July 2018, Week 1, Cruel Summer
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
5 years ago
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Rebecca (7a)
5 years agoNancy RW (zone 7)
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June 2018, Week 1: Hot Time, Summer In The City
Comments (99)Jennifer, Could the dog have been bitten by a snake she was trying to bite? If you can look at the hard knot in her mouth, do you see any fang marks? When we have a dog with swelling around the mouth/nose/snout area, it usually is a copperhead bite. No treatment required except maybe Benadryl for swelling. The only time we've had a dog stung by a bee or hornet wasn't in the mouth---was in the facial area and there were knots at the sting sites and swelling. Benadyl was the solution. With the onions that got wet, it probably just means they'll need a longer drying period. Watch them for mold though. Amy, When Houzz changes things, I just roll on and work around whatever they've changed. I ignore notifications, FAQs, etc. in the gardening season because I don't have time for that stuff. I just come here to chat with y'all. I'm just grateful they saved GardenWeb when it looked like it was going to go away and disappear into the realm of used-to-be's. Someday it will go away and all we'll have left to help us stay in touch is the OK Gardening-related FB pages. I think it is just a matter of time. I'm surprised your Red Rivers are done. When I've grown them they're usually about the last ones to mature, and it often is late June or sometime in July. This has been a weird year, and my onions are weirder than anything else. Half the 1015Ys fell over and I harvested them. The rest remain strong and upright and still growing. Normally they're done by now. One Candy has fallen over. None of the others have. Copra? Nothing yet and I wouldn't expect it. Either last year or the year before they were the last ones to mature and it took them forever. This has been such a weird weather year that I guess nothing should surprise us at this point. Some of my tomato plants have great fruit set. Some do not. It appears directly related to how early I did or did not plant them. The ones planted in late March (I only planted 7 that early) have had a huge fruit set, and we've already harvested most of that fruit----dozens and dozens of tomatoes. The rest, the ones that were planted about 10-14 days later, have set maybe 1/5th as much fruit. Some have not set fruit at all. We went from too cold to too hot literally overnight here and the plants just sat there forever, shellshocked and doing nothing. It probably doesn't help that the rain mostly keeps missing us. For as bad as I think they look compared to most years, at leaste they are relatively healthy. We may be too hot now for them to ever set fruit and I'm not going to baby them through the whole entire summer, so if they want to stick around, they'd better get busy setting fruit. Next year I'll probably plant them all as early as possible and cover them, instead of planting in stages. Rebecca, We don't have JBs down here. I guess they haven't yet made it this far west and south. We might see 1 or 2 stray ones each summer. Dorothy (Mulberryknob) lives in Adair County and I'm almost positive she mentioned buying and using some type of Japanese Beetle traps from someplace like Home Depot in previous years. I've never seen those traps down here, but it seems like they worked pretty well for her. Larry, I'm sorry about the hail. I hope the damage wasn't too bad, We don't get much rain here in the summer months, and I do try to grow dryland style as much as possible, but I still have to irrigate quite a bit. I wish I didn't. It is a grandchildren weekend so I didn't step foot in the garden today and probably won't step foot it it tomorrow either. I'm okay with that. After working in it all week in the heat, as much as I do love it, I need a break and weekends are a good time to take a break and spend the time with family and friends. Dawn...See MoreJuly 2018, Week 3, Summertime Blues
Comments (117)Farmgardener, I'm sorry you're having such a rough time with the garden this summer. It's this darned weather. Some years we just get to a point where you cannot water enough to keep the garden producing, and it sounds like your area is at that point now. (Mine is getting closer and closer to that point by the day.) There's no shame in walking away from the garden and waiting for better weather---either in the fall or next year. Jennifer, The chickens are fine. They are bored and they are aggravated with being held hostage in a nice climate-controlled area (and I don't care that they are aggravated because I want them safe from the extreme heat). I'm thinking we'll let them out tomorrow because our forecast high for tomorrow is only 106. There's only six chickens left, courtesy of the heavy predator population we've had the last two or three years. The predators get 1 or 2 chickens a week except when I lock them up in their coop/run and don't let them free-range. This is why I'm about to give up on having chickens. We have a much, much, much worse predator problem these last few years than we had when we moved here 20 years ago. The chickens get hot or bored or whatever and wander off into the woods, despite my efforts to stop them. They ignore me and just keep going, and if you try to pursue them, which is dangerous in snake season anyway, they just run deeper into the woods, which is more dangerous for them. Then, something gets them in the woods and we never see them again. If I didn't have these 6 locked up in the mudroom, we probably would have lost at least another one this week. I call these six the smart ones because now they stick close to the house when they're out, but I don't know if they're being smart and cautious or if it just has been too hot to roam around and get very far from the house. When these are gone, I doubt we'll get more. Losing them is hard to bear. If we ever do have chickens again, they won't be allowed to free-range. If chickens are never allowed to free-range and are always confined to a fenced chicken run, they're fine with that because they don't know what it is like to be free ranging. Once they've free-ranged, though, they hate being looked up permanently and it is stressful to them to be confined. So, I try to keep these as safe as possible while still allowing them to free-range, but I'm resigned to the fact that the bobcats or coyotes will get them eventually. We went many years with only losing a couple of year, but for the last couple of years it has been 1 or 2 a week. Jacob, You've had a very adventurous couple of days. I'm glad the garden held up to the hail, and glad the baseball-sized hail didn't fall at your place. My childhood home got hit by baseball-sized hail when I was about 20 or 21 years old, and by the time all the damage was repaired, my parents practically had a new house (and new cars). I'm envious of your cool weather. When we moved here, we thought we'd be able to sleep with the windows open in nice weather. Well, that didn't work out so well as the frogs made such a racket during mating season that you couldn't sleep at all. So, the windows stay closed now. Jen, That Boston terrier sounds very, um, energetic. I hope y'all survive the weekend. Nancy, I like gravel that has been taken over by grass (and/or weeds) just like Mike McGrath described. He's one of my favorite garden writers, and Organic Gardening magazine never was worth reading after he left his job as its' editor. You can have the appearance of a grassy lawn, but the ability to park on it no matter the weather. I'd like to gravel over our entire side yard that sits between the house and garage one of these days and then let the grass grow up through the gravel. The dense, compacted clay in this area holds puddles of water forever after it rains, turning into a lake when it rains a lot, so gravel on top of the clay would be a huge improvement. Kim, I agree with you. For the 3rd or 4th day in a row, we were over 100 degrees by noon. It might have been the same at your place out there west of us. This is ridiculous heat! I'm ready for a break, even though our break here still will include highs in the upper 90s. I bet 97 will feel fairly cool after so many days between 106-111. Tomorrow should be our last triple-digit temperature day for at least a week, if the forecasters are correct. I looked at the garden about an hour ago when I went out there to check on the plants in containers. Considering the excessive heat we've been having, it looks fairly decent. Not great. Not good. Not nearly as good as usual, but mostly still alive and likely to recover if the temperatures will drop down to normal or average July temperatures. Of course, August awaits, and our hottest weather usually occurs in the first half of August so it isn't like I think the garden's hard times are over. They aren't. Maybe, though, we'll at least get a few slightly cooler days. No chance of rain though. If the drought continues to deepen and worsen, though, all bets are off. Dawn...See MoreJuly 2018, Week 4, Fun, Fun, Fun
Comments (0)Since we just went through such a hard week for ourselves and our gardens, we all need a break. This week's gardening theme song reflects that and is just for fun....just a happy song to make us smile. Fun, Fun, Fun by The Beach Boys Last week definitely was not fun for our gardens or ourselves, but we get a little bit of a break for a few days before temperatures warm up again. I hope everybody and their gardens made it through the very tough weather week in good condition. Our garden is struggling with the lack of rainfall and very high summer heat. Yesterday really was stunningly hot so early in the day that it was mind-blowing. We were 103 degrees with a heat index of 105 before noon even arrived. Really? What did we do to deserve that? lol. We peaked at a high of 111 and a heat index of 113, and I would love to believe that yesterday will be our worst day of the summer and that there won't be any more like that one. After a week of weather like that, parts of our yard and garden look as if somebody took a blow torch to them. I'm watering really heavily and really often, for me, in an effort to keep the flowers in the garden going for the pollinators because they need them. There's not many native flowers left in bloom for them as most of them are dried up and either going dormant or dying. At least the native sunflowers are hanging in there, so the pollinators have those. There's a couple of patches of frogfruit in bloom in areas where I have made puddles of water for the small wildlife. At this time of the year, every single wildflower counts. The vegetable plants are not amused by the mid-summer heat. I have shade cloth over peppers and a few of the tomatoes and that is helping, but everything else including the fall tomatoes is sitting there roasting in the sun. Even the okra leaves wilted badly yesterday and their soil was plenty moist. The harvesting continues, albeit at a slower pace---okra, lima beans, peppers (hot and sweet), and tomatoes. The first planting of southern peas has finished up and the second planting isn't producing yet but the Lima beans are filling the gap nicely, although they are late. At least they're finally producing, which seems like a miracle of sorts in this heat. Because butterflies love the heat, the garden is overflowing with them now. They are simply everywhere which is great. So are the grasshoppers, which is not so great. It is, however, typical of what happens when the weather gets hot and the fields dry up and the grasshoppers migrate in huge numbers to irrigated areas. I hope everyone is seeing lots of hummingbirds. I think we have had more hummingbirds in the yard and garden this week than ever before. I suppose this is happening for various reasons---the heat and drought conditions may be driving them in out of the native woodlands and grasslands to homes with irrigated yards and gardens. It could be the abundant blooms in the garden for them---I selected so many flowers specifically in mind for them this year. It seems like they are visiting the feeders a lot more---just like they do as they migrate, though it is so early that I am not sure that they've begun migrating yet. Still, their southward migration will begin soon. I also set up a lawn sprinkler in the lawn in the midst of a bunch of trees and run it for them for a few minutes every hour, and they really seem to enjoy flying through the mist of the sprinkler. I'm not sure if they are bathing or playing, but they seem happy no matter what it is that they are doing. Maybe they just need some heat relief too. The garden itself is full of birds searching for insects to eat. I hope they are devouring grasshoppers. Are y'all planning fall gardens? Has anyone got anything going yet other than fall tomatoes? Due to the prolonged lack of rainfall here, I don't have much of a garden plan for fall yet. I'm waiting to see what happens between now and mid-August. If some rain doesn't fall, I don't think I'll plant anything in August. It is just too dry. I feel like it is going to be challenging enough just to keep the current garden plants alive, including the fall tomatoes, from now through mid-August. Historically, our worst summer heat in my county occurs in the first half of August, although I'd be perfectly happy if this year is an exception to the rule. The grass? Our bermuda grass looks pitiful and I don't really care, except that withered, dry grass becomes a fire hazard, so I guess I'll try harder to get it some water this week. It is so dry that its' green color is about gone, and it doesn't spring back after you walk on it....so footprints from the day before are still visible in the grass each morning. Fire activity is picking up down here, not just in our county but in other counties on both sides of the river, and burn bans are starting to pop up---in some cases on the Texas side in the form of emergency burn bans implemented without notice because the weather situation suddenly seems so dire. It really isn't too bad in our county yet, but I feel like it has the potential to turn bad quickly. So, what's new with everybody? How did your plants handle the extreme heat? Are you excited for fall gardening? Just hoping to survive the summer? Beyond caring? Remember to stay hydrated if you're still having the heat. Our cool-down has begun but we aren't really cool yet---the nighttime was cooler. It was nice to wake up to temperatures in the 70s instead of the 80s, but our high still is expected to be 106 today with whatever heat index comes with it. I'm looking forward to Tuesday when we are not expected to hit the triple digits....but they'll be back by Thursday, so the weather reprieve is brief here. The chickens were allowed to leave the mud room and free range around the yard late yesterday evening and spent the night in their coops. The mudroom has been cleaned up, swept and mopped but I haven't moved the furniture back into it. I'll do that today or tomorrow. Covering the entire thing in 4 mm plastic taped down to the floor so they couldn't get under it worked out really well and made clean up a breeze. Have a great day everyone and a wonderful week as well. Dawn...See MoreJuly 2018 Week 5: Singin' in the Rain
Comments (39)farmgardener, Yay! Congrats on the okra. I am glad it is producing. Desperate times, like this year, sometimes all for desperate measures. It sure has been a weird year. Jacob, Your garden looks great as always and it is so good to hear everything has recovered so well from the hail. The drought news from your area is not good, but in the next seven days I expect you'll get some drought relief, and so will we. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for all of us. We're in Severe Drought here now with increasing fire activity that is keeping me away from home and away from my garden---poor, pitiful, heat-roasted and drought-dehydrated mess that it is. I'm just hoping rain falls soon before we can advance to Extreme Drought. At this point, though, in our area we only want rain if it is going to bring hard downpours of rain---those half-hearted thunderstorms we keep getting that are mostly dry storms with lots of lightning (which starts fires) and very little rain just make things worse at this point since the lightning striking in dry fields can start fires so easily. Here's the 7-day Qualitative Precipitation Forecast, offering us a glimmer of hope. Now, y'all, don't take this thing too seriously because it updates multiple times daily and can be all over the place with regards to amounts. Still, as we watch it evolve over the next few days, we should have some clue about how much rain to expect. 7-day QPF Larry, I loved Little Lucy and was so unhappy when the seed company that carried it dropped it from production. It was so pretty and so productive. Rebecca, Hmmm. Baby Bubba usually produces a lot. Know what I'd do? I'd hit that sucker with Bloom Booster type fertilizer to push it into flowering. I don't know why it is being lazy this year. It isn't like we are cool and cloudy, so it ought to be happy with the weather. I am so happy that Seeds of India worked out well for your co-worker. Please tell her how thrilled I am to hear that their garden is doing so well. I was only able to work in the garden yesterday for a little while. I deadheaded flowers, dodging all the bees who take it personally when I start snipping off blooms. I did a little weeding, but there's not many weeds at this point since I've worked so hard to mulch heavily and remove each weed when first noticed. I have one path that gets a bit weedy because I never have gotten it mulched. Mulching that path is on my To Do list but I never seem to get around to getting it done. I harvested okra. I talked to the tree frog who was sitting on top of my sun umbrella. I scared the deer to death by walking out of my garden while they were trying to sneak into the driveway to steal the doves' cracked corn. We had four fire calls yesterday. I didn't go on the first two as they were relatively small and minor, but the third was a big one and we were out there for 7 hours in horrific heat. The thermometer on our fire dept. vehicle showed 121 degrees at one point, and that was because we were being heated up by residual heat from the adjacent fire, which was just a 100' or so from us at that point (but not moving towards us). It was so hot out there, and so dry. When we finally made it home, we rushed off to town to grab a quick hamburger. Wqe'f fed the firefighters cold cut sandwiches and chips, but we still were starving when the fire was extinguished anyhow. On our way back from town, wolfing down our hamburgers as we traveled down the highway, I saw a familiar orange glow in the night sky and told Tim that our fire had rekindled. He didn't want to believe it and thought it was somebody else's fire---maybe across the river. (This is what I call magical thinking....wanting something to be true so you just believe it is......). We went to investigate and, of course, it was our fire. So, we sounded the alarm and then spent the next two hours back out there again. Having a wildfire rekindle is not unusual because when hundreds of acres burn, there's inevitably smoldering trees and logs and such that will flare back up----there's not enough water in this county to soak down hundreds of acres, so you just do the best you can with what you've got. Now, as I am typing this on Saturday morning, Tim is back there on a very small rekindle. It probably is going to be a rough day here again today since it started out with a fire call around 7 a.m. So, I guess we are having the August I expected and dreaded----a drought-decimated garden full of grasshoppers, and fires daily, and with the fires seeming to increase in number and severity daily. I'm hoping we'll start getting rain soon and that conditions will improve. Even in 2011 when it was hotter, drier and we were much deeper in drought than we are now, we got our first hint of drought relief on August 11th, so that gives me hope for this coming week---that maybe we'll be getting some real drought relief within the next 7 to 10 days. The forecast looks kinda good right now, but then you really cannot trust a forecast 7 days out, so we'll see. I hope you all have a good day today. Dawn...See MoreMegan Huntley
5 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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