June 2019, Week 3
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
4 years ago
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farmgardener
4 years agodbarron
4 years agoRelated Discussions
June 2019, Week 1
Comments (28)Nancy, Having cats is about like having small children at times, isn't it? I imagine you blasted all the aphids off before monarchs really have begun much egg laying up there. They're laying eggs down here, but we're always a bit ahead of those of you further north. With QAL and hemlock, the purple streaks on the stem usually are a very obvious indicator. If you look at your plants, you can check the main stalks for very tiny, fine hairs. QAL has those very tiny fine hairs running up and down the stalk, and hemlock's stalks are smooth. My favorite way to tell them apart is that the seed heads of QAL will curl up into a bird nest type shape as the seeds dry. So, if in doubt about any plants that might be QAL or hemlock, just watch the seedheads. We have QAL, but I keep it pulled out of the garden and adjacent areas. I don't mind it elsewhere, just nowhere near where I'm growing anything on purpose because of its invasiveness. This year we have a lot of hedge parsley, especially in the neighbor's pasture due south of us. We've cut it down on our property so it cannot reseed here, but their seeds will wash downhill to us. I don't mind it---it is a host plant for the swallowtails, but at the same time, I don't want it invading my garden and taking over. I'm guessing all the moisture we've had since last Sept. has made every seed that was in the ground germinate and grow. When we moved here we were in our early 40s and this was intended to be our forever home, so I've always had that in mind as I garden---not wanting to create more than we can maintain as we age. Our nearly constant recurring droughts help me a lot in that regard because I cannot create more growing beds than we can irrigate throughout the summer months, and that reins me in more than anything else. We were in the second consecutive year of awful drought and a huge grasshopper infestation when we moved here in 1999, so that helped too---you cannot go crazy creating beds and planting when the ground is rock hard and the grasshoppers are eating every plant in sight down to the ground. You could say that Mother Nature reins me in from going overboard with plantings. Rebecca, That's a lot of rain. We have had less than half than much over the last two weeks. I hope your plants are okay. Larry, It is a hard garden year and the deer are not helping. They keep coming to my garden in broad daylight trying to chase me out of it so they can come in, and they just stand and stare at me like "who do you think you are?" I try to remember to close the garden gate behind me when I go in there so they cannot follow me into the garden. I don't know what their problem is---there's tons of natural food or them. I am pretty sure they want my okra plants, and I don't intend to share them. Jennifer, Sometimes zinnias just do that. I am sure it is some sort of genetic defect or mutation. I don't see it often---just a couple of times ever 4 or 5 years. Echinaceas do it too. What would eat a toad's body? Snakes of many different kinds, hawks or raccoons for sure. Probably other things too. Don't worry. Your kids always will need you, just in a different way. I enjoy the company of our adult son (and nieces and nephews) so much now---it is awesome to see them continue to grow and develop as adults. Then, someday, they'll likely become parents and you and Tom will become grandparents, and that is its own kind of awesome. If the demand for your eggs is higher than your supply, maybe you can refer some of those folks to the Conscious Community Co-op. There's almost always pastured eggs available there. Nancy, It sounds like your water table is coming up pretty high underneath your plants. Hopefully with less rain falling, that water level will begin to fall. I cannot complain about our tomato plants at all. We are reaching the I-cannot-bear-to-eat-another-tomato stage because we've been overdosing on them for 5 weeks now. A lot of my plants look sickly with foliar diseases (not unexpected because I've grown tomatoes in the same soil for 20 years, and they were supposed to be in the back garden this year.....), but they're still producing like crazy. I give the early planting all the credit for this, because I don't think my plants are setting any new fruit now and I don't think anything but the cherry and paste types have set new fruit in the last 2 or 3 weeks. I think the high humidity might be holding them back, because we've only barely been into the 90s at all, and certainly not enough to (theoretically) impede fruit set. I don't even care. Since we've been gorging on all the tomatoes we can eat, if I walked out to the garden tomorrow and all my plants mysteriously had died, I think I'd shrug it off, pull them out and replace them with zinnias and cosmos. Why not? I have 8 beautiful and healthy tomato plants in large containers near the garage that are producing very well if you don't count the minor herbicide drift damage from the neighbor's fence line herbicide spraying. I could be happy with nothing but the fruit from those 8 plants. I'm at the grumpy tomato stage where harvesting them, washing them, sorting them and processing the extras by freezing, drying or canning is annoying me. Life really is a lot easier if you don't grow too many tomatoes. I clearly grow too many, and that is nobody's fault but my own. Every year at this time I swear that I will take off next year from growing tomatoes, but of course, I don't do it. I do wish I had the self-discipline to only plant 6 or 8 tomato plants. My garden is not nearly as weed-free as yours, but I am making good progress. I still have three or four raised beds to weed, and several pathways. I think I have a good chance of getting all that done on Mon-Tues as this is a grandchild weekend and I'm not stepping foot in the garden at all. The tomato-like fruit on the potatoes is the potato fruit (remember, the part we eat is the tuber) which is not edible but contains seeds you can allow to mature on the plant and then sow if you want to try growing potatoes. Some people refer to them as seed balls to make it clear that they are not edible fruit. Google True Potato Seed if you want to read about growing potatoes that way. I did it one year just for fun to see if it could be done (it can!). You won't always get the potato fruit---just like your potatoes do not/will not always flower. I only get potato flowers/fruit in years when the nights stay cool for a prolonged period and those cool nights have to coincide with the potatoes being at about the right stage to flower. I don't have a lot to add about our garden. Although the tomatoes look sickly, I could nip that in the bud if I was willing to spray them with a fungicide, and I don't think I am. Y'all know I hate to spray anything at all on my plants ever. I think I'll just harvest the fruit and yank out the plants one by one whenever I get tired of looking at them. At least the heavy rainfall stopped here a couple of weeks ago, so the tomatoes taste much better now because excessive rainfall is not watering down their flavor. All the beans and tomatoes have spider mites, though not at huge levels yet. Either the predatory mites and lady bugs and other beneficial insects will take care of the spider mites, or they won't. If they do, great, and if they don't, I'll yank out heavily infested plants after the beans are done producing. It is rare for the spider mites to kill tomato plants as the predatory mites usually catch up, population-wise, by July and start knocking back the spider mite population, at which time the tomato plants put on a surge of new growth and rebound. I am concerned about the plethora of grasshopper nymphs I'm seeing and the fact that they are chewing holes in every single leaf on every single plant in my garden. The issue, really, is that our two organic grasshopper bait type control products---Nolo Bait and Semaspore are not available this year, so that is a big problem. I have a bottle of beauveria bassiana and I could use it to control the grasshoppers, but I worry about the effect it would have on other insects inside the garden. I think I'll just try to wait out the grasshopper damage. Or, if I start feeling really desperate about the grasshopper situation, I could spray the beauveria bassiana in a wide band around the outside of the garden fence and hope it kills the grasshoppers as they make their way to the garden. That might be a reasonable compromise. I really don't want to use it inside the garden because it can harm some beneficial insects (not all, but I don't want to sacrifice any of them). Earlier this week I noticed the caterpillar of the Variegated Frittilary Butterfly on my pansy plants. I was getting ready to yank out the pansies and replace them with Profusion zinnias, but now I'll leave the pansies until the Frit caterpillars are done with them. Lillie has been here for a couple of days and nights now and we're about to take her home to spend the rest of the weekend with her family. We tie-dyed 12 t-shirts and 2 pairs of shorts (half for herself, and half for her little sister) so my hands might be looking a little blue, purple and green (and pink, orange and red). lol. I've scrubbed them pretty hard and think most of the dye is gone now. I did wear gloves while tying and dying, but not when I was taking the rubber bands off the t-shirts to rinse them before running them through the washing machine. That is what gets me every time. Now that I've washed the t-shirts and shorts twice in the washing machine with those SHOUT dye-catcher things in there with them, I think they won't fade in a normal laundering, but I'll send the rest of the box of dye-catchers home with her today so they can protect the next few loads of laundry they wash. That worked out well for all of us last year, and now that we have tie-dyed t-shirts for 2 consecutive summers, Lillie has declared it to be "our family tradition". I'm okay with that. Hope everyone is having a good weekend. It is 88 degrees here and starting to feel a little bit toasty. Dawn...See More2019 Roses Unlimited Sale (June 3 - 19)
Comments (96)Another fun comparison: Left: RU, Distant Thunder, Own Root, I’ve had it about 1 month. This plant had the thinnest stems of the three, also had smaller root ball than the K&M. Very healthy, put out a lot of new growth Middle: Wayside, Molineaux, Bare Root, Dr Huey, also had it about a month. By far the thickest stems, but of course being bare root had to grow new feeder roots. Good progress, there’s even a bud. Right: K&M, Buxom Beauty ,Fortuniana, just arrived today. Thicker stems than the RU rose, also had a very dense rootball. Was trimmed short significantly to fit in packing box so most of the mature foliage is gone, but lots of new growth remains, even 2 buds. I’m very happy with all three providers, and thankful that I’m able to get hard-to-find varities in mid summer in great health!...See MoreJune 2019, Week 4
Comments (32)Thanks, Sandplum! That is something I really want. I don't need it right now because I don't have many ripe tomatoes, but hopefully next year will be like 2016 and 2017 for me--lots of tomatoes! Dawn, you did a great job reading my mind. IF my squash plant is butternut (oh, I hope so!), then it is a C. moschata, like you said. I did have SVB moths flying around it and think I found a small SVB grub. It was very small. And trying hard to chew into the stalk. I squished it of course. I've never seen a SVB grub that small. I usually don't see them until the plant dies and they're falling out of the dead plant. Ew. I love butternut squash so much and would love to get a good harvest of them. There's several fruit on this plant. They are growing in compost so probably don't need to be fertilized, right? Yes...I was wondering about the coloring and fruit size of the Lime Green. I might have picked it a little early. For some reason I thought the outside stayed green too and was surprised to find a light orangey fruit. Thought I had mislabeled, but not really because the plant looks different from other tomatoes. I have two. It tasted okay--a little tart. Maybe 'cause it wasn't quite ripe. The inside is a gorgeous color of green. It was a free package of seeds. I think either Rebecca, Jen or Megan got a free pack too. Carrots! Lovely carrots. I had success this year! They were crowding out and shading the shishito pepper (Actually I think it's the hot banana pepper I got from Bruce but the tag was accidentally switched with the shishito...by me) so thought it best to harvest them. Their tops were so tall, but I couldn't see the root pushing up from the soil so expected to find a skinny, underdeveloped carrot. Nope. These are lovely. I mixed up the seeds and scattered them all around the bed so have orange AND purple carrots. LOVE. They smell so nice too. Only the ones near the pepper plant were pulled so I have a whole bed of carrots to pull. Yippee! I'm going to start more seed when I can find a place for them. While scrolling through FB, I saw that someone had to pull out their hose for the first time this year. Me TOO! Last night. Dawn, I accidentally left the chicken door open a couple of nights ago and was surprised to see them out in the morning. At first I thought that Ethan had let them out (he's an early riser for a teen). Then remembered that I had closed the little chicken door so I could deal with broodies without interruption from the others. As it got dark I wondered why there weren't going into the coop. DUH! I shut their door. So went out and opened it, but then forgot to close it. Seriously. The pen door was closed, but our pen is not 100% predator proof. Something that was very determined could find a way in, which is why they have to be in the predator proof coop WITH the door locked during the night. That could have been a disaster because we have all sorts of critters lurking around at night too, Dawn, more than we've had so far out here. K, I need to finish work. We have a date night tonight and I want to leave early to take a nap so I don't fall asleep at 10. We are going to Picasso in the Paseo Arts District. One of my favorite restaurants. Have a good day, Everyone....See MoreAugust 2019, Week 3
Comments (44)Rebecca, That's an incredible amount of rain! I bet your plants will go wild with new growth! I hope you can get a lot done in this pleasant, mild weather. Nancy, Stores might have some nectar plants available now or next week if you don't have new ones started to plant in the garden. Because I succession planted flowers instead of veggies, we have nectar plants everywhere. Obviously I've never had quite this many flowers in the veggie garden, since they now make up about 95% of it, and the hummingbirds, butterflies and bees are present in huge numbers because they've certainly noticed. And, well, because we were so dry there's almost nothing in bloom in the pastures---a few yellow daisies and white asters here and there and some Mexican hat and greenthread daisies in the front pasture are just coming back into bloom after previously being mowed down by Tim, but I think the liatris will bloom late or not at all because those plants in pastures were turning crispy brown from the heat and lack of water. I did notice some of our goldenrods in the pasture are forming buds so they'll bloom soon. With the pastures fairly bare of blooms, even more little flying critters have been visiting the garden regularly. I'm pleased to have so much in bloom for them this year. We haven't seen Lillie in almost 2 weeks and it looks like she's grown about 2" since then. I guess she's having a growth spurt. I think it is hard on the girls having opposite weekend's with each of their dad's because they don't get to be together on the weekends right now, but that will change at the end of this year and they'll get back to being on the same weekend visitation schedules with their dads again. Really, it might not be too bad for each of them to get to be the only grandchild on autumn weekends. Because of the five year age difference, really I guess it is 5 and 1/2 years, they like different things, including different movies so there's lots of of compromise in making weekend plans like where to go or what movie to watch when they are together. When only one of them is here, we can choose the movie that child specifically wants to see, so Lillie gets to see movies that are for older kids and Aurora gets to see movies aimed at very young ones. It might not be all bad to be the only child with the grandparents on any given weekend now that I think of it.....but if we take one shopping one weekend and buy her new shoes, we're careful to take the other one shopping for new shoes the next weekend so they know they are being treated the same. I think you'll just have to cut into your overgrown summer squash and see if it makes a good winter squash too. Some varieties are multipurpose and can be used either way, but some are not---some are just really stringy and seedy inside and are not good eating quality winter squash. I haven't tried it with Meot Jaeng I Ae so don't know what sort of flesh it has when it gets large. I have had them hide from me to the point that they were too far gone to eat as summer squash when I found them, and I just gathered all those (it was some of all three Korean summer squash varieties) and piled them up on the porch as porch pumpkins for fall. With white flowers, it depends on how heat-tolerant they are. I like the ones that are white and stay white, but some white flowers just cannot take our July and August heat and low moisture and turn brown on the edges of the petals almost the minute they bloom. I don't care for those. With so many whites in bloom in our garden this month (cleome, garlic chives, several varieties of cosmos both short and tall, several varieties of zinnias, both short and tall, daturas and jasmine), I am loving the way they look, especially in late afternoon and early evening when that white really pops against the plant foliage. I'm not sure what kind of nectar flowers you're hoping to have for fall, but maybe if I list what I can remember that's blooming in our garden and flower beds now, if there's something I have that you don't have, maybe it will give you some ideas. So, here goes, from memory and probably not a complete list of all that is in bloom, but I'll try: Coral honeysuckle, morning glories, mina lobata, cypress vine, cardinal climber vine, yellow bells (Tecoma stans), orange bells (I don't remember the variety, also Tecoma something....maybe Jubilee), hardy hibiscus (Luna), zinnias and cosmos in many heights and varieties, cuphea 'Diablo', roughly six different varieties of lantana, verbena bonariensis, dianthus, autumn sage--at least 4 different varieties, one with raspberry red blooms, one (Hot Lips) with red and white blooms, and two different ones with red blooms (Furman's Red and Radio Red), moss rose, Texas hibiscus, firebush (Hamelia patens), Mexican sunflower, cleome (Helen Campbell White, Violet Queen, Cherry Queen and Rose Queen), yellow butterflyweed (and the oleander aphids are all gone!), angelonia in shades of pink and purple, pink salvia, blue meadow sage, Yvonne's salvia, a dwarf form of gaura that stays more compact that any other I've grown, two varieties of Russian sage, Texas hummingbird sage, echinacea (about done, I think, unless the rain revives it), viper's bugloss, Jasmine (in pots to overwinter indoors), Pride of Barbados (Caesalspinia pulcherrima), Laura Bush petunias, gladiolas (about to finish up), salvia farinacea, marigolds, several short forms of celosia spicata, tons of the taller (up to 6' tall now) celosia plumosa, white and purple daturas, comfrey (cycles in and out of bloom all summer if I keep cutting it back periodically), sunflowers, globe amaranth, red grain amaranth, canna lilies in yellow and orange, trumpet creeper vines in yellow, orange, and red-orange varieties, chaste tree (a particular favorite, along with comfrey, of the bumble bees), four o'clocks and 'Dracula' cockscombs. Then, there's the herbs that are in bloom, and they include dill, sage, rosemary, basil and lavender. If all of that is not enough to provide nectar for the butterflies and hummingbirds and others, then I don't know what else I can do. It is likely that my coleus plants all are flowering now because I haven't been pinching them back lately. Not in bloom yet? The cape honeysuckle, which usually doesn't bloom until September, and the roselle plants, which don't bloom until Sept or Oct and always are in a mad race to bloom before the first frost or freezing weather arrives. I often have to harvest them on the night before the first freeze whether they're ready or not, and I do it in such a hurry that I just cut off the branches (they are huge monster plants 7' tall by then with a base at least 6" wide so I cannot pull them up) and carry armloads of them up to the house, where I then can harvest the calyces and preserve them. Later on, when I have time, I'll dig out the frozen/dead bases of the roselle plants and toss them on the compost pile. Really, it would be late to get much of anything sown from seed to bloom if you're sowing seeds now, so you'll be at the mercy of whatever the stores or nurseries have on hand now. I haven't looked at the plants this week to see what is in stock, but normally at this time of the year it is mostly marigolds, zinnias, moss rose, angelonias, lantana and, perhaps, the first chysanthemums (though we are still too hot for them here). There, I hope I gave you some ideas. This morning we awakened to the sound of raindrops on the roof. After waiting so long for good rain to fall, it seems like an abundance of riches to have it fall two days in a row. The rain was just quick pop-up showers and only showed up on radar as a very narrow band that didn't affect much of our county, but these showers gave us another 0.40" of rain, for a total this week of 2.4". Tim's far-fetched dream of mowing the lawn this afternoon just died because everything outside is heavily saturated and dripping with water---it is our own little rainforest here today. Maybe it will be dry enough to mow tomorrow afternoon. Who knows? We have shopping to do today, and the movies this evening, and swimming to squeeze in during the afternoon hours if we get back from shopping quickly enough, so I'm not sure when he thought he'd be able to mow anyway. The long-AWOL deer herd returned today and were standing in the neighbor's pasture staring at our back door when I walked out the door: three bucks (one is pretty big and the other two slightly younger and smaller), three or four does, and two or three fawns. They re scoping out the driveway, the dove-feeding area and the compost piles. I put out two buckets of cracked corn for them, figuring if I didn't put out extra for that large herd, then the doves weren't going to get any cracked corn today. The deer were too happy to see me (or, rather, to see the buckets of corn), and the biggest buck came within about 8' of me (with a 5-strand barbed wire fence between us) before I yelled at him to back off. Had he not moved back, I would have carried the corn back into the garage to teach them that I won't put out the bird seed if they cannot stay out of my personal space so I can do it safely. That's it for now. We're headed out with our girl. Dawn...See MoreOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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