Thanks Cindy you nailed it. No idea
where out actually came from but happy it is in the way to yard waste company.

nice beds Nancy:)

Nancy

Welcome to the thread! You'd have to be very adaptable to go from gardening in Mn to OK.

Looking out from deck over nasturtium and Meyer lemon, clematis

Len

Some things I send to yard waste and some things are safer going to land fill. I would send wormy apples or peaches to land fill not to yard waste except that I figure the deer will process them better. I experimented and found that peaches under my apple tree disappear as fast as apples.

By the way I've got apples on the Yellow Transparent the size of tennis balls. That tree ripens in the 3rd week of July or so.

Lol John don't think deer want this thistle! Maybe yard waste us best destination.

Len, we need more PNW gardeners on here, our growing conditions and seasons are so different from the Midwest and East. My garden is just beginning to really get going, I put it in on May 11-13 because I knew that I was going to have major abdominal surgery on the 14th. Since I knew that the medical problem was going to keep us from going to our summer home in BC, I said "I will have pole beans this year!". We have .6 acre here in the city and up until a few years ago I always had a full garden. Leaving a garden for 7 weeks is hard, especially since the friend and neighbor that looks in on it is not a gardener-mostly she's a worrier.

The garden in May

Yes Nancy we have people from all over the country and even a few from the U.K. on the site. After the name (some names) it has the part of the country one lives in listed. Mine was like that too, but somehow it changed and put my name-still not sure what happened. I am from Texas

Nancy, welcome to Veggie Tales. Your garden has lots of variety...I like your "keep the pests confused" strategy! It looks like some areas are fenced. What critters are you keeping out?

We finally have warm and dry weather. Hopefully the tomatoes, peppers, and squash will kick into growth mode now. We had a long season for lettuce, radishes, etc. with the earlier cool, wet weather. The refrigerator is stocked with the last of the lettuce that all came out yesterday before the heat fries them. I see lots of salad on the menu the next few days!

Yesterday evening we had thunder and lightening for about two hours, but no significant rain. It went just east of here. The heat index for today is 100+. Very miserable. Only code yellow air quality today, so that's an improvement.

Will try to spend a couple hours outside, but it will be very limited. Need to get the sprinkler going and pick those green beans.

Hope that your weather is better then here!

Leah your garden is far ahead of mine this year. I have one tiny tomato on one of the three plants in the greenhouse we plan to keep going through the fall. The 50 or so outdoors are finally blooming so will see some fruit forming soon. Squash and cucumbers are healthy and beginning to expand. Bush beans are budding and pole beans are climbing.

Most of my garden is in raised beds at the north end of our long, narrow lot (house in the middle)

Then there are several in ground beds on the south end where I grow mostly tomatoes and beans...and dahlias. I swear that next year more of the gardens will be turned over to perennials if the seed addicts here will leave me alone.

Throw in some containers on the deck and you have a full time job!

Cindy take care in that heat!

Thanks, Len. I will. I will also be taking lots of breaks.

Today's green beans. Will weigh them later. A few are larger than we prefer.

This year's first dahlia. Her name is Comet. Last year in a sunny spot she grew vigorously and had lots of dark red blossoms until frost.

Mowed, hauled some wood chips and mulched the area behind where I set out another Mortgage Lifter tomato so that I didn't need to do more than dump and rake. This tomato, I expect, will start producing late, sometime in September probably near the end of the month. But I'm guessing. I have one more to set out next Saturday. I do have a lot of other heirloom tomato seedlings

As I was finishing it started drizzling, not much rain, but it dropped the temperature to 74F.

Leah

I'm expecting to be in your situation next summer. I've had two flares both 3 1/2 years apart. That schedule puts me at next July 4th (in 2020 ) for the third. My rheumatologist doesn't think much of my prediction. But I'm going to start digging for next years fresh tomato/potato field when it's cool this year and get my garden started early next spring.

Naturegirl, I'm in NE OK, out in a country neighborhood. The fence is for deer, possums, raccoons, and God knows what else--rattlesnakes, armadillos, skunks, rabbits--as soon as I say any of the latter three aren't really a big problem, they suddenly WILL be. lol I have so many ways of guarding against the deer! I try not to grow stuff they love out in the big flower/herb beds, but if I do, I keep under heavy security--fishing line fences, plant cages. And now I've added one motion-activated sprinkler and will shortly order another. They're expensive!

But I came here from Minneapolis, zone 3/4. What a switch. Heat index 102 today, gonna be a long month.

Oh, I am enjoying all your photos so much! That messy onion/garlic carnage-looking photo is no more. Got them all taken out this morning at 7.

How does one make the photographs smaller??

The total weight for the green beans is 1lb 13 ozs. Thought it would be more. The only time I was in the sun today was when I was picking the beans.

Spent the the other three hours in the shaded part and followed the shade down the bed. Spent the rest of the time pulling weeds and getting ready to lay a stone path on the edge of the strawberry area. Going to use blue-stone slabs cut to 18" x 18." I want it to be stationary and do not want to "tend" to it every year. Will also lay doubled landscape fabric underneath them with a 1" space between each stone.

Any problems with this plan that anyone can see?

Hi Cindy,

Main thing with any stone path is the foundation. to your point, tending a stone path that is settling unevenly is a real pain. Is your soil soft, then more crushed rock ballast is needed. If soil is gravelly anyway then a couple of inches of compacted crushed rock is good enough. Are you going to grow something in the gaps?

Nancy it is amazing that we are both in "zone 7" and our climates are so radically different! It is low 70's here today which is about average for end of June. The number seems to only tell the story about what will survive the winter I guess.

Thanks, Len. I do not plan to grow anything in the 1" gap as the landscape fabric will be blocking access to the soil which is good! For the most part the soil is very firm and doesn't move much. I have been trying to build this soil up for years. It still is not that great, but it's getting better gradually. The area is pretty level.

Well, Nancy, you’ve inspired me to dive into the fray! I find myself on these veggie tales threads a lot since the best advice is always lurking in here. I’m working on my first garden, in the front yard of the little townhouse we just bought. It’s about 15x15 which works for just the two of us. The weather’s been pretty kind in the DMV so there are lots of beans, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, herbs etc coming along. A picture, since I love the pictures everyone shares here! This was a week or two ago. I swear it’s all grown a foot since this picture.

Our HOA is doing a big drainage project this year and ripping up part of our yard, so all my strawberries and most of the peppers got to be in grow bags so I can move them out of the way.

We got our first significant harvest (beyond handfuls of peas/beans/strawberries) last week, which was really cool! Definitely picked these peppers too early (they are Coral Belle, Poblano, and Shishito) but there are plenty more right behind them.

Nice to officially meet everyone!

Lyla - It's good to "meet" you. I'm in Northern Virginia. This is a great bunch of people.

Len - I do not intend this walkway to be permanent. If we move, the stones go with us.

LOL Cindy...as a builder my mindset is everything is permanent except bark or compost.

Lyla fun to see someone getting the most out of small spaces...

Welcome, Lyla. I like the front yard garden and am glad to see it is OK in an area with an HOA. Some places near us might not like that, but I think veggies are every bit as deserving of a front yard spot as flowers are.

Good idea on picking some peppers early. I find myself waiting for things to grow and then having more than we can reasonably eat when the full size harvest comes. I'll have to take some baby veggies if the upcoming full size ones look to be prolific. We are at that point with lettuce, but in my defense we were gone twice in May for a total of close to 3 weeks. And we've been gone for a week in June, too. I'm glad just to have everything planted, growing, mostly weed free, fertilized, and not going to seed. A few more days eating big salads should get us caught up again :)

Good morning all,

Jamie - I have two Candy Roaster plants with their first set of true leaves. Originally I planted two hills about 15 feet apart. One hill is pretty much eaten to the ground, the other has the two plants with the true leaves. Yea!

We had a little rain overnight but east of here had hail, big hail. Glad it missed my gardens. Today and tomorrow will be decent weather for working outside here. Then the 90s are back for the rest of the week and the coming weekend.

Welcome Lyla, I hope you enjoy your time here as much as everyone else.

Serrano, Habanero, Fish, and Purple Ghost-Bolseno and Jaune Flamme tomatoes

Slovana, serrano, and Carolina Reapers

The reapers

Lyla I love your displaying techniques-great aesthetics

I am looking forward to setting up a place with soaker hoses like Len and Cindy use (I know that many others also use them, but in the pictures you can see the engineering of the hoses on some of Len and Cindy's pictures)

Good news, Cindy!

i canned 10 pints of bread and butter pickles this morning. 6 pounds of cucumbers from yesterday

Leah, how have you been feeling since the surgery? I know that garden therapy is the best available as long as you can keep the incision site clean. I hope you make a full speedy recovery and your problems are behind you.

Thanks for the welcome, all!

Naturegirl, the HOA is officially a co-operative (I find HOA the easiest way to explain what they do day to day, it’s a very unique setup) and gardening is encouraged in the neighborhood. There are dozens of front yard veggie gardens all around! I definitely got the idea to pick early from somewhere on GardenWeb. My peppers got a little ambitious with the early heat here in May and set peppers when they were only a foot tall so they could stand to grow some more. Plus, we’re going on vacation and I wanted to try some.

Have you all known each other for a long time? How do you all remember where the others live? lol Nice to meet you all, too, Cindy. Lyla, it looks like a great start.

Len. . . . more and more, I'm thinking the zones are all about latest and earliest frost dates. But now they have the heat zone maps, and you and I ARE in way different zones! Wow. https://www.ahsgardening.org/gardening-resources/gardening-maps/heat-zone-map

Everything is a bit out of whack here. Major flooding since about May 28. Water water everywhere, though not on our place; we are high and dry, built on rock, basically. Cooler than normal temps, but now HOT and humid; it began, oddly enough, on the first day of summer.

Nancy, you are correct - The USDA zones are just based on the minimum temperatures you can expect in the winter. They don’t necessarily give you an indication of the conditions for the rest of the year. The heat zones are definitely a better source of information for the rest of the year. It’s also helpful to look at the climatic summaries for different areas.

its steaming outside here so I’m inside for a while steaming things up. I’m making a tomato pie and a Greek chicken pie (kotopita) . Later on this evening we need to fertilize the tomatoes and plant some new beans.

Nancy, I think Jamie started this thread, but many of us already knew each other from other Houzz threads. I have been on threads with Tony for about 8 or 9 years. This thread is about 3 years old, but Jamie can probably tell you the exact age. I think I joined in the second month when Tony told me about it and it has been the most wonderful and helpful bunch that I have ever known. Free excellent advice is like Christmas in July

I didn’t start the original, Richard haha but I’ve been starting the updates for a while. I usually beat Jack to it!

I don’t interact with many other folks in the other forums- I like the variety of experience and growing areas we have here. I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration fromthe folks here.

Me too Jamie me too

Me three!

Thanks to all of you for the positive energy and advice!

Spent my allotted amount of energy spreading wood chips to mulch tomatoes, also under one of the pine trees up at the street. The chips are pine, maybe 8 months old, and had many tarp fulls of maple and oak leaves piled on top from last falls supply. There's a lot of black in the chips, very wet, but cold even in the middle of the pile. Left 12-18" around each tomato for straw. Need to get a bale

edit:

Nice day, sunny good breeze, 81 at most. Saying goodbye to June, was a good month for gardening here, and I'm happy with what I got accomplished.

Just checked my trap and there's a rabbit in it. Was trying to catch a 'coon, however, the rabbit has been dining on my strawberries and strawberry plants for quite a while.

And I know that there is never 'one' rabbit.

Cindy, we have relocated 2 chipmunks this weekend...never just one of them either. Hope your strawberries are safe for now. Coons seem to be more wary and harder to catch. Fortunately, we don't seem to have many around...or they just have not found us yet!

Looks like we are in for a week of hot and muggy weather. It should get the tomatoes, peppers, and squash growing better. I hope to get out early tomorrow and get some fertilizer on them. I may look for something the use on the tomatoes for fungus...this week looks ripe for that. Usually I don't spray but I have a feeling it might be good to do this year if I want my plants to produce for any length of time.

Richard, thank you for asking, I did bounce back from my surgery pretty fast. My user name is Lea-hikes-gardens, and I was hiking the month before I had surgery. They told me these rules like "don't bend over", so I knelt down to weed and plant. I am facing chemo for the next six months but I will still garden because, as my son says, "it's my happy place".

Those wandering leeks of mine

Is it July yet, is it.... :)

Stay strong Lea, a positive mindset is the strongest healer. I have leukemia but haven't had to start the chemo yet. I definitely find that gardening is the best healer and keeps my mind focused on other things-I am really thankful I rediscovered it before all this and that I found this great site with all these wonderful people

July: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5734563/veggie-tales-july-2019

Richard. . . . my son had CML (many years ago, in '84). . . is that what you have? I understand that in seniors, CML is much more manageable. Best to you. The word leukemia brings up strong emotions for me.

Yes Nancy, I have CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Luekemia) and am scheduled to meet with a VA blood specialist next month to discuss treatment

To Lea, Nancy, and Lyla, along with other recent followers: This discussion group changes to another month at the beginning of the month-so on the July link above from Jamie just say hi or post a picture and you will then get all the notifications and pictures from everybody-every month everyone chimes in on the 1th on the new month so they are set for the month after that. Just some information for everyone in case ya'll wondered where everybody went

OH! Thank you so much, Richard! I've been thinking of you. Prayers.

Thank you Nancy