July 2019, Week 2

4 years ago

Are y'all ready for the heat? It's coming.

Can we skip the list of usual gardening chores and focus on what matters in July: just staying cool and staying hydrated. That's a good start, and it helps the plants if they can do the same. Staying alive is the name of the game in July.

Otherwise, this time of the year is prime time for weeding, watering, and harvesting. Deadheading flowers. Mowing the lawn. Planning succession plantings for the fall garden and starting seeds as appropriate depending on what you want to grow. Oh, pest control. On the usual PITA pests, it is important to control them as much as possible in mid-summer because the pest populations can skyrocket.

There. That's it. I'm done. July is the month that I officially begin to not care that much about what happens in the garden---there is only so much I can do once it starts getting snake-infested, and mostly that means I hibernate indoors to avoid the snakes and the heat.

Have y'all noticed how many people have drowned in OK this past holiday week? There were 2 just a couple of days apart at Turner Falls, and a 4 year old at Lake Murray in our county today. I'm sure there must have been others in other parts of the state that I haven't heard about down here yet. Everyone here is just heartbroken over that four-year-old's death. One of our friends was in town this weekend to attend two funerals---one of them for a friend of his who drowned in Lake Murray last week. What is the deal? Is nobody wearing life jackets? Can nobody swim? It just seems all too common nowadays. I know that's not garden-related, but is has been on my mind all week. There are days the stress-relief that comes with gardening isn't enough to outweigh all the bad news.

I know I need to weed this week. Since the girls have been here, the garden hasn't been getting any attention, but I did have it pretty well weeded prior to that.

It is so dry that our ground is cracking. It amazes me how clay soil will stay wet, wet, wet, for months and then, suddenly, one day it no longer is wet, and is in fact bone-dry, and is cracking. It happens the same way every summer, but it still surprises me.

I just let the dogs out and then in again a few minutes ago and cannot believe the huge, loud racket of locusts, tree frogs, croaking frogs, etc. that you can hear here all night long. It seems so much louder than usual this year.

Tomorrow is the last day of this visit from the grandkids. It has been tons of fun, and I am totally and completely exhausted, but in a good way. I hope they'll be back soon to stay another few days. Summer flies by so fast, and then we see them mostly only on weekends once they are back into the school routine. Today both of them were wearing clothing we tie-dyed together in June when they came to spend the weekend. They are so proud of their tie-dyed clothing and love wearing them after we complete a project. It is sort of our summer thing that we do together.

The storms that didn't drop all that much rain (here, at least), knocked out power in the entire SW sector of Ardmore, so Chris and Jana have been without power all evening. I do think we got wind (we were down in Gainesville so weren't here when the storm rolled through) because some of the celosia plumosa plants were lying flat on the ground, though not uprooted. Ardmore's electrical power was supposed to be back by 11 p.m. I know that after the power went out, Chris went straight next-door to check on his elderly neighbors to see if they needed for him to fuel up and start up their generator for them---one of them is on oxygen. He is such a good son---even to somebody else's parents. He said he just didn't see any reason for their son to have to drive across town to help them get the generator up and running when he, Chris, was right next door. Those neighbors are awesome people, just so sweet and so kind, and have lived in the same house for over 45 years so are a great source for info about local neighborhood history. We really like them. In fact, all his neighbors are wonderful, and all of them have incredible landscapes. I think that gardeners in general are just nice people. I guess if my celosia plumosa plants aren't straightening themselves back up by Monday, I'll hammer some stakes in the ground, lift them up and tie them upright. I multi-planted more than one plant in each planting hole so they'd help hold one another up. In some cases, that seems to have worked, but not in all. The tall, old-fashioned varieties of plumosa like Pampas Plume get so tall that it doesn't take much to blow them down, so I was trying to be ahead of the curve by having really sturdy plants. Mine that got blown over were about 3' tall.

Dawn

Featured Answer

slowpoke_gardener

4 years ago

Well the guy that has the place rented showed up and started spraying 2-4-D a few minutes ago. I ash him to stay away the gardens, but the wind is out of the east and I expect it may carry over to the garden anyway. If the garden is killed it will give me time to do something else, and I have plenty that needs to be done.

Comments (24)

Nancy RW (zone 7)
4 years ago
Oh Larry! I hope it doesn't, but I understand the "plenty that needs to be done." I was just walking back to the deck thinking I need to cut down half of these plants and start over. I've been doing that with the catmint, 4 o'clocks and nicotiana. Meanwhile, starting over with tomatoes, and some flowers for the school. I have roselle and more cardinal vine for the school AND for me.

The sound of the tree frogs and locusts gets crazy loud! They get so loud, at times I don't come out in the evenings.

I transplanted six little tiny Swallowtail cats this morning, as they were totally out of food (and I'm totally out of dill now. LOL).I need to get some planted! I love dill. So do they, obviously. They will have to learn to love parsley or fennel. I had read conflicting information on whether they'd eat a different host plant; one of the butterfly experts told me I could transfer them since they were so little, but to leave the two big instars alone. I did--and both were gone this morning. I doubt I could recognize a chrysalis, so didn't even try, as "it's a jungle out there."

I didn't know how difficult it might be do dig up one of the passion vine sprouts, so got two dug up. Brought them up here and potted them up. Yesterday morning I was delighted to see both were doing great--but one of them had two tiny fritillary cats on it, so I took it right back down to the general clump. I got a good laugh out of that. I'll choose a different little sprout.

So it has been a couple intense butterfly studying and reading days. I'm excited to see if I get any monarch cats, as the milkweed is finally doing well this year.

Now something not so lovely going on. There is a dead body under our deck, as evidenced by the smell wafting up. And I feel safe in saying a critter didn't crawl under there to die. I'd say, rather, that some darned CAT left a body there. I hope it was a little critter so the smell will be gone sooner rather than later! BRAT.

I finally have enough tomatoes to do a bit of canning, so will get busy with salsa. Have a lovely week, everyone!
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July 2019, Week 1
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I'm still catching up. Nancy, I usually don't see aphids at all, though I saw them on western ironweed growing outside the garden fence this year. Ants were farming them and lady bugs were trying to eat them, so the ants and ladybugs were slugging it out. This year the oleander aphids did pop up on my butterflyweed plants in the garden, but about 2 minutes after I noticed them there, I saw ladybugs working the plants. A day or two later, all the oleander aphids were gone. It just amazes me how good the ladybugs are at finding a 'problem' and dealing with it or, from their point of view, maybe they are just happy to have a nice meal. When I was younger, more foolish and inclined to ignore the heat, I would just garden hard, endlessly, throughout July and August. Now? Being older and wiser, I listen to the heat and listen to my body and know when enough is enough....and I try to get out of the heat before 'enough' becomes 'too much'. I'm already looking at the tomato plants in the big containers and asking myself if I want to water them all summer long. Y'all shouldn't be surprised if I stop watering them in 2, 3 or 4 weeks. I don't even have the patience any more to stand out there in the heat with a hose in my hand....so heaven help those plants when I start thinking it is too hot at 7 a.m. (Or, I could just put up the drip irrigation lines for them.) The last few years, I've turned my focus to indoors DIY projects and this year might be kinda sorta the same, more or less, at least in August.and comes into bloom and produces much faster than okra planted in cool weather despite the estimated DTMs. I planted Jambalaya (which has a quick DTM of 50 days anyway) in, hmmm, late May I think, and it was producing by the end of June. I think it was so fast because it didn't really experience cool soil temperatures. Hopefully your okra will produce extra-quickly like that. You know, I learned this with hot peppers ages ago. I used to put them in the ground the same time I plant tomatoes, but that exposed them to soil temperatures and sometimes nighttime lows that are cooler than they like and it slows them down. Nowadays I plant them 2-4 weeks later than the tomato plants, and am harvesting hot peppers in June regardless---and heavier yields than I got from those earlier plantings. It amazes me what a difference it makes when the plants are not exposed to any cold. Benadryl for pets is important at times though it depends on the bite's locatio. We have had neighbors' dogs get bitten on the paw and the paw swelled so quickly that it halted the flow of blood and they lost the dog, so we always give a dog Benadryl if it is bitten and we usually don't even go to the vet. You can see the dogs' swelling go down literally in front of your eyes. I don't know why it doesn't work for people, but I know it is absolutely not recommended for people. Here's my theory though: If you've ever known anyone who was bitten by a venomous snake, you might have noticed the doctors circle the wound area and mark on it with a Sharpie. They come back, usually every 30 minutes, and mark the extent of the swelling or redness and this allows them to track the way the person's reaction is advancing (or, eventually) receding, in the area of the bite. This is important info for them as it can guide some treatment choices. So, if you have taken something like Benadryl and if it affects you by decreasing the swelling, it can interfere with their ability to track your reaction. I think medical personnel are the ones to decide if you are having an allergic reaction (which is separate from your body's reaction to the venom) and if you need an antihistamine, which one, etc. Jennifer, Yes, grocery story squash normally will be hybrid. They have special hybrids bred for commercial growers and I'd be surprised if you could buy any grocery store squash that is not a hybrid. Yes, your mystery squash could very well be one of mini pumpkins grown as decorative items. Amy, Yes, I wish we had that cool Spring weather back again. Sadly, we do not. Nancy, After worrying that Chris will accidentally blow up himself and kill himself setting off fire works, I'm over it. I spent over 2 hours this afternoon opening up all the packaging, taking things out, etc. and lining them up on a shelving unit so they are ready to go. I had a big black trash bag completely full of all the external wrappers and the bags from the Fireworks stand. The fireworks don't have to kill him. I am going to kill him myself. He bought enough fireworks to open his own fireworks stand, and I am not kidding about that. He bought a bunch of these big boxes with a fuse. You light the fuse, and the box goes off---some of them have 20 to 250 shells or balls in them that will go off in rapid succession. Our neighbors, and all the animals, are going to hate us tonight. I bet he has 20 or 30 of those, big box things, and they are just the tip of the iceberg. In his defense, the smaller stuff he bought earlier in the week is much smaller and run-of-the-mill. It is today's purchases, on half-off-everything day at the fireworks warehouse that enabled him to buy too much of everything and most of it really big stuff. I'm glad Tom, and you, survived his night out. I hate being outside listening to all the fireworks and will be glad when this weekend is over. K, I'm out of time, but almost caught up. Time for me to get dinner on the table. There will be six of us for dinner: 4 adults and 2 wrinkled prunes who don't even care that much about the fireworks because, for them, it is all about the pool. Have a nice evening everyone. 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July 2019, Week 3
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Nancy, Galia is a good melon. One of its' parents is one of my favorite all-time melons Ha'ogen, sometimes also sold as Ogen or Ha-ogen. Galia types do seem a bit slow to mature compared to some other melons but are tasty and very fragrant. You can tell Galia type melons are maturing just by the lovely aroma wafting through the air as they ripen. There are different varieties of Galia melons, so your melon might have a variety name like Diplomat, Regalia or Passport (or any one of many others). You don't have to harvest them---let them harvest themselves. Because they are reticulated melons, they slip off the vine themselves (forming their own abscission layer and letting go of the vine when they are mature). While you can tug on them and remove them from the vine once they reach the half-slip stage, I just leave all reticulated melons on the vine until they reach full slip on their own. I have friends here who grew up hating gardening because they spent their entire childhood working in the family garden (which, I pointed out to them, meant they had food to eat 65 or 75 or 80 years ago when we didn't have grocery stores within easy reach loaded with all kinds of food), particularly hoeing, and they swore they'd never, ever do that sort of work again once they grew up....and they haven't. Some of them have nice landscaping, but they don't grow anything edible. I think that is a shame because they've missed out on the joy of gardening and growing your own produce. I know I was lucky to grow up with relatives and neighbors who gardened and who loved it---because they taught me the joy of gardening along with the work. They didn't tell me gardening would bring a person joy or anything---they just lived it all by example, and I'm so glad they did. It is too hot for gardening work. It is too hot for almost anything. I hope you enjoy growing long beans....do you mean something like yard-long beans? I find them an interesting novelty type vegetable, but am not that crazy about the flavor so no longer grow them. I'm more of a traditional southern pea grower....just give me any variety of pink eye purple hull peas and that's all I need. We had an interesting visit with my mom yesterday. Her mind was really wandering and she was telling us....um....interesting but untrue things. Aurora loved attending the birthday party at my sister's house, which included a huge water balloon fight meant for the kids, but some big kids (adult nieces, nephews and their spouses and friends) all got involved and pretty much everyone ended up soaking wet unless they were hiding indoors. It was a nice way to cool off on an afternoon when the high temperature there was a bit over 100 degrees. My sister's husband is a landscaper and their front yard, which is mostly shady, is just so beautiful and I could have sat out there in the yard and just admired the plants all afternoon, but then I would have missed out on all the birthday party fun. Dawn
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July 2019, Week 4
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Comments (36)
Jennifer, Yes, Tim's family did come back to visit, several times, and I don't think we ever had weather that hot again during one of their visits, but I also think they were smarter in future years and came in June, having learned our hottest weather tended to be in early August. Yes, the plant available water on that map is very dismal. I'm thinking that some parts of OK are very much in danger of slipping into a flash drought and, if rain doesn't fall, they may end up in drought soon. Oooh, a new Drought Monitor was released yesterday. I wonder what it shows? So, I went and looked to see what it shows....and it shows the part of SW OK I was thinking of is now in D-0, as indicated by the color yellow, and this is not technically a drought stage, but is considered pre-drought. We'll have to watch the map weekly and see what happens with them because some of us have conditions that are not too far behind theirs. Here's this week's Drought Monitor Map: Oklahoma Drought Monitor Map Most purchased soil is inferior quality no matter what the supplier tells you, and it needs a lot of work to turn it into good soil. This is why we don't purchase soil and instead just work to add organic matter to what we have. You know, if you add 8" of organic matter (not all at once because the tiller couldn't work it into the ground all at once) to the soil, you've raised the soil grade 8" and then can build your new edging around it to hold it in place. That's what we did. Yes, it is a slower process, and buying enough organic matter to add 8" at one time is cost-prohibitive, but you're getting better quality stuff. Tim and I decided long ago it was better to spend our money on good quality stuff than to buy crap soil (we already had our own crap soil, after all) and I'm not sorry we did it that way. I know people who have bought what seemed like good soil and brought in all sorts of stuff they didn't want....nut sedge, too many various weeds to count, soilborne diseases and even root knot nematodes. If we were building new beds nowadays, we'd do it hugelkultur style, and wouldn't even have to purchase amendments, but our first couple of years here we bought bags and bags of Black Kow, mushroom compost, Texas greensand, lava sand, dry molasses, soil conditioner (a blend of pine bark fines and humus) and more. Once I got a good-sized compost pile going, we didn't have to buy much, but it took a few years for me to get a huge compost pile operation going that would produce enough compost for a large garden. Friends gave us old spoiled hay, which helped a lot in the early days, and Fred gave us cow manure once, but it did bring in a gazillion weeds, and I never wanted to use local manure again...and have turned down all subsequent offers of it, especially since herbicide carryover became such a huge issue. One thing about soil-building is that it is never ending, since heat eats compost (i.e. makes it break down quickly). Going no-till has reduced how quickly our organic matter breaks down, because we aren't fluffing up the soil with a rototiller and introducing fresh air, which then helps compost break down more quickly. Still, it shocks me how quickly soil reverts back once its organic matter breaks down. I added 4-6" of compost to the front (southeastern) corner of the garden in the winter/spring of 2018 and had gorgeous soil there, after doing the same thing in 2017. Guess how that soil looked at the beginning of this season? Like I'd never added any organic matter to it at all. That is frustrating. There's no way I can add 4-6" of organic matter to every bed every year, so I just do the best I can and hope our heat doesn't eat up the organic matter too quickly. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm trying to replenish soil that was conventionally farmed, so it had nutrients taken out of it without having organic matter given back to it for decades, and that sort of restoration is slow. It is not weird to be thinking of Garden 2020. The best time to plan for next year is this year when things are fresh in our minds. I've been planning for 2020 since at least May. Rebecca, Your plants look like they mostly have Septoria Leaf Spot with maybe just a tiny touch of EB on a couple of leaves. Both have been incredibly common this year thanks to all the moisture and humidity. I do not know why it is not working its way upward the traditional way, but had the same thing on some of my plants this year too. Larry, My pepper plants stalled for a week or two, so I watered them like crazy and they quickly bloomed and set a lot of new peppers. I was relieved that all they apparently needed was more water than they were getting. I'm so pleased to hear that the highway department showed respect for your zinnias. That is just so awesome, isn't it? I really think most people nowadays are trying their best to do the right things to help out the bees, butterflies and pollinators. I've noticed our highway guys delay mowing as long as possible to let as many flowers live as long as possible and set seed before they mow. Poppies reseed very well, but in the pastures where there is a lot of competition, the amount of reseeding drops each year. I suspect we could plow up the front pasture and a billion poppy seeds would sprout because they are lying there under layers of thatch, but we've never tried it. I just overseed with poppies every few years to ensure we keep the poppies going. In the garden they reseed just fine, despite my heavy mulch. Jacob, The insurance premiums for young adult males are ridiculous, aren't they? Our son always has been a careful driver. He had one minor accident as a teenager...slid off a gravel driveway and hit a tree. He and Tim fixed the car themselves (it was just minor stuff) because it was cheaper than going through the insurance company and having them raise his rates. Later on, he had a major accident on his way to work, but he was in his late 20s then and it didn't make his insurance premiums rise nearly as much as it would have if he'd been 25 or younger. Enjoy the camping trip. Our weather still is slightly cooler than normal, but the temperatures are rising daily and the heat really cranks up next week, and we'll end next week with high temperatures near 100, as usual. I need to get out there and work in the garden while it still is cool, but am having a hard time getting motivated. I noticed today that the ground near our house is cracking, which is something we try really hard to avoid, though we ignore the cracking soil everywhere else. So, I have the sprinkler on, watering the lawn (including the bermuda grass I wish would die) and guess that is what I'll do today...water the lawn on all 4 sides of the house, and also run the soaker hoses that are set up around the house's foundation. Our next-door neighbor's house in Fort Worth suffered from severe damage when her soil cracked badly when she was in a rehab center undergoing rehabilitation after her stroke, and we learned a lesson from that. She had to have extensive foundation work with new concrete piers poured, etc., had to have her wood floor lifted, repaired and nailed back down (her hot water heater pipe busted when the house shifted and tons of hot water poured onto her hardwood floors, warping them), had to have cracks in the walls fixed and everything repainted, etc. We figured that whatever money we spend to keep our clay soil from shifting too much around the house is worth it to avoid having that sort of thing happen to us. A couple of things were happening in the garden yesterday. Let's see if I can remember them. The white cosmos that I planted when I took out tomato plants started blooming for the first time yesterday. The pink, rose and mauve cosmos had begun blooming a couple of weeks ago. The garden is chock full of frogs. I've been leaving the northern edge, where I once had tomato plants and now have zinnias, unweeded for them so they can hide more from the snakes that inevitably show up to feed on them. Hummingbirds are simply everywhere. When our hummingbird population suddenly spikes like this, I'm never sure if it is occurring because the babies all have left the nests, or if hummingbirds from further north already are migrating, or if we are just seeing so many because all our trumpet creeper vines are blooming---we have them in at least six different places and they are hummingbird magnets. We always see a huge spike in hummingbird visitors in late July and early August, so what we are seeing is typical. Unfortunately, the purple martins apparently are gone. That, too, is typical, as they first desert the Martin houses in early July when the heat cranks up, but remain around at least a couple of weeks, living in the trees, and we'll still hear them and see them until....suddenly, we don't. Well, we haven't seen or heard them since last weekend, so I think they've gone south. They must leave so early for a good reason. There's still tons and tons of assassin bugs in the garden, and I'm seeing fewer and fewer pests each day. It is good to watch the system work. One thing that has been driving me nuts is the oleander aphids on the yellow butterfly weeds in the perennial border. No matter how often I hose them off the plants with a sharp stream of water, they're back the next day. At first the ladybugs came after them, but then the ladybugs disappeared so apparently the flavor of the oleander aphids (remember, they are eating milkweeds, so they would taste bad) doesn't really appeal to them. So, I did some research. I wanted to avoid using a chemical pesticide. So, technically, I did. Honestly, though, I did use a chemical, just not a garden chemical---Windex. After reading that Chip Taylor had experimented with using it to kill oleander aphids and it didn't harm his milkweed and his caterpillars (you don't spray the Windex if any caterpillars are on the plants, obviously) that fed on those plants later on seemed fine.....well, I thought, why not give it a try. I just sprayed the Windex directly on the oleander aphids, soaking them well, around 8 p.m. one evening. Then I watched the plant for damage for a couple of days. There was no sign at all of any damage to the plant, but the next morning after I sprayed, all those orange oleander aphids were black and dead. I suspect that a person could mix a little ammonia (or, perhaps, rubbing alcohol) with water in a bottle and get the same results, and I might try that if more oleander aphids show up. After hosing them off the plants daily for weeks, I was tired of dealing with them. That is my garden experiment for the summer and I'm happy it worked. I honestly thought that in this heat, the Windex might damage the plants, but if it had, I just would have pruned away the damaged parts. I didn't even hose off the plants....I wanted those dead aphid bodies lying there on the plants as a warning to any other oleander aphids. I also saw and cut in half another milkweed bug, and killed all its babies too. The only other pests doing visible damage in the garden are grasshoppers (tons of them, unfortunately), spider mites (typical) and stink bugs, so it isn't the worst pest year ever. Oh, there still might be a few unwanted army worms and similar caterpillars around, but the wasps are carrying them away, which I enjoy seeing. Have a good day everyone. Dawn
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July 2019, Week 5
Q
Comments (26)
Nancy, Thank you. You know, when Jesse was first diagnosed with cancer, we were deeply concerned---when you are starting out at Stage 4, there is not necessarily a lot of hope. Still, we hoped treatment would have help him live as long as possible. When it became apparent that nothing would ease his intense physical pain, then instead we began to pray for God to end his suffering. So, why does it hurt so much that God answered our prayers? Oh, I know there is no real good answer for that....but we all remain shell-shocked by his loss. I think we all just thought he was invincible and would live forever. So, this morning when I went outside to put out the cracked corn for the doves and the sunflower seeds for the cardinals, there was a herd of 7 deer waiting for me---and I was out an hour earlier than usual. The deer acted irritated. What is their problem? There ought to be plenty for them to eat out in the wild. So, the biggest buck (I've dubbed him Kyle's deer, because our friend Kyle hunts west of our house on land inherited by his grandparents, Jesse and Joyce, and he always gets a big buck that has been feeding at our place in summer and autumn) decided he wanted to engage with me in warfare this morning. He came right at me, lowering his head/antlers and tossing them into the air and waggling his head a little playfully. I yelled No at him and told him to retreat. We had a barbed wire fence and about 20' between us. Instead, he came right up to the barbed wire as if he were going to jump it, putting him about 10' from me (I had the pickup between us though), and I retreated to the garage, with the cracked corn and sunflower seeds still in my bucket. I went to a different area and fed the mourning doves and cardinals (they watch me and follow wherever I go with their breakfast) and told the deer I don't mind them stealing some of the bird food, but I'm not going to put up with aggressive behavior. When the deer start thinking the bird-feeding area is their territory, I stop feeding the wild birds there. From this point forward, I'll feed close to the house instead of close to the compost pile until the deer get the message and back off. They probably still will creep up close to the house and steal bird seed, but not while the dogs are out in the dog yard, as they are now, close to the bird seed. The garden is simply full of butterflies today, and those dreaded oleander aphids are back in the garden on the butterfly weed this morning...but there are lady bugs there eating them. Let's hope the lady bugs can stay on top of them. We started out our day here with fog, condensation on the windows and 99% humidity. I cannot help thinking that our temperature and heat index will be much worse today than yesterday, because the rain-cooled air yesterday really did give us surprisingly pleasant weather for so late in July. Our max heat index was only 100 yesterday, and I do not think we hit that until late afternoon after the clouds broke up. With the fog and clouds this morning, we started out cool but humid and now that the clouds are breaking up and melting away, I expect it will be smart to spend the rest of today indoors. Jennifer, Chick management is really time-consuming, and I'm just glad those days are behind us. We used to have so very many chickens and I miss having that many, but I don't miss all the work associated with it. The five we have now are the perfect number. I would assume that, yes, your neighbors are watering their fields for the sake of maintaining forage for their livestock. There is a place a few miles south of us that does the same for their goats and horses. I guess it is a matter of whether the livestock owner wants to feed their animals on green pasture this time of year by spending the money for irrigation or if they want to spend the money on hay or bagged feed instead. Also, depending on the lay of the land and how common grass fires or wildfires are when it gets dry, it can pay off to keep at least one field well-watered and green to reduce the fire danger. Yes, green fields will burn, but they are slower to ignite, so it buys time for firefighters to get there and get a fire out, or for livestock owners to get home and move their animals to a place safer from a nearby fire. Don't let the wilting of plants in hot weather get to you. Just remind yourself that they are transpiring water out more quickly than they can take it in due to the heat and that transpiration process is essential for plant survival....don't we humans all continue to breathe and sweat out in the heat? Of course we do. Just let the plants do what they do and don't worry. It is only worrisome if they are not recovering from the wilting in the cool overnight hours. I don't worry about wilted plants in the daylight hours or the early evening hours. I might worry if they weren't beginning to bounce back by dusk, and would be worried if they still were wilted in the early morning. Hailey, Over the years, I have used several different kinds of drip irrigation systems. It is really complicated in our sloping front garden, which slopes downhill so strongly from south to north and also downhill from west to east that I have to use pressure-compensating emitters. I like to set up shut-off valves on different raised beds, so I can exclude any given bed from irrigation if it doesn't need it just by turning the knob on the valve. It is much easier to set up drip irrigation in the more level back garden or in the landscaping around the house. Go to the website of Dripworks and read their blogs and FAQs and you can learn how to set up driplines that will serve you best. I don't know if they still do it, but it used to be that they would help you design your system too. You can start with one of their drip irrigation kits if you see one that you think will fit your needs, and it is easy to add on more lines and emitters to any of the kits if you need to cover more space. My biggest issue with drip irrigation is that in the back garden, once the voles discovered there was water in those lines, they started chewing them in dry months, which means lots of repairs have to be made constantly. So, I'm less in love with drip irrigation than I used to be----but it does work great if you don't have voles. Soaker hoses work well also, but don't hold up for nearly as long to the sun's UV rays. You do need to lift, dry out and store your drip irrigation system each autumn so there's no water left in the lines to crack the lines and emitters in freezing weather. Beneficial insects are not purely good guys for sure, but they're still the best helpers we have. I absolutely refuse to release praying mantids. There is no logic in it. If you put out an egg case and dozens (or hundreds), guess how many you end up with within a very few short months? One. You end up with one, because they eat each other and, in the end, only the one survives because he or she outlasted all the others. They also eat other beneficial insects, butterflies and hummingbirds. Now, I won't kill a praying mantis if I see it, but I'm never really happy to see them either, and I won't buy them and release them here on purpose. It took me only one time to learn not to do that. Blister beetles are another perfect example. If you have a handful around, and if they aren't clustering on one plant and eating it to death, then they are beneficial because they eat grasshopper eggs. But, if you have hundreds or even thousands of them, then there is nothing beneficial about their presence at all. Lady bugs? Don't we love the lady bugs? Sure we do, but they'll eat butterfly eggs and probably very small, newly hatched butterfly larvae, so.....shrug....what's a gardener to do? How about wasps? When I see a wasp carrying away an armyworm from the garden, I am happy, but I also know that same wasp doesn't discriminate---it will prey on the butterfly caterpillars for whom we plant host plants. I just try to provide an ecosystem where they all can thrive, but we have to remember that everybody in the garden eats something and also gets eaten by something, so there's that. A fall trip to Bustani sounds lovely, but I'm not sure one will be in the works for us this fall. It depends on the degree of ongoing drought probably. I definitely want to make that trip next Spring because I'm going to redo our landscaping around the house, and plan to drag Jana and Chris along so they can see Bustani for themselves. Rebecca, I think funerals help a great deal with closure. My strongest feeling after my aunt's and Jesse's funerals yesterday was just a sense of relief---that feeling that we had celebrated their lives and said good-bye to them, and offered comfort to their families. I do understand that some people don't want a funeral service for themselves, though, and we have to respect their wishes, but it is harder to feel a sense of closure in cases like that. Hailey, That's a black blister beetle. I kill them if they are devouring plants...in my garden they will eat cucumber plants right down to the ground, but if there's just a few and they aren't concentrating on one specific type of plant, I try to ignore them. They eat tons of grasshopper eggs, so usually are beneficial in that sense. I usually see a lot of blister beetles either in the same year that there's a bad grasshopper outbreak, or in the following year. If they clustering are on your tomato plants in any appreciable number (I'll ignore them if I see only 1 or 2 per plant), then they need to die. I cut them in half with scissors and get about 75% of them on the first try. It sometimes takes a few days of snipping with the scissors to get them all. Farmgardener, That's exactly how I deadhead my coneflowers, and I never get volunteers. I think the birds eat all the seedheads, or my mulch is so thick the that the seeds never find soil. Or, and this is a really good possibility, the red harvester ants may feed all the seeds and carry them off---I see them carrying stuff out of the garden all day long. Thanks. I agree with you that as we get older, the losses pile on more and more quickly. Only my mom and one aunt remain from their generation in our family, and that is sort of hard to think about. What we are going through is nothing new---everyone goes through the same, but between friends and family, we just seem to have a lot of that happening this year within a fairly short time frame. We'll get through it. It is, after all, such a blessing to have such wonderful. much-loved people in your lives that you suffer such grief at their loss. Megan, Thank you. Two in one day was a lot and I did nothing but collapse on the couch when we got home. Except for feeding animals and watering the garden, I'm not doing anything today either. I know I need to rest and decompress. Well, I already did a load of laundry, but you know how that is....laundry, like death and taxes, is inevitable, and I hate to let it pile up. I need to go read what our state climatologist, Gary McManus, said about the impending flash drought. Isn't he brilliant? I love his writing. I know he must be highly educated to hold his career position, but I love the humor he exhibits in the Mesonet ticker and in his FB posts. He makes the climate and weather so easy to understand, and sometimes with our climate and weather, if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. I think he uses humor to get our attention so then he can feed us the facts we need to know. I'm gearing up, too, to start cool-season seeds. I really cannot put anything in the ground, in terms of cool-season plants, until at least October and sometimes not until November if the hot weather holds on, but I want to have plants ready when the timing is right. The last few years, we have had temperatures hang on, even into the 100s and upper 90s, through the end of September, so I cannot get into too much of a hurry. The grow cart looks fine if it meets your needs. My first one wasn't too much larger than that---it had three shelves I think. All of mine have been homemade--plastic assemble-it-yourself shelving from Lowe's or Home Depot, with shop lights suspended from shelves by chains that we can raise or lower. No matter what size you get, it won't be big enough. I learned that from experience. As much as I love gardening, I no longer try to keep crops going all winter. I used to, but it was inevitable that when I was really busy with Christmas or winter fire season or whatever, I'd have kale, mustard, spinach, turnips, etc. demanding to be harvested and it just made it all so stressful since I have zero control over when wildfires break out in winter. Or, I'd be gone to a wildfire all day, or for several days in a row, and then not at home in the evening to put row covers over the plants if a particularly bitter cold night is expected, and that was stressful too. Nowadays I'm just happy to keep a few simple things going all winter in the flower border inside the garden---pansies, dianthus, stock, ornamantal cabbage and ornamental kale, etc. If I plant them too early, the pests devour the cabbage and kale, so there's no point in getting into too much of a hurry. I think that Lowe's and HD here get their transplants of those things in the store in serious numbers in late Sept or early Oct, and they don't keep them long because the live plants get in the way of Christmas merchandise, so it is easier to grow my own and have them ready at the time best for me. Of course, we never know when an early autumn freeze will come, but in recent years those have been very few and far between. Have a good rest of the day y'all. Since it is hot and I promised myself a lazy day today, I'm going to make a list of things to plant in next year's cutting garden, which will be the change of pace from growing an edible garden that I've been craving. Am I worried that in January or February, I'll panic because I'm not planting all the usual veggies? Of course I am, but I really want to do something different. I just realized that I get to be REALLY lazy today. I don't have to cook dinner because tonight is our quarterly VFD Fire Board meeting and Tim goes straight from work to that meeting, eating fast food on the way because there's no time to stop at home and have a real meal. I feel really, really bad for Tim and all our fire board members. Jesse has been (always and forever, I think, since the VFD was founded in 2002) the Fire Board Chairman, so tonight, of necessity, they will need to decide whether a current fire board member will step up and become the chairman, or if they want to recruit a new community member to fill that role. I think that is a hard thing to do just one day after his funeral. I'm going to be content today to sit here with my notebook and gardening catalogs and make lists of things I want to grow for the fall cool season and for next year's cutting garden. There's so many options available since I'm not having to save space for veggies. I think I'm going to make the back garden a wildflower/pollinator garden too. When I say I'm taking a break from edibles, I really mean it, except for tomatoes and peppers in container right next to the back door. Dawn
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hazelinok
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
I sure would like some rain. LOL Can you imagine me saying that a few weeks ago?!

I have the soaker hose on the back garden right now. I don't have a proper drip irrigation system.

Some of you saw the FB post about the mystery squash. Pretty sure it's from a Halloween decoration. I have a cast iron cauldron that I fill with small pumpkins as a centerpiece for my dining table. The pumpkins are thrown into the compost at the end of November.

It's a vigorous and pretty plant full of fruit, so I'll just leave it alone. It faces the street and helps the garden look lush and nice to passersby.

Thanks for your advice on last week's thread, Dawn, about the gifted tomato plants. The healthiest two were planted in the same bed that has pole beans. It also has a hot banana pepper plant and the gifted pink Brandywine tomato (which does have fruit and blooms. yay!) Most of the carrots were pulled so the two tomatoes went in their spot. There's a lot crammed into that bed. My garden is pretty full right now and stuff is just randomly stuck in empty spots. ANYway, the two tomato plants look pretty good today.

I'm still harvesting beans. Another Yay! I'll try to freeze more tomorrow. Dawn, when you mentioned on last week's thread how many feet of beans you grow---wow! I would like to have that many too. A couple of years ago I thought I would like to increase the size of the garden, but I doubt that will happen. Maybe if we win the lottery that we don't play, I could hire someone to come in and build it for me. But, it's doubtful I'll win the lottery that I don't play. haha. SO, I need to grow my very favorite things. Things I want to eat often. Beans is one of them. Cabbage is not. I still have cabbage to pull. I need to get that done soon or the Seminole pumpkins will climb all over them. I like cabbage, but don't eat it often. I like corn, but don't eat it often. So, we should not grow those things.

If I was 30, maybe I would increase the garden size. I probably would. Even if it's just a regular garden and not the kind of garden I'm building now. In good news, I still have room for 2 or 3 raised beds and could easily squeeze in a few containers here and there.

I say all of that... and then watch me till up another garden spot this fall. LOL! It would be fun to figure out how to grow food for the chickens.

But, as of today, I think we'll just keep working on the gardens we have and not increase.

A gardener can changer her mind though, right?

When I say "garden" I mean food gardening. I will be increasing the spots for flowers in the "backyard".

Tom and I are starting the Arbonne 30 day challenge, so we are trying to prep our food tonight. I'm going to try to eat some meat this week. At least some salmon maybe.

In sad and disappointing news...I walked out to check on the chickens about an hour ago and Jean Luc Picard was clucking to the hens...and they were all staring at something on the ground, under a feeder. It was a little reddish blonde chick. Dead. It makes me so sad. Poor little thing. I'm not sure what happened. I checked on them at noon after work and before fixing lunch and there were no chicks. Maybe I didn't check well enough. I don't like to disturb the hens too much especially since we are near the end. Tuesday is Day 21. But last year they hatched at Day 19.

It's interesting because it's like Jean Luc was telling the hens to leave it alone. It was not pecked on much, that I could see. And it wasn't fluffy. I wonder if it had started pipping when one of the non-broodies borrowed a nest to lay her egg...and the non-broody "helped" it out of the egg and pulled it out to the pen out of curiosity.

But, there's no way of knowing.

Because there are five broodies now, and five lower nesting boxes there is no room for the layers to lay their eggs. So everyone is fighting for the nesting boxes. Ignoring the fact that there are five upper nesting boxes sitting empty.

Anyway, we are moving all broodies except Rosslyn Kaye who just went broody a couple of days ago. This isn't ideal, but it's too busy in the nesting boxes. IF I can get one hen to accept her new spot and stay on her eggs, I'll put all eggs under her. I hope they can all accept their spots and we can be done with this soon.

We will not do it this way next year.
hazelinok
4 years ago
Larry and Nancy, I didn't see your posts earlier.

Larry, I hope your garden is okay! We all have other projects to do, but those are for non-gardening months. ;)

Nancy, I hope your smelly issue goes away soon. You seem very busy. I have a hard time keeping up with you. haha!

It's thundering here. and the wind picked up. Rain maybe?

Of course it's when I moved a hen and eggs to the funky, dog kennel area. I did it after dark but she is aware that she's not in her nest. I sure hope she settles down. And I hope the new roof on the kennel keeps rain off of her. If we get rain.

Update on the chicks. I heard peeping and ran to the coop and found Stormy pecking at a little blonde chick. I took the chick from her (maybe she was just trying to get the chick under her, but I don't think Stormy is a good Mom. The chick came indoors. with me and placed in a brooder. I went out and got the remains of the egg. I'm sure it's Stella's egg! I couldn't be more thrilled. Stella's egg is white and teardrop shaped. I am sad if Stormy's pecks were innocent. I put her on the roost tonight and hopefully she will stop this broody nonsense.

When I went to move the hens to their "apartments", I found that Blossom had a little black chick under her. I moved Blossom and the chick. She seems to be a good mom so far, so I put the little blonde chick under her too. I watched for awhile and Blossom seemed to handle the loud chirps (of course the chick is loud...she's Stella's offspring) of the chick just fine. Didn't get upset. I'm hopeful.

More on this later.
slowpoke_gardener
4 years ago
Well, the deer found my electric fence last night. It looks like they came from the east and headed west, ( where they will find the garden I planted for them). I have used the electric wire for years and it has been broken many times, so when I splice it, I tie it loose so it will pull away rather than break. If the wire pulls away repair is very easy, only slip the wire back through the loop and bend again. After the deer hit the fence a time or two they decide to eat somewhere else.

The heat really gets to me. I hate to work outside when the grass is wet, and by the time it dries it is too hot to work long. I do okay mowing on the rider, but I stay away from the push mower except for very small places. I dont do weedeating, but I will use roundup. When you get old you seem to look for the easy way out.
farmgardener
4 years ago
Slowpoke I admit to Roundup also. My husband has always weedeated ALL the fencelines and around every building and shed, and around all the trees and even the pond dams and around the edges of the ponds (we have 3). On our farm that adds up to 4-5 miles of walking and carrying a huge gaspowered machine. He is in his middle 70’s now and won’t give up his desire for perfection- so we have compromised and I spray a lot of Roundup. When I weedeat with Roundup it lasts a few weeks to couple of months and saves him several hours of work every week. It doesn’t look as neat but it satisfies him. I don’t consider it easy way out / just a matter of survival.
hazelinok
4 years ago
Hello! It's been 10 hours since someone posted here?!

Everyone is busy.

I had a decent morning in the garden. Got a few chores done. Things are looking okay out there.

Spent more time fretting about chicks. So far we have 4 living chicks. One is in the process of hatching. Actually, I think two are in the process. The one that is further along is in a green egg. I hope it makes it.

I didn't really sleep last night and I probably won't sleep much tonight either. I'm so sleepy, though. I can't get my brain to settle down. We had a snake lurking around the coop. I still can't tell bad from "good". Any snake around baby chicks is bad. It was a small snake, but still. Tom killed it. I hate, hate that. But it was dark and we didn't have a bucket with lid handy for relocation. I don't know why that dumb snake's death makes me sad. It would have been sadder had it tried to hurt the chicks.

Fowler bush bean and Black Seeded Kentucky Wonder pole bean--I recommend.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
4 years ago
I'm behind again because the last grandchild just left around 6 p.m. after staying for 6 days and 5 nights. Her sister stayed for 3 days and 2 nights. We had a ton of fun, but I think it will take me a week to recover from trying to keep up with a 4 year old and a 10 year old 24/7. I love them and would have them here all the time if they wanted to be here, but it sure wears me out.

Larry, Neighbors who use herbicides are quite vexing, but I try not to let it upset me when they kill or damage plants. What good does it do me to get all wound up over it?

I hope your garden is okay.

Nancy, I agree about how loud the racket is at night. I can't stand to be outdoors listening to it all at this time of the year---it is like sensory overload.

In my garden, the swallowtails always prefer dill first, then fennel, and then parsley. I guess that works out okay because the parsley tolerates a lot more heat than the dill does. The fennel does pretty well in the heat most years too. Next year I want to grow more for them...perhaps add rue and golden alexanders. We had our first Monarch cats a couple of weeks ago. They are gone now, and we're on our 7th or 8th round of swallowtail cats. It is a great butterfly year so far. I think the dill is starting to burn up in the heat though.

I hate that dead animal smell and when you live with a lot of wildlife it is unavoidable....and then you get the vultures circling and circling overhead looking for it. I faked out the vultures last week. I threw out some leftover spaghetti (no meat, just tomato sauce) on the compost pile out back of the barn, near the deer-feeding area. I figured possums or coons or skunks would find it and eat it that night. Nope. We came home from someplace and saw the wild turkeys eating the cracked corn meant for the mourning doves, and 6 or 7 vultures devouring the spaghetti. That just made us laugh. Who knew they would eat leftover spaghetti?

Jennifer, We are crazy dry here, so it doesn't surprise me that you're hoping for rain. Our ground, which stayed saturated pretty much nonstop from last September through May now is very dry....painfully so....and cracking everywhere. It amazes me how quickly things can change in the summer.

For our first 10 or 12 years here, I was constantly enlarging the garden. Maybe for 13 or 14 years. I finally made it bigger than I really could manage, but then the shade was starting to intrude on 2 sides of it to the point that no veggies will grow there, so we've given back a lot of those two sides to native plants (I want to move in the fence accordingly this winter, shrinking the garden down even more). A huge garden was necessary when I was canning and preserving so much food, but I think I'm over it. Tired. Burned out. Etc. Succession planting flowers this year has been so much fun and has paved the way to only plant flowers and herbs in the front garden next year. I am so ready for a change, and I didn't think I'd ever reach the point that I'd largely give up veggie growing. Well, I may not be giving it up---but, rather, taking a bit of a break for a couple of years.

Now that there's only me who will be here at home tomorrow, I plan to take out the rest of the bean plants, harvest what I can, and move on. I probably also need to harvest okra and tomatoes. I did harvest some tomatoes today, but only those in the containers up by the house. Might need to harvest peppers too. I'll need to get out there and get it done early because even the mornings are uncomfortably warm/humid now. I just don't like dragging the grandkids out to the garden at the height of the snake season. Today's snake visitor was a rat snake on the south-facing side porch. I know why he is there---one hen has been laying her eggs on the porch. I think she thinks we won't find them and she'll build up a nest and hatch them, but she's wrong. This snake showed up too late and there was no egg there for him to grab, but he didn't really know that so he just sat there and looked around.....and startled me, and sent me fleeing indoors.

Yes, a gardener can change his or her mind any time.

I'm sorry about the chick---this is not uncommon and generally they die because of a genetic defect.

Larry, The deer can be so annoying. I keep asking why they're begging us for food when there's tons of native plants available to them. I think our deer are just feeling lazy.

I don't like the early morning heat/humidity either. I really think it felt better here late Monday afternoon than it felt first thing in the morning. The temperature was higher, but it wasn't quite as sticky. I think we got some rain-cooled air from our west in the afternoon, even though the rain missed our area. We'll take a little bit of a break from the heat any way that we can get it.

We never have used Round-up, but I may start using it. I feel like it is increasingly too hard and too hot to try to keep the bermuda out of the garden fence line. We are getting too old for all this hard manual labor, and the weather is too hot to do them anyway.

Farmgardener, We've all got to do what we've got to do. I certainly understand why you choose to use a herbicide, and especially this year. The grasses are trying to become trees after all the rain, even though our rain has been skimpy in recent weeks. The trees? They are giants. I keep telling Tim that I would like for a very selective tornado to blow through, leave our house untouched, and take out all the trees on the southern edge of the woodland...just for maybe an area about 20 yards wide the entire length of the woodland, which in that area runs for about 1300'. That would push back the woodland from our yard and garden but, who am I kidding, it never is going to happen that way.

I have watched as all our original neighbors here, who were in their 60s-80s when we moved here have aged in place in their homes and now, 20 years later, those that remain cannot keep up with the routine mowing and weedeating. You know, we're 20 years older as well and starting to get tired of the constant need for maintenance, though we'll never give up living here. We'll just let things get more ragged. Many of our neighbors have switched to using Round-up and other herbicides instead of weedeating, and who can blame them? I certainly don't. The maintenance of large property is very draining in every way---time, energy, and even money. I agree that it is a matter of survival. There's only so many hours in a day, and also we only have so much personal energy to use up each day. For so long I have been trying to make our landscape easier to maintain as we age by replacing lawn with groundcover, shrubs and perennials, but I really, really need to step up my game and get a lot more of that sort of thing done. That's my goal for all of 2020.

Jennifer, I agree that no snake is a good snake around a chicken coop.

I did water the garden today, via sprinkler, as it is the fastest way to water all the flowers and herbs, and the tomatoes are all in one section that I still hand-water in order to keep water off their foliage.

The heat indices for the next few days worry me. I've been watching them closely. Our air temperatures really aren't all that bad for July, but then when you figure in the dewpoint and calculate the Heat Index, it is just awful.

I cleaned the hummingbird feeders this morning and refilled them with fresh nectar, and then there was a positively crazy feeding frenzy for the rest of the day. I think the birds were maybe too hot to fly around eating insects and just needed quick energy from the feeders. I sat out in the shade watching Lillie play in the pool for a little over two hours and got to observe lots of hummingbirds visiting the chaste tree and trumpet creeper vines during that time. I just love watching the hummingbirds.

We went to the hospital to visit our good friends this afternoon: he is there with Stage IV cancer and with nothing that can be done for him at this point except to manage his pain, and she has other medical issues. We had an exceedingly lovely visit with her, but he was knocked out, sound asleep for the first time in quite a while, so even though we missed being able to chat with him, we were relieved his pain has been managed to the point that at least he can sleep again. A lot of their family members were there, and it was sort of like a family reunion as we all are not together very often. Shortly after Chris, Jana, Lillie and I left to head back to our house, Tim called to tell me he was going to stop by the hospital to see them. We are blessed to have so many wonderful friends, but watching them suffer through so many health issues is just heart-breaking. I reminded Chris today that Tim and I are about the same age now that this couple was when we moved here and it is disconcerting.....I look at what they are going through and wonder if that is us roughly 20 years from now. Their DIL and I were discussing the fact that we all now are grandparents and our kids are parents and how weird that still feels and how old it makes us feel. (sigh) Getting old is not for sissies, but we all still can laugh about it, and also be grateful we still are here on this earth to age because some of our beloved friends never made it to their 60s and we are so grateful that we have. You know, getting old seems to be the 'theme' of this whole year for us, and I am not really quite sure how to feel about that.

I think everything in the garden that I have planted, except for some of the zinnias, the cosmos, a few cleomes (the last ones planted), some late glads and the candletrees (the last succession planting that I just finished last week) are in bloom now. The plants are starting to fill in so that it is becoming harder to tell where rows of veggies were removed. I tried to stagger the succession plantings of flowers and not plant them in straight rows wherever I could. Oh, and of course the roselles are not blooming because they do not bloom until October.

The grasses along the roadsides and fence lines really are drying out now---not to the point of being scary yet, but getting close to it. We were discussing today at the hospital that we are not ready (mentally or physically) for the summer fire season, but it likely will start soon regardless.

I saw the first big grasshoppers of summer today. They appeared out of nowhere. We still have plenty of small ones in the garden, but the birds have been eating them. I hope they come to the garden and eat these big ones too.

That is all. I need sleep.

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate y'all. Watch those Heat Advisories and don't let these wicked heat index numbers get you over the next 3 or 4 days.

Dawn
luvncannin
4 years ago
It is horribly hot and humid, which I'm not used to, here at the barn home. I drink half gallon of sun tea and gallon of water while I am working. I started my job so I cant work as much on the house.

PlantPlants are surviving.
slowpoke_gardener
4 years ago
I am late on everything this year, I picked my fires okra today. It looks like it is going to produce. If I start watering I may get a few veggies.
Rebecca (7a)
4 years ago
Another half dozen tomato skeletons today. More squirrel treats out.

That time you bend down to pull a weed and forget you have a pocket full of cherry tomatoes.

What causes a tomato plant to die branch by branch?
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
4 years ago
It is 9:12 a.m. Wed and our heat index already is 95, and it isn't even the highest in the state. Yesterday was pretty bad down here along the river, but I believe today will be even worse in NE & NC OK. I was out in the garden until 8:30 a.m. and the heat index already was 90 when I came in, so it seems like it is going up quickly. All I did in the garden was hand-water all the plants in containers and give a quick extra drink of water to any young plants that I transplanted into the garden within the last week. I pulled a couple of weeds that were easily seen in the open where no snakes could be seek lurking, and that was it for me. My gardening is done for today. The plants look great, though, considering the extreme heat. Of course, the plants feel actual temperatures not the heat indices so they probably are happier than the rest of us.

Last week we had Lillie here at the house from Wed-Sunday. On Monday, she came back with Chris and Jana to visit for a while and we all went up to the hospital to visit our two friends there. Last night they brought her back to stay a couple more days and nights while they're both working long hours. I'm not going to say the pool is the main attraction, but.......I don't have to twist her arm to get her to go out there and swim either. I expect to spend a lot of time out there with her. I'm glad we bought the larger pool--she is 10 years old now and too big for a little wading pool.

Kim, It is so awful, but also not unexpected when we're having such high dewpoints. I think the highest dewpoint we've ever had at our house is 79, and that really is New Orleans or Savannah type dewpoints. This last week? We'd hit 78 and 79 for a dewpoint almost daily. Right now, as I'm typing this, ours is 77 and likely to go higher.

Really all we can do is stay hydrated, and do the same for our plants. Even our dogs hate going outside. I'll put them out in the dog yard for 5 minutes to do their doggie business and they act like I am sending them out there to die. Once they are back inside, they completely ignore me when I try to get them to go out later.

I have noticed that traffic at the hummingbird feeders has just about quadrupled, and we have had plenty of them all along so now we either have a lot more or they are visiting the feeders a lot more. I am guessing it is easier for them in this heat to drink nectar instead of chasing insects around. Plus, the babies have left the nest too.

Larry, Okra is one of the few veggies I haven't already replaced with flowers and it is producing now too. I do love the okra flowers---the plants are almost pretty enough to grow just for the flowers, and then being able to harvest the okra crop is just a bonus. It is too hot for much of anything else, though the pepper plants don't seem to mind the heat too much....yet.

Rebecca, I am seriously hating those squirrels on your behalf. Sorry about the tomatoes and I hope they enjoy their treats so they'll go away and stop being a problem for your plants.

When a tomato plant is dying limb by limb, if the dying limbs are beginning at the bottom of the plant and the disease slowly is progressing upward, it usually is something fungal in nature like Septoria Leaf Spot or Early Blight. Look closely at the brown spots on your leaves. If they are more or less a solid tan to brown with little brown speckles on the leaves, that would be Septoria Leaf Spot, which has been widespread in OK this year because of all the rain. If you see concentric brown rings within the brown lesions, similar to a bull's eye target, that is Early Blight. Either way, the remedy is the same: remove all the diseased leaves so the spores won't move to leaves that currently remain healthy. Then, spray the remaining leaves and stems with the fungicide of your choice, whether organic or synthetic in nature. Copper would be probably the best organic choice and Serenade the next best, and Daconil would be the best synthetic choice and the best overall. Whichever one you choose to use, follow label directions and spray thoroughly, coating both the tops and bottoms of all leaves. Yes, it is as much of a PITA as it sounds to do this. The way these fungicides work is that they coat the leaves to prevent the fungal spores from attaching to receptors on the leaves, so if you don't coat the leaves thoroughly, the fungal spores will find the uncoated portions and attach. Once a tomato plant has a fungal disease, you do not cure it---you just do your best to stop it from progressing upwards on the plant. Often, if you are using fungicides, new growth will replace the diseased limbs you cut off and they will stay healthy. You'll have to repeat fungicide applications for an extended period of time. The labels on the bottles will say how often....I believe it usually is every 7-10 days or every 7-14 days depending on which product you use. I will add that it helps to keep water off the foliage, but do acknowledge that in this weather, between rain and dew, the plant leaves are going to be wet anyway no matter how careful you are when watering. We can only do what we can do, and we cannot keep rain off the leaves.

Well, my computer time is about to run out because I now have a child eating breakfast who expects to go out to swim soon thereafter, and so we shall. The Heat Index here is now is 99 so my goal of making it outdoors before the heat index hits 100 may not occur. This is crazy. I do not remember any time in recent history where the heat index was 99 degrees by 9:45 a.m. This is going to be a horrible day statewide for anyone who works outdoors. Stay hydrated, y'all!

Dawn
slowpoke_gardener
4 years ago

Last year I cleaned the Egyptian walking onions from my garden because I did not want to waste my amended soil on something my wife seldom used. I gave away all but a few to plant in out of the way places in hope to keep a start of the plants.

To make a long story short, all the bulging onions I planted in the garden died, while the Egyptian walking onions lived with no care at all.

I don't think a person con kill these onions.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
4 years ago
I think you're right, but then I have lost walking onions in our dense red clay (amended with some compost) in wet winters, so apparently I can kill them. Or, at least my wet winter clay can do it. : )

I am here to report that it is hot outside. Are y'all surprised? We have the highest dewpoint here at our place that I've ever seen---it has hit 80.8, which combined with our temperature at that time to give us a heat index of 115. This was shortly before 1 pm. In short, this explains why swimming pool time ended and now we are inside in the Air Conditioning. Meanwhile, our VFD, along with 2 others, has firefighters out on a fire that started when a so-called controlled burn got out of control. I have a couple of thoughts on this: 1) who does a controlled burn on a day when the NWS replaced the already serious Heat Advisory with the more serious Excessive Heat Warning? 2) did this person have a fire break cut all around the area he or she was burning? and 3) I feel a bit grateful Lillie is here because I refuse to drag her off to a fire, so I'm not at the fire. If she wasn't here, I would have had to go to a fire when the heat index was 115. That is a ridiculous amount of heat stress to put on a person's body.

Now, I'm headed off to the kitchen to show Lillie how our YoNannas machine will turn frozen fruit into the equivalent of soft-serve ice cream, except it is 100% fruit.

Y'all stay cool, and here's the Max Heat Index Map if you want to track how hot it has felt statewide today. I really thought one of you in NE OK would hold the title for highest heat index today, but it hasn't happened yet. However, the day still is young.....Oh, and when we got the Excessive Heat Warning and NE OK did not, I knew I probably was wrong about who would feel hottest today.

Maximum Heat Index Today

Then, there's the experimental Wet Bulb map. Here is what it shows:

Maximum Wet Bulb Map

Usually the worst number I see for our county on this map is 93. Today is has hit 95. I turned on the lawn sprinkler for the chickens, where a million wild birds have joined them in cooling off in its cool mist, and have a soaker hose going on the ground in the shade so they can lie in wet mud....and I put ice cubes in their chicken waterer. Anything I can do to keep them cool may help them survive this heat.....

My garden plants are showing some wilting, which relates only to the heat, sunlight and transpiration rates. Their ground is plenty moist.

Dawn
Nancy RW (zone 7)
4 years ago
It was stifling with a heat index of 102 at 10:30. Garry and I had run into town for a few things and also stopped for breakfast, so I came inside when we got home and took a nap. Well. Right now is probably the coolest it's going to be today, as it's RAINING. We had no idea. Just came out of nowhere, suddenly. Well, not really. Came from the north--but suddenly.

Dawn, garden plants showing wilting. . . i couldn't resist. I got my first cucumber and crookneck squash in (under the brown plastic chairs). It makes me laugh. I have 5 more small plastic chairs, so will put them out there with the rest of the plants in those beds. It'll look Iike I'm going to have a garden party, right? It's great living out where no one can see how crazy I am.

I'm excited to hear nothing will do away with the walking onions, Larry. I shouldn't have put that crookneck out there. That's asking for trouble. Maybe I'll go pull it out. Meanwhile, I have a Meot Jaeng I Ae Hybrid growing in that middle bed above (c moschata), and it is delicious!

I have been totally sidetracked on butterflies the past couple of weeks. We don't have the numbers of Swallowtails we had last year; don't know if we will. But I do have around 15-20 cats out in the center bed. And fritillaries on the volunteer passiflora. I'm trying to find other varieties of milkweed. Do any of you Tulsa folks know where one might get plants?

The day flies by when one takes a nap after going to town. Rats. I hate that. Later, all!
hazelinok
4 years ago
HI Everyone. It's hot. LOL

Didn't do much gardening today. Did water a few things and harvest what needed to be harvested: some Juliet tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, okra.

Mostly worked and dealt with animals. This heat is hard on them.

We currently have 5 baby chicks. I suspect the other eggs are duds...or the chick inside died.

And you know what? I was only going to keep two pullets, but if they are all girls (who could be that lucky?) I am keeping them all! haha.

I did the wing test on them all...they are all female according to that. But, I suspect there's some roos in the mix. Oh my. They are cute.

I moved Stormy to where Blossom was with her two babies. Blossom is tandem with Buttercup. Stormy is going to get a couple of store bought chicks tomorrow night. I will be watching her carefully. She will not get off the Broody Train. (but I don't want her to harm a baby chick). I'm going to lose her if she doesn't start eating and drinking again and stop obsessing about her eggs. Anyway, I'm going to Atwoods tomorrow afternoon and picking up a couple of chicks...unless a couple of the eggs that I think are duds actually hatch.

I'm just sitting down from all of the above and walking the dogs.

Y'all be careful in the this heat.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
4 years ago
For the first time in our lives here in OK, our dewpoint hit 80....and kept on going, all the way to 80.8. In the past, it was a big deal (and a bad deal) if our dewpoint hit 79. I was dying in that suffocatingly hot air today.....and then our heat index hit 116. That's the highest it ever has been here in our county at the Mesonet station, and our local TV met said tonight on the 10 pm news that it is the highest heat index number he's seen in all the Texoma region in the 10 years he's been here. We've hit 115 a few times, but it seemed like it wasn't possible for us to go any higher until today. So, it really felt worse here than I think it ever has been before. Now, we have hit an air temperature of 116 (not officially at our mesonet station though) in 2011 and I remember it well because (a) we were at a wildfire where at least a couple of firefighters got too hot and at least one went to the hospital in an ambulance, and then when I came home many hours later (b) we had dead chickens, despite my efforts to ensure they were cool enough before I left for the fire. Today's weather felt worse than that because we had an exceptionally low dewpoint that day due to prolonged drought.

Know what you need when the weather is very humid and very hot? You need a rain shower to cool you down. We got three hours of thunder and lightning while mostly still baking under the sun (the clouds were shaped like a doughnut and we were in the hole), and there were multiple flood advisories and severe thunderstorm warnings, and friends on FB in parts of our county or the one north of us complaining about strong winds, hail and heavy rainfall, while we sat there with dry skies. Storms went west of us and east of us and did their best to avoid us, but we got paged out to assist with grass fires caused by lightning in other parts of our county and with a motor vehicle accident that I assume occurred in heavy rainfall. I texted Tim and Chris, who both were at work, to tell them "we wanted rain, we got fire". This is one of those things where you have to laugh or you'll cry. Eventually it did rain here....a whopping 0.05", at most, was in our rain gauge by the time that big rainfall event ended. It was laughable to have so little rainfall that you couldn't decide if it was .04, .05 or .06, so I settled on .05. All our chickens survived today, and I hope they all still are alive in the morning. Finally, when the rain began to fall, our temperature fell into the 70s which felt so good, because it had been 95 at our Mesonet station before the rain and 97 at our house. I think the cool night air, at least, should help all the animals that were stuck out there in that heat today.

Nancy, I have used plastic chairs to provide shade and also as hail protection. Why not? Sometimes we have to use every means at our disposal to fight the weather-related problems.

I hated the stifling air. The dogs hated it. The cats hated it. Except for Tiny Baby who ignored me when I called him to come in and who took off and ran from me every time I tried to get close enough to him to bring him in. He finally came in after the rain started, but grudgingly. I think the heat must have fried his brain. Lillie was in the pool all morning, blissfully chilling in the cool water, telling me happily 'it feels like 85 degrees here'. I was laughing at her---she was totally oblivious to how bad the heat was. Oh, to be a kid again.....

We were inside before the lightning arrived because I was getting alerts it was coming. Chris and Jana's neighborhood had such strong storms that the swaying of the trees outdoors set off the motion detectors on their security system. The storms were moving south towards us from them, but very slowly.

I wish I'd had a nap!

Jennifer,

Y'all still have chicks in the stores? We haven't had them in the stores in weeks. In July, chicks become snake bait, so most rural people here want the chicks older and bigger before the snakes really get out and start roaming which, around here, was about 10 days ago. That is when I noticed rat snakes trying to get into the chicken coop and just constantly lurking around. I'd love to have a snake-free summer (or a snake-free life) but it isn't going to happen.

It was too hot to do any real yard or garden work today. I think tomorrow will be better, but Lillie is here, so we have plans to bake cookies and to swim. Nowhere is work a part of those plans.

I've been keeping an eye on the potential tropical cyclone trying to form in the Gulf of Mexico. Right now it seems like it will be heading towards Louisiana, and at such a terrible time for them, with the Mississippi River already near flood stage as it is. Its remains might come far enough east after it comes ashore to bring rain to southeastern or eastern OK in a few days. My garden and I are hoping it comes far enough east to reach us because we sure need the rain.

Dawn
hazelinok
4 years ago
I have fans on the chickens. And a mister in the shade. It helps.

Dawn, Atwoods had baby chicks of varying sizes/ages on Saturday. I sure hope they have some small ones today. (Or I'll get home and Stormy hatched an egg, but I think her eggs aren't fertile/chick died). Both Atwoods and TSC did NOT have the bottle part of those plastic chick feeders/waterers. Why? Why have 1000 bottom parts and not the bottles.

I'm not sure what I'll work on when I get home. Kane got into something when he ran off yesterday and he needs to be cleaned up. I want to do something in the garden, but will probably cook after going to Atwoods. Trying to stay on target with the "clean eating" challenge. Maybe I'll finish weeding the back garden when the shade hits it this evening.

There's three raised beds back there and both tomato beds are weeded now. Just need to do the jalapeno one.

Oh, and I want to start more PEPH peas and maybe some fresh bush beans.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
4 years ago
Jennifer, Some, if not all, of the plastic and metal feed and waterer bases will fit canning jars, either pint or quart. At least ours do, though all of ours are several years old. I assume that has not changed with the newer ones. Maybe that is why you're only seeing the bases. Ours fit regular mouth jars, not wide-mouth.

We have had a fan in our chicken coop forever but they only benefit from it at night because the minute I open the door to the coop in the morning, they are out of there. Our coop is in almost full shade all day be design to help them stay cool if they are in it, though a little late afternoon sun hits the west side of it for a few minutes before it is back in shade again. I don't worry about them in the coop so much....but when they are free ranging, they often forget to cool off (like little kids playing outdoors). I employ the use of soaker hoses, misters, sprinklers and home-made puddles for them. If they aren't able to stay cool, it isn't because we aren't trying to give them ways to stay cool. Had I known we'd have a heat index of 116 the other day, I probably would have kept them in the mudroom that day after covering the mudroom bench, table and floor with sheet plastic, but I really didn't see that 116 coming....the NWS had said our heat index would be around 107. They were a little bit off.

When I have broody hens who won't leave the coop on a very hot day, I place frozen 1-gallon jugs of water fairly close to their nests so they can benefit from it cooling the air. I don't put it close enough to touch them, but sometimes some of them will move and lay right up against the ice jug for a few minutes before returning to their nests. Their favorite cooling technique the other day was just to lie on the ground on the moist soil in the shade where I had a soaker hose on a slow drip for them all day long. The moist ground must have felt good because a couple of cats were lying there with them, and one of the cats wasn't even ours....I think she lives next door...or possibly west of the house next door, which means her home's driveway is about a half mile from ours, though she undoubtedly travels the shorter route across the fields.

It is unseasonably cool here this morning. I should work in the garden. I don't know that I will. There's been too many snake encounters lately, which of course, is typical for July, and I have no desire to get bitten by a venomous snake. Gardening here would be so much easier if we didn't have all these copperheads and rattlesnakes. I'm not happy to see any snake in the garden with me, but get about 10 times unhappier when it is venomous snakes. I know the snakes are in the garden at night because my garden frogs are disappearing quickly now, so it is likely some of the snakes are in there in the early morning hours or even all day long as well. I could smell a copperhead in or near the garden the last couple of days when watering, but I couldn't see it.

Dawn
hazelinok
4 years ago
Dawn, do copperheads really smell like cucumbers?

A tomato question. Do Brandwines have double blooms more often than other varieties? You know how they make those funky shaped fruit. Seems like a lot of my Brandywines have that weird shape.

It's 2:30 and my phone says it's 88 degrees out and feels like 89. I'll take that! It was almost chilly here this morning.

Normally I don't keep the fan in the coop on during the day. But with all the broody action, I have been. All of the broodies are moved out of the main coop. They each have a fan on them, though. Most aren't turned on today because it's not that hot.

Thanks for the chick feeder/waterer Mason jar tip.

Atwoods didn't have day old chicks yesterday (I called) but are supposed to get some today after 10. So, hopefully they're there when I head that way in a bit. I have the last two hens in their spots. So...it's up to the hens now. They need to prove they can do this.

Hoping to enjoy some time outdoors this evening.
Nancy RW (zone 7)
4 years ago
It started out nice and cool here, too, this morning. But by the time I began mowing, at noon, it was too hot. LOL--you all know how I praise/cuss the shade here. Today's strategy: Only mow where it's shady. Thus, my mowing took from noon-4:30. In several rounds. But it certainly was doable as long as I only mowed in shade! LOL

It has been so interesting, having two gardens--the one here, the other in town. TOTALLY different conditions. And it will undoubtedly be a great lesson for me. The one in town is full sun; shadiest areas are in the shade for maybe 2-3 hours. I find the weather is harsher in human terms. And it's windier than here. And of course, they got the standing water in the beds for nearly the month of June. Sound way to harsh for my tastes! BUT! We have six double cinder block raised beds around the large circle bed. In those beds, we have beans, okra, summer squash, butternut, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. And then in some shallow waist high beds, we have shallow-rooted flowers. And then in the huge circle bed, we have herbs and flowers, more peppers and tomatoes. A lot of those plants suffered bigtime with the floods, but nearly all lived and are now thriving.

To be honest, the plants, veggies, and flowers in all those beds are mostly outperforming those same plants here. Well. . . . I didn't put any shade to partial shade lovers in THOSE beds. And many of the sun lovers in those beds, I wouldn't plant here. But it's those in-between ones that are so interesting. And worst, it's the ones who need all sun but only get some sun here. :(

Like the milkweed, for example. Friends--are ANY of the milkweed less susceptible to the milkweed pests than the others?? I am so despondent over all the milkweed pests!

Dawn, any advice? Lisa? I have managed to keep the asclepias tuberosa from being eaten totally up this year, but doing my watches at least every other day. But this year I planted several scarlet milkweed, too, in the center bed, and was dismayed today to see swamp milkweed beetle nymphs! I took soapy water out to deal with them, but they're speedy little pervs. I WANT to be a monarch waystation, but HONESTLY! WHAT the heck!? Any cheers or advice or tips?
Rebecca (7a)
4 years ago
I’ve given most of the tomatoes a major cut back this week, to see if they will hang on until fall. Septoria is a bitch. Damn squirrels sat two feet from me and watched me do it. They’re taking every special treat I put out, and are still here.

The last storm we got topped one of my Heidis, and toppled my Late Girl trellis. Also, Gardeners Delight is producing like gangbusters, and is laughing off the septoria that’s taking down the beefsteak varieties. Taking note of that.

Had to water today. Cukes are finally taking off. Had to start them in jugs to get any going.
Rebecca (7a)
4 years ago
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
Jennifer, I would not really describe the smell of a copperhead as being similar to a cucumber. It smells like a.....copperhead. It is sort of a musky smell, not as bad as the odor of a skunk, but not pleasant. Maybe it smells a little like a cucumber to some folks, but not necessarily to me. I have some friends who say it smells like copper to them. It doesn't to me. You won't always smell it. I usually smell it when I have walked by one and startled it. Copperheads don't want to tangle with us and usually will slip away if they can, but if they are startled or surprised and can't slip away because maybe a person is between them and their best escape route so that they feel trapped, they'll release that scent. I try to freeze in place when I smell it, first checking the ground near my feet to make sure I'm not about to step on one. Sometimes I can find them after I smell them, but sometimes I cannot.

Brandywines do seem a bit more prone to have fused blossoms (aka megablooms) than many other varieties, especially from blooms formed when the nights still were cool. Usually as the season goes on, the megablooms become more and more rare. The fused blossoms do tend to produce very large fruit, but because of the way the skin of the different fruits fold together as the fruit enlarges, you often end up cutting away and tossing a significant portion of the ripe fruit, so lots of people just toss those flowers before they form fruit. I never do, merely because blossom drop happens so much here once we get hot that I hate to waste a single tomato blossom.

Nancy, If you plant milkweed, you're just going to have milkweed pests. Insects cannot afford to be picky---if they have to eat milkweed to survive, they're going to eat any and all milkweed. I've never noticed that any particular type of milkweed is less susceptible to the specific pests than others are. Like everything else, the milkweed plants and their pests are natural parts of our ecosystem. If the pests are doing too much damage, just destroy them. I leave them alone if I can and wait for the birds or beneficial insects to take care of them. I've never had the tussock moth caterpillars here and do believe I'd kill those things in a heartbeat. Whether you appreciate it or not, the ecosystem is functioning properly. While we plant milkweeds for the monarchs, we also have to expect that anything else and everything else that feeds on them might show up too. I usually don't see milkweed pests until the fields turn brown and the milkweeds go to seed and, in dry weather, began to fade and dry and die back to the ground. Guess what? We're already that dry here. The milkweed plants in the fields look sad and pathetic and the pests are moving to the milkweeds in irrigated green gardens. It happens every year---if you are hungry, you go to where the food is found. Pest-free gardening is a myth perpetrated by chemical companies. A healthy garden is full of insects, both good and bad.

Milkweeds existed on this land before we bought it. They are still here. They'll be here long after we are gone unless someone scrapes the ground bare and pours concrete on it. (What a horrible thought!) Nothing kills them, though excessively dry weather can make the ones in the fields die back to the ground. They often green up and grow again when rainfall returns in autumn. The milkweed in our flower border never dies back to the ground (I hope I didn't jinx them by saying that) but can look ratty if drought gets too extreme and I stop watering because I cannot water enough to help the plants stay in good shape. Sometimes I just give up in the heat and close the garden gate and tell the plants I'll be back in the fall, or after we get decent rainfall, and the milkweeds survive, so if they can take a couple of drought months with no water, they can handle feeding by most pests. Probably not the tussock moth caterpillars, but pretty much everything else.

As for being a Monarch Waystation....don't think of it that way. That's a sort of gimmicky way to make people feel good about growing plants for the monarchs. I want to grow plants for the monarchs to help them, not so I can display a Monarch Waystation sign. (sigh) You aren't trying to have a monarch waystation for its own sake, right? Instead, you are trying to fix a broken (by others) ecosystem by providing habitat. Approach it with the attitude that you are restoring the ecosystem to what it once was and needs to be again and remember that doing so provides a habitat for everything and that will have everything inhabiting it....those insects and creatures we would choose to see and those that we'd rather not see around. It is the way of the world, and they all have their place somewhere in the food chain. Everything in any ecosystem eats something and everything gets eaten by something. Accepting that and not going overboard trying to micromanage the garden 'pests' is so much less stressful, and it is natural. God made the world and everything in it and I trust that he created those darn milkweed pests for some reason that he understands, even if we do not. My goal never has been to have an insect-free garden or landscape, nor is it to have pest-free plants, because such a thing isn't possible unless you use synthetic chemicals strong enough to kill everything. My goal is to have an ecosystem that is healthy, strong and balanced, where I interfere in the food web as little as humanly possible. Make peace with the pests and only destroy those that truly destroy plants, not those that just damage them. Look at it this way: plant asparagus and eventually asparagus beetles show up (and harlequin bugs). Plant brassicas and cabbage loopers, imported cabbage worms and diamondback moth worms will show up. Plant potatoes and Colorado potato beetles will show up. Plant okra and sharpshooters and aphids are likely to show up. Plant squash and you-know =-whos will show up. Plant sweet potatoes and morning glories and tortoise beetles show up. Plant milkweed and milkweed assassin bugs, milkweed leaf beetles, oleander aphids and tussock moth cats show up. It is the way things are.

The older I get, the more I have learned to chill, relax and let the garden ecosystem just be an ecosystem. I have learned I can ignore most pests and the plants will outlast them, so I don't worry about anything except the ones experience has taught me do extreme damage to the plants we grow for a food harvest.. Blister beetles are an example of one you can ignore most of the time. After all, blister beetles are beneficial because they devour grasshopper eggs. However, on some plants (cucumbers and sweet autumn clematis, for example) they can eat the foliage down to nothing, so if they're doing that, a gardener really cannot ignore them. What matters the most, though, is how many blister beetles show up. If I see an occasional handful of them in the garden, I just ignore them. However if they show up by the hundreds or thousands, a gardener cannot ignore them.

Rebecca, It is just one of those years with the Septoria Leaf Spot. It was really hit and miss in my garden, but definitely more widespread than usual (some years I don't see it at all) and, in a most interesting way, I saw very little Early Blight, which is more common in my garden. It is almost like the Septoria Leaf Spot outcompeted the Early Blight for the right to hit tomato plants randomly.

Sorry about the squirrels. I was hoping those squirrel treats would work.

I've always found it interesting that most tomato varieties that produce bite-sized fruit just do not seem to suffer from common fungal and bacterial foliar diseases like the varieties that produce larger fruit do. I've never seen this addressed in technical literature, but have observed it in my garden. These diseases may hit the plants, but the plants outgrow them and never stop producing either.

I watered twice this week and probably will have to do the same next week. It just depends on how much the soil dries out. Tim is already fretting over the coming July water bill (which will arrive here in the first week of August) because, he says, the water bills haven't been at all bad this year and he dreads getting a high one. I laughingly told him to adjust his attitude and just be grateful that the water bills for January through June were not bad and to remind himself that a high water bill in July and August is normal and expected. lol. I also still don't think the July water bill will be that bad--I certainly am watering the remaining veggies and herbs, and all the flowers, much less than I water when I'm trying to keep a ton of tomato, cucumber and melon plants happy in the heat. I think he just needs something to fret about.

It hasn't really felt hot here since that day our heat index hit 116. Of course, the obvious explanation is that after that miserable day, any other day will feel cool by comparison. (grin) Tim wasn't here that day though and was in his air-conditioned office at work, so he missed the worst of it. I think our heat index had dropped into the 70s or 80s by the time he got home because of all the rain storms around us that basically missed us but gave us rain-cooled air. (And, I believe, a measly 4/100s of an inch of rain.) I do think the heat returns at the middle of next week. Since that hot, miserable day, I've felt like our weather has been only warm, not hot, but by mid-week, we'll be hot again.

We need to mow and edge everything tomorrow, and especially all the fence lines and such where the fields really are drying out now. Keeping as much vegetation as possible cut short reduces the fire danger, and we are starting to have fires. By the way, while typing this I have heard some fireworks going off in our neighborhood. Really, people? I think that by now people should have all that out of their system. Apparently they don't.

Dawn

July 2019, Week 2

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