Dcarch, we never expect every year to go smoothly as gardeners. Plant more, plant in succession, cull if all goes well. Start a tray of back-ups. Start a few early trays if the weather permits early plantings. (seeds are cheap)

But you know that.

Every year I get a punch-in-the-face problem. With covid we need more than average successes...

I'm having a good year, knock on forehead.

I was going to suggest your twin-wall. (you used it for your figs)

It is expensive. but if you have it...

You might be hesitant to do raised beds? It is the only thing that works for us. I bake a few beds every year for an entire season, covered. Not a big planned rotation but it helps.

Early Springs are so wet, raised beds let me plant early. Contains my rich compost soil where it needs to be. Good drainage.

I'm not convinced your garlic was diseased. Wet feet will rot them like some seasons where my early peas rot first plantings. (even in raised beds)

2x12's are cheap for a few raised beds. Warmed beeswax will preserve brushed onto the surfaced buried into the soil.

Not preaching, but in the NorthEast, this works so well for us.

I picked up 3 ears of corn at a produce stand today. It was nice and sweet with plump kernels. Might be a good corn year.

dcarch, I save "seed garlic" from my crop every year for next year's planting. I did buy the first planting's worth, but seed garlic is pretty expensive.

Jasdip, my sweet corn is doing extremely well, we've eaten a couple of meals including sweet corn. The local farmer's market is getting $8 a dozen for corn, $7 if you buy 5 dozen. Whew, I'm glad I grew some, I ought to let the kids sell corn out by the pole barn!

PM, I've let the monarchs have the fennel, and I left some milkweeds growing in my herb garden. It's ugly, but I've gotten a least a dozen of these:

The kids don't call it the herb garden any more, now they call it the "butterfly garden", LOL. I've got butterflies all over the place, but they seldom land long enough for me to get a picture, but I did sneak up on this one. Not a monarch, but still pretty:

And I finally got ripe tomatoes. Just a couple, but Elery's doing the happy dance.

Annie

Annie, I love the Yellow Swallowtails! Like bits of sunshine dancing on the breeze. We've only had one big one ripe so far but I pulled another at breaker stage yesterday. I trust neither the critters nor the weather!

I saw a little caterpillar on one of my parsley a couple hours ago, so the plant-stripping should begin soon. :) We got some rain on Tuesday and my small tomatoes started to ripen like crazy, so I'm loaded up with Stupice, Sungold, Sweet 100, and Gold Nugget already. Even my blackberries are starting to show tinges of color.

Hi everyone! I've tried to post to this thread a couple times recently but the post would just evaporate into thin air. Trying again -- without photos -- just to see if it posts. :)

ETA: Now I'll try adding photos. I found a few swallowtail caterpillars the other day... one went for dill, one went for fresh parsley, and one went for green parsley seed! The photos are from the day I found them. This first little caterpillar on my fresh parsley is much bigger now and has been doing a good job of stripping the plant clean, the dill disappeared, and I'm glad that I had several parsley plants started for seed. :)

My gardens are producing lots and lots of tomatoes and hot peppers now! More new varieties are ripening every day. They're both especially nice and tasty this year. My green beans were sad this year, though.. half didn't even sprout -- poor things had bad weather conditions at crucial times for them. Temps were 40s and wet when trying to sprout, then 90s and bone dry when they were ready to flower. :( Sweet peppers are slow, but coming. Zucchini and crookneck are still producing plenty. lol! Overall, we're having a hot and dry summer for us -- probably only getting 1/4 our usual rainfall.

PM, I'll try some pictures, here's my lastest garden harvest:

Edie, I like the Yellow Swallowtails too, and in recognition of my quest for the Monarchs, this one visited my flowers:

Mother helped me snap green beans for canning, I've done 30 quarts so far. That's a 5 gallon bucket, nearly full:

Jasdip, my corn did well, and, of course, there is the zucchini. This picking also included aspabroc, onions and golden beets:

And it looks like this posted normally. I even went back to edit!

Annie

We're down to tomatoes, a few cucumbers here and there, and bell peppers coming on along with 5 or 6 varieties of basil. I need to get making pesto! Raccoons got all our corn after the first picking, bugs got the beans and squash. :-( Oh well... I'm just grateful for what we have!

Annie, haven't seen any Monarchs yet but my zinnia bed was full of Viceroys this morning. Along with a Black Swallowtail and some Painted Ladies.

Lovely harvests! The only things I'm harvesting right now are macadamia nuts, which need to dry for a month, some herbs and walking onions. I have a lot of basil that needs to be made into pesto

And fyi, the caterpillars on the fennel are the same as the ones on parsley - and anything else in the carrot family. Common name is 'parsleyworm', and adult is this very pretty black swallowtail.

Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweeds - and have little black wiggly protrusions on each end.

P.S. If you poke or disturb a parsleyworm, it will protrude little orange 'horns' that spray an icky scent in defense.

Carol, I'm sorry, I was unclear. Yes, I left a big ugly milkweed that falls over onto my walkway just for the monarchs, and diligently picked off all the tussock moths so the monarchs could have it. I counted 6 Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed, like this one:

Elery is just waiting for the caterpillars to be all gone, so he can chop out that 5 foot tall milkweed, LOL. It IS ugly, but I've been jealously guarding it, as long as there is a caterpillar there. It appears that they are all gone, both from the milkweed and from the fennel, so both types.

edie, I find it hard to tell the Monarchs from the Viceroys when they are landed with their wings folded. I mostly can see the markings when their wings are spread. Whichever butterfly that is, it still makes me happy. And they are polka dotted, how fashionable. (grin)

I've only seen one Black Swallowtail this year, I think being in farm country too many farmers spray too much "stuff" on too many things. Ugh. Somehow the gypsy moths and Japanese beetles survive it, though, and about a zillion cabbage moths! Plus the tomato hornworms, which I callously feed to the chickens, they love them.

Not nearly as pretty, but much more beneficial, I had this visitor yesterday, sunning himself on the front pavers. I'm not at all afraid of snakes and we don't have venomous ones here other than the very shy and endangered Massasagua. This one was about 3 feet long, big for a garter snake, and was in the process of digesting a small mouse. See the "belly bulge" at the far left of the picture?

Annie

Garter snakes are truly our friends! And so are Black Snakes but sadly I can't convince anyone in my husband's family of that.

I grew up with a lot of venomous snakes, like water moccasins (AKA cottonmouth), rattlesnakes, coral snakes, and copperheads. I wasn't really afraid of snakes except when they came into the house - that was too close for comfort. I had to avoid the water moccasins when I would swim or wade in the creeks on our property, however.

Annie, did any of your chocolate Habanero seedlings survive? This should be a good time for them to thrive and possibly bloom. I did not sprout any new seeds this year, but I have several plants that have been growing since last year that are putting out new chilies, but not that many. Fortunately, I had a large crop last year, and I made a very large batch of sauce and still had plenty left over to dry. If I am desperate, I can always use the dried chilies, but so far that has not been necessary.

It's difficult for me to garden this year, spending half my time in Cathedral City. This week-end, Kevin put in a drip irrigation system for our citrus trees, so that it will be easier for us to be gone for an extended period of time without having to rely on our next door neighbor, who is about six months pregnant now. We've left a key to our gate with her, and so her husband could help if she were unable, but I don't want to ask her again at this point.

Lars, all three of the habanero plants grew and are in the garden. There are small peppers on them, nothing ripe yet, of course, but I'm hopeful.

Annie

If you got small peppers, that is something! I picked some small ripe ones this afternoon to add to a rice dish that I made for dinner (which also had red bell pepper, celery, onion, Hatch chili turkey sausage, etc), and they gave it a very nice flavor. The distinctive earthy flavor comes through even in very small quantities. I added cheddar cheese to the rice when serving it. It was a one-dish meal - very appropriate for a hot summer day, I think.

We didn't do any gardening this afternoon because it was too hot, and we watched Down to Earth and ate heirloom popcorn instead.

I still don't have one ripe tomato. And no color showing... argh. I do have one Stupice that might ipen in a week or two. It started out to be such a good year...hoping for a late freeze. My cabbage looks like an illustration from Peter Cottontail....beautiful, no loopers (thanks to regular Bt). I do have some cukes starting to form, Cucumbers are one of my challenges.....they either do really well... or not.

I haven't seen many aphids, which is nice. Or butterflies and my orchard is full of sweet William and black eyed susans, which they like. We haven't even had mosquitoes as bad as we usually do.

Raspberries aren't liking the heat. Blueberries, on the other hand, are going ballistic. We made them trellises and they are thanking us. My day neutral strawberries are starting to come back, even though it's hot. We'll have berries until snow now. I put in three grape vines last year and two of them have grapes. And Dr Doom said they wouldn't grow here. Ha.

Annie, that's gorgeous Music. I bought some last fall (since I lost 500 bulbs to voles) and it did pretty well for its first year. I tried a new one called Majestic that did awesome.....huge.

KatieC, here the voles dig the garlic up, but don't eat them, so if I can find them on time, I poke them back into the ground but if I don't find them quickly, well, you know. Majestic? I've never heard of that, I'll have to find some and give it a try. I grow Music because that's what Michigan State University says does well here, and they were sure right.

My berries did pretty well too. Now the bears have found the raspberries, so those are gone, and the chipmunks ate every ripe strawberry in the patch of 100 plants. Next year I guess I'll have to net them. (sigh)

A first for me this year was kidney beans. I've grown other beans for shelling, so I thought I'd give those a shot. They are already ripe, ready for shelling, and they are prolific. I planted a 25 foot half row as an experiment. About half of those were ready to pick and shell:

I have at least that much more in the garden which will be ready in a couple of days, but it took me 3 hours to shell these, I have to wait for my thumbs to not be sore. I also grew a row of Kebarika, but they are not ready yet, it'll be another couple of weeks, I think. Just a few are ripe, but aren't they pretty?

I actually have some melons too, I'm cautiously optimistic that one or two might actually ripen before frost, as long as it doesn't come early.

Tomorrow I'm cleaning out the hoop houses so I can plant fall lettuces, golden beets, turnips, some mache and maybe some snow peas. I told Elery I need more hoop houses, LOL.

Annie

I am still dealing with a "big" "problem". :-)

Huge tomatoes are coming nonstop. Sandwich making gets very tricky.

I don't even use any fertilizer.

dcarch

Not a bad problem to have! Gorgeous tomatoes. And all the beans Annie!

Just found this pic from 2016. I can vouch for this seller. I picked the best for Northern climates. I've been letting some scapes got to umbels every year saving bulbils,...planted in another smaller bed being so small. Back-up plan just in case. May need a third bed this fall. Hope to avoid the cost of purchasing ever again.

...and this little monster. I've been harvesting early mornings. But this is a green one. They usually go for blushing or ripe.

Wow. Just checked HoodRiver site for garlic. They are out of everything. Seems covid has created some gardeners, chicken farmers, and bidding wars on country homes. (we have had two Realtor calls asking if we want to sell) 🙄

Dcarch, I should have lots of bulbils in a few weeks I could send. And some 2nd year I just harvested. You could probably get a nice 3x3 bed started. Bulbils only need about an inch or two apart. I most likely will have way more than I have room for even sharing with neighbors. I had a few hundred bulbils that went in the compost last year.

I have a nice collection of micros this year. This one is a surprise. Calling it Shmoo. After the RedWingPottery salt and pepper shakers designed by EvaZeisel years ago. They have been growing in clusters of two. Carrot leaf.

I've never grown SilverFirTree or any frilly carrot leaf. This cross was sent to me by a friend breeder from Utah. Both parents are micro, one carrot leaf.

Sleeven, last week I got hold of a large supply of bulbs, enough for my 12' x 4' garlic plot. Thank you very much for your generous offer just the same. I really appreciate it.

The ones I got are hard neck very large cloves. I need the cloves to be extra large because I make my own black garlic.

dcarch

Oh good. Glad you found what you need dcarch.

First year my carrots seem thin. Have never had a problem and we have had about the most perfect amount of rain. Maybe I'm jumping the gun...still lots of time before harvesting. Tomatillos are another crop that surprises me. Just a heap of hollow husks, then 'boom', they fill out in no time.

My Fall crop starts are doing better than expected. The original tray is suffering so I should pot some more up. What a tangled mess. I see a ton of basil and have no memory seeding it. I don't bother making seed maps of misc greens. I know what it is when it takes off in the garden. I'm just expecting hand-sized greens but might get a bigger crop. Just need to find room. Not yet ready to pull anything.

Cooler mornings this week so double my usual outside energy.

Sleevendog, a garlic farm opened this year to the north of me, almost to the Canadian border. It has a much cooler climate than Hood River. Last I looked she still had some varieties.Snow Valley Garlic. They're also on facebook.

Annie, your beans look fantastic! I don't have enough space to grow beans for shelling, but wish I did!

dcarch, didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not the size that counts? :O)

sleeve, that's wild about getting the calls re selling! When I bought my current house it was a foreclosure so needed lots of big repairs... after about a year, when the majority of work was done, I got a bunch of letters, notes, and phonecalls from people who wanted to rent it! lol!

re garlic, I used to work with a guy whose family started an organic garlic farm in northern NY. I can't recall the farm name at the moment, but he always laughed about growing organic garlic because there's nothing that requires less care or chemicals. I'm still growing the hardneck garlic that my uncle gave me when I had my first house! It's always been my favorite of the dozen or so varieties I've grown... 'French Rocambole'.

This is mostly what I've been picking every day... lots of tomatoes and apples. This is only part of today's harvest because I had already given some tomatoes to the neighbor and made some applesauce before I took the photo. I only have one plant of each tomato variety, but it's been a very good year for mine -- I swear that I've eaten at least a quart of fresh Sungolds every day. I love those things. lol! Every day I've made applesauce or a batch of marinara sauce for the freezer, and luckily I grew serranos this year, so my BF has made lots of salsa. He uses the recipe that cookebook found -- that recipe is SO GOOD!!! I didn't grow plum tomatoes, so he just uses whatever I give him and he cooks it enough to get the excess moisture out. I can't get to the recipe site now, so here's a link to the original thread: Guadalajara's Salsa

So here's part of my haul yesterday, but really, I just wanted to show some of my baskets. lol! The one on the lower-left is something I just made for my sister. :)

"party_music50

------------- dcarch, didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not the size that counts? :O) "

That's why I don't feel bad that I have small hands. :-)

dcarch

Looking amazing everyone! My tomatoes are struggling.

Dwarf Sweet Sue and Perfect Harmony Tomatoes, Corno di Toro "Giallo" and manzano peppers, Tiger Baby and Yellow Baby watermelons, Scotch Bonnet peppers, and my share of the Black Jack figs from my tree.

Nanelle, that all looks yummy! I'm the opposite and my tomatoes are great this year! I grew 10 varieties and have been making lots of salsa, sauce, eating a ton fresh, etc. etc.

My wild grapes grew great this year and the cardinals were starting to steal them so I decided to pick them last night. I left plenty for the birds. They cleaned up to just under 3 1/2 lbs of grapes, and I just finished making the jelly -- 4 1/2 jars. Totally yummy! :)

@party_music50, I am so jealous. I absolutely adore wild grape jelly.

Our Estler's Mortgage Lifters are finally starting to get ripe. I swear it was almost as agonizing waiting on these as it was being a kid before Christmas!

We also have some Dixie Golden Giant and KBX ripening. I'll be putting some up in the freezer this week. Yay!

@party_music50, glad its going well. I had a good run until quite recently. Here is the orange fleshed melon.

Pretty orange melon, nanelle, and so is the yellow one.

Edie, Mortgage Lifters are my favorite tomato, and I like that they are a little later than most of the others, it gives me something to look forward too instead of just being tired of tomatoes!

Here I dug some of the Red Pontiac potatoes and made scalloped potatoes for Mother. They are are huge this year

Elery cut the cabbage for sauerkraut, the heads were about 8 pounds each, not exceptionally big for Late Dutch Flat, but big enough:

I still have a couple of bushels of tomatoes on the trailer and I'm still picking zucchini, although the cucumbers have finally given up. I shelled some more Kabarika beans and picked a handful of green beans that are still hanging on. The peppers are just starting to ripen, I got one big Ajvarski, lots of Sugar Rush Peach and enough pepperoncini to pickle one batch for my son in law who loves them.

The pullets are laying, we got 25 eggs today, but they are still "beginner" eggs, so they are about a size medium. Bigger than the "peewee" size we were getting at first, LOL, but not full sized yet. Lots of pretty colors, like sleevendog's baskets of eggs:

I still need to finish digging the potatoes and cut all the kale and collards. It rained hard last night and is supposed to rain again tomorrow, so many of the tomatoes will split and crack, we won't get a lot more of them. The butternut squash will be ready after that, and I still haven't gotten a single eggplant from any of the 8 plants I set out. And I need to check on the watermelon and the grapes, I have one seedless concord vine and I ought to just rip it out and forget about it. It gets grapes but I haven't figured out how to successfully prune it. It's a tangle of vines with a few grapes that the rodents find in among the leaves far before I do.

Fortunately the apple trees made up for the grapes, they are heavy with apples this year.

Annie

Oh Annie, I so miss my apple trees. Applesauce, all lovely kinds of jellies (my favorite was Candy Apple) and Linda Lou's Apple Pie Jam. And those beautiful eggs!! Now I'm jealous all over again. <Grin>

Annie, I feel better about my potted eggplant then... I've got one eggplant on each plant -- but they're still hard as rocks. :)

Edie, I'm curious about your Candy Apple jelly. I have two apple trees -- one early and one late. My early apples are done now, but I'll have more coming soon.

@party_music50, basically it is a regular apple jelly recipe with cinnamon red-hots (Imperials) added. Here is the recipe I use: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/candy-apple-jelly/

It truly is a beautiful dark pink and much more flavor than just plain apple jelly.

Annie. quick question. Did you start any fall crops? I think you may have mentioned that. Mine just have not taken hold. Meaning I expected them to take off by now. Still alive but only about 3-4 inches.

Mine are in the two hoophouses Elery built for me. I have several kinds of lettuce, golden beets, some new to me purple baby bok choi, a 45 day turnip, some snow peas and green onions. I'm hoping I can grow leaves for salad until maybe Thanksgiving!

I only planted those things a couple of weeks ago, so they are tiny but seem to be flourishing, I just have to close up the hoop houses at night so the deer don't make a visit to the "salad bar".

I still have butternut squash, lots of unripe peppers and eggplant and a ton of green tomatoes in the garden. I live trapped a big fat groundhog in the butternut squash yesterday so maybe they'll have a chance to finish ripening, although we have temperatures of 35F or lower forecasted for Friday night.

So, of course I have fall gardens, LOL, you know I just have to!

Annie

My new garlic patch. more than 160 gloves for next year. Very large clove variety. 160 heads should be plenty for next year.

Will find out if white rot is under control.

dcarch

I went to get some parsley the other day and there was nothing but a few bare sticks. Hopefully that means we will have a bumper crop of swallowtail butterflies next spring! So time to start some for indoor winter growing. I have some basil cuttings rooted already.

I love your spacing plastic dcarch, where did you get it?

Fingers crossed for your garlic crop. My peas look good, and basil. Weather looks good. The 10 day anyway. All my fall greens disappeared in a heap of lace eaten destruction of doom. Should have used my row covers.

Thanks Sleeven. Using sous vide cooker to sanitize the cloves at exactly 113F gives me some assurance that things may be OK.

"beesneeds

I love your spacing plastic dcarch, where did you get it?"

Here is the system I developed. A one-time quick work saves lot's of labor:

2. "A" is a 1 1/2" metal tube. The tube is heated up using a blow torch. It can cut holes thru the fabric easily and quickly.

3. "B" is another 1 1/2" tube used to core and remove soil thru the holes, leaving a precise hole in the soil at a depth good for garlic.

4. "C" is a plunger to push the soil inside tube "B" to cover the garlic clove.

5. "D" is a ruler to make sure proper social distancing between gloves are maintained. :-)

Everything is reusable. Same system is used for growing a few other seedlings.

dcarch

My basil went nuts this year. One plant and it's about 4' x 4' x 4'. I told my neighbors to come and get some because there's enough to go around.

The eggplant. The poor eggplant. I planted it in July and it was promising. It's a beautiful plant full of flowers and every flower thusfar has fallen off the plant. Except for one which actually produced a tiny little ball of a purple eggplant and then it fell off the plant. It's in an ideal location, got plenty of rain (during the monsoon season). The plant itself is thriving; but no eggplant.....yet. I am holding out hope.

Oh, and for some inexplicable reason my tarragon bit the dust. Too much rain followed by drought, perhaps? I think I will get a new plant. Weather here is unpredictable....it's either feast or famine.

Jerzeegirl, it must be the weather, my basil also went crazy, and my tarragon did too, but I did not get one single ripe eggplant from my 6 plants. We're a long way apart, but I guess eggplant just wasn't happy anywhere this year.

Annie

So weird — I’m a long way too and my basil was fantastic this year and I got one eggplant, plus a little one still hanging on. Lol. It was a really good year for tomatoes for me.

We finally have a little rain this morning — it’s been weeks since it rained and it sounds so nice.

A couple years back, there was talk here about how good Honeynut squash is. Did anyone who saved the seeds from one of these squash ever grow it to see if it came true?

Party_Music - I've saved seeds for this squash for a number of years and it has been consistent every year. You do mean the variety Honeynut Mini-Butternut Sqaush?

Thanks, Cindy. Well, now I'm not sure. I ordered a "Honeynut" squash in my Misfits shipment for later this week. iirc, it showed a photo that looks like a green/striped version of a butternut squash, but there's no indication of size. At the time I did a quick on-line search and saw photos that looked like it, so I assumed there was only ONE 'Honeynut' squash. lol!

party m. - When they are fully ripe the green turns an orange-y tan color.

Cute! If it is the same variety, why would Misfits show an unripe squash? lol! I guess I'll leave it in the order and see what I get.

I have had major problems this year and years before. Here are what I am doing to deal with the problems.

1. Fig trees - here in zone 6 area, I never had luck with my fig trees. Finally I developed a new winterizing method (posted on another thread) and I am getting figs finally. I will apply this method for all my fig trees.

2. Garlic white rot - I am using the heated method, sous vide cloves to 113F, to kill off the white rot virus. (posted here above) Will find out if I succeed the coming season.

3. This season, all squashes soon died off from borers. I understand that borer moths fly at night. So I got UV light zappers to try to kill off the moths. Will see if this will improve my squashes for next season.

4. Big time squirrel problem. I don't understand why. Global warming? I am not happy with traps I bought. So I made my own.

dcarch

I've also had some major problems with pests this year, mostly the big fat groundhog that evaded me for much of the summer but finally got careless a few weeks ago. The deer ate the golden beets, the groundhog built a burrow right in the row of kale, the tomatoes overran my red onions, I never did get a ripe eggplant for reasons unknown. I canned kale today and had to wash them repeatedly to get rid of aphids. Gophers ate every single ripe strawberry the minute it started to turn color and the bear wiped out the raspberries. I got about half a dozen peaches, the rest succumbed to the early frost.

Still, I got plenty, enough to share with the local food bank and several neighbors, more than I wanted to can, and for that I'm grateful.

Collards are something that really grew, the leaves are so big I had to measure one!

29 inches long and 12 inches wide, that's without the big stem.

You know, it's always amazing how 2 bushels of kale only makes 7 quarts of canned greens...

I need to go take pictures of my "winter garden" and get another thread started!

Annie