1/2" rebar is handy to have, I try to keep it in 120" and 30" lgts.

Not much gardening going on today. I did get out before church and hoed most of the south garden. Onions are dry, and some are under sized. It seems that I have more of a variation in size problem this year.

While out this morning I noticed that I still have peas and okra coming up, why is it taking them so long? Is anyone else having trouble with slow germination? I have noticed that the slow germination is from my saved seed, the purchased seeds seem to come up faster. None of my seeds were soaked before plant.

I got a couple jalapeno pepper plants to put in the ground, but not in this wind. But I did spend the day on the patio smoking a couple of pork butts. I feel wind beaten.

I planted my garlic on Oct 21, Mrs Dollar's birthday. I think its bout ready to harvest. But I pulled a couple today and its like that Texas saying " big hat, no cattle " .... well , I got tall plant and little garlic.

I don't think my garlic gets enough sun in this bed close to the house. It leans out, like its trying to reach for sun . I don't know what wrong, hoping there's some larger bulbs in the other plants.

I've had slow germination with okra lately. The okra over at Jennifer's is just now coming up after planting it a couple of weeks ago. Beans were a little slow coming up too but a rain got them on up. Just got my okra planted out over east yesterday after waiting for 3 weeks for the ground to get dry enough.

Rick

Lynn, the garlic looks good for growing up close to the house, where the growing conditions may be less than ideal. Did you plant seed garlic, or store shelf garlic? Only one year I ordered seed garlic, which I had rather do if it were not so expensive. A lot of mine was some I dug up at an old home site ( was given permission ). I have no idea what it is.

I have a lot of problems with critters digging under my plants. A lot of my root crops get eaten.

First tomato of the year! This was from whomever brought Abe Lincoln to SF. And I think a few others will be forming soon. Also an anaheim pepper is starting to form, right now it's the size of a BB.

Larry, I ordered the bulbs from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I would guess that's store shelf ? They get good sun all winter. Only this time of year, when the sun is really high, are they shaded. And the plants on the outside get full sun.

Lynn, what I was referring to, was, like picking up a bulb off the grocery story shelf ( Walmart ) just marked garlic, or elephant garlic, which is what I have. I think that I must have a stray dog from every town, as far as garlic goes. One year I ordered at least a dozen different types of Speciality garlic, but wife still would use the bottle of minced garlic from the grocery store. I am sorta getting her away from that now, its tough changing habit when you get old, and wife is not alone there, I have been bit by that same dog.

I need to go to town and buy more supplies. I had enough supplies to carry me through fall and next spring ( except diesel ). When you have extra it is easy for someone to come buy and say "can I borrow some till I go to town ".

To lazy to get up right now so I took a stillshot from the camera. Rocks are 99% gone, got one load of wood chips spread, now to do 3 more & I'll be ready to plant next year.

Jen, place is looking good. The tomatoes look good also. I have a couple of tomatoes on a plant where they are almost on the ground. I trimmed my tomatoes much like Lynn has his. The bad thing for me, is that I threw away as much of the plant as I had left in the ground. I need to go mulch around the plants now.

Pretty wildflowers I pass on my way home

Has the cat got your tongue? I remember hearing that, maybe a 1000 times when I was young, but, anyway that was what I thought of when not seeing any activity on the forum.

I got out and watered the south garden this morning, not a lot, but enough to hold it a day or two.

I worked a lot yesterday in the wildlife garden, and in neighbors garden. tilling and planting 60+ hills of cantaloupe. It is getting so late to be planting anything, unless you plan on keeping a water hose handy.

Kim, the wild flowers are pretty, but I have a tractor and brush hog sitting at the far end of the wildlife garden to keep that from happening here. I do have a pretty good supply of Ladino clover there for the bees. The clover grows low enough for me to brush hog over it, but my pasture has a good bit of wild flowers (weeds) in it.

I need to take it easy today. I may plant a few thing in the north garden, and mow the lawn. We are suppose to get some rain this afternoon, but it is getting near the time of year when "rain talk" is all we get.

Haven't heard that one in a while.

OKC got around an inch last night along with a little 60 mph wind damage here and there.

There's another wave coming around noon , we're in a flood watch.

Rick

Several of us are having problems getting onto GW. I can get to it from this computer, but no on cell phone or laptop. And since it's finally good weather, my "office" is mostly on the deck--plus I have been WEEDING. It was supposed to rain all day today, but not happening, so I'm off to town to check on the school garden and then more weeding here.

The wildflowers are gorgeous, Kim--I really don't have much color going on at my place yet. And I still have many plants to plant! Okra is slow at the school, too. I didn't plant any here this year. Peppers are going great; tomatoes not great. garlic and onions are on schedule. I had a lot more onions bolt, so I'll be pulling and freezing those. The lettuces are bolting.

We had a lot of company the past week and a half, and went to the native plant sale in Broken Arrow on Saturday. Garrison Creek and Across the Prairie nurseries were the vendors, and they sold out within two hours--a happy problem for them to have, but not good for those who came late to the sale. (We had pre-ordered, so were fine.) Saw a couple of friends there and met the nursery follks--so a fun time. The next day, Sarah from Across the Prairie and Danny came to the house and we had fun trading a bunch of plants. But it's always nice to be back in OUR routine.

Larry, this is the first year that I've trimmed the tomatoes that aggressively. Before, I'd cut some lower branches but not like I'm doing now. Hoping to delay the blight. Will see if it works.

I'm also taking off some suckers because of my 18" tomato cages. I wish they were 24" . Then it would not get so crowded inside the cages. So far, that's reducing the amount of foilage. Its impossible to get all the suckers, can't see em. And I don't spend a lot of time at it. I do have a couple suckers that I missed, that are putting off blooms.

But mainly, I'm doing this pruning just to see if I can keep the blight down to a dull roar.

Lynn, I dont have cages, I wish I did, but when I started my "system", if that is what you would call it, I did not have a lot of storage space, and did not want to open the cages up and hang them on the fence. Anyway, I have a lot of time and money tied up in T post, rebar, conduit, and cattle panels, which store easily. Neighbor is already hitting me up for the gardening supplies in the wildlife garden. I may as well give them to him, after I am gone nobody in my family will fool with all this junk I have collected. At the rate I am going down, gardening will be a thing of the past for me in another year of two.

I brought in some squash, peppers, and new potatoes, all but the peppers came from the plants on neighbors place. Neighbors land is higher than mine and we can get it ready earlier. We live in a very difficult area to garden.

Larry, at 70 yo, my joints are starting to fail. And my muscles don't wait till the next day to get sore. I can have trouble getting to my feet. I've had occasional thoughts about how nice a condo would be, with no lawn.

But this guy here said pruning tomatoes will reduce yield, but that can be offset by being able to put plants closer together. With me already having plants in cages about 5 feet apart, I probably should be letting these plants get bushy and just try to keep them in the cages.

He starts at one minute mark

I like James Prigioni, his gardens are amazing. And his pup is adorable. Jersey is in the same hardiness zone we're in & their growing conditions are somewhat the same, so I've found a lot of what he says is applicable for my garden.

Jen, I like to watch a youtube channel because if the dog, I dont even know what the name is, but the guy has a yorkie like we had, that little dog has his nose in everything. Our little Hercules was like that, he thought he was the supervisor.

I finished mowing the lawn and tying up some peppers. Rick said that there was some wind in Oklahoma, most of what Oklahoma gets, we get a taste of it also.

The deer, and maybe ground hogs have been sampling my south garden, and I dont have my electric fence up yet. Some years I dont even put it up, but I dont think this will be one of those years. I do pretty well keeping the deer out with an electric fence, but smaller critters are a pain. I can run a wire close to the ground, but it is hard to keep the wire from grounding out on the grass and plants.

It's felt like Houston around these parts lately. The aphids were trying to suck out the sap from all my tomatoes so I made a tank mix today with sevin & fungicide. Figured i'd empty the tank on my photinias, then came across what looked like a cellophane sac. I scored it and took the pic below. Any idea on what this is? Some kind of caterpiller sac? There were a few white cocoons in it, and I assume the rest is ground up leaves?

And back to hydrangeas, last year we thought there was something wrong with one of them because there weren't full blooms. I thought this one was a mophead, but now i'm thinking it is a lacecap. I didn't see the tag, but it is an endless summer type. So, im thinking it is a "twist and shout". Anybody have one of these?

With this much rain at this time, I expect to see a lot of BER.

I got up with some light rain this morning, and it sure was not too soon. I would like to see it coming down a little harder, and last all day long. Hopefully this rain will get out cantaloupe off to a running start. The cantaloupe are in sorry new ground, the only saving grace will be that the soil is full of broken tree roots. One of my old beat up tractors is a 1977 John deere 2240, and I have a 7' 9 shank heavy duty pasture/field cultivators on it that I use to burst up the soil before I till it.

I still have the north garden to plant something into, and, a 4' strip across the south garden, no more empty space till the onions and garlic come out. I do have about a 30 x 30 ft. spot in the wildlife garden I have been working on where I had some stumps dug out, but I expect to just plant some kind of cover crop there, It may never be a really good gardening spot because it has morning and evening shade.

Hwy20, the hydrangea looks nice. We only have a couple of Oak leaf hydrangea here. When we moved here there was very little shade, we are now to the point of too much shade, but we created that monster.

Picked my first " blushers " , as Dawn called them , this morning. They are Big Beef + variety, and that surprised me as those plants are not doing as well as the other varietiesin the garden.

The best advise Dawn ever gave me, was to pick the blushers and bring them inside to ripen. Before that, I had a couple mockingbirds that had a hey-day on my tomatoes every year. I'd even tried putting netting over the entire garden, but when the birds could not get to my plants, I had a big time problem with worms.

And bringing them in as blushers does not impact the flavor.

One is not very pretty and they're not as large as I expected, but I'm happy to see them.

Lynn, I would be proud of those tomatoes also, except I probably would have already eaten them by now. I like fried green tomatoes as good, maybe better than ripe ones.

I went out to the south garden a while ago ( still getting light rain), and a lot of my onions have fallen over. I expect that the rain, along with the right time of the year is the cause of the limber nick. I expect to be harvesting them soon.

While at the south garden I pulled more bunching onions and planted them in mineral tubs along the deck. I really think that we, as, gardeners should teach our kids that you dont have to save every plant, sometimes you just have too many. But Ace hardware had seed pack on sale for $.25 each, and I just had to plant a pack of seeds between the onion rows, it seems as though I got 150% germination, and I cant find places to put those plants.

Slow, funny you say that. Over the years i've developed an extreme "attention to detail" as my DI used to demand, coupled with being an engineer for the last almost 2 decades. It's a constant battle. I'll fight tooth and nail to save everything I seed. My efficiency suffers sometimes because of my loyalty and attention to detail.

If I were to approach things logically and really try to maximize efficiency, i'd have to yield on the other impulse. But I still think of it as being a learning experience. It would probably change in a hurry if I had to either make my living doing this or depend soley on it for sustinence. Nessessity is the mother of invention as they say. Or maybe it should be necessity is the mother of prioritizing and realism. That probably can't be taught, but only mentioned. Then experience will reinforce it for them and they'll remember the time you mentioned it. Sheesh, deep thoughts by Josh today!

Josh, thanks for the deep thoughts. Your comment brought me a chuckle. I was thinking about planting cantaloupe a few days ago. My neighbor is retired military, and raised on a produce farm in eastern Arkansas. Neighbor does everything in a dead run, and I am very slow at everything.

I plant most things by crawling on my hands and knees. When we were planting the cantaloupe, neighbor said "I will dig the holes, you just toss the seeds in as you walk by, and kick a little dirt on top of the seed". I planted using that method, and it pained me, but it sure was a lot easier and faster. When I planted watermelons a couple of weeks ago, I crawled past all 82 hills, making a line in the soil with my finger at each hill, and placed 4 or 5 seeds at 4" spacing parallel with the row and covered by hand. The melons look good, but I doubt that they taste and better than the cantaloupe.

Before we planted the cantaloupe, we were working in neighbor's garden. Neighbor ask me to till his acorn squash row again, because he had already planted squash 2 times, and nothing came up. I am always telling neighbor to slow down, and always turn the serial number on the seed up. I told neighbor " I cant believe you planted 50 hills of squash TWO times, and didn't get one seed right". Anyway, I tilled the row again and he replanted with new seeds.

I finally got in. Thanks to those who responded to my post in the facebook group. Houzz has reorganized it's navigation menus and I couldn't find my way in. I should have bookmarked directly but I didn't. I have now. Anyhow...

I'm jealous of those tomatoes. I plant early and don't have much fruit set yet. Normally, I harvest my first ripe slicer around July 4. I don't think that will happen this year.

I'm also noticing the issues with germination. My beans took a long time to pop up but once they did they went pretty strong. I sowed some okra, sunflowers and watermelon going on 2 weeks ago. If I don't see them early next week, I'll resort to starting them indoors.

Weeds on the other hand are bonkers! I inadvertently made compost tea last week but it was kismet. I had some peppers that had not been happy since I planted them. The leaves were the shade of the "grass green" crayon that is somewhere between green and yellow. I gave them some of the compost tea and they're getting a healthier shade of green now. It doesn't make sense because they're in healthy soil that other plants are thriving in. I did let the henbit go bonkers though so maybe that depleted the upper few inches of soil where a young plant's roots would be.

I have felt perpetually behind in the garden this year. I think HJ was complaining about the same thing in her garden Monday post on FB. I had plans every weekend from the first weekend in April to the middle of last month, so that was a big factor. Then when the weather turned from early spring to summer, that left me scrambling to get plants in and then weeds went bonkers. Anyhow, I just don't think I've felt "caught up" at all this season.

One question before I go for Danny, or anyone really. Anyone know where I can get seeds for Sabatia Campestris? I can find seeds for the other Sabatia but campestris is the one I occasionally see growing wild in my area so that's the one I want. Unfortunately, the area where I spot it is mowed before seeds set so I'm never able to get them in the wild.

I've experienced slow germination of okra. But not cowpeas. Hmmm? Trying to get winter squash going too.

Rick

I have 3 Arabat winter squash/pumpkin growing in pint containers on the front porch. These are some seed I saved from last year, I was doing a germination test back in the winter. I am tempted to go ahead and plant them because they just don't want to die. We have about 50 hills planted, but they are not as far along as these 3 plants. These plants have been blooming for near a month, but no fruit set. I don't see how these plants can live in such a small container.

Beets started in february arent bulbing up. Too early? Theyre Ruby Queen.

I have Detroit Red, and no worthwhile bulbs yet. My beets were not planted as early as yours, the marker at the end of the row stated planted 4-5-22, but I thought they were never going to come up. My beets are planted too thick, which seems to hinder bulding, but almost everything I plant is too thick.

I planted the Arabat squash a while ago, the 3 plants turned out to be 4 plants. I planted about 8 or 9 more seeds to finish out the row. I really don't need the extra produce, but I think neighbor can sell, or give away the extra.

My worries about tiny garlic were unwarranted. Those not right up against the house, that got more sun, are good sized.

I dug one garlic today and was a little disappointed. The garlic was small. I don't know what I planted, I just got odds and ends I had around here, and bought a few at the grocery store. I am thinking about removing more garlic and a bunch of walking onion tomorrow. The walking onions will just take over your place if they get the chance.

When the sun drops a little lower, I plan making a spot for cucumbers. The cucumbers are more plants we don't need, I think we have a bunch of them in the wildlife garden also, but if I have a couple of plants here at the house it will be easy to just walk out and get them, plus I found these two plant in the junk I had left over, there are some peppers that I need to put in the ground also. I need to quit starting seeds, I seem to always wind up with plants running out my ears.

Interesting sight this evening and I couldn't have been the only one to see it. No idea what this is, but we were guessing insects of some kind. My conspiracy side says drone swarm or alien probes.

That is interesting, looks like an eclipse.

Rebecca I have exactly 1 beet plant and 4 Swiss chard... nothing else came up at that end of the garden, and only a splattering of carrots. Very disappointed I watered all that drought time... and I haven't planted much because of it.

Moni

I may have lied about my beets, grand daughter was over today and I ask her to check the beets to see if she could find anything she could use. I think she picked 2 walmart plastic bags of beets, she took green and beets, so there may not have been over 10 or 12 beets per bag, I was helping with the garlic at the time and did see the beets.