Amy, hang on to the green tomatoes, I am doing the same. I like fried green tomatoes about as well as I like ripe ones, I have also bought some pickling mix hoping I can get some pickled green tomatoes.

Thanks for starting the thread.

Just popped in to say hi.

We have a lot of green tomatoes of varying sizes.

It will be interesting to see when our first frost come....

I am ready to clean out the south garden. My okra plants are ready to be pulled. I am thinking that area will be a good place to plant turnips as a cover crop. I have enough extra turnip and Elbon rye seed to plant the area, but I had rather use the rye out away from the house because it attracts the deer.

I picked 3 ripe tomatoes from the south garden yesterday, but the plants in the north garden are in much better shape, and should have more tomatoes on them. I also have some tendergreens and radishes that need to be harvested from the north garden. My kids have been picking the north garden pretty close when they come over. I have turnip greens and mustard that is large enough to start harvesting from the pasture garden.

I am in no hurry for a frost, but I don't seem to have much say as to when we will get one.

Kim, I am glad you found us, but we are not doing a lot of gardening here either. I always have something to do, but it is because I am so slow that it takes forever to do anything. I did get the rest of the potatoes dug in the south garden. The last row was a row of purple potatoes, which did not produce hardly anything. I don't plan on planting them anymore.

I wish I had some cattle or rabbits to feed all the small potatoes to, but I don't, so I guess I will compost them. I will still have all the potatoes we can use. As bad as my production was, I still say that Covington was the best bang for the buck. The Red Wine Velvet probably produced more per vine, but they wont keep as well, so we will have to start eating them soon, and maybe freeze some of them. I think that I still have 2 or 3 Covington from last year, they are the best keeping sweet potatoes I have grown.

I have turnip greens and tendergreens that need to be picked soon, I will check with Madge and see if she would like a mess, if so I will get to picking.

Welp, I scratched the entire plan for the day and worked on other things instead.

I hope I don't regret it. Currently I feel very good about the change in plans.

I was gonna clean the main coop, but decided to do it on Saturday instead when Tom will be here to help me check over the auto waterers and do a little repair on the "bad chicken" pen.

The young pullets are blending pretty well. The first couple of days are rough, but they learn to go into the coop at dark pretty quickly.

The white and black pansies were planted around the front porch and most of the flowerbeds in the front cleaned out. Every year white begonias reseed in one of the beds next to the porch. Looks like chamomile is as well....and a borage. It took me awhile to puzzle through and identify the borage.

It's doubtful the chamomile or borage will have a chance to flower. I hope more reseed next year.

I also did a couple of decoration things. Used a gold leaf type of thing to make picture frames look oldish. It's a fun way to decorate for Halloween. At first you wouldn't notice that they are decorations, until you look closely at the pictures in the frames.

All of that makes me feel a bit more like myself. I haven't felt like ME lately.

Unfortunately, I'll need to spend a couple of hours watering when I would rather be cleaning my front porch and styling things a bit.

And, I really, really need to get the produce out of Ethan's room. Sort through it. Some of the potatoes are sprouting. Maybe I'll do that after these next three days. It hopefully will cool down after that and all of this stuff can go to the utility room.

But, I would like to dump the sweet potatoes today so they can cure in the hoop house while it's still hot.

Bathroom is coming along. The faucet just arrived today. We will probably get that functioning and then wait until we return from Oregon to decide on a cabinet or shelving for above the toilet. And wait to install the mirror.

So happy this is almost done.

Also, will plant the garlic after Oregon.

Next up, the bedrooms beginning in January. Seed starting will be interesting.

Jennifer I totally understand not feeling like me. Every major life change and some minor ones too it takes time to recognize the new me. Surgery changed me. I am still working through so many issues. We just keep going don’t we? Larry whether you are gardening or not I’d hate to lose y’all. Today is George’s birthday

Kim, this forum, and gardening is about my only contact with the world, ( other than going to the doctor ). I would hate to lose someone also.

I need to go hoe in the the pasture garden. I have greens large enough to harvest and I need to Keep the weeds and grass out of them.

I went to visit my aunt and uncle yesterday, while there I told them that I had planted some mustard tendergreens ( the type they like ) and would bring them some greens and sweet potatoes today, they were both happy about. I also have 3 other types of greens I will take to them ( they like to mix their greens ).

There was a buck killed on the highway a little north of out house, but it was just a short time till some guy stopped and got it. Last year I planted food plots and put feed out about 300 to 500 yards from the highway to try to keep the deer back away from the highway. I am not sure if that helped any, but I doubt that I can afford that this year. If the economy may thin out the deer herd anyway.

Y’all are definitely my only garden friends. I tried fb but they don’t really know me, yet.

Thought y'all might enjoy this as we're finally leaving Summer.

That’s hysterically true

I thought so too, Kim. And I like how they did the skit as if they're seeing a counselor. Super funny.

Summer may be on the way out, and maybe a short fall ahead of us. I doubt that anyone of us can guess the weather, but I bet each one of us will say that it will be variable.

I just came in from watering, at least I can get by with a lot less water than I used in the summer. My turnips are doing well, everything else is just so so. I finally got a good stand of spinach, but its still small, and I have plenty of insects to eat it.

I have all but the 4 plants of sweet potatoes dug, and trying to cure them. Curing sweet potatoes is one of my most difficult task because I don't have a good place to cure them. I did not weigh all of them, but I would guess that I got about 125 pounds of potatoes. I am sure I will have to freeze some of them because of the damage from digging them from the hard ground.

We had our first mess of greens today, which we enjoyed. Turnip greens seems to be the easiest to grow, but they are not my favorite. We had a mixture of turnip greens, mustard tender greens, and curly mustard, with a Jalapeno and onion cooked together.

I got garlic planted last week. I found a container of leftover garlic from last winter that I had shoved in the fridge. Most of it had some mold starting, so i'm not sure if it'll even grow. But if it doesn't, I'm not out much. Rest of the week has just been chaos. Dog sitting has been slow, then this week we're slammed. Had meet and greets (meet the dog, go over care, and let the pups play to make sure everyone gets along) almost every night. We need the money, but when we get a houseful like this, it's exhausting!

This weekend I need to rearrange my office, but I'm going to try and get outside for a few hours on Sat. And a dozen other things I "ought" to do this weekend. Only 15ish more years and I can retire. Days like this I'm ready!

Amy, I'd leave the tomatoes as long as possible. if nothing else, let them ripen over winter and enjoy fresh tomatoes until Christmas.

HJ, I can relate to feeling off. We had some issues here this summer and I'm still a little off kilter from it all. A friend of mine once described feeling like she were juggling dozens of balls. Some were soft and squishy, others solid, others bouncy, and others made of glass. If one of the soft balls fell, no big deal. If one of the bouncy balls dropped, it would careen out of control. And if one of the glass balls hit the ground, it would shatter. Right now, I feel like the bouncy balls and glass balls far outweigh the squishy ones.

I feel for you people that are dealing with problems, I feel that I have had more than my share of problems, but I guess everyone may feel that way. I try harder now to not let things bother me, but I don't do as well as I would like to. The thing that helps me the most is the fact that I have very little, of maybe no control of the things on my mind anyway. I would like to say just put them out of your mind, and if you find a way to do that, please share your secret.

My daughter came and got her dog at noon today, so I took Madge out to the Olive Garden for lunch after my daughter left. Daughters dog is a small yorkie, those little squirts sure have attachment problems. Her dog thinks he has to be in someones lap all the time, and also wants to sleep in bed with you. It has been a rough week for Madge, the dog has almost been glued to her for a nearly a week.

I still have junk sitting that I need to get running to get ground ready. I am hoping for some rain to settle the dust so I can work up some of the larger plots. The small gardens around the house I can work with my rear tine tiller.

I went over to neighbor's garden and got some collards to mix in with my greens. My collards are only about 1/2" tall. I tried planting Vates collards and did not do well. The ones that came up vanished, I waited about 2 or 3 weeks and planted again, and so far I still have those plants, but they are sure growing slow.

Plants do grow slower now with the lower sun angle and daylength declining day by day. That's why fall plantings need to be planted in the Aug heat to get them to size up. But the heat and bugs make it a battle and with the grasshoppers being so bad this year it's almost a lost cause. I may try to plant a little more this weekend , like maybe some spinach for overwintering and then put my seed stash away til next spring.

I got my garlic planted already over east.

I just picked my first turnip greens over at Jennifers.

Also got a first picking of green beans

And ,of course, might have to cover for a light frost mon morning.

Rick

Frost alert Monday morning anywhere in the state.

Channel 4 just said it.

Rick

Our extended forecast shows a low of 41 mon night in Ft. Smith, and with my microclimate I could get down into frost range, but I doubt it. The extended forecast goes to the 27th., which is getting into average first fall frost range. I may go into Nov. before I get a frost.

I would like to get a few more greens, and my garlic planted, but I feel too tired to plant any food plots. I need to do some clean up and repair and back off from the gardening for now.

I think it’s cold enough to finish off the grasshoppers.

Larry, it would be so nice to go into November without a frost. It's very, very chilly out there right now but that's mostly the wind. We have outside chores to do so I'm hoping the wind dies back this afternoon.

We've been busy this morning, but with indoor tasks like installing towels bars, etc.

As you can see in Rick's picture above, I was able to get a colander of fresh green beans. There's more out there that will be ready today or tomorrow. The wind knocked several green tomatoes from the vines, so I grabbed those up and brought indoors.

Rick's plants in the SG look really good.

Last night there were only 4 remaining monarch caterpillars on milkweed and one of them was very small and looked like it was dying. It might have been one I moved from an empty milkweed. I wonder if I hurt it or it was already sickly. There were 12 that I could see when I left for work. So, the other 8 must have moved on with the others. There have been several dozen over the past couple of weeks. I can't find any more chrysalises though. I read that the caterpillars can travel up to 30 feet to form the chrysalis.

I really hope it doesn't freeze until the butterflies emerge and can get on with their trip to Mexico.

The caterpillars like the showy or common (I can't remember which I have and they sorta look alike) milkweed best. I have one orange milkweed, but the remaining ones only went to that plant once the others were all eaten up.

I don't have a lot of garden stuff to do this week or talk about really. I'm going to start filling up the Vego beds this week. Just with compost and stuff as we go through the winter. Just as soon as I can get those potatoes out of Ethan's room and use that cardboard to put at the bottom of the Vego bed.

Does anyone watch Living Traditions Homestead? They're doing their large garden with beds similar to the Vego ones. They're in Missouri and their ground is hard and rocky at their new place and they decided to go with the raised beds, rather than spend 10 years amending their soil. They're not spring chickens, so I can appreciate that.

Mostly we're just trying to get ready to go to Oregon next week.

What is everyone up to this weekend?

edited to say that my Dixondale catalog arrived today.

Madge and I went to Ft. Smith to Twin City Produce and picked up a few things, they are cheaper than in the grocery store. I was looking for elephant garlic, but found none.. I had to use the excuse of going by the Farmers Co-op as we were in the neighborhood anyway. The Co-op was out of garlic, and have been for a while, but I did get enough onions sets to plant this fall. I now have 170 onion sets, 200 garlic, and 24 elephant garlic. I may plant onion plants when they hit the stores in late winter, but I am trying to use less of the plants because they seem to be going up in price, and down in quality. I am also trying to get Madge use to using the bunching, and walking onions when she can. The walking and bunching onions are like a stray cat, they just keep coming back.

I have rested a while, and it has warmed up to 59 degrees, so I should go till some ground to plant onions and garlic. I also have some bunching onions that need to be separated and replanted. I also bought more cool weather seeds that I can plant.