Dawn and Rebecca: I am feeding my tomatoes in containers once a week with water-soluble fertilizers....alternating with MG for Tomatoes (18-18-21) one week, and Jack's Tomato Feed (12-15-30) with Micro-nutrients the next week. In between, I am giving a diluted supplement of Garret Juice once per week when watering mid week. I also sprayed them today with Epsom Salt. I've ordered some Fox Farm Tiger Bloom, which is 2-8-4, and it should be here tomorrow. I am all over the place, aren't I? lol We won't even talk about the fungicides, etc. Let's just say I am hovering. That's usually never a good thing.

Am I fertilizing too much? Too little? At the wrong intervals? I don't do container vegetables, so this is a new experience for me. I just want to keep them healthy and fed.

Thanks!

Mary

I am going to read tomorrow morning to catch up. I thought of several things today that I wanted to reply to...but I can't think of them now. Maybe it's 'cause I'm tired. Maybe it's the glass of wine. Maybe it's...who knows.

BUT, the babies are in their coop! They didn't want to go into their little door, so like a dork, I carried them in through the garden shed area to the coop. Ridiculous. They won't roost. And I made Tom make a little roost for them. They are huddled in a corner. It's very sad. I'm sure they will figure it out. Now I'm thinking...have we predator proofed everything?! Does anyone have a baby monitor I can borrow? LOL. I"m just kidding. Sort of.

And...why don't I ever feel the earthquakes everyone is freaking out about?

Rebecca, As long as the Thumbelina's look healthy and don't show fertilizer burn, they haven't been overdosed. They've probably just enjoyed the relatively cooler summer weather this year. You know, while the heat index has been very trying at times, the actual air temperatures have not been all that high overall, especially in your part of the state, and plants only respond to heat---so the heat index doesn't apply to them the way it applies to humans and animals. I bet they just are so tall because they are happy and healthy. Littleleaf does produce an impressive amount of flowers, and you should get lots of cucumbers once the females show up.

The general recommendation is to sow your bluebonnet seeds in October or November, but I expect you could sow them now to take advantage of the moisture that's in the forecast. After all, the bluebonnets I grow alongside the driveway dropped their seeds in July and those seeds will lie there on the ground until they get enough scarification to allow them to sprout. So, I don't see how it hurts to sow your seeds now.

Mary, Because edible plants in containers have to be watered so often in hot climates, the general recommmendation is to dilute the water soluble fertilizer to one-third to one-fourth full strength, depending on how often you are watering or getting rainfall, so you essentially are feeding every time you water but at a lower rate. So, if I was watering container-grown veggies every other day, I'd look at the label directions for diluting the fertilizer in water and cut it to 1/4th and then be sure to remember to feed at each watering. This is what works best to keep the plants well fed since nutrients leach out of the growing medium each time you water or each time it rains.

Jennifer, Congrats on getting the babies' coop completed. I know it has been hard in all the heat to be out there working on it in the evenings and on weekends. Young chicks often won't roost until they are about half-grown. I think it is more in their nature to huddle together like they do when they are being raised by their mama hen. We let our last batch of chicks stay with their mother for their first couple of weeks and every time a human being walked into the coop, all those chicks ran and huddled beneath her or behind her as she spread out her wings to cover them. If I walked in quietly enough sometimes, they wouldn't notice me for a few seconds, and I'd be treated to the sight of at least a couple of them sitting on top of their mom, which was the cutest thing.

If your coop is not predator proof you'll know soon enough and will be able to take corrective action. Our small coop was predator proof from day one, but Tim took some building instructions too literally while building the big coop (I'm guessing they were written more with air flow in mind than with predator proofing) and left narrow open air vents along the roof eaves (now filled in with insulation and covered with quarter-inch hardware cloth) that snakes and weasels entered through. Since we fixed that, we haven't had a predator get into the coop at night in ages. If you ever have a weasel get into a chicken coop, you'll never forget it, but I would guess weasels are not common there. I think we only have them here because of our proximity to all the Wildlife Management Area land along the Red River.

Melissa, Well at least you found it now! It isn't too long yet and you ought to be able to catch up.

Now, I need to get off this computer pretty quickly and get outdoors to take advantage of the cool morning air because we're headed for a high in the 90s today.

Dawn

Trying to recover from too little sleep for days is not working. I was in my garden in Friday, left Saturday at 5am for market and came home Tuesday at midnight. Four nights in a row I had 4 hour or less of sleep. So glad to be home to sleep.

Person responsible for taking care of my place did not do it. Rabbit was hungry and out of water, most of the squash did not get water dead, dog with new litter of pups since Monday did not get fed, flower garden herb area and trees did not get watered. How do people agree to do something and then not do it? Sad

Everything on drippers is fine and blackeyed peas are good. But every area is covered in 4 foot careless weeds. That rain helped everything.

Doing really awesome are Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, okra is huge but not producing yet, cantaloupes have babies, cucumbers, some herbs, flowers, greenbeans, broom corn.

Nancy my heart goes out toyou being in one place and feeling like you need to be in the other place. When I am here I need to be by mom when I am there I need to be here. Mother was mad at me because I did not spend any time with her doing chores. I told her before I came down but she is forgetting. She should know the drill, I have been going to this convention 19 years. I get up at 4 pack meals get into downtown before traffic gets bad get back home and in bed at midnight. It's an intense week. I have stayed at the hotel downtown and it is awesome. That way I get 3 more hours of sleep. World of difference. Well up and at it hard and fast is the game here. Breaks over.

For 6 days I have been busy with my father who was having chest pains. A couple days in the hospital later, the Dr says not his heart. Then Tuesday the home health nurse called me from his house and said, "Your dad has shingles. The clinic can't take him. Come take him to the emergency room for the prescription for an antiviral." So our garden and yard are a mess, not to mention we are 6 days behind putting things up. So today to catch up, we will be quartering and coring apples for the freezer to make sauce next winter. We have a small pie pumpkin with a soft sunburn spot that we will roast on the outside grill--because my oven died last week--then chop and peel for the freezer. There are just enough tomatoes to blanch one batch for the freezer. There is a 1/2 bushel of pears getting overripe. We will juice those. I have given away summer squash all summer and still have squash so I will grate some for the freezer. I have enough cherry tomatoes and okra and apples and pears to fill the dehydrater. I wonder if they will work together without the apples tasting like okra and tomatoes. We shall see. Then this evening if we aren't exhausted, we both need to mow, me on the rider, DH on the push mower inside the garden.

Dawn, thank you for helping me with the fertilizing schedule. I will start doing it that way.

Kim, that is horrible! How could someone do that, especially knowing there was a mama with babies, and a little rabbit who needed food/water? To me, that is just ...well, let's just say I can't understand why some people are that unreliable/un-feeling. Poor little things. I hope they are doing ok. I love little creatures, and I try to remember that God could have made me a helpless or homeless or mistreated little creature.

Mary

Do you see her sticking her tongue at me

Kim, i hope you can catch up on all the rest you missed. I do not know how people who agree to care for plants and animals can/will/do fail to follow through. It just makes me sick to think of your animals and plants being neglected like that. I surely would not trust that person again because he/she has shown they cannot be trusted. What's wrong with someone like that?

Dorothy, While I am grateful it wasn't your dad's heart, I hate to hear that it is shingles. They can be so unpleasant to have. I hope he is well on the road to recovery at this point.

I know that you and Glenn will work hard to catch up, so please, please just try to not overdo it and exhaust yourselves. It is so hard to catch up once you're behind and harvest time is a tough time to be behind.

Mary, You're welcome.

Kim, She's sticking her tongue out because she's just so relieved you are back and she'll be cared for......she can relax now...I hope she and the pups are okay. It is hard to stay cool in this heat.

We woke up to fog this morning and even though the air temperature was nice, the 100% humidity was not. Now that the humidity has dropped about 55 points, it feels much nicer outdoors even though it is 20 degrees hotter. I didn't let the humidity stop me from working earlier, but I was dripping wet early in the day and almost overheated and had to come in to cool down and drink water, even though the temperature seemed 'nice'. It is going to be more pleasant working out there for the rest of the afternoon with a much lower humidity.

The bees and butterflies are not very happy about me tearing out plants, I'm doing my best to leave "their" stuff alone, but some overly vigrous petunias and zinnias have needed to be cut back or completely removed and the wild things are fighting mad and fighting back. Whose garden is it anyway?

No earthquakes are being felt down here so we're missing out on all that, and I'm not complaining.

Hope everyone is having a beautiful and productive day.

Dawn

Dawn, all these fabric pot tomatoes were seeded on June 9 (8 weeks ago tomorrow). With the exception of Bella Rosa, and Pink Berkeley Tie Die, they are really getting big...about 30 inches tall, and buried really deep.

PBTD has been a PITA in my garden from the start. Sprawled out horizontally, first to get fruit worms, blighty and leafless now. I hope yours behaves better.

Amy, I'm chuckling. This PBTD was from seed I saved last year, and it must be a complete clone of the mother plant. This is exactly what she did. She grew a megabloom when she was about a foot tall, and as the tomato grew, the plant looked like Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree...with one huge ornament on it. I had to support that little plant practically on crutches until I got the tomato off. After that, the plant grew to about maybe 3 feet...not big, but it did set some more fruit. I never imagined it would repeat itself. I probably won't grow any again. Not worth the trouble.

AOH dear. . .I am going down in flames. Gettin' too old for these kinda trips where I just have to see umpteen million friends. I am traveling on fumes by end of today, tank's on empty. Traveled 99 miles this morning for SIL in Sheridan today. . . To Buffalo, back to Sheridan, back to Buffalo for something she needed but forgot to take for her knee replacement surgery. (She was doing so good, I am thrilled out of my mind--hope her road to recovery continues in good fashion.). Calling folks to arrange meeting-up times; laundry, seeing Mom at her living space, dinner, out to meet some friends who'd arranged a get-together, calls to GDW in-between--Titan is a little better, but GDW came down with a horrible cold. First thing I asked was, "What are your symptoms!!!!" Sounds like a cold. No fever, no weird symptoms, and found out one of the kids who visited last Friday had a bad cold--which under these circumstances (possible tularemia), made me feel very happy. Everything's relative, right? The only thing I know about gardening is that GDW is gathering lots more tomatoes. Know it has cooled off a bit and he said we got a good rain today. Know my lips are about to fall off because it's so dry here in Wyoming. Froze my butt off last night out on the deck visiting with my bestie of 65 years. I was the one who caved first. BRRR. Slept inside with 4 blankets and a heavy bedspread, and was snug as a bug in a rug. They have a beautiful 3 acres with aspen everywhere and tons of goldenrods surrounding their little home-made waterfall and pond.

I was so frazzled with the unplanned 99-mile unplanned trip and obligations all around me, and with GDW's cold, and because Titan is a little better, and because I hadn't made any reservations anyplace for the return trip home to wait and leave here Saturday morning. I will just rest and take it easy tomorrow and hang around SIL's cats, who miss her. And cannot WAIT to be home!!

Missed ya Kim and glad you checked in! Know you're in a good place having just gotten to your conference. So so sad about the person who did not take care of the animals!!! And angry. I pray they're okay.

Glad your babies are in their home now HJ. And Dorothy, sounds like you've had a week similar to mine! Sheesh! Blessings!

One of my biggest frustrations the past week has been forgetting to keep phone and IPAD charged up! It's funny but not at all funny. Technology--good and bad!

I am a bad bad traveler. It discombobulates me and I get by through the grace of God--there is no other explanation. Back around 1990 when I was spending 30 hours a week working and about 40 hours a week painting, decided I had to pare my friends list down to 12. Every time I got a new one, I decided, I'd have to drop an old one. Of course it didn't work out, but I was very cautious about meeting folks. Now it's totally out of control. LOLOL. But now, will try to deal. I just want to be home now! I want to see GDW, Titan and the garden! Blessings to you all!

Thanks everyone for the info on when to harvest the lemon cukes.

My father-in-law dropped by yesterday, and he said he is proud of my plants! Haha I was so happy to hear it because it's my first year gardening and he rarely praises anyone.

Has anyone grown sweet peas here? Is it possible to grow them around here?

Rebecca, it's my first time growing carrots and I'm growing Scarlet Nantes carrots too. As for columbines, do they take a long time to grow? Mine are still small even though it has been around two months. Are they ok with full sun here?

Kim, I feel for you about the person who did not take care of your place when you were away. DH and I are going to Dallas for my birthday next week and we can't spend too many nights away because we don't trust anyone to take good care of our bulldog and cat. (Mostly the bulldog.)

Dorothy, I hope your dad feels better soon. My father-in-law had shingles last year and it was on his face hurting his eyes. I think it took about a week for the medicine to kick in good.

Nancy, I'm glad to hear that Titan is doing better. Sounds like you are doing so much and making full use of your time in Wyoming. To me, you are a superb traveler. I don't even know I can get DH to drive to Denver or Houston/Galveston.

Amy, have you been to Worley's Greenhouse & Nursery in Owasso? Saw an ad on Facebook that they have some Crepe Myrtle on sale, but they don't seem to have good reviews online.

Mary, I think your tomatoes look fine. They do not look like they are overfed nitrogen. When you overfeed nitogen (a neighbor of ours did this about 10 years ago and I learned a LOT from just looking at his plants), the foliage gets incredibly dark---such a dark green that it is a bluish-green. The plants get huge and dense, which is not necessarily bad---happy tomato plants do get huge and dense if the soil and growing conditions allow, but if they turn a dark bluish-green instead of a regular happy tomato plant medium to dark green, then that's a big sign they are being overfed nitrogen. For what it is worth, by mid-summer our neighbor's 3 tomato plants, spaced about 10' apart were huge, dark green to bluish green monsters. From a distance they looked like spruce trees. They never bloomed. They never formed a single tomato. They couldn't. All that nitrogen kept them in a strongly vegetative state. That is what overfeeding nitrogen will do. As long as your plants are blooming and then setting fruit as temperatures allow, you probably are not overfeeding nitrogen. It is hard to overfeed in containers because the rain and irrigation wash away the nutrients.

As for PBTD, it produced aomw beautiful and tasty fruit in my garden, and it made a nice, large, healthy plant. I don't remember that it necessarily produced a lot of fruit though. I grew it in fairly wet years, and it had a lot of disease even though it was growing in a bed where I didn't normally grow tomatoes and didn't feel like I had a disease buildup. I liked it okay but not enough to keep it in the regular plant rotation.

Amy, My affection for PBTD is about the same as yours. I guess it just isn't the plant for us.

Nancy, I am so glad that your SIL's surgery went so well. And, of course you are tired, oh my....look at all the miles you have traveled since leaving home, and you've driven it all yourself. That's tiring in and of itself, and then add to that all the stress (there's both good stress and bad stress, you know) of trying to squeeze in visits with as many of your family and friends as possible, and worrying about Titan and Garry and your mom......if you weren't tired, that would be odd. Before you know it, you'll be home and sleeping in your own bed and getting back into your normal routine.

Poor Garry. Catching a cold when he's busy doctoring Titan and taking care of things alone. I see he is keeping his priorities straight and getting those tomatoes harvested while you're away. (grin) Enjoy your rest before you embark on the long drive home and please be careful. There's a lot of careless drivers out there on the highways nowadays. Prepare to drive home in rain, rain, rain. The forecasts show lots of rain across various parts of the state over the next week. For August that's highly unusual and something to feel hopeful/excited about. I am not sure if I can ever remember an August with this much rain in the forecast, so it is nice to look at the forecast and think that it could happen. Maybe it won't happen. The QPF is notorious for predicting heavier rain that we will see 90% of the time, but every now and then we get about what it says will fall....so, if that happens, most people here in OK will be somewhere between plain old happy to deliriously happy.

Click Here to See Forecast Rainfall Amounts for Next 7 Days

Eileen, Congrats on the praise from your FIL.

Are you asking about sweet peas the flowers or sweet peas like English peas, snow peas and sugar snap peas? I have grown all the above here and they do well some years and not so well in other years, depending on how cool and wet we are in the winter and spring. All the peas are cool-season plants and some years our cool season is shockingly brief. The flowering sweet peas, if you can get them planted early enough to bloom but not so early that they freeze, will produce beautiful flowers but then the heat will arrive and that will be the end of that. Really, the same is true of the edible peas too.

It got pretty warm here yesterday and, oddly, it felt nicest in the afternoon with lower humidity and higher temperatures, so even though I think I ought to get right out to the garden as early as possible this morning and get some work done, I remember sweating like mad in the sweltering 100% humidity early yesterday morning and having to come indoors and cool down even though the temperatures were in the 70s. That's just wrong. Obviously yesterday it truly was the humidity and not the heat. So, maybe it is better to not be in such a rush. I think the humidity should fall quickly today just like it did yesterday.

The cracks in our ground are enlarging and the post oak tree that was the original (only) tree in our front yard near our house when we built the house starting in August of 1998 has a bacterial infection, is oozing slime flux and defoliating and looks like it may not survive. Fortunately, we planted many more oak trees (none of them post oaks) in the yard after the house was finished and have many other sources of shade near the house now, so if we lose that tree, we still will have plenty of shade. I've been watching it for a couple of months, hoping it would improve but it seems to be getting worse. Normally this sort of infection and slime flux tends to occur in/after drought, but I really think this tree hasn't looked/acted right since the year we got 200% of our annual rainfall (78" vs. the usual 39"), which was in 2015. And, normally, the bacterial infection and slime flu don't kill a tree, but this tree had endured intense drought from 2011-2014 and than had that hugely wet year and I think that combination of conditions may have been to much for it. I suspect Tim and I will be cutting down this tree this fall.

Have a great day everybody.

Dawn

Rebecca, how big is your grow bag? We grow potatoes in bags. As I understand it, tubers form at the first node on the stolen. So we put about 3 inches of a Mel's mix type soil in, lay the potatoes on that, add about 6" soil, then add more when the leaves come up. There is a school of thought that you just fill up your bag and the stems will find their way up. Optimum bag height is 18" I think. This video might help Kenosha Potato Project.

Kim, I can't believe someone neglected your animals. I hope you had a good time while you were away and got some sleep.

Dorothy, I'm so sorry your dad has shingles. My dad went through that, too.

Nancy, I'm glad you're resting before the trip home, it's such a long trip and the weather will make it harder!

Eileen. I like Worley's. I buy their potting mix. It is cheaper than Promix but better than what you get at the big box stores. I have bought plants there, but nothing as big as a crepe myrtle. The plants were high price wise for me, but healthy.

Dawn, I'm sorry about your tree. I'm a little surprised, oaks are usually pretty strong. There is a preserve, over by Keystone Lake, Keystone Ancient Forrest with 300 year old post oaks.

I harvested and watered containers yesterday. It was hot (patio thermometer said 98 with 28% humidity). I did okay up till the last few minutes, like a cartoon thermometer that suddenly rises and breaks. Then I was done. I did start a tray of seeds the other night. Need to do more. Maybe tonight.

Have a good weekend.

Oh, we got about 3/8" of rain last night.

Very cool here today. A very dry 77 degrees at 2 o'clock. Nights have been cool, dipping into the low 60's. According the forecast for the next seven days, it's going to just get cooler over the next week. We've had a ton of rain this year, and I don't even think we've hit the 100's once. Looks like another week of rain starting tomorrow.

My tomatoes were about dead so I pulled the worst ones and left my Cherokee Purple and Old German. (Also pulled my cucumbers.) They've got new flowering growth and are starting to produce pretty tasty tomatoes. The peppers are loaded. Harvest my first cantaloupe yesterday. I have probably 10-12 growing up the trellis from 5(?) plants. The vines have taken over the garden! Been harvesting Stowell's Evergreen sweet corn and putting it up in the freezer. Lovely sweet corn. Spring beans are done for the season, replacing them with cabbage transplants in a few weeks. Planted around 50 bean plants and a zucchini plants where the tomatoes and cucumbers were.

Been mainly working in the flower garden out front and covering my back garden with cardboard. I'll be getting compost in next week hopefully to begin my experiment with no dig. Pumpkins and butternut squash coming on like CRAZY. I planted the first round of winter spinach and kale. Also purple sprouting broccoli for overwintering and fall cabbage.

The chickens have have been loving to free range with the cool weather. They laying in the sun at the moment dusting and getting bugs.

I figure that when the rain gets past it'll be a good time to get started on my earthen oven build. Finding clay and sand for it.

That's all I've got. I'm hoping these cool temperatures will continue through the end of August and just get cooler in September....I too want a cold winter for the bugs and funguses to die off. We need it badly!

Playing catch up.

I use MG, but I'm not good about keeping on a schedule. I should probably read a recommended schedule for various plants. It's maybe been 6 weeks since I've used it. My thought is until my soil is better, I'm going to use it (or say I'm going to use and then forget).

Kim, glad you enjoyed your mini vaca. I hope it was the retreat you needed. Sorry the garden was bad when you returned and that your pets were uncared for. That makes me so mad.

I hate typing on phones too, Nancy!

Looks like everyone is busy growing and harvesting and pulling out old plants and preserving and cooking. FUN!

What's going on with me...

Babies 2nd night in their coop. Lulu and Rosa figured it out. I could sorta see them through their little door. It appeared that they hopped right up on their roost. The other 5 were huddled together outside in the corner of the pen. I gently pushed them into the coop through the door where they proceeded to freak out and peck at the corner of the coop. Then I walked through the shed part to the coop to secure their little door. I only THOUGHT Rosa and Lulu were on their roost. Nope. They went straight up to the window sill of their coop. How is the coop going to look cute with poop on the window sill?!

Our neighbors have baby chicks too, almost 2 months old like ours. I heard what I would describe as a juvenile crow coming from their property. For those of you with rooster experience, is that common? It wasn't a full-gown rooster crow, but it still sounded like a crow. I ask this because my chicks haven't made that sound, so I'm hoping that all of mine are girls after all. I paid for all girls, but sometimes mistakes happen. I'm not quite ready for a rooster this year, but if I get one I will keep him.

It's time to move the big girls over. That should be a hoot. They've enjoyed their free time in the garden. Back in the spring, I ran out of room in the compost bins and started dumping stuff in an empty spot in the east garden (very unattractive, but I needed to do something with my chicken poop, bedding, and food scraps) They discovered it and have flung it everywhere. I didn't realize how far the composting process has come until they started scratching through it. The bottom portion is almost complete. When y'all compost, do you ever put it on the empty beds in the late fall and let it finish breaking down? OR do you wait until spring?

I'm not harvesting tons right now. Some tomatoes, okra and a few Korean squash and cucumbers.

Hope everyone gets some rain this weekend.

Jacob, I'm hoping for a cold winter too, although we will complain about it while experiencing it.

Amy, I ordered potato grow bags that are 18" tall, so we should be good. I just want a trial run with the procedure before next spring. I am prepared to keep adding dirt until I can't add any more.

Eileen, this is my first time with columbine. I've heard they do well here in spring and fall sun, but don't like our summer sun. I am going to put mine in pots so I can move them around when it gets too hot.

Dorothy, make sure your dad gets a shingles shot, it makes a world of difference. Actually, everyone older than 60 should have one, especially those of us who had chicken pox as a kid.

I have a couple of funny shaped bell peppers coming. Will heat do that? I yanked the non producing Big Bertha. It was 6 feet tall and hadn't set one pepper yet. The BB I planted a month after that one has 3 nice sized peppers and a bunch of babies. So I guess it was just that one.

They raised our high tomorrow from mid-80s to mid-90s. Guess I won't be working outside in the afternoon. Maybe Sunday, in between rain drops. But, I'd rather have rain Sunday than anything else.

Amy, Luckily I am not emotionally invested in that post oak. I knew when we bought the place and chose the site to build our home that the post oak wouldn't like it. Post oaks do great in the wild. They don't do great in yards, especially yards that once were wilderness. Post oaks don't like having humans and animals walk on their soil and compact it. They don't like having construction eqiupment do the same. They don't like irrigation, not when they've been used to having nothing but rainfall. They don't like being fertilized when you fertilize the grass (not that I fertilize the danged old Bermuda grass because the last thing I want is for it to be even more vigorous than it is by nature), etc. So, the surprise really isn't that the post oak is declining, rather it is that it tolerated having a house built 20' from it for as long as it did. All the other oaks we planted around the house were dug up from our woodland as tiny saplings and are either red oaks or bur oaks, so they are fine and perfectly happy. This post oak probably was doomed from the day we bought this land, and we sort of knew that. Since it was the only shade tree in the yard, we left it and tried hard not to do anything that would irritate it, but I think we knew eventually it would die an earlier death than it would have if no one ever had bought this land and put a house on it. A lot of the area post oaks died in 2011, so I've sort of felt like ours really was living on borrowed time after that.

Y'all were hot. That happened to us yesterday and today. Our forecast high for today was 90 and we went, officially at Burneyville to 96 and to 97 at our house. Why doesn't our weather ever do what they say it will? Our forecasts fail terribly. Our heat index was just over 100, and we were out at a grass fire during the worst of the heat, trying to save a house that was literally surrounded on all sides by burning grass and trees when the first firefighters arrived on the scene. Amazingly (because they are awesomely skilled, hardworking firefighters), they saved the house with only the teeniest bit of scorched siding on one side. They also kept it from escaping that property and making a run for the neighboring place where big round bales of hay were already lined up in rows for winter storage. I'm so glad the hay wasn't lost. Oh, and there was a nice garden plot out in a pasture just a little bit further from the house than the grass fire managed to travel, so the garden was saved too. Other than going to the fire and refilling the hummingbird feeders, I don't feel like I accomplished a lot. We had to go pick up 10 more cases of water and Gatorade to stock up for the next fire, and then we went out to dinner. It tried really hard to rain here, and some places NW of us got rain, but at our house we got a trace. Just a trace. So small you can't really measure it--believe me I tried, but it wasn't even close to 0.01" so we'll just call it a trace and leave it at that.

Jacoblockcuff, Welcome to the forum! Your 77 degrees sounds heavenly.

It sounds like you are having marvelous weather and a really great garden year. That's terrific.

Our chickens free range all day and are locked up securely in predator-proof coops at night. The heat was kinda hard on them when we were over 100 degrees for a while with heat index numbers topping out around 110, but now that we were a bit cooler for a few days, they seem happier. I just wish the cooler weather would last longer here than it did, but any break in summertime is a good thing.

Jennifer, In our early years here when our soil was not yet well-amended enough, I am pretty sure I used MG every other week---at least for the tomatoes and peppers. I may have been more lax with everything else, and in the week that the plants didn't get Miracle Grow, they got compost tea, manure tea, alfalfa tea, fish emulsion, liquid seaweed or Garrett Juice. I varied it constantly, hoping that anything that was lacking in one product might be available in another one. As the soil got better, I cut back on the MG more and more until I felt like the plants didn't need it any more. Sometimes I still use Super Bloom to boost blooming to coincide with a cool spell in the summer, but haven't done that this summer because the cool spells came either when the tomato plants were heavily loaded already or because there weren't any cool spells before I started yanking out plants to make room for the fall garden......which I'll plant, if we ever can stay below 100 degrees for 4 or 5 days.

Here's a news flash, and you know I am laughing with you because we have the same issues.....chickens don't care if the coop is cute. Just in case you are wondering. And there is a great product that softens bird poop and makes it easier to clean off of stuff you're trying to keep cute. It is called Poop-Off. (I am not making this up!)

Poop Off Cleaner

There's also an outdoor version of Poop Off. Again, not making it up. (I couldn't think up this stuff on my own if I tried.)

Tim and I are thinking of screening in our wrap-around front/side porch that is on the east and south sides of the house because we cannot keep the chickens off of it, and it is hard to keep the porch chicken-free, feather-free and chicken poop-free. I use the power sprayer so much to remove the chicken mess that I'm removing the paint from the porch railings. Screening in the porch seems to be the ultimate solution. I always wanted cats that would sleep on the porch swing. Nope, but we have chickens that sometimes sit on the back of the porch swing and make a mess. It drives me nuts.

Yes, juvenile roosters will make all sort of sounds as they learn how to crow, or just as they get better at it. Sometimes they sound pathetic---like a teenaged boy whose voice is changing, and sometimes they sound pretty good. Some crow more than others. Even as juveniles, there often already is an established pecking order if you end up with more than one rooster, and sometimes the smaller, less dominant roosters are pretty quiet when the dominant rooster is around but louder when he has wandered off and is not paying attention to them. Banty roosters have an even cuter crow---to me, it always sounds like a child's crow, even when they are full-grown and old.

Yes, you can move compost to the beds in the late fall so it can finish breaking down. I often do that, and then I like to pile up layers and layers of chopped/shredded autumn leaves on top to keep the compost from breaking down too much or from washing away if we get any heavy rain in winter (fat chance of that happening, but I can hope).

Like you and Jacob, I really want that cold winter. I want snow! We hardly ever get good snow---2010 was awesome as we had more than a foot of snow and I was deliriously, ridiculously happy.....as long as I was inside the house looking out at it. It seems like our snow has been pretty skimpy to nonexistent the last few years. Being so far south, we never get as much as the rest of you anyway. I also remember that in the winter of 2012-13, we had the most incredible fall garden. I don't think I covered up the plants much and my fall brassicas didn't freeze until late January or February, and the ones that didn't freeze kept going until they started bolting in March. It was so cool to have winters that felt like winter, looked like winter and acted like winter. I don't like the cold weather and I hate having to clean and refill chicken waterers when it is icy, but we sure do need a year like that.

Rebecca, Incomplete pollination will give you odd shaped peppers, and heat plays a role in that. The peppers ought to straighten out if the weather ever straightens out.

They raised our temperatures for tomorrow and Sunday too....so, if it is the same way at your end of the state as it is down here, then at least I won't feel like the weather is discriminating against us. They only raised our highs to 93, but then, today we went 6-7 degrees higher than the forecast, so if that happens on Sat, Sun, or both, it could be a kind of miserable weekend before the rain finally arrives here. I think all of y'all will see rain before I do. The QPF keeps pushing our expected heavy rainfall out further and further into the future, which usually is a bad omen.

Have a great weekend everyone, no matter where you are or what you're doing.

Dawn

H/J, when I first read your post and saw "juvenile crow" my first thought was the bird crow, not the sound crow. A juvenile American crow, the species we have in OK year round that "caws", sounds like a crow with a cold. So does a Fish Crow, which is not here in winter. They look identical, so you must hear them to ID them. There's your trivia for the day. I have one hen that's broody. I need to make a pen for broody hens, I guess you bring them out of it by preventing access to the nesting area. I have no rooster, she is just causing herself unneeded physical stress. Before chickens I chose one bed to be the compost pile for the winter. When my soil was so bad in 2015, I put coffee grounds out as mulch on some beds, along with pouring diluted milk on them. The puppy will probably prevent composting in the garden this year.

Jacoblockcoff, your weather sounds heavenly. I'm a little surprised you're so much cooler there than I am here near Tulsa. I don't know why it surprises me when people have nice weather in August, conditioning I guess.

My son had shingles the summer before 2nd grade. It's rare for a child to get it, but it happens. We thought it was poison ivy, but he was in so much pain we went to the doctor. Rebecca, you're right, we should all get shingles shots.

Dawn, I figured building a house near the tree didn't help. The Ancient Forrest trees are growing on poor, rocky, sloped land, so no one wanted to farm or build near them. For being so old, they are not big in diameter, they add very little each year.

I'm sorry you were called to a fire, but kudos for saving the house, garden and hay!

Poop Off...snicker. Another reason I want the chickens in the back of the yard. I am sure the puppy would eat chicken poop if she could get to it.

I want bug die off (and squirrels, for Rebecca), but I hate cold. And people with artificial joints shouldn't walk on snow and ice. I also really like having the brassica survive the winter. So it needs to get cold gradually and give them time to acclimate.

This is a market day for Kim? Hope it goes well.

Nancy, safe trip. DH said there were pictures on face book of snow in CO. I guess in a mountain pass.

Amy, I didn't mind the fire so much---we are always happy to be out there with our fire departments making sure the men and women of the fire service have water, Gatorade, wet towels and snacks. I just minded the heat, and I was scared for the people whose home was surrounded. The first firefighter to arrive told me that house was surrounded by huge flames (some trees and logs were burning very close to the house) when he arrived. We think if he'd been 2 or 3 minutes later, the house would have been burning. Timing is everyhting. I don't get to see my friend, Fran, often enough, so we had fun and we had lots to talk and laugh about (when we were on our way to the fire in our fire vehicle and didn't have to have our serious fire 'game face' on) because she just find out last weekend that she is going to become a granny next Spring. We'd been texting about it back and forth, but it was fun to see they joy on her face yesterday when we were discussing it live and in person.

Uggh. We discovered rat and mice droppings in our fire station, which grosses us out, so Tim and I will buy rat poison today and put it all over the place up there. This is a routine summer thing---I am sure they flee indoors in the summer trying to escape the heat, but that doesn't make it more bearable. We cleaned up all the pellets we found while another firefighter grumbled about hanta virus. (Men! I love him to pieces, but did he have to remind us of that at that specific moment?)

Nancy, Safe travels and Godspeed. I saw those snow photos from one of the high passes--Monarch Pass--after Damon Lane posted them. I think the story said it went from rain to hail to freezing rain to snow and they ended up with a slushy mess. It looked beautiful but I wouldn't have wanted to be driving in it.

I assume Kim is at market. I think the only photos I saw on her Caprock Gardens FB page were flowers in bloom, so I am not sure what she harvested.

Dawn

Amy, the temperatures in town are quite a bit warmer than at our house. We live in the forest on top of a pretty large hill with a creek at the bottom outside of town- we generally catch the snow storms and cooler weather and RAIN a lot more than the town we shop at does....In town it's probably in the mid 80's to 90's while we're sitting in the 70's (low 80's for today) most of the next two weeks. Sure helps.

We once had luck with getting a hen out of the broody state by putting a chick or two that we bought off someone local underneath her. She raised it and it's a great hen now...

Harlequin bugs doing the nasty on the kale I left. If I cut that all out and bag it will they be gone by the time I want to set out new stuff? I planned to cover the fall brassica, but some of it will get tucked in where they fit.

Adult SVB on my cucumbers. Mutter, mutter, mutter. DH says he saw squash bugs yesterday. Mutter, mutter, mutter....August.

Don't want any more chickens right now, Jacob, but I'll keep it in mind for later.

Burpee website has a B3G1 free special through tomorrow, plus free shipping on 3 packs. Just in case anyone wants something they can only get from them, like Brandy Boy seeds. I've had good luck with their flowers, and with my disease problems this year (I'm blaming the squirrels for them too), I may see about their hybrids. And speaking of squirrels, an old thread on squirrel problems popped up on the veggie board earlier, so I've got a few new options to try.

Amy, If April is the month we gleefully plant anything/everything/all things, then surely August is the month that makes us mutter because of many things. I haven't even seen harlequin bugs this year (knock on wood) or SVBs (I'm expecting them any day now). My cucumber plants are exhausted. They've hung in there pretty well despite a run of 100-degree days a few days back, but between spider mites, some sort of little disease hitting them from the bottom up, and too many hot days with too little water (I try, I try, I try but that sandy soil out back drains like a sieve). I think they are about done and I'm okay with that. I've canned a ton of pickles despite only planting about 1/3 as many cucumber plants as we had last year.

Jacob, Our whole property is a creek hollow. (Or, if you speak country, a creek holler......). You'd think it would be cooler here, and I guess sometimes it is. I do notice as if I walk down the driveway past the garden on my way to the mailbox. It will feel distinctly cooler as you pass by the garden (which also has woodland to its south and north, so that may help with the cooling). After we'd lived here 10-12 years, I saw an old map of this area that listed names for creeks and hollows whose names we never had heard before. We learned our creek is called Dry Hollow Creek. Well, why didn't anyone tell us that when we were looking for land to buy? I would rather have found a Wet Hollow Creek if only I'd known.

Rebecca, I saw that in my email the other day and have been meaning to go see if Burpee has anything I want enough to do an order. As their prices have climbed the last couple of decades, I've gotten to where I only buy stuff from them for which they are the exclusive source. I used to love Burpee, but they priced themselves right out of my life for the most part.

Dawn

Wow, Jacob, your property sounds amazing.

It's so hot. I helped with Dale's Kids' Gardening Fest this morning and it was already hot at 9. Great turnout though. Lot of fun.

Not much to add today. We're going to try to put up a temporary roof on the chick pen since it's supposed to rain tonight. That tarp doesn't cut it, as we found out we it rained earlier in the week...and it was only a half inch. Next week we'll get the proper roof on. We are taking a break from work and going to dinner tonight.

Sure hoping for rain as we all are. Rain would force me to stay in and do inside work. So, that would be another benefit.

I think the real reason it's so much cooler is that we have forest on almost every side of the house. We only have an acre and it's in a neighborhood as well that winds around the hill, but the nice thing is that there's trees that block most of the houses to a point. Another benefit is the woods provide some decent shade to the garden during the heat of summer, which most crops don't mind. This year I was able to grow sweet corn in only 5 hours of full sun and still get 2 ears per plant on average...

I got some news. My neighbor gave us a banana tree and my mother also found a good bargain on garlic cloves for planting this autumn in town today! Burpee's prices for it are outrageous, being 2 cloves for $16!! I got 12 cloves with about 6 smaller cloves per piece....should be enough. First frost here is USUALLY mid to end October so I'll aim to plant late September or into early October...

I like to order from Baker's Creek usually (rareseeds.com) but they can be a little pricy at times as well.

Jennifer, Tarps are a great temporary solution, but as you've learned, get heavy with rainfall quickly and then can collapse.

I hope y'all enjoy dinner out. We went out last night and it was great just to get away from the house for a while.

Jacob, Congrats on the banana tree and garlic.

I like to look for unusual forms of garlic in specialty grocery stores (Sprouts, Central Market, Whole Foods, etc.) and buy some to plant. They've always grown well for me. I do grow a few varieties that I bought from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply (on clearance in winter, for either 50% or 75% off) a few years ago and also from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. In the back garden where the soil is very sandy/silty, garlic is one of the few things that the devilish tunneling voles will not eat, so I plant it in rings around our fig tree to keep it safe, in addition to growing it in other places strictly for a harvest.

I used to order more seed from Baker Creek than I do now. I still order a lot from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Victory Seeds and Swallowtail Garden Seeds. A couple of great inexpensive seed companies with good customer service are Pinetree Garden Seeds (their seed counts per package are smaller, but who needs 100 or 200 broccoli seeds anyway?), Willhite Seeds (even their lowest priced sizes usually contain a lot of seeds) and Sample Seed Shop.

I have found that with the intense sunlight and extreme heat we have here in the middle part of the country, even plants that need full sun in some other places do just fine here on as little as 4-6 hours of sunlight.

Dawn

Before I get to read all the posts of the past couple days, gotta say, so nice to be situated, showered and refreshed in Russell OK (apt, don't you think? Nancy Russell Waggoner from Wagoner staying in Russell KS--nice room, and a fridge (thank God) as I have a leg of lamb gifted to me by my much-loved SIL! What a beautiful gift--she knows how much I love lamb. She already treated me to lamb chops before she went to have knee surgery! Only six more hours to home, to GDW with a cold and Titan, ill, and garden and yard to see, and it is HOME! Yay. Okay, now have time to read back through all your posts. I know you all live all over the place, but I missed all of you, too. I indeed know where my home is!! Blessings.

BTW, I'm not sure how the weather was at home, but sounded good. GDW said it wasn't as hot as it has been, and apparently it has rained handsomely for him--I'm thankful for that since he got this cold and is preoccupied with treating Titan. Bless him, know he's so stressed. I haven't suggested any other treatments, unless he asked, and am just cheering him on. But I also know Titan loves both of us and have to think Titan will be just a little more enthusiastic when I'm there, too.

Was downright chilly in Buffalo. Usually doesn't hit that until about Aug. 20. I got up this morning, went outside, and thought, bet the public swimming pool will be pulling the plug early THIS year. My growing-up home has an enormous free public pool--largest I've ever seen--used to have an 18-foot diving platform with an 11-footer below, a 10' foot springboard, and a long enormous slide; the pool was (ice-cold) creek fed with a sand bottom, and a 60'-across the middle, split between the shallow side and the deep side, by barrels--couldn't swim on the deep side until you could swim the 60 feet across. (I am a good swimmer--accomplished that early on.). We used to love to dare others to dive off the 18-foot platform, but as for me, I only did it maybe 4 times. NOW the pool is the same size, but they took out the platform and the slide and it now has a concrete bottom, and they now pour a bit of warm water into it too. I am going to post some pics of it on FB when I get home, along with how the town looks now. It is a very picturesque little town of app. 4600. It almost died in the 70s when the big box stores moved in nearby--but the smart folks in Buffalo since then realizing that tourism is their best draw, rennovated and geared it toward tourism (a main link to Yellowstone and Devils Tower) and now it is positively bustling--even without decent groceries or shopping. They had an unusual amount of rain this year, and the gardens and flower gardens were to die for in August (that almost is NEVER the case)

I can hardly wait to see how my cucumbers and sweet potatoes are doing. GDW has harvested and bagged up 3 gallon-sized bags of tomatoes, so I guess I'll be doing more canning. Again--can hardly wait to see them--and eggplants and peppers. Whee! Just read all your posts. . . Sounds like for the most part, we're getting a bit of a break at home.

Kim--how's it going over there?

HJ, loved your commentary on the babies.

And Dawn. Thank you for you!

Amy--driving around Denver today at 2 pm--from Ft Collins, around Denver to I-70 down south--stop and go in many places--I can't begin to imagine it at rush hour!!! That slowed me down a little, as well as forgetting there was a time zone change--bummer. Plus, I'd had too many liquids! LOL. So. Was supposed to take me 10.6 hrs, took me 11.5 hrs. Still, not bad. My way of traveling is to drive as far as I can and try to coordinate my pee-breaks with my needing-gas breaks. Jump out , fill the car up, run in, run out. Jump in car and on my way, but stretching, stretching body parts, trying to limber up while in the pay station. Works pretty good. LOLOL. Plus, good detective audio books (to keep me interested) are almost mandatory! That makes a trip speed by!

Okay. I will begin talking gardening again as soon as I get home. Love my OK gardening friends!!

Nancy, I'm glad you made such good time on your long road trip and are just a few hours from home now. I am hoping you have a safe journey for the rest of the way home, and I am sure Garry and Titan will be so thrilled to have you back home again. It likely is wetter now than when you left and more rain is coming.

Rebecca's area had a probable tornado with little to no warning last night.

I awakened around 5 am to temperatures outdoors still in the 80s and I wasn't thrilled about that. Then a line of thunderstorms that was moving across the state sort of brushed past us and dropped our air temperature from 81 to 72 in mere minutes. We are grateful for that. Sadly, while it gave us a lot of thunder and lightning, it mostly forgot the rainfall part. I heard rain falling for a couple of minutes, so maybe we'll have new rainfall of 0.01" to 0.04" in our rain gauge this morning. That seems to be our daily limit lately if we get anything at all. Today should be the day our luck changes and we get real rainfall that you can see and feel and watch fall from the sky, hit the ground and form puddles. We'll see. Our forecast high for today is 97 (cannot catch a break!) but then heavy rainfall is in the forecast from Sunday evening through the overnight hours Monday. I think I have been pretty patient, but if that heavy rainfall fails to reach us here, I just may throw a temper tantrum. With a fairly high forecast high plus the higher dewpoints and relative humidity that normally accompany approaching rain, I think today might be miserable until the rain arrives, so I plan to mostly stay indoors and stay cool.

Maybe I'll start some seeds for fall plants indoors in a flat today. I've been needing to do it, but had my mind made up that I wasn't going to bother unless I got a sign from God, like heavy rainfall, that let me know it would be possible to have a fall garden. It would be pointless to attempt a fall garden if no rain falls here this week.

It is so dry here that Augustus the turkey has lost his wading puddle in which he loves to stand and cool off. It is a broad low dip in the driveway that I fill with water for him. If I fill it up to the max, it holds the water for many days. Bunnies, deer and wild birds love to drink from it while the water is there. The big puddle now is dead and gone. Although there is no visible crack in the gravel driveway, Augustus' puddle apparently has been ruined by a crack beneath the surface. I can spend an hour running the hose to fill that depression in the driveway, creating a small pond for him and the wild things, and then an hour or two later all that water has drained away underground. He just stands there in the mud looking at me as if to ask 'where's my water?' I have made him a different puddle in a shady area where the clay soil hasn't cracked enough to lose the water but that's not good enough. He wants his water puddle where he's used to it being. Hopefully we'll get lots of rainfall and the soil beneath Augustus' wading hole will heal and I'll be able to keep him happy the rest of the summer with his usual wading puddle in its usual place. Yesterday he was so aggravated he tried to follow the dog and I into the house. I shut the mudroom door in his face, leaving him standing on the porch steps----probably wondering why he cannot come into the air conditioned house with us. If we get the rain that's in the forecast, there should be big puddles everywhere for at least a couple of days since our clay soil near the house drains so slowly.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday.

Dawn

Good morning all. I had a great market with lots of beautiful cherry tomatoes, peppers, green beans, peas, flowers, herbs, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, and some deadly zucchini. yes thats right.
While we were tearing down our market booths i munched on a small zucchini. Not my first time. I started coughing, then could not catch my breath, then my throat started closing.... Well it never dawned on me until last night and sure enough it popped right up in google and listed my experience to a T.
Today it feels like i swallowed a cactus. My throat is swollen raw and miserable and my body is not feeling too hot either. I am glad it did not end in trip to er.
My chefs are disappointing this week since they both ordered eggplant and one did not need it and the other never showed up.
live and learn everyday

Dawn, my cucumbers were planted after the onions, so they are relatively young plants. I first saw the SVB on a tomato plant. I sprayed it with the hose. Surely it won't attack cucumbers? Next year I must plant at least a slicing cuke early. DH had been waiting for a decent cuke for so long. They give me indigestion, though I like a pickle occasionally. Fresh from the vine cucumbers bare no resemblance to store bought. Yet another thing I am spoiled to, including eggs and tomatoes. I wish I could preserve that fresh taste. I have to go, will come back later.

Yes, August is kind of a depressing month for gardening. Usually much hotter, too. I noticed the rain ignored Dawn again.

I tried throwing Harlequin bugs to the chickens, but they didn't seem to notice...or don't like them.

I have holes in the yard. One was completely full of water, but the pup kept sniffing at it. I know I have crawdads in the yard, I keep hoping the holes belong to them. Knock wood, I have not noticed vole-like damage. Ron disturbed a baby bunny weed whacking yesterday. After Nancy's problems, I REALLY don't want rabbits in the yard! It was little. Surely the one I was seeing 2 months ago has grown bigger than that. How many, uh what do you call it in rabbits? Litters? How many times do wild ones breed? I guess the phrase breeding like rabbits tells the story.

Russell and Wagoner, cute Nancy! You know when you texted me that day with your address you spelled it with 2 Gs? Too funny. Are you home yet? Hope so! When I drive by myself I end up taking so many breaks I add hours to the trip.

Kim, I don't understand, have you developed an allergy to zucchini? Was there something on it, did it develope too much cucurbitacins? I hope you feel better! Poop on the chefs.

I pulled a parsnip today. It had a woody core like last year. I may give up on growing them. I tried hard to keep them watered consistently this year, and it is a different variety than last year. Pouting.

I have big okra plants, but still no blooms (these also followed onions). There will be zipper peas soon. Figitelli Sicilia, Sweet Pepper is so covered with fruit the branches are laying down. It is sweet even green. I got them to make pickles, but good enough to put in a salad. From BC. I think it was my Revolution Bell (F1) I picked for dinner Friday and it made good tasting thick walled fruit. My sweet peppers are going to town, my hot peppers are not. WTH?

Amy--Waggoner IS spelled with two G's. It's Wagoner OK that's misspelled! LOL . BTW, yep, got home at 1:15.

I was shocked at Titan. . . he is nowhere near himself, and has lost weight. But all we can do is keep treating him. At least he kind of gets out and walks around the yard 2-3 times a day now.

And By the WAY, TON of rain here, it's obvious--hard winds, too, so everything's knocked over. Gotta check the Mesonet. GDW said 2 inches in the past 3 days. And the wind toppled the Mexican sunflowers--they're hamburger--and many other things are smashed down, too. Can't leave you all alone for one minute! Honestly! LOL

Kim, Oh dear, how unfortunate that you apparently have developed an allergic reaction to zucchini. Also I'm disappointed in your chefs as well. It sounds like you took a lot of wonderful stuff to market though.

Amy, When the squash bugs and squash vine borers run out of their most preferred plants---summer squash and some winter squash varieties, they will indeed move on to other cucurbits and they are not necessarily picky. They'll attack cucumbers, Armenian cucumbers, muskmelons and sometimes (though less often) watermelons. So, keep an eye on yours. They need to feed on cucurbits, so they'll take what they can find. I never have seen them feed on the native buffalo gourds, which are Cucurbita foetidissima. Hmmm. Maybe we should be crossing other Cucurbitas with buffalo gourd to see if we can get edible, flavorful squash with the tolerance to or resistance of squash pests that C. foetidissima seems to have. At least we don't have pickles worms here (or, if we do, I've never had them in any of our gardens, either down in Texas from the 1960s through the 1990s, or here since 1999).

I agree that fresh-from-the-vine cucumbers are far superior to anything you'll ever find in a store. Isn't that why we all work so hard to grow our own?

I'm getting close to giving up on the rain. The rain last night/this morning skirted north of us, catching our Mesonet station and some northwestern parts of our county but mostly missing us. Now, this afternoon the storms are firing up to our W/SW and moving east....enough to probably just miss us to the south unless new storms build back in behind the ones currently in Texas and then maybe those new storms come our way. If the 2-4" forecast for us by the QPF for the past week ends up being the 0.09" currently in the rain gauge, I will be so disappointed. I wanted to start seeds today, but promised myself I wouldn't unless we had real rain falling. So, I'm still waiting. This certainly would not be the first time that a multi-day rain event missed us to the north and then the next round of the rain, whether the same day or the next day, missed us to the south. It happens surprisingly often. The worst thing? Listening to someone else's thunder and seeing their lightning and it all is so close, but not close enough to bring your place rain. I should know better than to expect rain to fall just because it has been in the forecast for a week. I feel another epic forecasting fail developing right over my head where I'm looking at blue sky as the clouds from the Texas storms begin to pull away from us after, at one point, looking like they were coming straight at us.

Our chickens are surprisingly picky about what they'll eat too. I don't believe I've ever seen them eat harlequin bugs. They do like grasshoppers, katydids and crickets. They'll eat some grubs and caterpillars, but not others. Some of them will chase butterflies (though they don't necessarily catch many) but others won't. Sometimes it seems random, the things that catch their attention and get eaten....and the ones that get ignored.

Cottontail rabbits can breed young--around 2 or 3 months, and I believe the doe carries the babies for 3 or 4 weeks. One doe can have anywhere from 1 to 7 litters per year, but most probably have 3 or 4 at the max. Around here, rabbits are devoured by every wild thing around, so ours don't live long. What seems like a plentiful rabbit population in March, April or May fades away to almost nothing by late summer, and then resurges a little in autumn. There was a mama cottontail coming to our yard to hunt for stray bird seed in June. She had one tiny bunny with her---presumably her only survivor from its litter. After a couple of weeks, there was only the baby so I guess something must have gotten the mother. Now, I haven't seen the baby in a while so wonder if it is gone too.

For the record, pouting does not fix the parsnip problem. Been there, done that, gave up on them. Clearly I do not get enough rain to get anything through August anyway.

Your peppers are backwards. Maybe because you've had so much rain? Cooler weather? I don't know. My hot peppers have been going gangbusters all along, as long as I keep them watered in the heat, but the sweet peppers, while earlier than usual, still have been slower. They are starting to catch up again, but continued success depends on some of that wet stuff actually falling from the sky in a meaningful amount. While I am willing to water up to a point, August is a tough month if rain doesn't fall and I don't think I'll willing to water endlessly in the absence of rainfall. Our okra is going bonkers, so at least there's something in the garden that loves the heat.

Nancy, As long as Titan is still alive, there's hope. I think the fact that he gets up and walks around a bit is a hopeful sign. It can take an animal that's been sick quite a while to regain weight loss due to illness. Hopefully he'll keep improving, bless his little doggy heart.

Congrats on the rain! You know, if you lived down here in rain-forsaken southcentral Love County, all your plants would be standing tall and dry because, you know, we don't get rain here. With little rain, there's little wind. (And, wow, would I be mad if we got the strong wind without any rain! lol)

The sky got significantly darker and I started to get more hopeful, but nothing's happening.

Dawn

Internet gremlins stole my post.

Nancy, I know your name is 2 Gs, but you spelled the town that way, too. I remember because I had to look it up to see if I had been misspelling it, LOL.

I'm glad you're home. Sorry the weather wasn't nice to your garden. I hope Titan will start getting better now.

Dawn, I was not pleased to hear that cursed SVB might go after my cukes. We bought an electrified "badminton racket" for zapping stuff like that. I put it up so grandson wouldn't get it. Wonder where I put it. (Who the heck decided badmitten was spelled badminton? I suppose I've been pronouncing it wrong my whole life!!)

Apparently there's nothing around here dispatching rabbits. It's been hanging out in the chicken run, so I suppose that's a good thing.

I'm used to seeing one or two sweet peppers, that usually take so long to ripen they're sunburned before I get them. I have one bell with maybe 6 peppers on it and another that is being overwhelmed by okra that I know has peppers, but I can't see how many. The Figiteli I mentioned? I just picked like 20 peppers off one plant. The banana pepper next to it had about a dozen. I couldn't find a jalapeno for my daughter yesterday, nor a Czech Black. They have been shaded by Tulsi I've let grow as living mulch. I think I let it crowd them too much. It's conceivable they've ripened and fallen under the Tulsi, but I would have thought there would be a few on the plants. Another new pepper this year is Red Cheese. It would get mixed up with the Alma Paprika, flattened round shape, thick sides, ping pong ball sized. Nice size when there's only 2 of you. I grew peppers in this north/south aligned bed last year and they did so well I chanced another year there. The east side is the best. But the Anaheims on the east side really aren't producing much. Just another odd thing for an odd year, I guess.

Dawn, if I make salsa, it will end up pretty soupy, right? From what I read it has to be liquidy so the heat penatrates?

A billion blossoms on the cucumbers, and then spotted a couple-four wee cukes on the ones I planted a week after the first ones, so thought, AAHH, then there should be some on the earlier planted ones. Well, GDW never even thought about checking them, understandably, so here's what I found on the earlier planted one. . . Bet that honkin' big rascal (9.5" long) is not going to taste very good, but we'll see tomorrow! I cannot believe these are growing cucumbers five weeks after having been planted from seed! What the!

We're getting some really good banana peppers and bell peppers now-- (thinkin' mine are backwards, too)--lots more jalapenos, which just makes me laugh. I'm going to have to get really creative with fixing jalapeno dishes. Sweet potatoes are growing everywhere and plenty of tomatoes are coming on, too. That's good enough for me for fall. Oh, and the cowpeas! I'm going to go pepper-crazy next year and grow lots and lots of different kinds!

No squash bugs or vine borers or other cuke pests (yet). I'm wondering if because I didn't grow any squash this year and didn't plant the cukes until July 1, maybe they won't find us? I'm going with that. Yeah.

Note to self for seeds next year--SESE and Johnny's. Any other great ones?

Garry said my getting home has made a big diff with Titan. I saw deer near the back yard, too close. They must realize Titan's not patrolling. So I went down and hollered at them and clapped my hands, and here came Titan, trotting down the deck stairs thinking he needed to help--but my clapping sent them on their way. And, besides, he couldn't trot after them anyway. Still, he made the effort! And that makes sense, really--wouldn't have mattered which of us disappeared for 10 days; could have as easily been Garry--but the dog needs his pack. I know he will get better than he was, and am sure willing to be ready for a long haul. . .

Kim, is this allergic reaction a zucchini-specific thing, or summer-squash related generally? Wow! Nonetheless, sounds like your gardens are doing great, overall. I got all the way from WY to home without one single wrong turn! Yay! (Honestly, the hardest part was actually winding down through Tulsa! LOL)

I have my work cut out for me this week, weeding and cutting stuff back. I might stick a whole bunch of coleus (one of the billions I wrongheadedly grew) out in the bed where the Mexican sunflowers cratered (or maybe more cowpeas or both--I have several sun coleus).

So so good to be home!

Nancy, I had to stake one of the Mexican sunflowers today, and will probably have to do the others this week. Am I supposed to be deadheading them? My second planting of cukes are starting to set now, the slicers. Still waiting on the Little Leaf cukes. Too many boys. And I'm thrilled that Titan seems to be feeling more like himself. He missed you. Maybe sit with him and give him some attention tonight.

For seeds, I'd add Seed Savers Exchange, Victory Seeds, and Sustainable Seeds.

For various reasons, I'm going to have to do the Brussels sprouts in grow bags. I have a couple of 15 gallon ones ready. Anyone know about their fertilizer and water needs? Should I give them some afternoon shade when it heats back up again, then move them to full sun as it gets later in the season?

The seed potatoes I got (the last of the spring stuff) are kind of soft and leathery, and sprouted already. Think I should forget them and plant some of the fingerlings from Cherry Street instead? Or try them anyway?

Yep, Rebecca, deadhead, deadhead, deadhead! LOL

Been giving him attention since I got here at 1:15. Every time I walk by him, I crouch down and whisper sweet nothings to him. . . .

Thanks for extra seed companies!

Dawn--I am so sorry we've got all this rain and we can't send some of it your way--but do you remember HJ saying she quit, she gave up, she KNEW she wasn't going to get any rain and so it didn't even bother her anymore. You sound just like her now!!! It's NOT funny, but it sort of is, just remembering HJ's laments. And I am praying for rain for both of you! HJ--did you ever get in on the rain curve?

Nancy! You're back. (I only read the last post here which was yours). Yes, we got about an inch of rain last night. I think. The wind was crazy and it blew over the rain gauge. So, while it was enough to give everything a good drink, and the ground isn't so dry now, it's still just a breath away from scary again. I sure hope Dawn is getting rain now. It looks like that area is getting rain. Night. I'll be back tomorrow to catch up. :)

Kim, 25 years ago, I tested allergic to zucchini. The Dr was surprised because he said it was an uncommon allergy. He asked how I fixed them. I said, rolled in egg and flour and fried or made into zucchini bread--with egg, flour and milk. He had already told me I was allergic to eggs, flour and milk so said my body decided zucchini was quilty by association. It was not the permanent type of allergy. I had to totally eliminate those foods for two years--that was HARD--and then return one at a time. I can now eat them again, but I don't eat any of them every single day like I did for years.

The weather forcast showed a probablilty of us getting 2-3 inches last night. I slept late this morning, hearing nothing overnight so I was surprised to see 2.2 inches in the gauge this morning. Yay! I am so glad because while dad was in the hospital over the weekend--48 hours--we stayed with mother because she is disabled and cannot stay alone--our water was running on three 50 ft soaker hoses in the garden. Our water bill is going to be outrageous! So we won't water anything until after the 15th when the meter gets read. There are enough buckets, tubs, and barrels under the eaves of the house and greenhouse to take care of the container plants until then.

We have had a very cool summer so far. 97 was the highest temp so far and that was just one day. We have had more nights in the 60s this summer than in the 70s and none in the 80s. We've had good rain too. 6 inches in June, 3 in July and Now 2.5 in August. But all the rain and cool has been hard on my tomatoes. Every plant has a fungus disease. Early Blight I think. 3 have died; all are affected. Leaf footed bugs are also in good supply this year and doing damage, sucking juice out of the tomatoes. But we have had more squash and cucumbers than we can eat. I planted too many and they have just kept producing with no sign of SVB and only a very few squash bugs.

I don't know if I will plant a fall garden. Dad has sold his ranch and we are going to be super busy helping him get ready to move. (Anybody know of a good assisted living place in Tulsa?) Besides now that we plant cool weather greens in the greenhouse in October to eat on all winter there isn't as much need to plant them in the garden. Plus, I learned several years ago that since I take thyroid medicine I shouldn't eat turnip and mustard greens every..single...day...for 6 weeks as they suppress thyroid function and make me tired and when the Dr increases the dosage and I quit eating them after a while I get too hyper and she has to decrease the dose again. "Be consistent!" she said.

The Kentucky Red cowpeas I got from George several years ago are in full production. The nasty Japanese Beetles don't like them, preferring the Kentucky Wonder pole beans. Next year I will plant more KR and fewer KW.

The 8 ft fence we built three years ago is still keeping the deer away from the okra and sweet potatoes and they are doing very well. UNfortunately the squirrels are still working the fruit. They didn't bother the Hosui Asian pears at all. I guess because they are so brown when ripe, they didn't know they were ripe. But they took half of the American pears and probably a third of the Yellow Delicious apples before they got fully ripe. So we picked them early, froze, dried and juiced some and saved a few to eat.

And now to bed. Tomorrow we will pick okra and cherry tomatoes to dry and then attack the grass and weeds in the garden with a weedeater.

VERY educational post, Dorothy! Thank YOU! Yep, our tomatoes have likewise been compromised by the weather, but they were/are fighters. We (next to Ft Gibson Lake, not all that far from you, have had the same conditions. What I love is that there are big failures, but also some great successes. It's kind of enchanting, really.. . . and we roll with the punches.

Amy, If you have the salsa screen on your tomato mill, it will give you a slightly chunky salsa, although by the time you cook it and bring it to a boil, it is slightly less chunky. To keep it from being too watery, after I cut and core the tomatoes, I use my thumbs to scoop out the seeds and gel and that gives me chopped tomatoes from the tomato mill that are the perfect texture for Annie's Salsa. You want to start with that chopped tomatoes/liquid blend so that you don't end up with a smoothly pureed salsa because that can cause safely issues, if you're working with the Annie's Salsa recipe. If you haven't used your tomato machine's sauce screen yet to make tomato sauce or pasta sauce, that one gives you a fine puree which is great for sauce but shouldn't be used for salsa.

I have said badminton wrong my whole life too but I blame it on being a native Texas and having that Texas drawl.

I'll have to come back later and read the rest of this thread and catch up on everything. have chickens demanding attention and it looks like it wants to rain again, so I need to go let them out. I already fed the wild birds and the one bunny that was sitting by the chicken coop waiting.

Nancy, It is all good---we had huge rainfall (for us) last night so all is well in my wet, puddled world this morning.

Dawn

Walked out this morning to find loads of mushrooms growing in our flower beds!! They must be liking the cool, wet weather.

Glad to know everyone got some good rainfall last night!

Ha! No rainfall here last night, Jacob--thank goodness! LOL

Dorothy, I hope y'all can find a nice place for your dad. I am sure it is hard to see him sell the ranch, but just about everyone's parents get to that stage sooner or later (if we are lucky enough to have them live long enough to get old, you know.)

Your garden sounds a lot like mine this year, even though we are in very different areas. Even the fall tomato plants, all fresh and healthy, are getting slammed by the same diseases that have bothered the spring tomatoes. While I'm thrilled that we finally got rain, now I'm thinking the tomatoes that are left will become diseased wrecks. Leaf-footed bugs are the worse they've been in several years, and prior to the rainfall, grasshoppers were exploding in terms of population---I don't know if the rain will help control them or not.

It's always something, as Gilda Radner would say. I think she is the patron saint of Oklahoma Gardening.

Dawn