition. I just like to play in the soil and grow stuff. If my melon is bigger that does not make me a better person than anyone else. Anyway. I like sharing here. Everyone is excited for everyone else, even if we don't have time to always express it. Out there.......it's sceeeerrry
hazelinok
6 years ago
Starting with Bon's 10:05 am post yesterday.

Bon, you have an amazing garden this year. Congratulations. I like your attitude with it too.

That's a lot of potatoes, Dawn! I only have a little 4' x 4' bed that is about 3 ft. tall. I like potatoes a lot and would love to have more room for them. I have plans (still unspoken to Tom--haha!) about extending our main garden. I realize this project might have to wait until Ethan is out of school because we're still working on the current garden. I think I can get him to agree because he really wants to plant corn and this extension would allow for corn and more potatoes and who doesn't want more potatoes and corn?! Not Tom. Not me.

Kim, you had a productive day!

I just love reading about y'all's days in the gardens even if I don't really have a comment to make on them. Your posts are so interesting to me--all of you.

Dawn, I agree. I wish people would at least try to do a small garden in whatever space they have. We had the smallest garden our very first year out here. It was only a 5' x 5' square, some sunflowers behind the shed, and 3 mounds of pumpkins that were so beautiful until SVB. That was my introduction to SVB. People just do not want to put the work into caring for a garden OR they don't realize what grows in the different seasons and get discouraged that they can't grow broccoli in July. I get this, because I didn't understand much until 3 years ago! I had gardens in the past, but just followed my father-in-law's instructions. He had a big garden. However, I'm stubborn and will keep trying and keep learning. Most people give up.

I suppose if you have the money, you can just pay for farm-to-fork restaurants. I still enjoy eating at those types of restaurants once in awhile to support their cause, which is a good one. AND their chefs have some amazing recipes in the vegetarian area. It's a little trickier to eat balanced without meat and especially without animal products at all. I like yogurt and eggs too much to give up on animal products...and I see my hen's eggs as a gift to me. I care for them. They care for me. (SQUEAL! My new chicks are due to arrive next week! Prepare for tons of pictures) I do worry about my daughter. She eats extremely healthy and is going vegetarian. Her boss is vegan and she travels on business with him often, so they eat at vegan friendly restaurants. She also works out daily and is always hungry, so I'm a little concerned that she isn't getting enough protein, although she eats eggs and yogurt every day. O blood type people really are supposed to eat meat (in some theories), but she doesn't know her blood type. She is either A or O. I talked to her yesterday about this. I am vegetarian, but I realize that some people will not or cannot do that. If she needs meat, she may just need to buy cruelty-free meat. There's plenty of places to buy it around here. Anyway, I'm rambling. But, yes, I agree people should at least know how to grow their own food to some degree. I remember reading something about southern peas. Someone's great grandmas said to always keep a patch of southern peas and you'll never go hungry.

Amy! I agree about the Korean squash! Good grief! It's everywhere! I do not have a trellis in that bed and must figure something out soon. I don't want to spend money on a trellis since we are rebuilding the coop right now, but I have to find some scraps of something to make a trellis. And soon.

Hmmm....I think I purchased the Sevin when I planted the Sunflowers and used it once before realizing it kills bees, so I freaked out and started reading about it. I forgot I had it until we started cleaning out the shed and there it was with a bottle of Round Up that I bought about 10 years ago that made it to this house from the last house. I think I used it at the other house in cracks in our driveway. Maybe I'll just sprinkle it around the base of the pumpkin plant.

Melissa, what a pretty little girl. Enjoy cooking with your onions!

Amy, I"m like you with bug ID. I can't tell the good ones from the bad ones often.

Nancy, go ahead and look at the Select Seeds sale. You might miss something wonderful!

George, I'm glad Jerreth is better. Jerreth is a pretty and unusual name. I like it.

Sadly, we've only gotten sprinkles. I'm hoping for a good rain tonight or tomorrow. I will need to water tomorrow evening if we don't get it. It's just so much easier for the rain to do it for me.

I've forgotten how to cure onions. I'm going to need study up on it again. Last year was my first real year with a significant harvest. We were in the middle of a remodel and I think I laid them on a tarp in the shop.

I think I'm mostly caught up. I enjoyed reading the other threads, but will just enjoy them silently, I think. I still need to unpack and bottle up the kombucha from it's second fermenting.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Amy, I feel like I need to see what I can do with BS this fall. Maybe they will be my nemesis, too. No idea. But the challenge is in trying. And, it would be really cool to be able to tell people I grew them myself. Thinking I might also start filling tomato bags as they die off with green beans, so I can blanch and freeze up until Thanksgiving.

I hate Sevin too, HJ, but I am using it on my squash this year, mainly because Mom threatened my life if I didn't get her squash this year, lol. She also does not care about organic anything. I have the spray, but I'm applying it with a small sponge paintbrush, just to the stems, so I can avoid the flowers and pollinators. Also applying it in the evenings. I've got 5 baby squash going for her. I am not using the Sevin on anything else, though.
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
Dawn, speaking of folks not growing garden produce. . . we were out exploring today, trying to find ANY place on Ft Gibson Lake where we could launch the boat (don't think it's gonna happen--the lake's still up 17 feet. . .) I very seldom am willing to go for "drives," but we were on a mission. So we covered probably 50 miles of roads between here and the dam east of Okay. I was consciously looking for veggie gardens. Of course, we didn't see every single residence or dwelling, but of the many many I did see, I saw exactly two vegetable gardens. One is my neighbor's, 1/2 mile away, the other a beautiful big garden southeast of Wagoner. I suppose it was possible some had small gardens in back of their homes, but really, would have been no reason to have had really small ones, as most of the places had plenty of sunshine and plenty big lots or properties. And it might be a little more understandable if we had a glut of great grocery stores! But we have one Walmart that often doesn't have what I might want. Crazy crazy.

Goodness! Hard to imagine you with all that rain, Dawn. It has been dry dry dry here, though with comfortable temps. Oops. . . just looked at radar. Looks like the one that will be leaving you is headed pretty much straight toward us at this point. Uhh, never mind.

Well, yeah, Amy and Dawn. I did look at Select Seeds a little bit, and decided I had to have a few things. . . and then we went for our ride and so now I've calmed down.

I need to re-arrange stuff that's here more than anything. That center bed is a mess. No rhyme nor reason--tall plants in front of short ones, cabbages, tomatoes and peppers here and there. I did move the peppers so they can get a bit more sun. Need to take out more Shasta daisies, but know everyone loves them, so won't take them out unless to give to someone. Those rascals DO spread! As do the daylilies, 4 o'clocks, cleome, bee balm and cannas, and about everything else I've got here. I began with 5 tiny clumps of daisies I'd grown from seed 3 years ago, now I could easily give away five more clumps and still have 4 large clumps. And of course I expect we'll have tomatoes volunteering everywhere in that center bed, since they did last year anded the year before. And now with nicotiana and more rudbeckia and the datura, bachelor buttons, zebrina hollyhocks, echinacea, milkweed, blah blah. . . maybe I better wait til next year. . . the peppers I've picked so far are all from flower beds, none from the veggies' area; makes me chuckle. And the tomato plant with the largest tomatoes is also in a flower bed.

I dug under one fried and skimpy potato plant today. It only had 3 potatoes, but it was also just a small single stalk, and the 3 potatoes were a lovely medium size. They looked like Yukon gold. . . I don't remember planting those, though. I know we planted Kennebec (only because that's what Walmart had at the time, and a red one--as I've told you, I didn't pay attention to names before OKGW. The rest aren't dying quickly enough yet. I haven't disturbed the onion bed yet, because of two last and big holdouts, neither of which shows signs of softening necks. haha. . . that's okay, I can wait, I think I'll put the sweet potatoes in the modified hugelkultur bed outside the fenced beds; but I have a question. Would it be better to put cucumbers in the onion bed or in the potato bed? My thinking tells me either would be fine. On the other hand, I think the potato bed needs the most amending, so might be inclined to put them in the onion bed. And I think I'll put in some cowpeas for the potato bed. . . George's comment above made me think about that, and when I've gotten rid of tomatoes and cucumbers will put in a good cover crop--recommendations for next fall's cover crops? Like Amy, kinda just thinking out loud. And thinking about that 10-15 feet east of the present raised beds and compost area. . . heh heh. . . soft pedaling, but GDW grows increasingly interested. If only there were a way to successfully grow iceberg lettuce, he'd be sold. Well, and he does love the cabbage and onions and garlic. And broccoli! Oh yeah. That's reason enough. We need that extra 10-15 feet for ONIONS! Thanks, guys.

Calamint sounds enchanting, Amy. I believe I need some. Yes, I am allowed to keep buying herbs, all. They're food and they smell good and yes. In fact I bought yet one more Arp rosemary and two small dill bedding plants, as I didn't plant dill in succession. So now I have seven, count them, SEVEN rosemary Arps planted here, there and everywhere. Having that big beautiful 3 foot tall rosemary killed over last winter must have scarred me more deeply than I had thought. hahahahaha

I have, I think, now got my parsley planted in alternate years, so should never be without. Part of it is bolting and it's as tall as I am--it's confined to a partly (largely) shady area, as it got obnoxiously big in a sunnier spot. Likewise with the lemon balm, which despite being hacked apart for SF, has rebounded with vigor. The big mounds of sage, oregano and thyme are also in a largely shady area. The sage is a beautifully rounded mound a little more than 2x2 feet now.

Melissa, your daughter is drop-dead adorably beautiful!!! Sorry, the onions come in at a distant second. :) Is she loving gardening? Fabulous photo!

Dawn I actually looked through all those photos of the leaf-footed eggs and nymphs. This is THE one part of gardening I HATE. I am, even after all these years, queasy about bugs. Obviously I am a neophyte gardener. I'm better. . . but OUCH. Darn it, though, I'm tough. I'm a cowgirl from Wyoming. I can handle this. Snakes don't bother me that much. . . I'm used to crickets and ants taking over my house (though I made GDW promise he'd pick up all the dead crickets I step on), and even spiders. . . I'm scared of them, but most of them are scared of me too. But now I have horned beetles and all these other dangerous and scary critters. It's almost more than a person can bear, when one is afraid of bugs in the first place.

George, I'm excited about growing my first (somewhat exotic, I think!) sweet potatoes. I adore sweet potatoes, GDW heretofore has not been a great fan. To me, they are the great compromise between potatoes and squash. Isn't it great to have a computer techie living with one? Almost as good has having a plumber or electrician spouse! (And a mechanic, as good!) Give her my best. I'm the techie in our family, but not great. . . adequate when the occasion demands it. But I always get grouchy about it.

I am fascinated by the different areas that captivate gardeners. Like, how did you get to love sweet potatoes (and peppers) so much, and how did you, Dawn, key into tomatoes so much. What have the others of you fixated on? For me, I guess it would be herbs (obviously, specifically Rosemary! LOL) and peppers (and really, my use of them has been a relatively recent journey, maybe only over the past 10 years) and good-smelling and LONG-blooming flowers. And though I've always loved fresh tomatoes, never until now began to realize I need to grow the ones that do best for me.

Bon, so thrilled you're having a glorious gardening year; HJ, probably needing some re-grouping time; Kim. . . let us know how market goes. . .blessings, all.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Kim, I agree. It can be sceery out there, especially with people who are relentlessly competitive about having the biggest tomato or the earliest whatever, etc. etc. etc. I do not view gardening as a competitive enterprise. I just like playing in the dirt, growing stuff, and then enjoying whatever we have grown, whether it is in the form of food, herbs or flowers. A bouquet of zinnias and other flowers in a vase on the table on any summer day makes me as happy as a fresh tomato or fried okra from the garden or a peach right off the tree so warm and juicy as you stand there beneath the tree eating that peach with juice running down your chin.

When my farmer neighbors tried to make it a contest, I did my best to shut them down. In the long run, it backfired on them because.....raised beds warm up more quickly, so I could plant earlier, so I usually had the first harvest of everything. I just wouldn't even mention I already was harvesting because it made their brains explode, but they came into the garden and looked around and could tell that I was. Then they asked a billion questions about when I planted and how and "why so early" (lol) and became even more competitive and I just had to ignore them more and more. If they wanted to compete, they could compete with each other because I wasn't going to play that game. You just go on being you and doing what you do and love it for all the right reasons and ignore their competitiveness.

I hope you are having a great day at the Farmer's Market today and wish I was there to see you in action. I hope you sell everything.

Hazel, Parents always worry about their kids. If your daughter is lacking something in her body, it will tell her and she'll learn she has to eat enough of the right stuff to keep her body happy and healthy. My son is very much into healthy eating and working out, and while I worry he may be a bit too thin, the fact is that he is healthy, young and strong and probably in the best shape of his life, so I think I am worrying about nothing.

One easy thing to remember about identifying good bugs versus bad bugs is that often you see good bugs singly here and there and may see bad bugs in larger groups. That's especially true when they first hatch or first are born if they are born live versus eggs. While the nymphs of spined assassin bugs look very similar to the nymphs of leaf-footed bugs, when I see spined assassin bug nymphs they tend to be alone hunting for prey but the nymphs of leaf-footed bugs will be clustered together on one or two plant leaves. I often find the nymphs of stink bugs or leaf footed bugs together on leaves shortly after they hatch and the lint roller and I make quick work of catching and disposing of them. They are a lot easier to kill young then when they are older.

Curing onions is simple. Lay them on a table or on the ground in a shady area preferably shielded from sunlight and rainfall. You can lay multiple rows with each successive row of bulbs sitting on top of the foliage from the previously lined up bulbs. So, one table, tarp, bench, shelf or whatever else you use will hold a lot of onions. Let them stay there until all the foliage dries down and turns brown. As the foliage dries, the outer layer of onion skin dries and contracts and the onion neck grows smaller and smaller. Curing is important for good storage and I usually let mine cure for at least 2 weeks if they were relatively dry when harvested but up to 4 weeks if they were really wet or heavily laden with internal moisture. Once they are cured, you can either braid them like garlic if that is your choice or clip off the leaves about one inch away from the bulb. They are edible at any time so I'm constantly raiding the curing table for onions to use in cooking. You can store them in single layers on shelves, in boxes or whatever, or hanging in Dixondale onion tubes (I have used the legs of pantyhose in the same way, just tying a knot between each onion I add so it isn't touching the one beneath it). If you have more than y'all can eat fresh before they sprout, you chop or slice and freeze them. When I have onions sprout, I toss them out onto the ground between the pecan tree and my garden. Generally nothing eats them and they somehow root into the soil beneath the four o'clocks. Then, the next year or sometimes later that year, we have blooming onions. The beneficial insects love their flowers.

Rebecca, For folks like us who prefer to grow as naturally as possible, it is very hard to make the decision to use a synthetic pesticide. I understand that. It seems better to me, though, to use a pesticide in a highly selective and very careful method like you're doing than to just throw up our hands in the air and let the squash vine borers win. Since the whole point of gardening is to grow something, and the whole point of edible gardening is to grow something to eat, I feel like sometimes a gardener has to do what they have to do to protect the crop and get a harvest. It is just a sad fact of life that there are not great organic methods to control SVBs in our climate where we get multiple generations per year and generally have to deal with them from May or June through November.

There are times I think I ought to just make a new fenced garden area solely for pumpkins and summer squash (C. pepos and C. maximas) and grow nothing else in it. I could spray that area with a pesticide to keep the SVBs away and grow actual pumpkins again without feeling it is a lost cause, and grow summer squash without having to grow under netting covered beds and doing hand-pollination.

I guarantee you that the very selective and careful use of a pesticide in the manner you described is nothing at all compared to how much commercial crops are sprayed and often systemic pesticides are used on commercial crops, meaning the pesticides are absorbed up into the plants. So, your pesticide-treated squash still will be healthier to eat than most purchased squash, other then if you buy organic squash (which is hard to find and expensive).

Nancy, It is shocking to me how few people have edible gardens out here in the country where everyone has plentiful space. Too many people are willing to rely on grocery store food, and I think that is unfortunate.

When we first moved here in 1999, there were quite a few gardens--I even saw one garden a few miles from mine that was somewhat similar to mine with flowers and herbs mixed in. However the recurring drought years of 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2011-2014 here resulted in there being fewer and fewer gardens planted each Spring. I think all those years of drought just wore people down. Then, also, as older gardeners gave up gardening due to very advanced age or illness, we lost more gardens. I don't expect everyone to be a gardening maniac like we are, but I do think everyone ought to be able to manage one raised bed with a few tomatoes, herbs and peppers....or whatever else they like to eat. Americans probably spend billions of dollars (and tons of chemicals) a year on lawns that serve no useful purpose except to look nice and serve as a play space for kids and pets, and spend much less on growing wholesome, healthy food. It kind of makes me crazy, but it is what it is.

I cannot believe the lake is still so high---it sort of sounds like 2015 all over again. Meanwhile, down here with the ground baked rock hard from heat and little rain, even 1" of rain led to flooding because so much rain ran off instead of soaking in. That seems crazy to me. Now that we received that inch of rain, we're only 7" behind average rainfall. Woo hoo. Improvement is improvement even if it is small.

The ducks came back twice last night. I hope they do not think the puddles in the yard and driveway are permanent because the water does soak in eventually. Being a turkey, Augustus put his tail feathers out and put on quite a show for the ducks, but they could not have cared less. They just wanted to walk around in the puddles and run up and down the driveway.

Cucumbers grow fine almost anywhere. I like to put them where they are convenient to harvest and water but have gotten fine harvests even from fairly poor soil.

My dad grew tomatoes my entire life, so I have a deep appreciation for the superior flavor and texture of home-grown, so much so that I simply refuse to eat grocery store tomatoes ever. When we lived in Fort Worth, our yard was too heavily shaded by neighbor's trees to have much of an edible garden, so I was lucky if I could eke out the sunny space to grow 6 paste tomato plants and 6 plants of regular slicers. When we moved here, I had been growing heirlooms for only a couple of years and then, suddenly, had the space to grow more. That's when I lost control and became a tomato maniac. The deer hadn't found our garden yet, so I had a huge unfenced space in addition to the regular fenced garden. The unfenced space lasted until the drought of 2005-2006 when the deer found it and began eating tomato plants, but by then I had grown many, many different varieties in trials to see what we liked best, flavor-wise, and what grew best here. Since then, now that I am restricted to only growing within the fenced garden, I experiment a lot less with new varieties and grow fewer tomato plants overall. It takes some of the fun out of growing when you stop trying 20 or 25 new tomato varieties each year, but I'm okay with that. It is time for me to have a more balanced garden that isn't 75% tomatoes.

I'm also learning to let go of the dream of having a big, green, happy garden in drought. Can I pour on the water in drought years and keep the garden green? Of course I can, but....there is a point at which you can have it looking good but not necessarily producing enough harvest to justify huge water bills. I've learned to cut back a lot on the summer watering when we are in drought and just try to help the plants stay alive, more or less, and limp through the drought and survive (or not) until the drought ends. Sometimes it is the hardest thing to do, to stop watering and let the garden more or less sink or swim on its own, but it is smarter than running up a huge water bill that makes me cringe when I see how high it is.

Dawn
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
So far no rain. I wore myself out yesterday and didn't go back out to water. First on the agenda today. I had to take the rain gauge down yesterday, a trellis is going in where it lived. I got the fancy weather station and it's never been installed. I think we picked the spot for it yesterday. I really need to do laundry, too.

This is what my leaf footed bug looked like. Thanks for the link Dawn. I will be looking for the weird lined up eggs. Maybe your Mallards normal pond got too deep with run off. They are "dabbers", they like shallow water they can up end themselves in and reach the mud below with their beak. The also just enjoy playing in puddles. Did Tim get home from work okay? Do you get volunteer potatoes? I pulled two out with the peas and found another fresh looking plant when I cut back the broccoli.

Nancy, the calamint starts out with an oreganoish taste and finishes with the licoricy mint. Unusual taste. No idea what I'll use it on. I also have a Wild Zataar plant to find a home for. It looks just like oregano, it needs a pot. The Sculpit is a green taste. I think it is grown for the greens first, then it has neat flowers. I thought it was a "flavor", but its closer to lettuce than oregano. My parsley bolts every year?!

Speaking of herbs, how do you all preserve herbs? I have dill wanting to flower right now. Sometimes I freeze some to have later for pickles. I could dry it, of course. The chervil is in it's prime right now. I don't know how to cook with that either, it's kind of a French herb. (We all know I need recipes). Lots of parsley, even cilantro. Someone on facebook says she freezes cilantro in lime juice. I thought that was brilliant. The truth is, I grow herbs like some people grow flowers, they make me happy, they usually don't have a big foot print, and you can get things like Tangerine Thyme or Mojito Mint. I love stuff like that, whether I cook with it or not. Someday I will learn to use them. Then there are the medicinals. I will learn them, too.

The girls at the Y are advertising me as the Owasso tomato lady. I don't think I deserve the title, but it makes me feel good.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Dawn, I appreciate your endorsement for how I'm using the Sevin. You're right, I'd rather not use it at all, but SVB are evil. There is nothing else to use. I figured if I was going to use it, it would be in the least damaging way possible. My method probably wouldn't be time effective for someone like you, who might grow multiple plants, but for me and my one plant, it seems like it's working. I'll probably use it on the acorn squash, too, soon as it gets going.

Amy, when I have a new herb, I start trying it out on something bland, like chicken or potatoes or pasta, whichever seems to fit. Then as I get used to the flavor, other ideas come about. I love having herbs too, I just don't always get to use them before the season is over. I need to know how to dry them too, until I get a dehydrator. My oven doesn't have a dehydrate setting. I know some people hang bunches upside down somewhere, but I thought we were too humid to do that.

The tomato plant with herbicide damage is trying to make flowers. I was going to pull it this weekend, now I'm not sure.

Speaking of herbs, I think I'm going to make Pioneer Woman's buttermilk herb salad dressing this weekend. It uses a lot of fresh herbs and I think it would be good on almost anything right now.
jlhart76
6 years ago
I hang mine upside down in a closet. And one year I got a wreath form and made an herb wreath. Once it dried I hung it by the stove and pulled pieces off as I needed them. Decorative and functional, plus the kitchen smelled like sage and lemongrass.

ID anyone? Not sure if I planted it or its a volunteer. It's in the pot labeled daylily but thats not right.

And this is what happens when you don't wait for seeds to sprout. I got impatient and dumped all the empty pots together. Now to figure out where to plant them until I know what I'm growing.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
There is this microwave idea, Rebecca. My old dehydrator was too hot and too, uh, windy? for something as delicate as most herbs. We'll see about the new one. The wreath is a neat idea, Jen. I clothespin herbs upside down to a wire hanger and they hang in the spare room till dry. I have dried them in paper lunch sacks. Some sources say to cover the herbs with upside down lunch sacks to keep dust off. Why can't I put them in a lunch sack upside down with the top open? That way when the leaves fall off they are in the sack. Just don't try to dry too much at once that way. You can turn your oven on briefly, turn it off and dry herbs on a tray in the oven. Leave the light on for a little extra heat. Another thing I do, though this is usually to make sure collected seeds are dry is use the cable TV box. I have a small vinyl coated shelf with legs. The legs fold up, and at that point it is about 3" above the cable box. Far enough not to block the vents, but it blows warm air 24/7. You could use parchment paper, plastic canvas mesh, tulle to keep the herbs from falling through. I put bean seeds on a paper plate. The Dollar Tree has small pop up mesh clothes hampers. These would also work for drying herbs. And finally, there are these.

Jen, DH throws the contents of pots into beds at the end of the season. Never know what you'll find the next year.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
Ha, I came here to post this and forgot. Kim, do you grow lavender? I like my lavender flowers in tea, but if I had more plants...no, I wouldn't do this. I might buy them though. Lavender dryer bags.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
Got my umbrella today, with this base. It is very light weight, I will have no trouble carrying it around, though the wind is another issue. DH said the stand pushed into the ground quite easily, despite how hard it was yesterday. I did myself in yesterday. Can't even go play with it. It's cloudy anyway. But I'll be ready for next week.
chickencoupe
6 years ago
jlhart, that flowering plant is a weed. Very pretty. Seeds prolifically. Enjoy, but don't let it go to seed. I don't remember the name. Can't link Name That Plant! forum FAQ via phone. Very common flowering weed.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Rebecca, You know that I try to grow as naturally and as organically as possible, but there are times that it is almost impossible to defeat a specific pest organically---and I'd say squash vine borers are the absolute hardest pest to fight organically. So, sometimes I think we just have to be practical and ask ourselves if being 100% organic is the most important thing to us or if producing a harvest is most important and we can, therefore, let ourselves be 95% or 99% organic or whatever. Sometimes it is easy to let one's philosophy and goals overcome practicality. I think I have become more pragmatic over the years---maybe seeing SVBs win the war 8 out of 10 years does that to a person. (grin)

If having organic squash is not important to your mother and you want to provide her with home-grown squash, then I don't see the specific harm in carefully using Sevin. I know you're not going to be slinging it everywhere and killing the bees, but even if you were....it is your choice and your right and I am always going to be right here defending your right to garden as you see fit. I don't want to be one of those militant organic/mostly organic people who jump down people's throats if they go non-organic part of the time. Perfection is hard to achieve---and organic perfection probably is the hardest thing to achieve, so sometimes we just have to be realistic and practical.

Jen, The closed flower pod sort of reminds me of some kind or poppy or maybe something in the poppy mallow family. Did you sow seeds of any kind of poppy? It doesn't look exactly like the winecups we have here as the leaves are different, but there's fringed winecups and other similar native wildflowers which it might be. I keep lots of wildflowers around and even sow their seeds on purpose because they tolerate our weather and our clay soil so well.

Patience is everything. Sometimes seeds sprout slowly if temperatures are cool or don't sprout at all if the soil is too hot. A friend of mine sowed seeds of brussels sprouts too late, directly in the ground, after soil temperatures were too hot....like maybe in February or March. They never sprouted. In September or October the soil cooled down enough and the seeds sprouted. By December, they were eating brussels sprouts. So, the seeds seem to know when the temperatures are right for them and sprout accordingly. Now you have a lot of little babies you can transplant to their final growing space!

Amy, Keep us posted on how you like your umbrella. Mine is a sand umbrella, so the end that goes into the ground is like a screw and you just screw it into the ground. The wind has to be pretty strong to blow it out of the ground, and I'm always careful to fill in the hole in the ground when I remove the umbrella because I don't want to encourage voles or field mice by providing them with starter holes.

Bon, Some of my favorite wildflowers are weeds and, also, some of my least favorite ones are too. (grin)

It didn't rain any more here today, but I am not complaining. We got 1.1" yesterday when all was said and done, and that's plenty for this week.

Dawn
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
I have one of the screw in umbrellas. Its about sun rotted. I could rarely manage to screw it in by myself, and if the ground was wet enough for me to do so, it would fall over. I couldn't find another one locally. I'm hoping the step on holder will work better for me. The base has a screw to twist to lock the umbrella in place. Of course, my hand may not be strong enough for that either. Sucks to get old. No significant rain here today, though people around us look to have gotten some.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
It does suck to get old, but it sure beats the alternative. At least we're not pushing up daisies.

We had spotty rain here. I know at least one portion of our county got some scattered showers. Oh well, we've had an inch plus a bit more. That might be it for us this year based on previous months, though I hope I'm wrong about that.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Squirrels stole all 3 of my big yellow sunflower heads. Dammit. I got something at Stringers that they say will repel them, but I don't know if it'll work. Worth a try. Guess I know what happened to the dwarf ones out front.

There is rain all around me, but none here. Air is super heavy and humid.

My Sun Sugar and Black Cherry plants are slowly defoliating. Leaves turn yellow with black spots first. I've been spraying fungicide. I can try to get a picture tomorrow.

I'll be pushing the plants real hard to set fruit this week, as we are heating up quickly. Lots of cage rattling and flower thumping, even though we've had a breeze most days. I'm getting a good idea this year of what tomatoes will become my main crops in the future, at least if they continue to do as well as they are. Jersey Boy, Big Beef, and Brandy Boy are leading the way. All hybrids. Rutgers and Homestead are behind them, but leading the OPs. Squirrels vote for Big Beef. Hmph.

I may be forced into placing a seed order to get some brussles sprouts seeds to start this month. Gosh darn it. Audrey is fixing to bankrupt me buying cat grass seed packets at Stringers, so I guess I'll order from somewhere I can get that by the pound.
jerrydaniel87
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Yes good old Oklahoma weather.

Pounds and drowns you with 7 inches in a few days then decides to quit for a month. I got a couple of sprinkles enough to wet the ground but thats about it. Luckily my old tight clay soil weathers drought and retains moisture better than almost any other type. That stuff is both a blessing and a curse you just learn to work with instead of against.

Every thing seems to be going well except Bell peppers and snow peas. I will not even get my seed back with the snow peas as they are dying off from heat just as they are blooming. Just got too late of a start for those. The peppers caught a virus of some kind in all the cold weather earlier this year and they will be a total loss. Only Tabasco peppers snapped back and that is the only hot peppers I have planted this year.

I planted 2 kinds of potatoes this year and of course as soon as I did an all points bulletin went out to Colorado to notify all the Potatoe beatles to begin their yearly migratory trek to my house here. It's a Conspiiwicy I tell ya. The leaf footed bugs don't seem to mind the company though as they have made a Cooperation of Plenty Treaty with the beatles.

Also this is the first year I have ever been attacked by corn ear worms before the stinking corn even has ears. The dang things are trying to eat down in the top of the leaf folds before the tassle gets to run up, where i find them and squish them. Strange, and only lends more credence to my theory that corn seed comes with its very own complimentary corn worm eggs. As NO-ONE has ever grown an ear of corn within 3 miles of here for 10 years that I know of.

AAANND, I now have cucumber beatles for the first time ever. I made the mistake of planting some of those this time because my daughter said she likes pickles. And of course those seeds come with their own special accompanying entourage TOO.

And would'nt you know it? The particular strain of cucumber beatles they sent me in the packet seem to like everything with their cucumber salad besides the gerkins. So now those little buggers can get in line behind the resident veteran flea beatles, gangster squash bugs and the fire ant thugs and wait their freaking turn.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Rebecca, Hot pepper tea or hot pepper wax sprayed on things that squirrels like often will repel them. They even sell a bird seed mix for bird feeders that's been treated with hot capsaicin that repels the squirrels but which does not bother the birds. Since you're in a usually wet and humid area, I think the pepper wax would have more staying power for you than a pepper tea, but you could make your own pepper/garlic tea at home so that's a plus. I hope that's the kind of product they sold you, as it seems more effective than most squirrel repellents that include putrified eggs as part of the formula.

With tomato foliage, I feel like it is just that time of the year. You know, until the tomato plants are carrying a heavy load of fruit, the foliage doesn't seem to have much trouble. Once the plants are loaded with fruit that's enlarging and ripening, it seems like the foliage goes straight to hell. My theory is that the plants at that point are putting their energy into the fruit, not the foliage. I've sprayed once with a fungicide and have been removing spotted foliage as I'm seeing both Septoria Leaf Spot and Early Blight, and I cannot tell the fungicide is making any difference, which is frustrating. My good sprayer was broken and the backup sprayer I used was sort of spotty in the way it sprayed, though I couldn't find anything stuck in the tube or nozzle causing the irregular spray. I've fixed the good sprayer now, so hopefully will get better coverage this time. I'll spray again in a day or two, this time with copper since I used Daconil last time.

The first tomato bed, which has more of the early varieties and was planted around mid-March is much worse looking than the second bed. I likely will just try to keep it going long enough to harvest as much as possible and sometime around late June, if not sooner, I'll yank out those plants, add a bunch of compost, and plant fall tomatoes. I shouldn't plant them in the same bed and I know that, but unless the big onion bed finishes up sooner than I think it will, that's the spot I'll have open, so I'll use it. Or, maybe I'll just put 8 lr 10 fall tomato plants in big pots. That's always an option too. The second bed is later varieties and those plants are not as heavily loaded with fruit as the ones in the second bed, so the foliage still looks a lot healthier. I'm thinking I'll go more with hybrids for fall tomatoes just because of their known disease tolerance.

Based on our forecast, down here we ought to be able to get tomato fruit set for another week or so, but sometimes the tomato plants do not easily go back into bloom after they start dropping blossoms, and once we hit 100 degrees last week, the tomato blossoms were falling like snow. I hate hitting 100 degrees in May for that very reason, but we get whatever weather we get.

Jerry, It sounds like the pests have launched an all-out assault on your garden this year. I just hate years like that.

It does seem like it has been a bad year for caterpillars in general. I've been killing corn earworms and don't have ears yet either as I planted my corn late this year. With no corn to munch on, they've been going to the tomato plants where they're known as tomato fruit worms. I guess I'll spray the tomato plants with Bt 'kurstaki' tomorrow or the next day. I was going to do it around Wednesday or Thursday but thought I'd wait for the days and days of rain to stop. It seems like we've likely gotten all we're going to get for a while despite a forecast that shows us getting more. Today the rain clouds fell apart every time they got within a few miles of us, and that's not an all unusual.

We've always had tons of cucumber beetles here ever since we moved here in 1999. We're in a rural area and I see them on winter weeds as early as January. They drive me crazy. They do seem to like absolutely everything and nothing is safe from them. Usually we have the spotted ones. So, of course, this year, all I saw for months was the striped ones, and they've been everywhere. Now the spotted ones have shown up too and they're having a convention on all the cucurbits.

My biggest pests this year, though, seem to be stink bugs, both brown and green, and they showed up extra early, as did the spider mites. Oddly, something has been controlling the spider mites so far as they don't even seem as bad now as they were a month ago. This is not really typical, but I'll take whatever help Mother Nature sends us. Perhaps it is the lady bugs, or perhaps it is the predatory mites.

I am trying to be exceedingly patient and wait for the beneficial insects to show up and help control the bad bugs, but the beneficials, other than lady bugs and a couple of spined soldier bugs, seem to be a little tardy so far. Oh, we do have very small praying mantids but they aren't as helpful as you'd think since they'll eat other beneficial insects, including other praying mantids. I haven't seen a lot of parasitic wasps or robber flies yet either, but they usually show up sooner or later to help with the other insects. There are dragon flies patrolling the garden and they are always welcome.

Oddly, there were no Colorado Potato Beetles this year, and no harlequin bugs, and so far only 1 single squash bug, so I feel lucky in some respects. There's never a year when there's no pests---just years where one thing is worse or another or whatever. What we're missing in CPBs, harlequin bugs, squash bugs and grasshoppers, we're getting in the form of stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs and spider mites.

My cucumber seedlings in the front garden are much more affected by cucumber beetles than the ones in the back garden. These two garden areas are only about 200' apart so I wouldn't expect to see much difference between the pest levels in them, but I do. If the cucumber beetles get this round of plants, I'll just wait a few weeks and sow seeds for fall.

I'm so grateful we have our gardens to talk about. We all (so far) have at least avoided having our gardens wiped out by tornadoes, flooding, microbursts, downbursts and hail. At least there's that.

Dawn
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Are summer squash heavy feeders/waterers?
hazelinok
6 years ago
Good grief! Korean squash is crazy! It's everywhere. I made a trellis with some leftover junk, but I'm pretty sure it will outgrow the trellis in a week. This is a good problem to have because there's already a ton of food on the plants. So, when do y'all usually harvest the long variety? Well, and the other two as well. As in, how big?

The other regular summer squash and zucchini is crazy too as it always does until our special enemies show up.

I did use the Sevin on the volunteer Halloween pumpkin. Just on the ground around the stem. It would be SO nice to get a big orange Halloween pumpkin! Maybe, just maybe it will happen.

Y'all I"m tired. We got some light rain for about 30 minutes. It didn't amount to much, so I watered everything. And I made zucchini bread with the giant zucchini fruit. And made pesto with the basil and parsley.

Rebecca, honestly I don't do much for my summer squash. It is a maniac producer until the SVB and to a lesser degree the squash bugs show up. But if you've treated them, you expect them to live and produce for longer, so maybe...? I'll let a more experience gardener give their opinion.

I'm heading to bed. NIght everyone! Sweet garden dreams.
jerrydaniel87
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Rebecca, No I do not consider them to be. I consider them to be maybe like a medium feeder but that is a somewhat relative statement.

I think of it like this. Tobacco is a HEAVY feeder. It has been known to stripmine a poor piece of ground to the point of useless. Then you have corn which I don't think you can feed too much. Hit em with 10=20 10 at first then later nitro the heck out of it with some 33-0=0 or bloodmeal and keep it growing fast. Its a little known fact that corn grows so fast towards the end you can hear it. You can hear it popping by holding your ear to the ground in the later stage. Its true try it sometime.

Then you have tomatoes which are a heavy feeder. Most other stuff falls somewhere in the middle of the above all the way down to cowpeas and beans which make their own nitrogen as legumes and only need light feeding. Also peppers don't need hardly anything and seem to do the best if you actually torture. them starve them and make them grow in a drought. Over fertilize those and you are sure to get the krinkly leaf syndrome.

As for your squash prepare your soil as you always do then when the squash is about 4 leaf stage or better light fert with about a tablespoon of a balanced fertilizer and side dress about 1.5 x that same amount every 3-4 weeks or so as it produces until the inevltable squash bug attacks gets it seems to work for me.

Maybe others have different methods and ideas I am sure.

I had an unusual harvest hit today unexpectedly. I went to the wood line to cut some trellis poles and ended up bringing back about 10-12 pounds of the plumpest ripe wild blackberries you ever seen today. Well thats minus about 12 oz my wife gobbled down as soon as I washed them. At the prices these nutjobs at Wally World and Marvins want for a tiny 6 oz container of those I figure I got about 200-300 bucks worth. Man o man are those gonna be good on some ice cream and smoothies. Glad to have em.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Ooh, blackberry cobbler!

I will stop feeding my peppers at the same time I feed the tomatoes, lol.

I asked about the squash because I had a 2-3" yellow crookneck shrivel up and fall off today. Wasn't sure if it was pollination, lack of water, or something else. Don't see any evidence of SVB or squash bugs.

I read my notes wrong. Top OP tomatoes are Creole and Sioux, with Homestead and Rutgers coming behind. Rutgers is wimpier than I was expecting. Of course, taste will be the other part of the story. Those Brandy Boys are built like tanks. Really want to try a couple other Brandywine Marriage toms next year.
jerrydaniel87
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Yes Im growing 4-5 Creoles this year. They handle the heat well. And Sioux is quite simply an old Oklahoma classic that just keeps hammering. I did not know anyone still grew those anymore but me. It is one of my all time favorites for here.

I never had much luck with a tater leafed tomato in my old clay soil. They just seem to wilt to bad in our heavy spring rains and I never had much production from the Brandywine line but that may just be me and my lousy dirt.

I like OPs and I have settled on Arkansas Travelers, Bradleys, Creoles, Sioux, Delicious and Abe Lincolns for growing here in about that order after years of testing stuff.

I;m not much on different colors though, I like tomatoes red and carrots orange, I'm funny like that. I tried about all the blacks here, to much cracking and such and not fond of that type flavor.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
I wasn't impressed with Delicious, and haven't tried Abe Lincoln or Bradley yet. Creole and Sioux tolerate my clayish soil just fine. I think they'd be way less happy in red clay - I have a softer black clay that's been amended over the years by me not cleaning up grass clippings and fall leaves, lol. Plus, they grow nicely in grow bags. I only have one Ark Traveller this year, but they are good too. True Brandywines I agree don't do well here, but the hybrids and Brandywine Marriage plants cross Brandywine with stable hybrids to get Brandywine flavor but the disease tolerance and production of hybrids. If they taste good, it's a win-win for me.
amunk01
6 years ago
No rain in Edmond either. Total bummer. I'm so sick of dragging hoses everywhere to water..

I'm sorry to hear of everyone's pest problems this season. So far the only thing I've noticed is a ridiculous amount of aphids all over my tomatoes which I have never had. I sprayed a few plants with water once which helped, but the ladybugs have showed up in force so I'm not worried.

Jerry those blackberries sound delicious. We won't have any this year, but I expect a good harvest next year. I did get about a dozen large delicious peaches out of the orchard! Hooray. First harvest ever.

Sounds like my tomatoes are performing about the same as everyone else's. Some are huge, some are doing nothing. Some fruit has set but not enough. Is it ever enough though? Lol I'm trying to stay on top of the diseased foliage too. But haven't sprayed anything. Since I'm pregnant I decided to just let nature take its course this year, and try to win by stripping foliage, or removing plants as needed.

I desperately need to fertilize everything. Got some fish emulsion fert. today. Hopefully I'll get to that tomorrow. Just depends on what the baby has in store for me. Ha
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Alexis, when are you due?
billstickers
6 years ago
hello everyone. i was/am a very irregular poster (tho more frequent visitor) from tulsa. i wanted to check in here for several reasons, both to say hi again and also to try and join in the community a little better.

because of health issues, i am down to a small collection of containers, (about 10 right now) some of which are basic flowers, but also a small herb container, and a few peppers. one of my gardening goals is to expand the herbs to also include some easy to get going things like green onions and chives and the like and i have a couple of larger ones that might be ok for squash or bush beans or maybe even some small tomato plants. i have to cook almost all of my meals for *reasons* and it would be nice to have a few new resources to incorporate.

my other gardening goal, which isn't so much about gardening, is to contact and be a part of whatever interesting people are doing in n.e. oklahoma related to this (hobby? obsession?) . but i have no idea how to start that, other than posting here.

hope everyone enjoys their sunday. it's nice and cool here and i have a new pepper plant i'm going to put in. feel free to contact me here anytime.
hazelinok
6 years ago
Hi Bill! Enjoy the cool weather and planting your new pepper plant. :)
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Rebecca, Yes, squash are medium to heavy feeders. Still, I don't do anything really special for them. I amend the soil really well with a lot of compost and usually add Espoma organic Garden-Tone to the soil before planting. I also mulch the ground around the plant with compost after the plants are a few inches tall. My summer squash and zucchini plants have been in the ground since mid-March with one supplemental feeding since then and are producing so much I can hardly keep up with harvesting it and cooking or freezing it.

If your squash is growing in containers, you probably need to be feeding it with a water soluble fertilizer diluted to 1/3 or 1/2 strength every single time you water since nutrients leach out of the soil-less mix whenever it rains or whenever you water.

Hazel, Yes, Korean summer squash is crazy and it a rampant grower, and on top of that the squash are quite tasty. That's why we love it so much. Any summer squash that can outgrow squash bugs and common squash diseases and which is virtually immune to damage from squash vine borers is a treasured variety that must be grown in Oklahoma.

For anyone reading this, you can find the varieties of Korean summer squash we are discussing here:

Kitazawa Seeds' Summer Squash Page

Because these Korean summer squash varieties are C. moschata, they have solid stems instead of hollow stems, and this prevents the SVB grubs from tunneling into them. Growing Korean summer squash will change your summer gardening life because it removes the problem of how to get a summer squash harvest in the summer.

Mine always outgrows the trellis and runs amok and I just let it. It crosses the aisle to the asparagus bed and grows all over the asparagus plants, pretty much shading them from the worst of the summer heat. This does not appear to hurt the asparagus plants at all as they are vigorous growers themselves. I've let summer squash (and winter squash) climb all over the asparagus for years. The shade they provide helps keep down the weeds in the asparagus beds. If I don't let the summer squash climb all over the asparagus beds, then bindwind sprouts there and does the same thing and then I have to weed it out, so I'd rather have the summer squash vines running amok than have bind weed doing the same thing. I do believe that if a person wanted to shade a new patio the first year or a dog house, they could do it quickly with Korean summer squash vines while waiting for newly-planted perennial vines to get established for future years of shade.

I harvest the two avocado squash when they are about 3-4" in diameter and maybe 5 or 6" long---slightly larger than a really large avocado, but you can harvest them at any size you want. All summer squash is better when harvested at a smaller and younger size. With the longer zucchini-shaped one, Meot Jaeng I Ae, I harvest it at about 6" long. You can let it get longer and bigger if you want, but again, we like them best at the smaller, more tender size. Lots of people let their summer squash fruits get too big, sometimes on purpose and sometimes accidentally, and I feel like there can be a loss of quality after they get to a certain size. When I miss one while harvesting and it gets way too big, I just feed it to the chickens. The hotter and drier the weather, the more the chickens love to eat summer squash and Armenian cucumbers.

Rebecca, As long as the fruit that fell off the vine didn't show any signs of fungal disease, then it likely just didn't get pollinated. However, with squash, especially in a wet year, you sometimes see the fruit shrivel and rot because they've contracted choanephora fruit rot which can be particularly common in hot, humid, wet weather. The main symptom is the fruit shrivels and rots, but if you inspect it closely you'll usually see decay and the growth of a mold type fungal growth on the surface of the fruit. Always remove and dispose of fruit with choaenphora fruit rot so it doesn't spread to more fruit.

Jerry, I grow Sioux as well and grow tons of other old heirloom types every year. In fact, I don't grow many hybrids by comparison, though some years I'll grow more heirlooms for fall tomatoes. I've also got Bradley Pink and Arkansas Traveler growing this year as well.

We're already harvesting and eating Brandywines. For a long time their production here was very erratic, but I learned that all I have to do is plant them in mid-March so they get a chance to set fruit before we get hot. If I plant them in April, we usually get too hot for them to set fruit before they even bloom. Good Brandywines grown in good weather are superb eating, but the plant can be a disease magnet so I will yank it out of the ground after we've harvested the tomatoes if it is getting its usual leaf diseases. We have very well amended red clay in raised beds....amended for so long that it now is a rich brown loamy clay and tomatoes thrive in it, so I can grow pretty much any variety I want...except, apparently, for Paul Robeson, which manages to die pretty much every year before producing a ripe tomato. I believe I have just given it its last chance this year, but we do have 4 ripe ones from it and more ripening that I harvested a couple of days ago before I took out the 2 Paul Robeson plants.

Alexis, I didn't see many pests at all from February through late April or early May, and some of the regular pests haven't shown up yet, but lately there's a lot of other pests showing up rather recently. Having said that, I don't worry much about most pests and just let the beneficial insects take care of them. I do try to kill leaf-footed bugs though as they will ruin a tomato crop, and stink bugs as well. The pest population has been odd this year--ebbing and flowing, coming and going, and not doing much damage except for the caterpillars.

We are very short on rainfall here, with cracks in the ground and doors to the house sticking and getting hard to lock as the clay ground contracts, so this week's 1.1" was a blessing. That's about half of our total rainfall for this May, which was very deficient, so maybe June will be a better month. Watering gets old and I only do it when absolutely positively needed, so I haven't done very much watering despite the dryness---only just enough to ensure the tomatoes don't develop BER. Our clay soil does hold water pretty well, especially in the areas like the tomato beds that have had the most amending over the years.

One of my favorite Brandywine crosses is Gary 'O Sena, a Keith Mueller cross of Brandywine x Cherokee Purple. It produces heavily and very early and I try to grow it at least every other year. I should grow it every year, but there's just so many other OP varieties that we like that I alternate different ones in different years. I haven't grown any of the Brandywine Heirloom Marriage line, but this year I am growing Cherokee Carbon and really like it, so maybe I'll try one of the Brandywine ones next year.

I'm glad you're not spraying while pregnant, Alexis. It seems best to err on the side of safety. I hope you are able to get a good crop by stripping off the diseased leaves. Be sure to be kind to yourself and your body this summer because heat can be so hard on pregnant ladies and I worry you'll get outside and overdo it. Because, of course, I always stay outside and overdo it anyway and you are garden crazy just like me. (grin) I don't even remember having any veggies growing when I was pregnant so very long ago, but I did have flowers. Maybe I had a couple of tomato plants, but I really think I didn't put in the veggie garden until the year after I had Chris. We had a shade issue and didn't even have a good place for a veggie garden so gardening was on a small scale back then anyhow.

Hi Bill,

It is good to see you here.

Are you a member of any of the Oklahoma gardening facebook groups? If you aren't, let us know and we can list a couple of them for you. There's tons of garden chat on them daily, and I confess I do not necessarily keep up with it very well, but I try. Well, I try when I'm not working obsessively in the garden.

One way to connect with other local gardeners is via garden clubs, which you might be able to find in your area by Googling your city name and the words garden and club. Another way would be to take the Master Gardener's course through the extension service if you have the time and desire to do that. You would meet other Master Gardeners and the MG groups in many areas are quite active, often maintaining their own demonstration gardens and working on other service projects together.

Okay y'all, I'm out for the day. We have a lot of work planned---inside and out, weather permitting.

Dawn
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
This was the squash that fell off. It's kind of mushy, but no signs of fungus or insects that I can see. I am fertilizing it weekly with MG, plus it has Garden Tone in the hole and top dressed monthly.

Any guesses what kind of eggs these are on the zinnias? Bad picture because of wind, but they're tiny round clusters and black. I hit them with Spinosad yesterday, but now I wonder if they were good things.

Something is munching on the dwarf sunflowers.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
My new grandchild lol. Mom is a robin who built a nest on top of my electric meter.
luvncannin
6 years ago
If I miss some stuff I am sorry just say it again cuz I am fried. Market was great, fun and sooo busy! Really had a great time and as I answered questions and chatted I could hear all these years of GW advice coming out of my mouth, See I do pay attention.. lol.
Everyon loved the sachets. I didnt sell out but I bet next week they will be looking for them. Sold out beets, and sold 34# onions and most pecans. Mostly tho it was fun to be back in the swing and spend time with friends. Got a flat tire on the way home pooey. I am going to have to get new tires asap

I went to tour friends farm and see what his crops are doing and made sure to compliment everything I saw :) I hope it made him feel good. He did say I was the hardest working woman he ever met since I do everything by hand, no tractor. I am going to tell him to go to Oklahoma thats where the tough ones are.
I do understand about those water bills. When mine hits 100 do I go higher or shut it down.
Amy I do not grow lavender but I know where there is a whole bunch of it mmmhmm.
And foi as I toured my friends farms I noticed the blackeyed peas he planted before the last frost are puny, stalled for the last 2 weeks and yellowish. The ones he planted less than 10 days ago are almost as big and a vibrant healthy green. Same with his cukes. Very interesting and so I dont feel bad at all about being late to harvest but maybe I wont be that late. I was sad to see most of his onion necks broke over and he is going to leave them awhile longer "since they are not ready " I hope they dont rot but the way he trench floods they might. He fills his trenches with about 6 to 8 inches of water and those poor little babies are struggling to keep from drowning. He would laugh his head off if he saw how I water sometimes. My favorite scene in coalminers daughter (my fav movie) is when Loretta is putting the garden in and the little girl is following with a cup of water for each plant. I am like that.

Thank you all for well wishes for the market and I cant wait to load up and do it again
luvncannin
6 years ago
My booth, my onions dryong and look. This guy tried to hitch a ride to market lol
chickencoupe
6 years ago
Yellow Squash -- Thot I was having pollination problems. Fruit was weird-looking like above. Taught daughter to hand-pollinate. The hand pollinated are fine. I think it's the weather. Also I have the squash kinda hidden in the early corn to confuse squash bugs. Maybe pollinators are not finding it, but for us I think it is mostly weather.
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
Your booth looks awesome Kim!
jerrydaniel87
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
And the Frog don't look to bad either. I think your supposed to kiss those or something and they turn into Robert Redford.....so they say.
jlhart76
6 years ago
Today I weeded most of my front bed, planted some of my surprise volunteers, and potted up one container of basil that was packed with seedlings. I now have 18 pots, most with 3 plants each. Think that's enough??? And of course this was my unlabeled pot, so I don't know exactly what kinds they are. My labeled containers are still too small to thin, if they do well I'll have half a dozen varieties of basil.

My garden is a mish mash too. I'll plunk things down wherever theres a hole, then figure out it's not a good spot. But it makes for a interesting combination. I'll never win our neighborhood "prettiest yard" contest, but thats fine with me.
luvncannin
6 years ago
Nancy Thank you. I fuss with my display as i sell out. This was after an hour and i had already sold almost all my beets.

That's how I do my life plunk wherever and hope for the best. I did not kiss the frog. He spends his life in the shop happily. If I can catch him I will relocate him to the garden.
hazelinok
6 years ago
Kim, I love your booth and your little toad. What are those things hanging up? Are they the things with flowers in them? What are they exactly? I saw them on another post/thread. Is it soap or pretty things to display. I can't tell.

Jen, what are you gonna do with all that basil? I made pesto last night. We FOR SURE will never win a prettiest yard contest. Sometimes I think I should have worked on beautifying our property first, before working on the food gardens, but I don't really think that...just sometimes. Sometimes it's overwhelming--all the stuff I want to do. What kinds of basil do you grow?

Thanks for sharing your pictures, Rebecca. I like looking at other people's gardens and harvests.

I killed several squash bugs today. Removed a 4 or 5 clusters of eggs and found a group of baby squash bugs that must have just hatched. Question for Dawn (or for anyone who might have a guess), why do you think you have an occasional squash bug/SVB free year? Can you see a pattern?)

Pretty sure I saw a SVB moth. They are hard to catch.

I'm craving watermelon and it's going to be a long time before that craving will be satisfied -- at least from my garden.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Rebecca, I agree with Bon. It just looks like it didn't pollinate---doesn't look sick. For whatever reason, the pollinators missed that one. If the weather was cool and rainy or misty, that might be why.

Look closely at the black clumps on leaves and see if they could be caterpillar or some other insect frass. That's about what it looks like, and it generally ranges in color from green to black.

We always have at least one bird build a nest in an inappropriate place. Usually it is a Phoebe who builds one up under the front porch eaves. Then, the cats sit on the porch raining and jump up and knock down the nest, especially when there's baby birds in it. This year she built the nest, left and never came back so I think something must have happened to her. I have had small sonbirds build a nest inside a caged tomato plant before. Have had one the two last years. Generally I don't even notice them until they've been there a while and have baby birds chirping in them.

Kim, I'm glad your market day went so well and sorry about the flat tire. Your booth looked great. Maybe you could set up your little frog friend in a both and sell chances for $1.00 to "Kiss the Frog and See if He Turns Into A Prince". (grin)

Despite my determination to take weekends off, I slipped into the garden shortly before sunset and harvested about 30 or 40 tomatoes. Most are only at the breaker stage so I don't have to deal with them for a few more days. The tomatoes are starting to pile up all over the kitchen counters and soon will begin to overflow into the breakfast room. I am about to get real busy canning, but that's okay. It is sort of the whole point of planting so many tomato plants so that I get big harvests all at once. The sooner I start canning, the sooner I reach my canning goals and finish canning.

Kim, I'm the one standing and staring at the garden and trying to decide if the plants will die (or if fruit-bearing ones will get BER) if I don't water today. If I decide they won't, I postpone watering for one more day....and one more day....and one more day until it reaches the point that I know I should have watered yesterday.

Jen, I don't care about yard of the year either. I just cannot do much with the yard because everything I plant there becomes chicken chow, deer chow or rabbit chow, so all my good stuff is within the fenced garden. I am okay with that to some extent. It is my happy place. If Tim ever wants to have a nicely landscaped yard, he's going to have to fence it first. I've fed the deer all the lovely plants I intend to feed them.

Basil is coming up all over the flower border. I let it. At some point I'll have to yank out the excess basil when it begins to crowd out flowers or other herbs, but I'll leave all of it for as long as possible. Laura Bush also came up everywhere and is hogging all the space in the flower border. If I had more time, I'd dig up and transplant a bunch of them, but I just don't have that sort of time.

Kim, With regard to southern peas, I succession plant them all summer. It is amazing how quickly some of the late-planted ones will go into production. The heat really enables them to grow quickly and produce quickly. I bet yours will produce very quickly this year. I think when they are not exposed to any cold or excess moisture, they will beat earlier plantings of southern peas that had to deal with a few late nights and too much moisture.

I'm not a big fan of flood irrigation, perhaps because I mostly have clay soil. Oh, and a thrifty Yankee (he always says "I got down south as quickly as I could") husband who hates big water bills. Despite that, I've run up some big water bills at times, but am trying to stop doing that, other than watering perennials that need to be kept alive. We'll see how my resolve to water less holds up when the really hot, dry weather gets here.

Dawn
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Actually, Mama Robin is kind of genius. She's on the east side of the house, so out of 90% of the wind that comes through here, plus under the eaves, so out of direct rain. And she's been pecking at the bolting lettuce and some of the herbs in between hunting for worms and bugs. I keep a saucer of water out for her.
amunk01
6 years ago
Kim, love your stand! Your onions look great, and your mascot.. wink. Glad sales are going well! I just realized that's what I forgot to plant this spring! Beets! Ha

Dawn, I promise to be careful this summer. Yes, im a crazy gardener, but im also a crazy mama bear now lol so my desire to protect myself and the baby is slightly greater than protecting the garden luckily. Everything is planted pretty much, and I'm already prepared to enlist a lot of help once the real harvesting begins. I planted 107 tomato plants this year, and everything else to boot so my family have all already received the memo that their help will be required (hopefully)! Everything is mulched to death, so weeding should be minimal this year (fingers crossed). My main job will be containing/ pruning/ trellising the tomatoes! I did lose a fight with a rubber mallot today while assembling pvc tomato cages. I hate those cages but I keep using them because oof the financial/ time investment I put into them my first year gardening. Blasted my hand with it because I wasn't paying attention.. oops.

Jlhart, mismatched is an understatement around here too! I just cram in whatever, where ever! Sounds like youve have plenty of basil for pesto! My favorite! I set down my extra basil seeds somewhere a few days ago and have yet to locate them.. baby brain! Ugh.

Hi Bill, glad you joined us again! A little garden is still a garden! Hope your new pepper is settling in well.

Rebecca this is probably ridiculous, but you're sure that's not caterpillar poop right? The picture is too blurry for me to Id any kind of egg, but it sure looks like poo. Lol Oh, and I'm due Sept 5th!
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
Too much this weekend. Got lost of weeding done yesterday morning, and a bit of mulching. And then family/company from 3 until about 9. Then my computer went on the blink. First time since I got it in 2013. I've been wrestling with that since. Apple support helped somewhat, but I'm not convinced we've solved the problem. They're supposed to call back tomorrow and we'll see. So I had to go find my IPad and sidekick keyboard for it, charge it up. . .just in case. I couldn't even really read your posts last night; the computer wouldn't stay on long enough.

I fear the tomatoes nearly got drowned. I forgot I had the drip line over them Friday, and left it on far too long--AAGGHH. And then last night. . . It rained and it rained and it rained. My gauge said an even 3 inches when the rain stopped at noon today when we got home from church. I think we ended up being one of the wetter places in the state when all was said and done. Wagoner, just 10 miles away, got about 2" less than we did. My granddaughter's boyfriend and I were checking the radar last night just before they left to return home to Tulsa, and when we looked at the 2 am radar estimation, it was one big green spot covering the entire state--we got a good laugh out of that. We had a wonderful time with all 5 of them. Lots of fun and laughter.

But then the computer woes and rain! Busy morning at church, WAY too wet to do anything in the garden or yard; many of the taller too leggy plants/flowers in our too shady yard were flopped over, so I staked many up, and that's all that was done out there today. I was thrilled to note that our tiny 6 blueberry bushes have now taken off, after I added mulched leaves and compost to them last week. I picked some Japanese beetles out of the center bed and deck front bed.

I'm making lists for squash next year, so appreciate your discussion. I really am missing my zucchini this year, but am resigned to waiting for next year. . . And likely will forego it and do your Korean squash. Meanwhile I'm only going to do cucumbers and sweet potatoes this summer. Frankly, if I can get GDW to liking sweet potatoes, I may forego squash entirely. I was going to try some watermelon, but kinda don't have room--meanwhile the eggplant and okra are doing good! I understand that at any time disaster could strike in the form of deer or rabbits or squirrels or any number of other pests. . . So as always, I am hopeful but not counting on anything. And Kim, I lost one fig tree (I cannot remember where I planted it and it was so tiny, I haven't spotted it! lol I may be pleasantly surprised at some point, who knows.). BUT. . . Of the other two sprigs, I see little leaves on one of them! Yippee! And I'm glad I remembered I picked up some okra from one of you (Kim, I think) at SF. Because I had two IDKs, one in the hugelkultur-modified bed and one in the front shop bed. And NOW I realize those are the okra!

Dawn, where's your thrifty Yankee husband from? Lol. I'm glad you got an easy inch of rain finally! We have had big water bills in the summer, too, since I've been here. I keep trying to tell Garry it's because we take far more baths, not that we are using all that much in the yard (don't think he's buying it. . .) BUT. Now I'm using my rain gauge to see exactly how long I leave the hoses on in each spot, and it will save on the water bill a bit this year, as I'm also more conscientious about remembering to move the hoses or shut the water off. I have determined that it takes 3-3 1/2 hours for an inch for our particular sprinklers.

Hi Bill. . . Are you having problems finding folks who love gardening? I've only found one other couple of nutso gardeners here (about 40 miles east and a little south of Tulsa). I think I'm joining the local garden club, but I'm not convinced any of them are nuts about it like, say, the OKGW. :)

Jen, my kind of gardens too. An absolute and fun mish mash!

Alexis. I've noticed lots of aphids, too. . . And today noticed two little lady bugs. Come on ladybugs, need more of you!

And JerryI am sold. Gonna get me some blackberry bushes!!! Oh my gosh!

I put 3-4 nicotiana in the bed right in front of the deck, and it is so nice to walk by on the deck and smell that lovely smell! I'm so hoping the brugmansia will bloom this year. It's growing beautifully so far and is about 3 1/2 ft tall and about 3' in diameter; Y-forked about 6 inches above ground and now looks like each of those branches are going to fork again. I read that it's a heavy nitrogen feeder, so have put a couple batches of grass clippings down by it, and gave it a 3-1-1 hit last week. Those of you who grow these, do you think it's conceivable it will bloom this year?

I'm still largely in waiting-to-see-what-will-happen mode with everything. Veggies and flowers. Ho hum waiting on tomatoes and potatoes and peppers; picking a pepper here and there now and then. My parsley plants are definitely biennials. And the curly-leafed one/s grow tap roots 2 feet deep! Right now one of them and one of the flat-leaved ones have bolted and it makes me laugh to see they are like 4 1/2 feet tall!!

Not many of the load-carrying flowers have yet bloomed. Zinnias are out in force, nicotiana have been going for about a week; some small spider plants have small spider plant flowers; 4 o'clocks are going, some rudbeckia, and the tithonia are just starting, along with the bee balm and Shasta daisies. Should be very colorful in another couple weeks. I'm excited about all. . . The echinacea are looking promising, along with the milkweed; verbenas planted from seed are filling out more all the time. . .ornamental peppers are growing and beginning to produce little tiny peppers. Meanwhile the pink endless summer hydrangea blooms, while not as profuse as last year's purple ones, were Enormous, some of them easily 10-12 inches in diameter. The 3 inches of rain last night knocked some of them to the ground. I'm considering (just considering) staking them up.

The avocado tree trapped out in the fenced raised bed area, between a raised bed and the bordering timbers, with 6" of space between the two, is about 3-4 feet tall now and with a "trunk" about an inch in diameter. What a hoot that is. We're gonna have to cut out the fence right there in a day or 2. And THEN what! LOL We'll play it by ear.

Have a good week, everyone!!
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
I have no idea what caterpillar frass looks like, so no, I don't know that it isn't that, lol. Y'all know more than I do.
luvncannin
6 years ago
Hazel those are my new fun chemical free air fresheners. Wax sachets with dried herbs fruits and flowers. Not for cars but great for home, closets, drawers etc.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
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