Babushka: I am growing 9 varieties this season. Amos Coli, Big Mama, Mariana, Pony Express, Rio Grande, Roma Va Select, San Marzano, Supersauce & Viva Italia. This is a trial (some of those varieties I discovered from GardenWeb research) to narrow down to fewer varieties for future years. As far as BER, I mentioned a few days ago that Amos Coli is super susceptible and I've tossed most of the tomatoes from that plant so far, disappointing. I have been using TTF which claims "no more BER" and adding Epsom salts to fertilizer and trying for consistent moisture but I have still experienced some (a few on certain varieties, some none at all) not as much as previous seasons though. I think some is inevitable. Right now a variety that I can recommend to you for your own trialing is Viva Italia (which is a GardenWeb favorite) due to high yields, smaller fruit size but pound for pound is the leader so far. Others are still inconclusive but I can try and keep you apprised.

Nice harvest Hokie!! I hear you on the long hours of canning to come. I'll probably be spending at least 5-6 hours putting up stuff this weekend. Salsa, pickles, and a batch of Jalapeno poppers at least. I also need to peel, slice, and dehydrate a dozen or so garlic bulbs that had some damage that will prevent them from storing well.

itsmce - I have only grown Sarah's Choice cantaloupe and they are supposed to only be about 3 lbs. but most of them got to about 5 lbs. in my garden. I got tired of the raccoons and possums getting more of them then I did so not growing any this year. Actually 5 pounds is bigger than any single 'fruit' that I will harvest this year. Have you tried Murphy's Oil soap on the Spider Mites? That is what Digdirt (Dave) recommends at one Tbsp. per quart of water.

Kevin - I do think your tomatoes would benefit from TTF this year as long as they don't get taken out by the Septoria and are still blooming and setting new fruit. The TTF does seem to encourage more blooming and fruit set and really seems to help size up the fruit that do set. I've been feeding mine about once every 7-10 days with a Tbsp. per gallon of water according to instructions. Make sure you shake it real good initially and then again for 5-10 seconds before each use because it separates quickly. I pour a half pint or so into a separate container before each feeding to make it easier to measure out. The dealer map on the Urban Farms website only shows local dealers in Texas, and Louisiana so most of us are SOL on finding it locally.

Man did it rain here overnight. Widespread totals of 4" or more and the local news is showing my area got over 6" and it's still coming down. I had to make 2 detours on the way to work due to high water on the roads. Interstate 35 has been completely closed in both directions due to high water so the morning commute is going to be a mess for a lot of folks. I see some bland waterlogged tomatoes in my future but the bright side is that will add more weight to my harvest totals! I didn't harvest anything but cherries last night but hopefully I won't have much splitting. At least I won't have to water anything this weekend!

Chris - that stinks about getting the wrong seeds from BC but they are indeed beautiful flowers!. So I assume the milk weed won't have a chance to overwinter since it is a tropical? Or is it an annual?

Speaking of seeds, if any of you order Orange Jazz for next year there are not a lot of online vendors that offer it. I ordered mine from Totally Tomatoes but Grow Artisan also offers it and is supposed to be a reputable dealer. Whatever you do don't order OJ (or anything else) from Reimer seeds because you will probably either get seeds that germinate poorly or some other tomato entirely.

Jack, jeez! 6" from a storm seems a bit abnormal! Is that a somewhat common thing down there? Thanks for the heads up about the OJ. I meant to buy some seeds last week and forgot. I don't think this milkweed will overwinter here, but it is normally a perennial.

Chris - no 6" is very abnormal from one storm and especially in just a 3-4 hour period. We rarely get 6" of SNOW from a single storm!

You should be a photographer for a gardening magazine or Johnny's seeds or something Chris. Great picture! The Bumblebee series was developed by the same breeders that developed Orange Jazz.

Hokie - Beautiful haul! That's another magazine quality photo!

Itsmce - glad you were able to share the 'putting up' chores (and fun) with the D.I.L. Is always nice having an extra hand and Im sure she appreciated the time spent together and learning something new.

Jack - I pulled the trigger on the TTF. From what I've seen the septoria is still there but manageable, and there is plenty of new blossoms and green growth that can support new blossoms. My problem is going to be what to do with the height of the plants... they have all outgrown the tops of the support structures (over 7 feet). I've read about topping them but I really don't have much lateral room for them to grow either with how close the plants are spaced. I guess I need to study up on the physiology of tomato plant growth... will existing branches bear new trusses or would I need to do some serious pruning and let the new suckers start growing to create their own trusses and fruits?

Those are the kinda rain totals usually seen from tropical cyclones! 6" of rain would probably equate to roughly 60" of snow! These rain systems have been very crazy this year. I hope that's not something we have to deal with going forward.

Thanks! I recently remembered that my brother-in-law had left me his old Nikon D50 camera and it takes beautiful shots. I didn't know that about OJ! I thought it was Wild Boar Farms, but I just read that it's Fred Hempel from Artisan Seeds. I'm growing Pink Boar and Pink Berkeley Tie Dye tomatoes from Wild Boar Farms' Brad Gates as well. Those also look very cool, but aren't ripe yet.

Chris - gorgeous cherry tomatoes and gorgeous photo! Agreed with the weather. I always wonder whether it feels like we experience worse weather than in the past or whether we are exposed to much more newscasts/social media/weather tracking data sets that it feels as such but not guided in facts.

ETA - sorry for the whether/weather tongue twister.

Kevin - Haha - at least you used the right spelling in each instance. You may be right that we hear more about the weather extremes than we did years ago but it sure seems that the climate is changing for good or bad.

The new trusses should be from the new growth at the top of the plant. I just let my tomatoes droop down after they top the cage which they are doing now. It makes harvesting more difficult because I have to move branches out of the way to see the interior of the plants. I'm sure last night's storm rearranged some of the branches so I may do some pruning of branches without any blossoms this weekend

Thanks, Kevin! We have definitely seen some weather changes in our lifetime. Whether or not that is part of a larger trend that we as mankind have never seen or tracked before, is another thing.

I'm starting to experience the gangly growth with my potted cherry tomato plants now. While the cages make harvesting a pain, they do help keep the plants supported. Tomatillo plants are the worst! They get massive and their branches are not nearly as sturdy as tomatoes.

Jack - I had forgotten that I did use Murphy's Oil Soap once on my tomatoes, etc. to tackle spider mites, thanks to DigDirt's suggestion. I'll try that again. I suppose I should take a piece of white paper out to the garden with me again. I've been assuming that I've still got those pesky mites. the plants sure look like it, but I suppose it could be something else.

Re: cantaloupe: I grow Ambrosia. A few years ago I picked one that was over 10 pounds! It was a beast. It had been a really wet spring and early summer. That was possibly also the year I harvested a 49.5 pound Crimson Sweet watermelon. It was all I could do to get that sucker out of the patch!

Re: Paste Tomatoes: My varieties this year are Margherita and Supremo. Margherita had been my go-to paste tomato, but I tried Supremo a few years ago. I'm leaning towards Supremo now. Those 3 plants have had very little blossom end rot, whereas the early-to-ripen ones on especially one of my Margherita plants were nearly all ber duds. I have noticed some cracking on the Supremo fruit lately. If it's not one thing, it's another!

Two mornings in a row now I have trapped and relocated a possum. Yuck. I know they eat lots of bugs, but I think they also enjoy my peaches...So off he went to the local park.

Itsmce, good idea. I should take a piece of paper out and look at what I think are mites. They're tiny and black and jump/run around kind of fast. And there's back debris/spots/speckling on the backs of the dahlia leaves. I applied the combo neem oil on Tuesday but I think after the 4"+ of rain my yard got last night I will reapply again tonight or tomorrow. The storm here was intense last night! Not as high of winds as the one we had on Saturday night, but much much more rain. The basketball courts I pass on my way to work were underwater up to the rim! They're right by a creek, though.

Good luck on the possum! My dad once tried to trap rabbits in his yard but got three (different) possums three mornings in a row so he gave up and took a break. I heard on a nature show once that possums eat something like 90% of ticks they come across! I'm fine if they're around as long as it's in the middle of the night and I don't see them. :-)

That sounds like flea beetles, Sunflowers. I have them pretty bad up here this year. They are loving the tomatoes. Can't believe the rain you and Jack got from that storm!

Yep...spider mites. Both on the 2nd planting of bush beans that are starting to get close to blooming and on the tomato plants. I didn't do the paper test on the melons, but I'm sure at least the watermelon are affected. They sure look like it.

Sooo...I decided to mix up some Murphy's Oil Soap solution as Jack reminded me. It was super calm here this evening, which is fairly rare here. Seemed like a good time to spray. Bad news? I discovered one of my biggest watermelon had split open. Even though it was immature, I ate the heart out of it. Had reasonable flavor.

I took a couple pictures of my sad tomato plants.

@hokie - thanks for the insights on the varieties you are trying out. i have heard of viva italia and had planned to try that next year, good to hear the confirmation. will let you know how my san marzanos and amish paste do..... close to ripening now.

Ok I'm in.

Nice looking tomatoes there, Steve. Did you shine them up before the photo shoot?

Steve - Looking good, glad to see you 'on the board'.

Itsmce – sorry to hear and see that mite damage to the plants. As far as getting down/discouraged goes I was right there with you when I first started battling my plantsseptoria…. It felt like I was going to trim away every single leaf on every single
plant with the way it was spreading so fast… I know this sounds superficial but I was legitimately down in the dumps about it. All the hard work and raising the plants from seed and talking up my gardening plans for the year and here I was potentially having to toss out 50% of my planting space and my number one crop in tomatoes and start anew. Luckily I was able to be diligent about spraying the plants every chance I got with bleach and getting on a fungicide program. I also got lucky with the
weather where it dried out for a little bit, taking the ball out of the fungus’ hands and back into mine.

I hope you can find the tools (sounds like you got some good advice on the murphy oil – keep applying it!) and diligence to get on top of the mite problem, and that you have a little luck on your side too (it always helps!).

My best advice is that you cant be over aggressive in these situations. Push the boundary a little on the recommended dosages and frequencies. Look into other (even non-organic) alternatives. If you see any leaves that are highly infested just clip them out and burn/pitch them...yea the plant will look ugly immediately after and you might lose some fruits but it just might save the plant later. An ugly plant is better than a dead plant.

Couple pics to share. Overall of the garden. I think I need to do some selective pruning on the tomatoes - they are starting to get overcrowded. Thinking there might have been a tad too much nitrogen in the soil... there are a good number of flowers and fruits but it seems more 'vegetative'.... I dunno, maybe is just due to extreme close spacing. (BTW, check out the 'melon' at the bottom right. Its been growing for four+ years, still ripening! ;-)

I got suckered into a clearance sale at Tractor Supply. $5 a piece for these grow bag/supports - I bought all 6 they had left. They are 10 gallon bags and the supports are admitted weak at maybe 3 feet high. They aren't the best thing in the world but figured with the fancy aesthetics they would be acceptable by S.O. to grow outside of the garden next year (giving me more space to experiment). I'll probably do determinate bush type tomatoes or peppers (despite the label) in them.

Made some fresh salsa last night... so tasty. We omitted cilantro because my plants are not looking too good and honestly didn't have a nice aroma to them.

Texas tomato food is supposed to be delivered Saturday which is perfect timing, I've been delaying a round of feeding.

Hmm going to go look up flea beetles!

Kevin, that salsa looks delicious and so fresh!

Can someone provide link to the famous salsa referenced on this thread? would be interested to try.....

Babuska - here is Annies Salsa - that's the famous one (that can be safely canned).

http://faq.gardenweb.com/discussions/2766092/annies-salsa-recipe

This is what I generally used for my fresh salsa last night (not cannable). Note I add a good heaping of garlic:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/214893/the-best-fresh-tomato-salsa/

itsmce, I'm sorry to hear about your garden troubles. Just think about the successes you've had. One of the greatest things about gardening, in my opinion, is the challenges it presents. Not everyone does it because it's not easy! You've got lots of melons left too! Hope you can get everything under control. I also get very discouraged too. We are all on this forum because we share a passion for gardening, so I think it's only natural that we feel down when things go south. Like Kevin said, we put a lot of hard work into these plants and gardens.

Steve, beautiful maters!! Looks like you'll be eking your way up the tomato charts soon.

Kevin, your garden is flourishing nicely! I laughed out loud about the melon! haha! Salsa is looking great!

Speaking of garden issues, I discovered the early onset of powdery mildew on my zucchini plant. I removed the leaf, and sprayed a potassium bicarbonate solution on everything within a 3 mile radius lol. I also have some interesting disease on my Jaune Flamme tomato plant. Top outer leaves have some browning and are drying up. We are expecting rain and cool temps tomorrow, so let's see what happens. Not much else to report here. I feel like I've been waiting for my beefsteak tomatoes to ripen for 2 years. Now that Steve's have begun ripening, I should be close.

Chris - I have a bunch of powdery mildew on my squash... I've always just found that this signaled the time to pull it out was coming soon ... should I be worried about letting it drift onto other plants? Ive never noticed it affecting my tomatoes, peppers, or others in the past.

If you have cucumbers and yellow squash nearby, like I do, yeah. My cucurbits produced late this year and the Marketmore cukes are just starting to yield fruit. Don't know what caused their late growth, but I'm not ready for them to be done yet! lol

Chris & Kevin - thanks for the encouraging words. It can be a struggle at times. My sister-in-law has made the comment that gardeners are eternal optimists. So true.

The good news this afternoon is that I picked 3 cantaloupe totaling 18 pounds, 9 ounces.

The bad news is that the cucumber beetles are getting pretty bad. Tomorrow morning I will tackle that. I'm thinking carbaryl is the way to go, right? I wouldn't mind those pesky bugs but I know they carry whatever causes bacterial wilt. 2 years ago my 'loupes were just about to start ripening when the plants died essentially overnight. I figure it was due to bacterial wilt.

Thanks to this thread, I knew that the way to handle Japanese beetles was drop them in soapy water. I heard buzzing in my peach tree. I went inside to prep a container with hot soapy water. Back out to the tree. I used the lid of the container to trap the beetles and the peach in the container. When they quit moving, I removed them. 27 of the suckers on that peach. Sadly, a few got away. Thanks for the knowledge that you all share.

May you all have a successful gardening weekend!

Itsmce - those looks like June bugs, not Japanese beetles. Not much difference pest wise other than they are bigger and cause more damage quicker. To me they seem to be harder to capture too so good job getting that many!

@kevin - Thank you for the salsa recipes, much appreciated! I am a huge fan of bruschetta, will search for a good recipe and post.

@steve - Congrats on the tomato harvest commencement - let the good times roll!

@itsmce - Stunning melons, way to go. melons are THE BEST in summer, so refreshing on a hot day. I like them with tuna salad.

Update to my tomato harvest tally:

Carmello: 1 pd

Amish Paste: 4.6 oz - first of the pastes and ***fingers crossed*** no BER right now......

Paul Roebson: 4 oz

Quite possibly my most favorite thing when I come home from work is to put down the purse and briefcase, pet the cat and immediately go out to the kitchen garden, to see how things are progressing. I am learning from you and now picking tomatoes as they blush...Pictures of recent petite harvests below.

So here is how my broccoli V2.0 (Pacman Fall edition) is doing.

Babushka: let me know if you find any winners on the bruschetta. I am a big fan of the stuff at Costco, "Hannah" I believe? But they aren't sharing their recipe obviously.

Steve: Interesting seedling, always fun to find a mutant. It looks like some sort of kale to me that may have accidentally made it into your packet.

We finally got some rain here last night!! I caught a possum in the trap last night too, this will be the fourth possum I have relocated this season. I have also had to start shooting squirrels due to tomato theft and ruination. That's a crime punishable by death in my backyard.

Babushka-great looking petite harvest! That first pic looks very artsy. Add me to the list of wanting that winner bruschetta recipe if you find it!

Steve - good looking broccoli babies 2.0! You reminded me that I need to pot mine up. It's significantly easier in summer (compared to March) to forget about the garage seedlings when there's so much "work" to do out in the main garden.

We got over 3 inches of rain ovrernight and still counting. They are calling it a rare summer nor'Easter. Add that to list of weather I don't remember in my lifetime. As soon as it stops I'm breaking out a heavy handed dilution of bleach spray for the tomatoes and baking soda for the squashes powdery mildew I think (as long as it stays cloudy and the suns not beating down). I'd be fine if the zucchini and yellow squash had to be pulled but I want my cukes to keep producing.

Supposed to have a high of 75 here today!

I harvested my garlic today. 11 plants only. If I counted that right, I have a total of 49 individual bulbs, with a range of 3 to 6 bulbs per plants. I'll most likely plant all of these in October to have more next year.

Instead of just pictures, I thought I'd do a video.

Cantaloupes look awesome, itsmce! Looks like Kevin is right on the identification. Green June Beetles. It's all the same to you. The beetles actually look really cool.

babushka, nice harvest! Love how it looks being right on the vine. Beautiful presentation!

Steve, seedlings are looking great! That one seedling is really strange! Like Hokie said, it kinda does have a kale look to it, but weird that it is kinda thorny.

Kevin, these storm systems are insane this year! We were supposed to get rain Friday and Saturday from the same storm, but then it completely missed us. Been cool here too. We are getting early fall temps in the hottest part of the year. Don't know how this will affect the heat-loving plants.

Great garlic harvest, isgen! Nice large bulbs. I'll be cleaning up the last of my garlic today actually.

Yeah, I'm happy with the size of my garlic. They had about 3 leaves out of 8 turned yellow and wilted, probably could have waited a bit more, but I had to sow some fall crops before it's too late. I also didn't want to lose too many papery layers. One of my garlic turned out a bit funky: first, the scape punched through the sidewall at the base of the stem and it's also my smallest one; three OK size bulbs and a small one starting to detach from the rest.

I really want to grow more garlic, but can't dedicate so much space to it in my current garden layout, I'll have to figure how to maximize and optimize my space to make it happen!

Isgen- garlic looks great. I love the looks of your soil too. That must be one great advantage to raised beds...no soil compaction.

Yesterday's tomato harvest: I picked 10# of slicers, 17# of paste, and 1.25# of grape tomatoes. I canned 5 quarts of 14 pounds that had been picked earlier in the week.

I picked 3 more cantaloupe this morning. 21 pounds 10 ounces for those three. The biggest so far this season is 7 pounds 6.5 ounces.

isgen - beautiful garlic!

This is about half of my Alisa Craig harvest. Not too bad, but not as good as last year.

This is what I got from the Wethersfield. Total waste. They are a zap, along with Baker's Creek. Sticking with Johnny's next year.

itsmce: good harvest numbers, how many tomato plants do you have? I am not a fan of raised beds so I work around compaction by using dedicated paths and dedicated rows. I picked another 23 lbs of tomatoes today and have put up 10 quarts so far. Should make a ton of sauce this year.

Peter: Your Ailsa Craig's there did better than I have ever gotten out of them! Must be your latitude. My Walla Wallas didn't size up to full potential nor did the Spanish yellow types (Copra & Patterson) I grew this year. Seeded and Dixondale starts had equally sub-par results. I think the very wet spring made this a down onion year.

@itsmce - yeah, my soil looked pretty good under the somewhat crusted topmost half-inch. I don't know how much it'd due to my "raised" bed, hardly being a foot high. It's really more to clearly separate it from the surrounding lawn, but glad if it helps!

My first garlic harvest, cured and cleaned up! I planted 1 pound of seed garlic, and it generated 3.25 pounds of garlic in return. I will plant again this Oct. Now sorting these to set aside the largest for seed garlic. My first eggplant flower continues to swell, thinking there might be a baby Rosa Bianca in there!!!

Hokiehorticulture - I have 12 tomato plants. 1 Big Beef, 2 Celebrity, 1 Jetstar, 1 super sweet (grape), 4 Margherita, and 3 Supremo.

I just gave about 8-10 pounds to my son's inlaws who were here for a brief visit. Also sent them away with 4 cantaloupe to enjoy while they are with my son and DIL for a few days.

As I was showing off the garden to the visitors I noticed that I've got another 2 or 3 cantaloupe that will be ripe in the next 24 hours. Need to go find the neighbor to give one to.

I hope everyone had a great weekend in the garden. It sounds like a lot of harvesting going on now.

Peter and Hokie - It was not a good onion year here either. The Candy, Red Candy, and Superstar that were from Dixondales did reasonable well but the 2 types I grew from seed were a waste of space. I'm going to just buy the Dixondale starts that I can get locally next year. They started carrying Copra so I will try that again as a long keeper. I will only start bunching onions and leeks from seed.

Steve - Your broccoli starts are looking good! I agree the mutant looks like a kale/broccoli cross. It will to cool to see what it turns into this fall. I have about 50 brassicas that are about 3.5 weeks old. I'm going to start hardening them off on Tuesday and plant them out August 12 weekend.

itsmce - wow you are rolling in produce! I wish there were some way to preserve cantaloupe since they always seem to all ripen at the time.

My tomatoes have kind of hit a ripening lull at the moment. I only picked 6 Big Beef and one Orange Jazz over the weekend. My peppers are really starting to ripen up fast though. I picked about a dozen ripe sweet peppers over the weekend. My total harvest is getting close to 500 lbs. Cucumbers made the biggest contribution this weekend with over 20 lbs harvested. Total cucumber harvest for the year is just under 80 lbs. I will have a dilemma in a couple weeks when my broccoli and cauliflower are ready to go out because some are going in the beds where most of the cukes are currently growing. I will either have to prune the cukes down so they are only growing on the trellis or just rip them out completely. I should have plenty of pickles put up by then but I would like to keep the Sweet Success slicers going as long as possible.

I made a batch of dill pickles on Friday, a batch of 48 Jalapeno poppers on Saturday using Linda Lou's recipe from the Harvest forum here, and a batch of Annie's Salsa on Sunday.

I sowed carrots on Saturday. 40 row feet of Bolero and 30 feet of Purple Haze. I was going to plant some Napoli too but I was having too much fun sowing the pelleted seed that I didn't want to spoil the fun by having to plant the tiny little conventional Napoli seed. I watered them in and then covered them with cardboard to help keep them moist. They should be sprouting by mid week.

Add me to the list of a slightly disappointing onion season. I'll end up somewhere around 50 lbs of cured onions from the over 300+ plants planted, which turns out to be a small ~3 oz per bulb average. I had a couple nice baseball sized ones though - I think the biggest was 13 oz or so.

I had an opportunity to test out the kitchenaid strainer for tomato sauce this weekend. Wow it is amazing! It does a little better if you run the 'waste' through the system twice but that is no big deal compared to the time saved not having to boil/ice bath. I did about 5-6 lbs of tomatoes and the sauce was turned into a marinara/pizza sauce that I used Saturday night. Cant get any fresher than that!

Brandywine still holding out - the last to blush.

^^ The big beef sucker experiment looks like it will be a success as long as I can keep it disease free. It looks mangled and ugly because I just wrangled it into the cage before taking the photo. There are a few fruits set already.

Habenero and Ghost Chilis. Some of the habs are just starting to 'blush' orange.

Not a fox like babushka, but our canine garden protector. We used to have the invisible fence line ran right through the garden so he wouldn't come in. I've since re-routed it around the outside and trained him that its okay to come in and help scare off pests for us.

Broccoli (~20 plants) and cauliflower (~8 plants) after a pot up session. They have some crinkly leaves due to me missing a watering but should bounce back hopefully. Im in the same boat as Jack - I plan to plant these in spaces that are likely still going to be producing finely for me for a while (cucumbers, eggplant, and squash beds). I may end up planting them at the foot of the cucumber vines and pruning the bottom leaves - the vines still have a little while to go before they are fully supported on the trellises. Might also just rip out the squash bed (yellow, zucchini, and spaghetti) as they are all pretty engrossed with powdery mildew right now.

Cute dog Kevin! Is it a Labradootle?

Wow - your Brandywine really set a lot of fruit! They are not known for high production. Is that one that had the bad case of Septoria a month ago? TTF does seem to increase blooming pretty quickly. My plants aren't putting on many blossoms lately because of the heat but now that it has cooled down into the low 80s they should start to set again. Not sure if that is good or bad. lol I can't even tell from the pictures that your tomatoes had/have Septoria. Your treatment regimen seems to be doing the trick.

I always run the waste back thru my tomato strainer at least once too. Those chili peppers look dangerous!

Thanks Jack. The dog is a 7 y.o. golden doodle. The plants that have the septoria the most are Homestead (dead center behind the bench in the below pic). You cant tell from the overall picture but they are pretty severely infected still and I've been pruning them heavy. I will not be growing Homestead again in my garden. I've been able to keep the septoria away from the Brandywine for the most part. Those fruits just keep getting bigger and bigger, not a single one has blushed yet. There may be a 2 lb'er contender in there depending on how much longer they can hold out.

I'm debating whether to build a monstrosity of a tomato support system since the plants are all still doing really well and have all exceeded the top of the existing 6-7ft supports. The idea would be to attach 8 or 10 ft lengths of 2x material directly to the edges of the beds (the stick up parts in the below picture) with deck screws, and then run strings or wire through and around those to give me something additional to tie the plants to. I'd need to keep a ladder or at least a step stool in the garden then.

That makes me wonder - where has sloan been? I should have went with her 2x4 “swingset” style supports from the get go. Next year I think I will do more of those stake-a-cages but set the welded wire fencing at least two (maybe 3) feet off the ground so I have a full 7 or 8 feet of support.

Wow, everyone's harvesting left and right here! We've had a glut of Cherokee Purple tomatoes begin to ripen all at once, which is nice since we have a dinner planned for next weekend where we can use them. I hope the plant sets more fruit now that it's starting to cool down for a few days.

I harvested a tasty Tromboncino squash for dinner tonight. The taste is somewhat similar to zucchini, but it's a bit...denser? They don't seem to shrink as much when I sauté them, and don't have the melt-in-your-mouth texture that zucchini have. Then again, this is my first year growing it and my third time sautéing it, so take it with a grain of salt.

Over the weekend I went to the Kansas State University Research and Extension office's Field Day, where they open up their trial gardens to the public. It was awesome! They trial hundreds of flowers each year and rate them by their ability to survive the Kansas climate. I also got to hear some KState students speak about their research projects in the vegetable area (the projects related to grafting, shade cloth, fertilizer, etc.). It was heaven and I would love to go back!

Here are a few pictures:

Sunflowers- that is very cool to experience that type of cutting edge research! I went to penn state and actual have an ag and bio engineering degree but it's in storm water management / natural resources area and I admittedly didn't take advantage of the "ag" knowledge that I could have. That and not fishing in the area are two regrets I have of my college days. I guess I could have worse regrets!

Here's the start to my monstrosity supports.

Kevin - I've built supports like you are describing before. I would screw some eyes into the 2x and then run coated wire between the boards and tie the tomato vines to the wires.

Sunflowers - I'm glad you are finally getting lots of tomatoes! Most of the black tomatoes that I have grown seem to be almost semi determinate and most of the fruit ripen in a short time span and then a few straggle in after that. It is starting to get close to the time when any new fruit set won't have time to ripen or won't ripen until late September or October in cool weather and the quality will decline.

How are your Brussels Sprouts doing?

That sounds like a cool field trip you had. Was it in the Manhattan area? Years ago I went on a tour of the USDA center in Ames, Iowa which was pretty cool.

If I didn't look at a calendar I would swear we skipped right from July to September here. Our 15 day forecast is showing 11 days with highs in the 70s and tomorrow is the only day over 81. Gotta love it!

I actually snapped a few pictures last evening. I was going to take a few of the garden as well but it started raining.

These are most of my fall broccoli and cauliflower. I have one additional tray that I needed to top off with more Promix before bringing them out. Yesterday was their first day hardening off.

They grow up so fast...It's always so hard to let them go out on their own!

Garden pictures · More Info

Bunching onions have been outside for about a week now. I need to get them in the ground this weekend.

Garden pictures · More Info

Jack - those broccoli and cauliflower starts are looking great!

We have similar upcoming weather here. I assume most of the veggies will appreciate the cool down from 90+ degree days.

Would love to see some updated photos of your garden if you get a chance.

For the structure - Im thinking I may actually run a couple 1" strips of wood horizontally to lock those stakes in place a little better. Then tie strings off to plants from that. Its going to be a nightmare pulling that all down after this season though.

So I'm preparing one of my 24ft beds for Broccoli now that the garlic is out of it. I turned the soil with my fork and watered it heavily then put the clear plastic over it. My hope is that this will cause seed germination and then death via the high temperature to clear out the weeds. We will see. This 4ft x 8ft section previously had lettuce and Bok-choy the remaining 16 ft x 4ft had the garlic.