I found out that my whole yard, everything including gardens, was washed in neonicotinoids last month and it wasn't the first time. Since Sunday I've gone from thinking only my eaves were being sprayed every other month to finding out that every damned inch of our property was washed with about the worst thing possible that's still legal to use from a pest control standpoint. That's prolly all I need to say about how my day is going or what Ben is coming home to.

Side note: the plants I brought to SF were not exposed.

From a fruit standpoint it seems that my veg will be safe for us to eat but I have no idea how long my yard will be a toxic waste site for pollinators. I've tweeted Xerces Society to see what I need to do from a remediation standpoint - information conflicts as to whether it lives just a year or as much as 3 years in the plants and I can't find how long it's still available in the soil, let alone what if anything I can do.

Dawn, thanks for the reply. There are so many things I want to respond to, but I have such a hard time with this tablet. If I ever learn how to use it properly I will bore you and the others to death.

Megan, So, is Ben still alive? Just checking.

Other than that, I have no words. I am so very sorry you are going through this.

I hope that whatever response you receive back from the Xerces Society has some sort of positive information for you. They may need to know the specific neonic product that was used because some of them are worse or more long-lived than others.

Larry, I miss your long posts, but I understand. I hope your tomato plants start behaving themselves and doing what you expect them to do.

Nancy, So lovely! I love when the yard and garden are full of butteflies. It makes gardening just that much more fun.

Robert, If you see this, I got 0.30" of rain from the tiniest little popup storm ever. So, it's your turn now! I hope you get more rain than we got.

Dawn

Megan I am so sorry to read about this. I have been through something similar and it is horrible. Just focus on doing what you can for remediation.

Rebecca should send us cookies for that.

I have been here y'all i just can't seem to find much to say. Lots of salt being poured into the wound.

Speaking of wounds I got a tooth pulled out today. I didn't have a choice but I am not happy about it. and it doesn't hurt now so that's a huge blessing. I have been in pain on and off for a year. Maybe now I can get back on my feet.

Kim, would like to say something to cheer you on, but Megan said it best. Thank you, Megan. Much love to you from here, too.

And like Dawn, Megan, no words for the neonicotinoid. Good luck!

I feel horrible saying this out loud here, but our forecast looks like it could get nasty tomorrow and Saturday, with heavy thunderstorms. I think I actually am a little traumatized by them after the past 3 years of too much rain in May and June and the damage caused by it. CRAZY. This gardening is CRAZY stuff. This year, we didn't have it. Until possibly now. Well, we did get a windy rain last week while I was gone, and it knocked many things over, but GDW got the yard cleared before I got home so I was spared that. And there WERE a lot of flowers, just many of them lying on the ground. lol Didn't seem to do much harm to the tomatoes or other vegetables, although now I'm wondering about one of the Sungolds. I don't see spider mites, but some of the yellowing leaves look familiar after the blighty summer last year. I'll examine more closely tomorrow. That one had too many one it anyway. LOL And as Megan said in different words, this is but a minor blip.

Dawn, is there a nasty bug that has NOT shown up at your place this year! AGGH. Our grasshoppers. When I walk into the center bed, the scampering away noise of them let's me know they're there in force. And that's just the GRASSHOPPERS. LOL Oh well, right?

I was excited to get a lot of weeding done today, and then got my last bale of alfalfa hay divided up and distributed.

This year, like HJ, I have an embarrassment of riches with my pile of wood chips, hay and grass clippings. I am loving it.

Megan, I think blogging about what you do in the recovery/remediation phase is an awesome idea and could help other people somewhere down the road. If you don't have time to blog about it in real time, maybe you can jot down or record notes for yourself now as you go through it and then put them in blog form some other time later on when life is not so hectic. Blogging about what it takes to recover from something like this would be so incredibly helpful to other people on down the line.

The one thing that is so unique about your experience is that your plants are still alive---not killed by herbicide, but alive and poisoned with a systemic pesticide that has the potential to keep on killing pollinators for a long time. That has got to be so much more frustrating than dealing with dead plants. If it had been a herbicide and the plants died, then your path would be so much more clear. Instead, now you have to worry about how much of the pesticide made it onto/into the plants, whether you save the plants and just wait for it to work its way out of them, etc. I don't think there's any way to know how much is in them without expensive lab testing so in that sense you're sort of flying blind. I know that even the smallest (is it a few parts per billion?) amounts can cause issues for bees and other pollinators. I truly cannot imagine walking in your shoes in this instance. I hope you know we're all here for you as you embark on a gardening journey you never imagined. Oh, and I am glad Ben is still alive.

Kim, I'm sorry about you losing the tooth, but glad you no longer have to endure the pain it was causing you.

Please keep talking to us and don't remain silent.. Salt in the wounds must be painful and we're always here to listen.

You have shown so much restraint and so much grace through this whole ordeal and I continue to believe good will come from everything you've been through.

Nancy, Rain here in the summertime is such a two-edged sword. If only all rain would fall kindly and gently upon us and our gardens, but it just doesn't happen that way. Then, after the rain, with this sort of heat, often come the fungal diseases. Hopefully today's rain will be kind, will fall without all the severe crap that often accompanies it, will fall everywhere all over the state so that no one is missed, and will make us all happy. That sounds like a tall order doesn't it?

There are SO MANY pest insects that haven't shown up in my garden yet. Think about it.....I didn't have Colorado potato beetles, asparagus beetles or harlequin bugs. No cutworms. No squash bugs to speak of (just the two in April, of which I killed one, which probably prevented early breeding and an early squash bug infestation) and no SVBs yet. No blister beetles yet, although since they later feast on grasshopper eggs after destroying plants, I would try to co-exist with them if they showed up. No pests at all on my ornamental cotton (cotton is pest prone so I watch it carefully) so far. No corn earworms (lol, since the early heat made me ditch the idea of growing corn this year), and that's a marvel, because without corn they usually feast on tomatoes and are called tomato fruitworms. We don't have Japanese beetles here. The June bugs hatched out at the wrong time and got caught in between two cold spells in April, which must have killed a lot of them as the annoyance of them and damage from them was very short-lived. The mosquitoes have been almost non-existent lately since we have been too dry for them have puddles to lay eggs in/hatch in. Even the craneflies, which generally are good guys, had a small population and weren't underfoot and trying to come into the house and in everyone's hair that much.

It is just that the pests we do have (grasshoppers, katydids, crickets, leaf hoppers, stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs and far too many white-lined sphinx hornworms on the bat-faced cuphea plants) are here in incredible abundance, the likes of which we seldom experience. That's rural living for you though, especially when it is hot and dry. The leaf-eating and fruit-sucking pests flock to irrigated gardens because the fields are dry and brown and don't have a lot of plants with high nutritional value for that reason. June normally is not a bad grasshopper month. They usually don't get really bad until late July and early August. So, it seems we have them not only in very large numbers but also very early. Having them here so early like that just makes me wonder what lies ahead for the next two months. The army worms likely are a warning about more to come, so I'll just watch for them as fall approaches, which is usually when their population peaks. I've just been smashing them when I see them, but if their population gets too big, I can just spray Bt.

There's lots of good insects and other garden helpers in the garden as well---tons of ants doing their jobs, green lacewings, lady bugs, a whole lot of dragonflies (people don't really think of them as beneficial insects, but they are big-time insect predators), wheelbugs and assassin bugs, bees and all kinds of other pollinators, wasps, green long-legged flies, some ground beetles (they eat tons of pest insects) and lots of butterflies. Lots of birds. Some toads. Skinks. Quite a few songbirds in the plants eating insects. So, all in all, it isn't the worst year for pests. So far it isn't even the worst year for grasshoppers, but merely a bad one.

I have been spending a lot of time this week weeding out the small amount of weeds that show up in mulched beds (so very much fewer than most years in fact due to an early start with all the mulching), deadheading flowers, cutting back a few wildly rampant plants, harvesting, and mulching.

I am about out of patience with all the people around me who spray herbicides. My garden got hit by herbicide drift late last week for at least the fifth time this season, and I'm going to lose probably half my tomato plants. Some aren't going to survive and of those that do, I think even their survival won't matter because they just aren't going to make fruit now anyway. I've lost okra plants, zinnias plants, and far too many tomato plants. There's fairly widespread damage on bean plants and the ornamental sweet potatoes. I wish I could build a tall wall-like fence that would keep drift from reaching my plants but the drift would probably fly right over it. Because the drift goes airborne and cannot be see or felt (and seldom smelled), you don't know when it is coming (other than if you are sitting in your garden watching someone spraying) and you cannot do anything to stop it. Sometimes I see multiple people on multiple pieces of property spraying on the same day and I just cringe because I know the odds are good that drift is headed for our garden. People are so irresponsible and spray on days that are too hot (which causes some herbicides to turn into a gas and travel farther) and too windy.

I've always liked that our garden was visible from the road and people can enjoy seeing it as they drive by. I suspect that visibility is going to end. I've about decided that all we can do is put up a big hedge of evergreen shrubs and possibly short trees along the east side of the garden fence far enough from the fence that they won't shade the garden excessively (since almost all our drift comes from that direction, with trees to the south, west and north seeming to block any from those directions) that hopefully, later on down the road in a few years, will get tall enough to block the herbicide drift. I also am contemplating building a new tomato-growing area in our back yard because the placement of the house, greenhouse and detached garage would help protect tomato plants there from drift. We might have to cut down a few shade trees to make this workable long-term, and that is not something I want to do, but it might be necessary.

Now, I'm going to head out to the garden in the slightly cooler morning air (sadly it probably did not drop down cool enough for fruit set on the tomato plants) so I can work until the rain arrives, or until the heat index values drive me indoors, whichever happens first.

Dawn

Yes, Megan I immediately starting recruiting help in coming up with ideas for ways to raise bail money!

I think my phone was scorching there for a bit! I tried to be supportive rather than vent my true feelings and share some of the ways I would be tempted to retaliate! Might not be a good idea to help plot revenge?

For all the good it may do, I went ahead and signed up for chips. I'm already on a couple of local tree companies list as a place to drop and have an area I'd be willing to take a hundred loads or more! I had one load delivered over a year ago and nothing since.

Thank you Bruce and everyone willing to pass the hat to help me out.

I've yet to hear from the Xerces Society or the county extension, but I did locate some soil life information online that looks at the persistence from seed coating, not spray, but it's the best I have to work with. Based on the type of neonicotinoid and application type, the foundation beds are no good for pollinator plants for up to 3.5 years from December of last year. I don't know why they were spraying a systemic pesticide in the middle of winter. It doesn't make sense and the only thing it did was contaminate my soil. Maybe that's what they were counting on. It being present in the soil for early blooming plants. I don't know and it won't solve anything now.

Since 3.5 years from Dec would put me in the middle of a spring season, I'll plan to wait until the following year, so in 2022 it should be safe to grow pollinator plants in the foundation beds. I have an established milkweed there already and it took me 2 years to get it established, so I'll Okie engineer a net tent to use over it for the next - OMG - 4 years. It sounds crazy but I started that baby from seeds and out of a dozen or more starts, 3 survived until ready for transplant and only this one survived after that.

A different neonicotinoid was sprayed last month over most of the yard. The life on it is a year on the high end so by next year things hit with it will be safe. As luck would have it, pretty much anything flowering that was hit with it is an annual. It does mean that the residual should be out of the soil by the time I want to start my new gardens. Bring on the wood chips!!!

So how did this happen? Back when I asked for a change to the service, Ben stopped the guy who came to spray, asked what he was using and where he applied. A: Bifinthrin on the eaves, windows/doors/etc. Since Ben didn't call the office, he didn't get the whole story. The chemicals, spray site and application type rotate. Knowing my husband, I'd already figured that out and gotten over it by the time he copped to it, but my ornery streak imagines what I could leverage his guilt into besides being able to have a garden anywhere and as large as I want (LOL) but I'll settle for that, even if I probably could have gotten it anyway.

Nancy and Dawn, I too was a crazy gardener before Ben. It just wasn't on my radar at that time either. Isn't it funny how much so many of us have in common...People who would otherwise be strangers if not for plants and the internet?

Megan, I probably would still be being held without bond.

My one Beefmaster plant seems to be putting all it's energy into growing one big tomato. Heidis are making tomatoes, but they look really fungus-y and certainly aren't going like gangbusters. Two Creoles (which were bulletproof last summer) are blooming but being very casual about setting fruit. My sole surviving Brandy Boy is being as much of a diva about everything as my only Brandywine. Big Beef looks bored. All 4 cherries are spindly and wimpy looking. Porter has a couple of grape sized fruit on it. Really, most all the tomatoes are one big yawn except for the 4 EG in the big grow bag. They're going crazy blooming, and I'm shaking them down enough in cooler weather that I'm seeing fruit forming everywhere. Everything is getting fed and watered regularly, and either Daconil or copper, and everything gets shaken down whenever possible.

I've got more PEPH seeds to go in, but even the surviving ones are growing slowly. The okra finally seems kind of happy. Peppers are starting to take off. Cucumbers are being a struggle. Slow growing and hard to germinate. Same with squash. They all get fed too.

I don't know what's up with things this year. I can blame the heat, which I'm sure is part of it, but that can't be all of it, especially with the heat lovers. I've even got zinnias that have had flower buds ready to pop for a couple weeks, that just sit there, and the LB petunias just look small and sad.

Dawn, so far all the moisture that has went through the gauge has added up to 0.12". Just enough to get the leaf surface wet .At least the cloud cover is nice.

Brought in 4 tomatoes that broke color! 2 Patio and 2 EG.

Rebecca - hahaha! Had the one with the 3.5 year dissipation time been the one sprayed everywhere, I would be!

Megan, It is true that Bruce was recruiting help to raise bail money. We were planning a situation-appropriate plant sale to raise your bail money---we were going to sell pollinator plants and fall tomato plants so we could bail you out.

I think it is cool how much we have in common, and yes, we likely never would have met one another if not for the internet. It is crazy. So often we read about how people use the internet and social media to retreat from real-life interactions and just keep most of their interactions with other humans online or on their cell phone. Don't you all know people like that? They have hundreds of FB friends, but rarely leave their home to do anything with a live-and-in-person friend. Not us! We have to get together in person at least once a year (more often for those of you who live close enough to one another to see each other more often) so we can see each other face to face....like a reunion of a far-flung family. Once we meet, we truly are family forever, not internet strangers. I think Oklahoma's relatively small size helps. If we had a state that was as large, geographically, as Texas or California, we'd be so spread out over the larger area that the Spring Fling still would be too far of a drive for many people.

Rebecca, That Beefmaster must have had a father who told him (or her, or it) "If you're just going to do one thing, do it really well." So, that's what your plant is doing---it is making that one tomato its masterpiece. Maybe it will set more fruit (if the temperatures cooperate), later on.

I think all the problems mostly are the heat. Maybe not all, but mostly. Even heat loving plants like a break now and then, and most of our plants had to deal with extreme heat from very early on in their lives. My zinnias were slow to start flowering, but are going gangbusters now. Everything has taken its own sweet time. I feel like the plants felt all the early heat and decided they needed to really establish their root systems and toughen up to endure the heat before they could really take off and grow, bloom, flower, or fruit as appropriate. Even the watermelons (true heat lovers like okra) that I planted from seed directly sowed in the bed after all the brassicas came out have been very slow to sprout and grow. This year's constant herbicide drift isn't helping either.

Robert, Well darn it, I was hoping you'd get more than that. It looks like Antlers, at 3"+, is the big winner in our part of the state. I hope more rain has fallen on your place this afternoon or will fall tonight. I've lost hope that our place will get any more. All we've had today is heat and a pretty miserable heat index, and neither of those is what I was hoping for.

We did have good cloud cover until around 11 a.m. and it was heavenly. The weather just went haywired after that and the heat finally drove me indoors much earlier than I was hoping for.

Rebecca, Hooray for the tomatoes!

Megan, You're still laughing, so I think you're doing really well. I agree that the 3.5 year one would have been incredibly discouraging had it gone everywhere. Thankfully it did not.

In my garden today, I observed a brand new hatch of tiny, tiny grasshoppers about 1/32nd of an inch in length. This constant hatching of new grasshoppers each week is driving me crazy. I have never seen such a slow, steady, non-stop hatch of grasshoppers this late in the year. Did these guys not get the memo to hatch out in April and early May like normal? I have noticed that if I sit very still in the chair in the shade at the west end of the garden, song birds will come into the garden and fly around, visiting various plants (especially the squash) and eating something. Usually the birds won't come if I am in the garden---they'll sit on top of the fence or on the nearby electric line and wait for me to leave the garden. So, whatever they're eating is tempting them to risk coming into the garden with me.

This morning Tim sent me a text message asking me if I had seen our Friday-Saturday forecast. Well, of course. He should know that I had because I watch the weather like a hawk. I guess he just noticed that our temperatures go back up and he must have been worried I didn't know. Oh, I know, I know. I've been dreading the return of the heat all week....not that we even have cooled down that much anyway. I will say that today's Heat Index of 101 was much better than the heat index values last week and the week before, but it still feels too hot to me at this point. I'm ready to start hibernating indoors more---not that I want to, but just that the heat is going to push me to the point that I have to.

Dawn

My hair was still drenched, 3 hours after we got caught in the downpour trying to leave Walmart with groceries. Rained so hard all the way home (9 miles) we could barely see at times. Reminded me of coming home from SF 2 hrs ago. No wind to speak of though, so that was good. My gauge says 2.2"; but Tahlequah station said 1.6 "and Porter .4 or something like that. Since they're both a fair distance away from us, I think the gauge is probably measuring accurately. It seemed to be a pretty narrow band of red on the radar. It looks like we won't get anything else tonight or tomorrow, and I'm thankful for that, I know most of you need rain. . . but we really didn't need it much, and now that the tomatoes are so close to being ready, a lot of rain is not what I want. I see that part of the panhandle got a good amount; I'm sure they needed it.

The potatoes are just moseying along doing their thing; corn is getting very tall. Corn was a fun experiment, but I decided real estate out in the garden is too precious to grow it again. Better stick to beans and peas and cucumbers. I will get back to cabbage and broccoli, but not without nets next time.

Lots of 4 foot flowers now ground-level flowers, or 2', at any rate. Just have to laugh. The Bermuda grass/crabgrass lawn looks lovely though. MOST of the beds (well, all but 2 large ones further back) are pretty weed-free for the next few days, and mulching with the wood chips continues. The two further back, well, I just won't talk about them.

I was shaking my head at my worry about too much water (and Saturday there is a chance of yet lots more), and then thinking about your yard, Megan, and your pesticide-loving neighbors, Dawn, and the many of you in severe drought. And of the insect pests so many of us are seeing. Gardening's crazy.

Megan, well at least you'll eventually have a clear slate for your gardens. And Dawn, I can't imagine the constant assault you're under with neighbors spraying. I hate that for you. I'd probably be a raving lunatic.

Yes, not only is it wonderful to have this gardening connection, but in truth, my only real friends down here ARE all gardeners. And I appreciate all of you so much. There are other lovely people I visit with, but I most enjoy visiting with my gardening FRIENDS!

God willing and the creek don't rise, I might get to see Amy and Eileen and their hubbies on Saturday. Since heavy thunderstorms are an 80% chance, it could fall through. I'm hoping NOT!!! Bad timing for Rebecca. Bummed about that, Rebecca.

Glad you have tomatoes, Rebecca. . . I have a few sitting on the deck table. All New Girls except for two Mortgage Lifters that I'll probably be tossing in the compost, as they were lying in the mulch at the bottom of the plant. We'll see. I've almost got enough Sungolds to make a big batch of baby-poop-colored cherry tomato sauce, Dawn. Now THAT made me laugh.

Just noticed something strange. I moved to the desk computer and am missing Dawn's most recent post, which showed up on the laptop. I liked it. You were referring to the internet connections statewide.

Larry, so you and your granddaughter never went computer shopping?! You need to get after it. LOL

Jacob, are you crazy busy? I hope everything's growing great for you.

hahaha, NOW I see your post, Dawn. Yes, we do have the grasshoppers in common. Which is saying to me that it is their time, apparently, since where I live is so different from where you live.

I haven't been asleep yet tonight/ last night lol. Reading y'alls posts encourages me to plan next years garden. I went to the SBDC and I am working with them to develop a business plan for a market garden. I hope to begin next year but maybe not till the next. I checked on a piece of land I heard about and they want 30k. Way to much for 3 acres. I Am trying to keep my hope up and look to the future but living on the farm and seeing them at the market is like being punched in the guts over and over.

My little gardens keep me happy. I am only harvesting herbs but I how to get some cucumbers and beans soon. Maybe some purple potatoes. Sweet potatoes are doing great. Hibiscus is looking really good. The one in the pot is doing better than the ones in the ground. Compost tea works wonders for all of them.

Kim, Land is expensive everywhere any more. Shockingly so. I hope you can find your little piece of heaven on earth at a reasonable price. Keep dreaming and you can make the dream a reality.

I know it is hard to live on the farm and see them at the market. I don't know if I could bear that under the circumstances.

Congrats on getting a harvest form your little garden. I'm not surprised that your hibiscus in the pot is doing better than the one in the ground. It probably can hold on to its moisture better.

I'm sorry you apparently have insomnia and couldn't sleep. Perhaps you can nap during the day today then.

Compost tea and Garrett Juice, which is an enhanced compost tea, are miracle workers. I relied on both very heavily in our early years here when the soil was nowhere near as good as it needed to be. I made every tea of every sort....compost tea, manure tea (back when you could trust manure to be herbicide-free) and alfalfa tea (my favorite tonic for struggling plants).

Nancy, I could be a raving lunatic over all the herbicide drift but what good would it do? People who spray their land with herbicides aren't gonna change. People who spray their fencelines and the roadside with herbicides to reduce mowing aren't going to change. They're gonna go on spraying and not care if their stuff drifts, so I just refuse to let it ruin my garden joy. There's a lot more drift this year and it has caused tons more damage to my garden than I've ever had before. This is likely occurring because a lot of these herbicides that people use are being used at air temperatures too high for them---so they turn into a vapor and drift like crazy and then settle down on my plants. I've always gotten minor damage on plants at the east end of the garden, nearest the area where other people are spraying herbicides on their land. This is the first year I've had it hit almost all parts of the garden, including plants at the far west end of the garden, and there's been more major damage---as in dead plants and also plants so badly damaged that they will not recover and produce. It is easy for us to forget that most everyone around us is not organic and relies heavily on pesticides and herbicides, at least until I walk into my garden and see herbicide damage on a garden on property where herbicides never are used. I don't know if there is anyone organic within 5 miles of us. It has been this way from the day we moved here. It never will change.

I've always loved our open front pasture with its wildflowers, but now am contemplating planting a gazillion trees and shrubs in it next year to create a little mini-forest that hopefully will someday serve as a sort of barrier to all the herbicide drift. It is really horrid clay, though, so I don't know if trees and shrubs stand a chance in it. I suspect they'll possibly grow too slowly in the dense clay to protect the garden. Maybe I should just plant a big wall of bamboo, with a bamboo barrier trenched into the ground between the garden and the actual bamboo planting.

Let's look at the bright side of things. We are slipping into drought here. Our soil is so dry, even a day after it rains or a day after I water deeply. Dry, dry, dry. It would be challenging to keep the tomato plants alive and producing no matter how much I water. If I water enough to keep the plants themselves happy in this heat and our increasing drought conditions, the fruit still will taste watered down. So, having herbicide-hit plants makes it easy for me to make what normally would be tough drought-related decisions. I won't bother trying to keep the tomato plants going all summer because the herbicide damage is so severe. I'll just harvest the current fruit as it ripens and than yank out the plants....if they live that long anyway. Then I'll sow flower seeds that are quick to bloom from seed so at least the butterflies will hopefully have some flowers in August. At the rate the fields are drying up, there won't be wildflowers for them in July and August. While the U. S. Drought Monitor may not show us slipping into drought yet. what my eyes see tells me that's what is happening. The monitor is just always slow to catch up. Drought makes life simpler in a lot of ways because you get to the point where you just cannot water enough and you know you have to stop.

We haven't had a bad grasshopper year in a while now. I guess not since around 2014, so we're about due. It is what it is, and we'll just deal with it as it comes. We always have grasshoppers, but if you have 8 or 10 grasshoppers per square yard, that's not so bad. Now, if a person is seeing 30 or 40 grasshoppers a square yard, that would be a big, big deal and the ranchers would start spraying to save their rangeland. It even depends on what species of grasshoppers a person has because only a few of them really inflict massive damage.

We're supposed to hit 99 or 100 degrees Saturday and with high humidity. As Tim said, the party's over here......not that this year's growing season has been much of a party to begin with. So, from this point forward, having a garden here is like Survivor....you get to see how long you and your plants can outlast the weather and outplay the pest insects. I feel like our garden is as well-prepared for this summer as it can be. I was very careful with soil improvement before planting. I chose varieties, especially flower varieties, that can endure a lot of heat and some drought. There's not a single pampered princess-type plant in my garden---I choose tough stuff. I planted very densely so the mature plants would come together in a solid mass and shade the ground beneath them. I have mulched very heavily and keep adding more mulch as time goes on. I haven't tried to push the limits by planting a lot of succession crops of veggies that would struggle in the July and August heat, choosing instead to plant succession crops of flowers for the wild things. I cannot think of anything more I could have done, so from this point forward, it is just a matter of how hot and how dry we get and how well the garden holds up to it. The tomato plants will not last all summer---not with the herbicide damage that has been inflicted on so many of them in combination with our heat and lack of rainfall. It is okay. I wasn't planning on a big food preservation summer anyway. We've already had more tomatoes here than most people get in a whole summer. We've eaten them until we're almost tired of them. I've put big gallon ziplock bags of tomatoes in the freezer for winter cooking. I've been making pasta sauce with them all summer mainly because pasta sauce is a great way to use up a whole lot of them at once. I sort of plan my meals around how many tomatoes I can use up. (It is a good problem to have....too many tomatoes sitting on the counter.) We have plenty of tomatoes on the vines to keep us harvesting fruit well into July....if the folks around us don't spray herbicide again and if their drift doesn't finish off our already damaged plants.

We all have to work with what the weather gives us. I know how to work with what it is giving us this year. In a lot of ways, returning to our hot, dry, miserable summer weather is easier for me than having flooding rain like we did in 2015 and most of 2016 because I can water enough (up to a point) to make up for the lack of rainfall. When your garden gets 24" of rainfall in one month like it did in May 2015, with 12" in one day, it isn't like you can go out to the garden and suck up all the excess moisture out of the ground with a shop vac. At least, with drought, we're back in our usual comfort zone (as pitiful as that sounds).

Now, I am heading out to the garden early to beat the heat. Our humidity is awful this morning even though the rain yesterday missed us, so I doubt I last long at all outside today. I hope to last long enough to do today's harvesting and to weed at least the asparagus bed. It really needs it.

Oh, and we had a 10% chance of rain before 7 a.m. It didn't happen and it isn't happening and I am not surprised.

Dawn

Ugh, 2015...

Watching plants drown, some slowly and some very rapidly was painful! Using the cans around tomato plants helped that year by being able to stuff grass clippings and a little compost around the stems allowed addition roots slightly above grade and kept most of them alive. That and foliar spray to supply nutrients while the roots developed and recovered.

Brassicas just melted into the ground when the sun finally came out and it seemed like onions floundered badly as well.

Definitely not an issue this year!

My tomatoes are growing out the tops of the cages with most of the indeterminate varieties taller that I am. Some are heavily loaded while others, (same variety) next to them have little or no fruit? Other than observing, I'm not overly worried about it. I know I'll have more than enough to gorge on tomatoes and plenty to can, freeze or make fresh salsa. Friends and family that don't garden will likely get the excess.

Moved another hornworm to the sacrificial plants in the east end of the garden that has just about decimated the plant I placed it on. One of the members on OGN (FB) officially named all hornworms 'Lisa', which I felt is very appropriate! Especially after all the grief I've received as result of my previous hornworm management practices! I do miss the sound they made when I did a gravity check on the ones found on my plants. The sacrifices some of us make due to peer pressure....

Seems I have onion and garlic eating gophers. I've lost a few to the little demons, but I guess if it keeps them away from my peppers and tomatoes until I get time to trap I'll live with the loss.

Mole or moles moved into the mulched walkways and beds. I seldom worry about them and generally let them eat grubs and aerate the soil, but when the walkways started feeling like I'm walking on a huge marshmallow, I decided enough was enough. I broke out the mole trap and promptly dispatched one. The trap was reset over another tunnel, but no luck on additional convicts! I'll patiently wait until they slip up and give away their location. Years of developing patience in the pursuit of game, hunting and fishing comes in handy at times?

My stewart's zeebest has really struggled to get going with many having to be replanted 3 and 4 times. Cutworms, grasshoppers and seems like everything in the world has attacked them! I finally seeded up a bunch in small pots that are used as replacements as I go along. I'll win or if I lose, it will be after a long war! And there will be many casualties!

So hot and yukky here. I am having big sale tomorrow. Hope to get rid of all the furniture. Trying to downsize to a more manageable pile of stuff : /

My cucumber is blooming like crazy. Have no idea what I planted but no matter what it will be good. My friend has lots of yellow squash so I am good there. Melons are growing fast too. One of the local farms is hiring so I am going there on Monday.

Bruce, I agree that 2015 was painful. I remember that May day when we got a foot of rain. I was almost mesmerized watching all the water flow downhill....we had waterfalls where we didn't even have streams previously. While I was chilling out watching the water flow, in town the water was rising and getting into some homes, and it flooded the courthouse basement, where they apparently kept all the records. (I guess keeping the records there made sense until it flooded.....). If we never have another year like 2015, I'm okay with that. I take no joy in watching plants drown and die, or die slowly of multiple water-related fungal and bacterial diseases. Onions rotted right there in their raised beds. Of course, hot and dry isn't a picnic either but I prefer it to wet and flooding.

My tomato plants did the same thing. Some varieties set heavily and some set nothing. I think it is just a matter of who managed to get the job done before it got too hot, and who didn't. It isn't even necessarily a variety thing because I have multiple plants of the same varieties and in some cases one plant set a ton of fruit and the other set little or none. Well, I don't have to worry much about it now, because with or without fruit set, the ones that got herbicide drift are toast, so there's fewer plants to worry about.

I hate gophers and hope you can trap and kill yours quickly. Our cats wipe out any gophers that try to move onto our land, but the voles outnumber the cats a million to one and the cats mostly just ignore them any more. Pumpkin will catch a vole in the field next door and bring it to me, alive, in the garden to show off his toy, and then while he is playing with it, he'll lose it and it will be roaming free in the garden. Pumpkin's kind of garden help is no help at all, and he's three years old so he ought to be more about cat type work now and not all play.

I suppose your patience is paying off. It probably isn't nearly as much fun being patient and waiting for a mole and it is for a fish or duck or deer or whatever.

Except for the two Stewart's Zeebest plants that got drifted and pulled after they could not recover, my plants look great but haven't even flowered yet. I'd say they are right on the verge.

Most all the news from my garden today is bad news.

I found squash bug nymphs. Sprayed them with insecticidal soap, but still haven't found their parents. Also found one possible SVB entry hole while harvesting yellow squash and zucchini this morning. I don't even care. It is too hot and too dry to care. When the SVBs kill the plants, I'll just remove them, dispose of them properly and plant something else there. So, from no squash pests to both of them found in the same day. Oh well, it's summer time and summer is hard on gardens.

A creepy thing happened today. I went to the house from the garden, which sits between the house and the road. The garden is visible from the road. The house is not. As I walked back down the driveway to the garden a few minutes later, there was a pickup truck (not someone we know) stopped in the road, blocking our driveway, with the driver staring at my garden. He or she had either binoculars or a camera trained on the garden, and fled as I approached. Creeped me out. This is one reason my driveway gate stays locked even when I am at home. If this person wasn't up to no good, why flee once they were noticed?

It is hot. Hot, hot, hot. When the heat index hit 98, I gave up and came indoors but I was able to stay out there a lot longer than I thought I would.

Dawn

I did wind up with 9/10's of rain yesterday. Cucumbers are putting on finally and the squash. I think the corn is going to be poor this year. It's stunted and tasseling already.

I planted some of those yellow rind, yellow meat watermelons this year and they have lots of blooms. I hope some more tomatoes set fruit as they are few and far between.

I know you are normally prepared for snakes in the garden, so I suspect a snake trying to come on the property may not fare well? I just hope it never comes to that.

The neighbors I like so well, have enough cats to populate the world, but evidently she feeds them too well and they aren't much when it comes to hunting! I do find dead mice every now and then, but I've never seen indication of an interest in gophers or moles.

The deer found my PEPHs and have been dining on the leaves. I planting them for a cover crop, so I really don't care. I may till under what I have left and plant another round around the later part of July. Just glad I didn't so ahead and plant sweet potatoes this year! Gophers eating the growth underground and the deer eating the foliage would have made for a slim crop.

I'll get my deer deterrent strings up shortly and it keeps them out. They've never bothered much besides peas, sweet potatoes and last year they mowed one strawberry bed. The string went up and they never ventured past them. Or maybe they ate everything they wanted?

We got a brief shower yesterday morning early and the rain that was supposed to come in toward dark never happened. I could have used it, but I know my ground isn't as dry as some. I'll just keep watering and not complain.

I've been picking a few tomatoes as they break color so they are starting to pile up a little on the counter. The next two weeks should switch over to picking buckets full and having to do something with them. Looking forward to that!

Yellow squash and zucchini have been really slow this year, but the lemon squash has produced a little and fixing to be a lot. The trombincino it vining rapidly and starting to set a lot of little tromb babies! Hopefully we enjoy it as well as zucchini.

I'm so glad to know it's not just my garden that's slow this year although I've got a foliage issue with my maters. Ugh. Must go spray with my oil mixture since it rained yesterday here. We got 3/4's of an inch!

We have one yellow summer squash, one zuchinni and 2 cherry tomatoes. We've have gotten quite a few cukes & jalapenos. I ran around like a frantic person throwing every last seed I could think of in the garden last Sunday before I returned to work Monday and I'm happy to report that all except my spaghetti squash have come up!!! Even Okra!!!! (some of you may remember I'm okra challenged.......)

Yes, I'm back at work. And today is the first day that I haven't gotten angry, made someone angry or thrown a fit. I HATE these meds they've got me taking......I'm so cranky that I can't stand myself! Yes, everyone please feel sorry for DH. He's so grateful I go to the garden so much!!!!

This is part of the area I have been working on. Up by the 275 gal. water tank are tomatoes, squash and PEPH. Those I am growing for myself, the rest of the area is for wildlife and soil improvement. To the right I have melons, peas. beans, and foxtail millet growing. The millet is outgrowing everything. To the left there are turnips and radishes coming up very thick. I brushhogged the area about two week ago and scattered the seed everywhere. The other seed is not coming up yet. Come fall planting time I will decide what to do with the area to give good cover crop and food for the wildlife,

Dawn I hope you are still well protected. Where are your guard dogs? Maybe a guinea hen would help

Yeah, that WAS a creepy thing to happen. What did Tim have to say about it? I would be pretty highly alerted by something like that, too. I'm sure you will be on guard, as you should be. Hate it when these kinds of things happen.

Larry, I love your gardening plan, growing your stuff and stuff for the wildlife. That would be a delightful dream, doing what you do (and Dawn does it too, and perhaps some of the rest of you.) I also love Amy's thread on mulch crops.

Here, we only have 1 1/2 acres, the back half heavily forested. It's not in town, but not in the country. We have neighbors all around. And we have deer, possums, sometimes raccoons, sometimes rabbits, squirrels (!), woodchucks, voles, moles, and lots of birds. The thing that is kind of funny, but frustrating, is that none of our neighbors garden with veggies or flowers. So our yard is heaven to the critters. And with 1 1/2 acres, with half of it oak woods, the magnet would be the immediate beds. I can understand why all the critters would love our yard to party in, I cannot imagine how I could grow enough stuff to make them happy while keeping myself happy. I wish I could.

Bruce, you mentioned string fences. . . you talking about fishing line fences? They are MY magic bullet.

Just went through the flower and herb beds this evening, whacking off lots of herbs and flowers. "Rearranging" many flowers or herbs that I'd not grown before and so didn't know how big they'd be. Bad time of year to do it, but did it this evening to give them a good chance. Actually, after the heavy rain yesterday, the soil is wet and there is heavy mulch everywhere, so I expect they'll be fine.

I'm nervous about the tomatoes, with yesterday's heavy rain here, and perhaps Saturday's heavy rain. But have to say, whatever happens, I'll have a better harvest than I did last year. Garlic's drying, onions are done (pulled prematurely, but good), prematurely dug up a few potatoes and they were good. I moved down here in Feb. of 2015.

First year, several shrubs and a few perennials, and creating beds. Second year, creating the raised veggie beds in the former hunting dog pen. Adding more plant/flower beds, lasagna style, with newspaper/cardboard/straw or hay/ doubled mulched leaves, grass clippings, compost; piling loads of double-mulched oak leaves in raised veggie beds, with some compost and regular dirt from nearby neighbor. Third year, piling loads of raised garden soil in the veggie beds, along with peat, compost and double mulched oak leaves, and in the many herb/flower beds, tons of double mulched oak leaves, wood chips, compost. Raising nearly everything from seeds under lights indoors enables us to spend money on soil amendments. Have to say, the most time-consuming part of this has been how to germinate everything. But it has been a ball.

Bruce, I'm saving my creepy person explanation for the end of this post, and Tim and I both arrived at it separately yesterday and then discussed it between the two of us last night after he got home. Now I don't know whether to be terrified or to laugh hysterically. I'm still upset, but for a different reason than y'all probably are thinking. Yes, I carry a handgun to the garden because of the snake issue, but I'd hate to have to shoot a human snake. I'd do it, though, if I had to in order to protect myself.

With deer, you just never know what they'll do. In years when the native plants are plentiful, they never have bothered the garden much, but in hot dry summers they will increasingly eat more and more. The ones that bother me are the ones that stand outside the garden and make strange sounds---like they are blowing air through their nostrils. Sometimes they sort of stomp a foot too. Is there a name for that behavior? They usually are trying to chase me out of my garden so they can come into it. Fat chance of me leaving it and leaving the gate open for them, but they don't know that. Usually they are just wanting me to bring them some deer corn or cracked corn because they're hungry and there's nothing back at the deer feeding area. I won't leave the garden while they are there outside of it.

I assume the strings you're talking about are like fishing line and they can't see it but walk into it, get spooked and take off? That sort of trickery never worked for me. Heck, even deer netting on poles didn't work for me. They'd bust right through the netting, bend the poles or knock them down, etc. My feeling is that we have far too many deer here in the river bottom land around us and that during period of drought they migrate upland to our yards and fields to feed. Once we're that hot and dry, they'll eat anything that isn't behind an 8' tall fence. We've even had them eat the very tough Burford holly leaves some years, although that occurred more often when the shrubs were younger and smaller but not so much in recent years.

I picked a lot of tomatoes yesterday. I think it will be the last really big harvest since nothing is setting fruit. From now on we'll just get a ripe 1, 2 or 3 here and there for fresh eating, and I'm okay with that. It was the plan all along that I didn't want to grow too many tomatoes, so I'm achieving that, with a special assist from Mother Nature and all my herbicide-loving neighbors. I'm eyeing that pile of tomatoes and trying to figure out how to use up the common ones---like Early Girl and Illini Star quickly because there's a lot of those. I'll probably process them and freeze them to use for winter cooking. The one thing I'm firmly set on is that I am not making salsa. Nope. Not doing it. Especially not doing it in this heat. The ones we're looking forward to eating---the True Black Brandywines, Spudatulas, Big Brandys, Indian Stripes and Genuwines will be BLTs for the next week. Probably lots of BLTs, but that is okay. They are one of the joys of summer for us and it is too hot to cook fancier meals. Sadly, the Nebraska Weddings, which are Tim's favorite tomatoes, got hit early by herbicide and then got hit a second time within the last couple of weeks. Consequently the plants are small, stunted, pitiful-looking and haven't set a single fruit. I should just pull them and a bunch of other similarly damaged plants but I hate to give up on them. I'll probably pull them late next week----I thought I'd give everyone a chance to prove that they set fruit during the slightly cooler, rainier days if the did (and I don't think they did.....blossoms still were falling to the ground prematurely). I cannot even keep up with harvesting the SunGolds. I need to work harder at eating handfuls of them in the garden while working.

Robert, I'm glad you got some rain. I know it wasn't nearly enough, but any rain is better than no rain, I almost planted corn back in April. Then, I looked at how dry we were, how we went from too cold to too hot almost instantly and how the rain just kept missing our place even though it was falling over much of our county, and I gave up on the idea of corn. I didn't think I'd get good tip fill in the ears even if I could get the plants to produce. I'm not sorry that I didn't plant it because it feels like we did get too hot for proper pollination. I do miss having fresh corn. On the other hand, I don't miss fighting the earworms. Since I didn't plant the back garden because of the heat and dryness, I only have half a garden and I miss having that back garden. My plan was/is that I can afford to water the front garden deeper into the season, even if we make it into drought, because I won't be watering the back garden. Still, it hurts to think of all the things I had planned to grow back there that we just don't have this year. That includes cucumbers. However, I could plant them for a fall harvest if it ever rains here again. Making pickles in fall's cooler weather is more fun than being in the hot steamy kitchen making pickles in the summer anyway.

Yellow squash here has been doing really well and I've already got some of the extra squash put up in the freezer for winter because when it is doing well, the plants make more than we can eat fresh. The zucchini plants have been much slower and now they're the ones where I found squash bug nymphs and SVBs yesterday so they are short-timers for sure and likely won't get a chance to produce much before the SVBs kill them.

Paula, I'm glad you're back at work IF you are glad you're back at work. I'm sorry the medications make you feel cranky. I know that you and Ken will get through this together, and I am grateful for your sake and his that you can spend so much time in your garden.

Larry, I'm amazed you can grow things without deer eating them the second they sprout!

Kim, We've been down the guinea route. Had them for about 15 years. Loved them and hated them and don't really miss their big mouths and all the noise they made all night and all day. They roamed too much and I constantly had to chase them down and herd them home. So, after predators got them all (along with every other single chicken, duck, guinea and turkey in our neighborhood) in the cougar year, we didn't replace them. My dogs are old and guard their food dishes and that's about it. I do have Pumpkin. He's a pretty fierce attack cat, but probably no match for a human.

Nancy, Tim was fairly unconcerned and I'll explain why in a minute. I just wish we had a way to determine if this person is a stupid bad guy or a stupid good guy. I expect time will tell. I'll just say this: stupid is as stupid does.

If I tried to rearrange plants right now in this heat, I'd just have dead plants. Heavy rain? We don't get that here in summer. I think I've forgotten what it is like. I'd love to have heavy rain, but it isn't in our forecast. Only a tiny chance of very light rain so I'm not expecting anything. On the other hand, with heavy rain can come lightning, strong wind and hail, so if the heavy rain skips us, at least all those other hazards skip us too.

Okay, now for the best explanation we can come up with for the creepy person. Sometimes people are idiots. Sometimes they think they know more than they know. Sometimes they have a lot of book learning and not much actual in-the-field experience. Maybe this person is one of those. Maybe he or she is a DEA Drug Task Force agent who is NOT a gardener.

At the front of my garden, in the area where I traditionally grow the Flanders poppies and larkspur plants where this year I ditched them to improve the soil with about 6" of compost during the time they normally would have been sprouting and growing, we have 5 or 6 kinds of zinnias (Art Deco Mix, Pinca Mix, Benary's Giant Lime, and several colors of both Profusion Zinnias and Dreamland Zinnias), I have a plant that is about 15 to 17 years old. It has been in the same place all that time. It is a hardy hibiscus called Texas Red Star Hibiscus (Hibiscus coccineus). I'm actually surprised it has survived so long because it also is known as swamp hibiscus, and my garden generally is not very swamplike (except in 2004, 2010 and 2015). Sometimes overzealous law enforcement agents (or potheads) mistake this type of plant for marijuana. Now, I'll say this---I have never ever used drugs of any kind and I wouldn't know a marijuana plant if it was sitting there staring me in the face, but I do know my Texas Hibiscus plant and I know what it is NOT. So, while we are not sure if we're dealing with a good guy idiot or a bad guy idiot, we think the lurking idiot stranger surveilling my garden from the road likely can see just enough of the plant from the road to think it is something that it is not. I've known all along, ever since I planted it, that some gardeners have been arrested by idiot cops who have mistaken their swamp hibiscus plants for pot plants. So, that's our best guess. I've looked at photos of marijuana plants online (did so just yesterday to see if my theory could be correct) and I don't really see the resemblance. The swamp hibiscus has a lot fewer leaves (at least it does in our non-swampy garden) and they don't have the correct number of leaflets. Still, a non-gardener might not pick up on stuff like that. And, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the idiocy of this mistaken identity. All I have to say is that if they show up with an arrest warrant for me because they mistakenly think I am growing pot, I'm going to be beyond angry. I'll be sue-their-ass-for-wrongful-arrest angry and I'm not a person who thinks people ought to sue others at the drop of a hat.

Several years ago, Southern Living garden writer/editor Steve Bender wrote a hysterical article about plants that commonly are mistaken for marijuana plants. In case y'all don't read his articles in Southern Living or on his grumpy gardener blog, I'll link it below. Until I read it, I had no idea that overzealous law enforcement officers sometimes mistake some of these innocent plants for marijuana plants. I already knew about the swamp hibiscus of course, but had no idea about the others....so in my garden or yard I have three of the four innocent plants.....and none of the bad plants.

If it is a law enforcement officer, then the fact that we keep our gate locked even when we are home during the day, might be adding to their suspicion. Oh well, as a woman who is home alone all day in a rural area where there's no neighbors near enough to hear her scream, I refuse to apologize for that. On days I've left the gate open for UPS or FedEx or because I'm expecting a friend to drop by, we get....every single time, without fail, creepy people knocking on our door for suspect reasons or creeping around on our property without letting us know they are here. (The dogs always know and bark, even when they are indoors.) We get people wanting permission to harvest firewood from our woodland, or to hunt deer (no, never ever ever) or to be running around in our woods at night with coon-hunting dogs hunting coons (no, never ever ever because we like to sleep at night)...or a million other things.

If y'all don't hear from me later, you might need to start raising bail money. Tim's in a law enforcement class all day long today that doesn't get out until 5 or 6 p.m. so I have no backup if anything stupid happens here today. Oh, and I cannot believe we're even having to discuss this!

Steve Bender's Article on Marijuana look-alikes

Now, as the sun starts to rise, I'm heading out to my garden to deadhead flowers and weed the north end of the garden before it gets too hot. I hope Steve's article amuses you all as much as it amused me.

Dawn

The string I use is the twisted nylon often used for jug lines or limb lines. Monofilament would probably work, tho?

I'm not ready to permanently close in the east end of the garden so I have hog panels wired to t-posts for the time being. It's pretty easy for them to hop over and start shopping.

The strings wouldn't stop anything, but they do not like them!

Paula, I don't know if my garden is behind or just confused? Tomatoes started off slow because of having to wait 3 weeks later than normal and I still had to cover them a few times on the earliest ones. It was about as early as I dared, and I frosted the leaves on a few plants, but you sure can't tell it now!

Squash, cucumbers and okra are slow growing, but they are coming along.

Onions are what have me scratching my head. My short day varieties are all out and pretty close to being cured. Even a few of my long day variety have laid over. I see a lot of people harvesting garlic and mine isn't anywhere close! I removed a few scapes, but most haven't even started sending them up.

One of the members in the gardening groups sent me some top sets from her garlic. She has been growing it since the late 90s and seems to be pretty impressed with it. I love adding various 'storied' garden varieties to my collection, so I jumped on the chance! I don't know the name (variety) of a few of the ones I have now and it kind of adds to the allure, I think.

I've been using red cedar mulch around squash for a few years now and have been pleased with the way it repels squash bugs. I've found it needs to be added to or replaced after a few weeks as it loses it's repelling tendencies. Anyway, I went to Tractor Supply and bought cedar pet bedding. I'd noticed it didn't contain as much of the heartwood as I would have liked, so I piled it a little deeper. Yesterday I noticed most of the white wood or what I thought was sapwood is pine shavings! That's not what I felt like I was paying for, but it's to late to put it back in the bag. Pretty good chance I'll leave a review on their website and possibly email or call the company and have a little chat!

Way behind so I just skimmed. Youth camp starts Sun so I've been busting tail trying to get everything done. So nothing to report garden wise, since I haven't done more than water. I did harvest a green tomato for my bacon, spinach, & fried green tomato sandwich last night. Delicious! I should come home to a nice little harvest.

Dawn, the only reason I know what pot looks like is becauseod the goobers in one of my plant ID groups. They seem to think it's funny to post a pic saying "this is growing in my flowerbed, what is it?" There was an article not too long ago about a coupe who were arrested for growing pot. Turns out it was okra. If you're going into drug enforcement, you should have a general overview of horticulture.

A couple of years ago, I took a bunch of lemon basil to a lady down by Checotah. After I gave her the sacks of stuff, I headed on down to go fishing. She later messaged me and said the store owner at the store we met up at had accused her of buying marijuana in the parking lot! Now, this guy is a former police officer and I think I figured out why the former part applies? Knowing her, I bet his ears are still burning even now!

Now when we do our plant or produce drop offs, we try to be extra sneaky, just to get him going!

Darrell Merrill (Tomato Man) had a funny story about being visited by law enforcement for growing a plant that looked like pot. Might still be up on TMD website.

The big Beefmaster is gone, no trace left behind. But, I brought in 4 more blushing tomatoes yesterday. So, I guess the score is Rebecca 2 Squirrels 1? Might pull Beefmaster and replace, it’s just not happy, I don’t think. The best looking and producing tomatoes are the 4 EG planted together in the 60 gallon bag. It’s a total jungle because they aren’t more than a foot and a half apart, but even with fungus issues they’re miles ahead of any other tomato in the garden, including the cherries. Would you believe I haven’t gotten a ripe cherry tomato yet? Maybe the secret for me is crowding them. Could be fooling whatever squirrel is still lurking. This weather sucks.

I love strawflowers. I know they dry very well, but I hear they need something special done to the stems before they’re used in fresh arrangements. Anyone know? I’ll have to google maybe.

Have fun flower shopping, Megan! I sure wish the video would work.

I love your plant drop off story, Bruce. haha!

Jen, I have a picture of the flower I got from you at SF. It's so pretty. I'll come back later and post it. Have fun at camp.

Dawn, that is quite the story! I didn't think about that. When I first read the story, I thought it was just a nosy person wanting to look upclose at your garden. I might would do that too if I knew where you lived! haha! And the person drove off 'cause you "caught" them. But...your suspicion makes a lot of sense. Check in to let us know you're okay.

Honestly, I would grow a plant or two if it was legal. Just because. But, it's not, so I would never consider it.

Nancy, I need to trim up some herbs too. And the soaker hose was left on (Tom) yesterday after an inch of rain on Wednesday. Then it rained this morning and it looks like we could get more tonight/tomorrow. Maybe the tomatoes will be a bit flavorless? But they're still green! Turn already!

Paula, I"m sorry your meds are making you feel bad. :(

Kim, I need to message you. Thinking about you...

Someone said "ugh 2015". Yes, ugh! I promise I could feel my plants dying during that flood. It was so upsetting.

I have a new pest. Asparagus beetles. Fun. I haven't had time to really deal with it yet.

Grasshoppers are eating the leaves of everything including my southern peas. Dumb.

All sorts of wildlife around here. Possums. A coyote out in daylight--9am. Stole one of the neighbors' hens. Their Shetland pony ran it off. Those ponies are sorta mean--won't let me pet them. My other neighbor got it on video. Thought it was a deer at first so stopped to video.

Rosa is now broody. So, my other neighbor (who took the video) gave me 3 eggs to put under her. She has 2 roosters. Dolly's eggs will be at 21 days on Monday. Maybe we'll have babies next week. I will be disappointed if something went wrong. I'm not counting my chickens before they're hatched but two cute little baby chicks would be nice.

I'm not harvesting much--just SunGolds really. Close on the eggplant and need to pull all the cabbage. Maybe tomorrow.

Take care everyone!

HJ - Asparagus beetles?!? Ugh.....thanks for the warning. I had them last year but nothing so far this year. Dadgummit. You're pulling cabbage?

I randomly planted 7 cabbages around the early part of May. Then the weather has been all wonky (not to mention me) and they've been slow to form. They're beginning to form heads and I covered them with some of those row covers from that kinda expensive garden shop online (but I LOVE THEM!!! It was kinda dangerous for me to be off unattended while planning the garden this year!! haha!). They're getting watered right long with the beans, PEPH and melons around them...should I pull them or will they eventually make even a small head? I'm not so worried about bugs but they are slightly shaded now and being watered at least every other day right no because of new seedlings.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and keep an eye on the sky!

Well, nothing happened today, and I am relieved about that. I got to spend oodles of time out in the garden because it kept trying to rain so we had clouds and rain-cooled air until about 2 pm. The rain never reached us (except for one raindrop that hit me when I was walking up to the house as the thunder and the wind moved in). Do y'all think that one raindrop counts since it never hit the ground?

Two separate rainstorms bypassed us today by staying further north, as has happened over and over again this year, and that was disappointing, but we get another chance overnight. Since these storms are supposed to bring strong winds, maybe I should be hoping that they miss us instead of hoping they hit us.

Our mesonet station shows our 4" plant available water is 0.07. Without rain, it should drop about 0.01 per day, so that would mean that if no rain falls, we'll be a 0.00 in about a week. That's usually the point where I cut back watering and worry only about keeping the perennials alive.

Oh, and I said nothing happened. What I meant was nothing happened that involved creepy people. Two other things did happen. 1) While I was trying to walk carefully in the zinnia bed and deadhead without stepping on any plants (very challenging because they are packed in there very tightly so they can shade their own soil keeping weeds down and the ground cooler), I encountered a snake....by almost picking it up. Luckily it was only a rough green tree snake, entwined around a few zinnia stems while it lurked and waited for a tasty insect to come along. It startled me, and made me realize if it could be there lurking in the zinnias, so could any other snake. Hmmm. I am going to have to rethink how I will deadhead them. Or even if I will. I got the rest of that bed deadheaded very quickly and got out of there. 2) Then I switched to weeding the harvested part of the onion bed, where tiny zinnia seedlings (from an heirloom red zinnia blend) are just now sprouting. I sowed that seed last week after I pulled the last of the Candy onions. I pulled out the bindweed and crabgrass that is sprouting with them, and was rewarded by a bite from a fire ant who apparently didn't like sharing space with me.

Even though I had already harvested tomatoes almost every day this week, there still were new ones breaking color, so I harvested a Cherokee Carbon and a Big Brandy today. I also noticed that the 6 leftover tomato plants I planted along the north fence line to serve as sacrificial feeder plants for the hornworms (I move tomato and tobacco hornworms to them when I find them on our official rows of tomato plants) are looking really good and setting fruit. I think they are being protected by a small tree east of the fenceline near them because they are the only tomato plants that haven't been hit by herbicide drift. Now I hate the thought of moving hornworms to them, so maybe I'll start moving the hornworms to daturas.

Bruce, My onions and garlic both have been goofy. Heck, almost everything has been goofy. I'm trying to stay calm and go with the flow. Things that are going to produce will do so. Those that aren't....well, I guess they won't. It has been such a bizarre weather and pest (and herbicide drift) year that I doubt anything else could happen that would surprise me. All the weirdness does make me appreciate every single thing I harvest from the garden.

Jen, I agree. Anyone who is working drug interdiction needs to be really and truly trained to recognize what is, and isn't, pot. This whole thing has me irritated though. Since I need to plant a barrier of plants to slow down the herbicide drift before it hits my garden, I think it would be funny to created a big huge bed between my garden and the road and to fill it up with nothing but chaste trees, Texas red star hibiscus plants, cleome and okra. Wouldn't that be a hoot? I could even plant the ornamental pink okra. Maybe Sunset hibiscus. Perhaps roselle. Think of the fun I could have with that bed....watching passers-by trying to figure out what all those plants are since apparently the world at large cannot distinguish between marijuana plants and chaste tree, swamp hibiscus, cleome and okra. I'm chuckling to myself as I type this. I am SO going to do this next year! I need to amuse myself somehow.

Bruce, That is just hysterical.

Rebecca, The only thing I know about strawflowers is that their thin stems usually don't hold up well, so you attach them to florists wire to help them stand up. I always thought that was just for dried bouquets, but I could be wrong about that.

I agree that the weather sucks. Our forecast only looks worse and worse the further out I look, so I've stopped looking. How's that for a solution? That way I can be surprised when each succeeding day turns out to be hot and dry.

Megan, I hope the plant shopping was fun. Don't plant and buy a Texas red star hibiscus unless you want strangers lurking and conducting surveillance on your garden!

Jennifer, I've heard that marijuana plants are pretty. I'd never grow one though, not even if it was legal. Since Tim is a cop, there's some lines I'll never cross.

Asparagus beetles never have been a problem for me. I think it is because no one who lives within a migration distance of us is growing asparagus, so they just cannot find us. Not that I care. Y'all know that I am over growing the asparagus for various reasons. Asparagus beetles can come and destroy my plants and I promise I won't mind.

Grasshopper numbers are scary high. Today I noticed a gazillion newly hatched crickets. What in the world is going on with them? Why are new ones hatching out non-stop? It appears we had oodles of crickets and grasshoppers laying eggs at some point.

We don't have broody hens right now and I'm glad. We have enough to deal with right now with all the predators, lack of rain and heat.

Paula, I think there's a good chance they'll make a head if the heat doesn't make them bolt first. I guess it will be fun to find out.

I am watching the radar. I expect the storms will do what all the other storms have done this year....they'll fly right by us and drop the rain somewhere else. Usually by the time overnight storms reach us, they run out of 'oomph' and just don't have anything left. We're under a severe thunderstorm watch until 5 a.m. I expect the storms won't reach here until about then, unless they fall apart before they even get here.

We've got wild turkeys lurking around and helping the poultry eat their hen scratch. They also raid the deer feeding area's cracked corn. I don't know if they're having trouble finding something to eat in general or if they are just lazy and come here for our bird food buffet.

Today I had a big long, fat green locust sitting on the red wooden Adirondack chair in the garden...my chair that I sit on while taking a break. I made it get off my chair because I was not going to sit there with in. I also noticed (and it seems either too late or too early) tent caterpillars in the pecan tree right next to our western garden fence line.

I also am seeing tiny baby praying mantids in the garden. I hope they get big quickly and start eating grasshoppers. Right now the grasshoppers, even the small ones, are larger than they are.

There will be no gardening for me tomorrow. I'm actually pretty caught up and there isn't anything to do. In 3 or 4 days the first southern peas will be ready to harvest.

Dawn

Dawn, we're both in OK, but your description of what the forecast portends is just about exactly the opposite of mine here for tomorrow. I'm praying for no heavy thunderstorms!

I can't say as I'm pretty caught up, but am fairly caught up in the gardens. Got a bucketful of sungolds--but potatoes still not ready. The rest of the tomatoes are slowly coming one; have 8 or so on the deck table, most enormous but worried they may have worms in them. I don't know what the bottoms of them should look like since I've never grown them before. These are app. 1 lb tomatoes (Cherokee Carbons and Mortgage Lifters.) Decided I'd cut one apart tomorrow and see what's happening.

I wouldn't be at all afraid to grow pot here. No way could any law enforcement official zero in on it in this jungle of plants. LOL

THE only two things I did today were mowing the lawn (1/2 acre) and making dinner. Spent the past week weeding and mulching. Spend yesterday cleaning house (I know I said wasn't gonna do it til November, but GDW guilted me by vacuuming the entire house thoroughly, so I made a big list and crossed most of it off.)

Japanese beetles. Researched and now will arm and declare war.

Even with all the nasty insect pests, I have such a variety of plants/herbs/flowers in the beds, that many are thriving. This is the best learning session for me. And what is the funniest thing for me this year, is that I grew SO many flowers/herbs that I've never grown before, and had no idea what they'd look like or how tall they'd really grow. It is a riot realizing how wrongly I placed so many things. Thus. my frantic rearranging despite the risks. But seems to be okay.

So tired and am not commenting on your posts, but read and enjoyed them all, as always. XOXO

Nancy, I'm still reading your posts. Just been too busy to comment!!

We spent the beginning of the week putting up hay for my grandparents (and playing cleanup with fixing tractors), which really didn't go very well lol!

When we came home the garden was mostly eaten. 2 days(!!), and not only had something mowed all 30 ft. Of my pole beans, but also some of my bush beans, all 18 winter squash plants, marigold flowers, and all of my cucumbers. On top of that, an entire 30 ft. Row was stripped of all green tomatoes. Some were on the vine with teeth marks, but most were gone. Strawberries were also mowed. Grape vines are now skeletons and so are the bottom halves of our fruit trees. All in all we pretty much lost 75% of the garden. BUT, my fall brassicas and all the lettuce were completely untouched. They were the easiest to get to, and probably the tastiest. I have no idea how. Until we catch these critters I have the brassicas covered in row cover at night, as it's far too late to start these long DTM varieties if they get eaten.

Been spending the last few days replanting, putting up soap and sprinkling pepper for deer, and trapping. All seems to be working. In the last 3 nights we caught 2 coons and a possum. If we catch something our cat stays outside and starts meowing A LOT, and I hear him now, so I suspect we caught something else this morning.

I was hanging soap on our fruit trees yesterday, and when I happened to shake it, Japanese beetles start falling out on my head. Looked up and they're all over the top of it!! Never seen that before.

I'm a little jealous of your rain. We got some drizzling and a slow rain on Wednesday that lasted maybe 10m, but not a whole lot. It dried out when the sun came out very quickly. We were supposed to get nasty storms last night but got none, and now it looks as if we may not get any later. I don't think we've had very much rain at all since late May, and it's awful dry. Problem with if we get any rain today at all, it'll likely be heavy, and it'll just run off because the soil is too dry to take it up!! We need a good all day, slow, steady rain, something I don't think we have had since March or April.

On the other hand, I'm very thankful for the 70 some degree days we have. It was hot hot hot Monday and Tuesday (low 90's), but Wednesday on has been 70 some degree temps during the day. Looks like the heat returns Monday.

Tomatoes are as tall as me now.

Chicken people! There was a fully formed but still slightly in the egg dead baby chick outside of Dolly's nesting box! I couldn't find the other fertilized egg until I picked her up and there is a gray baby chick in the back of the nesting box! Took the dead one to show Ethan and then called Tom. Went back out and the baby was trying to get out of the box and Dolly was pecking at it (not hard) I think to get it back into the box. But she seems stressed. Should I take the baby from her?! And put it in a brooder? I don't want her to freak out and kill it too! If she killed the first one, which I'm guessing she did. I wasn't prepared for this today. Thought it would be Monday. I just don't know what to do.

HJ, I’m sorry about your chickens. I wish I knew what to tell you to do. Is there a chicken forum here, maybe, until Dawn checks in?

Brought in 4 more blushing tomatoes, 2 Anaheim peppers, and big handfuls of mint and basil. And, a big bouquet of flowers, mainly so I could cut the zinnias back so they’ll get more bushy than tall. All going to my moms for the family.

It looks like I got really good fruit set this week with the cooler temperatures. I gave them bloom booster as soon as I saw the forecast, then MG a few days later, and scattered Tone last night so it could get rained in.

Finally got a few cucumbers to come up. Not seeing the new PEPH yet. Everything else is growing. Potatoes aren’t falling over yet. The guy at Stringers that I always go to with questions said leave them alone until after the 4th, or later.

Jacob, I was watching the saga of the garden pillage on the veggie forum. Glad you’re getting the culprits, but I’d still be getting that permit to shoot yourself a raccoon coat. Now that word is out, you’ll be fighting them forever.

We we are going to Bixby to Carmichael’s, to get corn, melons, green beans, blackberries, and blueberries. Family is here for the next week or so en route to Fort Worth for the move.

Not sure what to say either Hazel. Never had that happen before!! Good luck.

HJ, my first thought was to put the chick in the brooder so it’s safe. But I don’t know chickens.

Sorry, for the freaked out post. I just wasn't prepared today to find all of that. I can't concentrate on reading right now.

I've read online a TON of stuff. The dead baby could have been caused by many things. I did move Dolly and Stormy (the baby) into the shed side of the coop in a dog pen with a large can turned on its side to act as a nesting box. It might be a little small though. I'm really torn between wanting do let Dolly care for that chick or caring for it myself. Dolly is still acting broody and sorta pecked me when I moved her. She hasn't done that before. You read all sorts of horror stories about hens killing their babies. I saw that with hamsters when I was a kid. (had a ton of small animals in my bedroom growing up.)

Decisions.

I really should be working in the garden although it's quite wet. We got an inch of rain during the storm last night.

I guess I'll spend the day wandering about fretting over a baby chicken and her/his mother. Why am I me? Why can't I be normal?

Okay. I won't talk about chickens.

Paula, my cabbage is weird this year. Some are really small, but they have good heads. And some of the larger ones didn't really make a tidy head. But, I'm going to pull them all tonight. (I was too distracted this morning to do it while it was cool).

Yes. Asparagus beetles. I've been squishing them when I walk by, but haven't done a true attack on them. How did your asparagus do this year after being infested with them last year, Paula?

Glad to hear from you, Dawn, and nothing creepy happened to you yesterday. Hope today was the same.

I'm excited about your southern peas. Mine are SO far away from being ready to eat. I still have some dried ones from last year. Wonder if they're still good.

Nancy, I hope you were able to get some rest. Let us know what you figure out about your tomatoes.

Jacob, SO sorry about your garden. That really is disappointing. And, I think, coons and possums are so cute. But they're not good to have around a garden or coop. My dad had a pet raccoon. There are pictures of him with it. I heard it got into the coop and my grandfather hit it. Then the coon turned mean and it left. However, my uncle said it actually got into their rabbits. Which is interesting because I didn't know they raised rabbits. Anyway...cute, yes.

Nice garden haul, Rebecca.

See...I didn't talk about the thing that I said I wasn't going to talk about. But I do have some thoughts regarding that topic and SunGold tomatoes. A comparison of sorts. But will leave it for another day so I don't become a liar. However, if I deleted the first sentence no one would ever know I was a liar. haha.

Okay. Here's why I should never have a "free" day.

Came back with pictures for Jen and Nancy.

Jen, the first pic is the flower you gave me at SF. It's beautiful. Thank you.

Nancy, here's the offspring of the red bee balm you have me last year. It was beat up a bit from the storm last night, but it smells So good.

Jennifer, You can move the chick to the brooder if you prefer (I like to do it because rat snakes and chicken snakes cannot get into the brooder to eat the chicks), but our hens do not slaughter their babies. So, we aren't moving them into the brooder to protect them from their moms. Sometimes, if there is only one chick hatched, we do move the mother into the brooder with it so the chick won't be lonely. Usually we have more than 1 hatch out at a time though. Sometimes a chick has a congenital issue and just doesn't survive though. It happens with a certain percentage of the chicks that hatch. If you try to think of your chickens as farm animals, not pets, not substitute children.....just farm animals, then it will be a whole lot easier (I hope) to not obsess over them. This is why we don't name our poultry, although Chris did name his two turkey toms although Augustus is the only one whose name I could remember, and the other tom didn't care. He'd come to you even if you yelled 'Hey you". I always keep in mind that our poultry are farm animals, not pets. Otherwise,the inevitable losses of free-range chickens to hawks, coyotes and bobcats would be too much to bear if I started thinking of them as more than farm animals.

I think you are normal. Some people just get really attached to their animals. I am that way with furry animals, but not so much with feathered or finned ones.

Rebecca, It sounds like your garden is doing really well. Mine is just roasting in the heat and lack of rain, but it is producing, so I cannot ask more of it than it already is managing to do in these circumstances. I do not think I got more fruit set in our slightly cooler conditions but I won't be certain for a few more days. Or, at least I won't stop hoping for a few more days. Of course, the rain has missed us all week and I don't really expect tonight to be any different. In years when the rain starts missing us like this, it tends to do it really consistently.

I did some deadheading of zinnias a few days ago, but need to do more. I just try to leave the flowers as long as possible for the bees and butterflies before I deadhead. I probably need to cut some for bouquets just to lighten the load on the plants. They're almost too heavy in their compost-rich bed and are turning into big overgrown monsters.

Jacob, Haying is going on hot and heavy here too. Tis the season, I guess. Everyone was trying to get it cut, raked, baled and, in some cases, hauled, before the rain could get here. Well, no problem at all since the rain hasn't made it here yet. There was a ton of haying going on all week, and even more today. Even fields that normally aren't cut are being cut and baled. I think people are starting to worry about drought developing and perhaps them needing more hay than usual put up for winter.

We've been there with coon issues before. They are mean. You have to be really carefully carrying the trap because they'll do everything in their power to hurt you. I hate them. We leave the possums alone (of course, they are fenced out of the garden) because, among other things, they eat venomous snakes. I'd like to have 100 possums living on our property. Instead we just see one or two wander through occasionally.

I am sorry the critters took so much of your garden. Been there, done that, and have the 8' tall garden fence now to ensure it doesn't happen ever again. Tim moaned and groaned and whined about putting up a tall fence (the expense! the work!) but, you know what, it was worth every bit of time, expense and labor to keep the garden safe. It even was worth listening to him moaning and groaning about it all. For all that he does not like putting up fencing, even he knew it was our best option and that we just needed to do it. He just didn't want to do it even though he eventually gave in. I think mostly that, after fencing our 14.4 acres to keep the neighbors' cows out (and we had to cut through 40 years of overgrown forest in most cases just to be able to put up the property fence), he just hoped he'd never have to put up another fence for the rest of his life. Fat chance of that. We couldn't do any fencing right now, though, because the ground is rock hard like cement and there's no post hole digger that can break through it when it is like this.

Nancy,

Happy Birthday! Hope you're having fun today.

Of course we got the wind (clocked in at 52 mph at our mesonet station) last night and none of the rain. Then, today we got the higher dewpoint and a heat index of 104, again without the benefit of the rain. I wouldn't mind the other stuff that comes with the rain if only we were getting the rain too. The good thing about not getting rain is that we're not getting hail, so at least there's that.

Every day this week I tried to harvest all the tomatoes at or beyond the breaker stage, the zucchinis, the yellow squash and the peppers. I'm just trying really hard to not get behind on harvesting. I thought that the first PEPH peas wouldn't be ready until the middle of next week, but now it looks like they will be ready tomorrow or Monday. They are turning from green to purple pretty quickly in this heat. The second planting of southern peas is just now sprouting in the former potato bed, with a row of an heirloom red zinnia mix in between the two rows of peas. Hopefully the new planting will be producing by the time the first planting is finishing up.

I've been sowing dill, fennel, zinnia and cosmos seeds in every bare inch of ground within the garden fence, trying to ensure the pollinators and particularly the butterflies will have everything they need for the rest of the season. As the fields dry out, I've noticed there's not much left blooming for them. At least within the irrigated garden I can try to provide them with blooms (and their pollen and nectar) all summer long, unless it gets so dry that I totally stop watering, and I hope it doesn't come to that.

Our rainfall for June is worse than pitiful. I don't have a word that adequately describes it, but it is, so far, less than 25% of our average June rainfall has fallen and that's not many June days left to make up that deficit. Our 4" soil moisture level was 0.06 this morning. Well, at least it cannot get much worse because it already is about to the bottom of the scale.

I hope that anyone in the path of tonight's storms get nice gentle rain and none of the wind, hail or damage from severe thunderstorms.

Dawn

HJ, was that one of the canna bulbs I brought? Odd, because mine are red or yellow. I didn't know I had some cross like that!

Garden is on its own for the next 5 days, though I may ask the husband to water it if it stays too hot. Since so much is in containers, I'm sure they'll need it. Otherwise, it's sink or swim time.

I am afraid to go out and check the tomatoes across the hwy, there is a good chance some of them will drown because of the rain we recieved the past two days. I believe that I can lose half of them and still have enough, I am still very happy for getting the rain because the pastures and hay fields were very dry.

Larry, Just send me your extra rain and I'll take care of it for you. I think everyone in OK got rain this past week (and most of them got a lot like you did) except for me. Well, unless my one raindrop counts. I think since it landed on me and not on the ground or in the rain gauge, it really doesn't count as rain. I hope your tomato plants are okay and not drowning.

Jen, Have a good week away. I am sure your DH will try to keep the plants watered while you're gone.

That canna is not a cross. It is a very, very old heirloom variety called Yellow King Humbert. It is a particular favorite of many people because of the way the yellow and orange blend on the flowers---often no two flowers look exactly the same.

Jennifer, My cousin had a pet raccoon as a kid. They rescued an apparently abandoned baby one in their yard, her dad built a big wooden cage, and they had it for a while. It was mean and would bite anyone who got too close to the cage. I don't think they had it for a real long time, and they released it once it was mature--not long after it bit her if my memory is correct. Coons are vicious predators of many small animals, particularly chickens, but I've never heard of them preying on rabbits. Knowing how viciously they'll kill chickens (even full grown ones if they can get into the coop or run) though, it wouldn't surprise me if they prey on rabbits in a similar way.

Nancy, I meant to add that weeding and mulching is so exhausting, especially in high heat and high humidity, but so worth it. I've noticed that the better a job I do of keeping the weeds down, the less insects I have. That doesn't mean no insects, but just fewer of them. I really believe they breed in and hide in the weeds. I don't think I ever really get and keep my garden as well-mulched and well-weeded as I like, but I just keep plugging away at it as well as I can under the conditions we have. Once we get too snakey, that changes a little, but I'm not willing to risk a venomous snake bite to keep the garden perfectly weeded from mid-summer onward.

Dawn