Who doesn't!! Bwah ah ah!!

Good Morning Dr. Tracy,

I hope you're feeling better this morning and hope that venting about your many frustrations with living in an unbearably hot climate helped you feel a little better.

I'm sorry yesterday was so rough and especially sorry you lost a chick and some plants. If I lived in your climate, I likely wouldn't even attempt to have a garden. I simply don't know how you do it.

One more summer is not so terribly hard to bear, is it? Hopefully your remaining time there will fly by quickly. (Of course, I know you've been wanting to get out of there for quite a while now.) Have y'all narrowed down your list of places to move to once you're able to leave Arizona?

Have you read Barbara Kingsolver's most excellent book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" about her family's move from Arizona to the Appalachian region and their efforts to eat locally for a year and also to grow as much of their own food as possible? I recommend it highly. You can just hear the relief in her voice as she describes leaving the hot weather of Arizona behind, and then you can feel her family's joy in living in a region where they have a long and much more pleasant growing season. I think you'd find it so inspiring and encouraging as you slog your way through this summer and then one more Arizona summer.

I would say that maybe the summer monsoon season will start soon and you'll at least get some moisture relief, but I read a long-term projection yesterday that indicated the monsoon season might be late this year, so maybe the less we discuss that, the better.

When you're feeling better, I'd love to hear what has grown well for you there. It is hard for me to comprehend how anything except maybe okra and southern peas can survive. Do you grow mostly in fall and spring? Or in winter? Because summer seems too hot for much of anything. Do you use shadecloth? It helps with some crops here, at least in some year.
How close did you come to heat exhaustion yesterday? Feeling sick? High heart rate? I hope you immediately went inside! I know you have to take care of your horses, but you have to take care of yourself too.

Don't worry, you can vent here all you want. We feel your pain as almost all of us are hotter and drier than ever before, though most of us aren't quite as hot as y'all are there.

Hang in there! One more summer. One more summer. One more summer. Repeat that as often as you have to in order to keep your mind focused on the fact that you won't have to live there forever.

Dawn

I have got to get that book, Dawn. Saturday is now forecast to be 119, which is one of the hottest days I've seen.
I do remember a time in Tulsa, though, when it was a drought year and it got really hot in June, over 110. I lost a nursing broodmare during that heatwave, so it can always be worse or better.
So, I know this is due to the drought and y'all are dealing with the same. Next week, there is a chance of rain so perhaps the drought will finally break and we can get a little more back to normal.

Sometimes I wonder if we are seeing climate change occurring at a rate that will make us revise our concept of what "normal" is.

The last 3 or 4 summers here, many people have had trouble getting their tomato plants to set much fruit because we've gone from too cold to too hot so quickly. I have gotten and continue to get good fruit set, but think maybe it is because I'm so far south and my tomatoes set fruit a week or two earlier than those further north. Back in the old days, say anytime before 2007 or 2008, we could continue to see new fruit set on tomato plants until about the end of June. In more recent years, the fruit set needs to happen in April and early May. After that, it is iffy. That's a big change in a short time, and I hope it is a temporary one.

Today some peculiar wet stuff briefly fell from the sky. I understand it is that elusive stuff called "rain",and at our house it was accompanied by half a rainbow. Only half, as if the rainbow angels cut the rainbow in half and gave us half of it and somebody else someplace else the other half. I hope they enjoyed seeing their half as much as we enjoyed seeing ours. Of course, any moisture at all is appreciated and the quarter-inch we got was very welcome. Yet, at the same time, the storms have lightning in them and remain in the area though no rain itself is falling here now, so I cannot go outside and work in the briefly-cooler air. Also, now we'll have more humidity, so our Heat Index likely will feel worse this afternoon than it otherwise would have. Yesterday our maximum heat index here in my county was 108. Sometimes you cannot win for losing. Still, any rain is welcome and is good and it is encouraging to see some, no matter how small the amount.

I think today's rainfall puts us up to about 13" for this year at our house, but half of that fell in May, so we've been pretty dry overall except for May.

I look at the U. S. Drought Monitor map every week and watch the 'Exceptional' Drought category continue to spread and worsen over Texas, western Oklahoma and parts of some other states. I've never seen such a large area of 'Exceptional' drought.

The temps have dropped low enough this morning with the rain-cooled air that I might get some fruit set from blossoms on the tomatoes, and maybe some bean pods will set from the bean blossoms on the bush beans. The bush beans are near the end of their natural life and I was looking at them last night and thinking their days are numbered. Since it rained a little this morning, they'll probably have bean rust by Friday and I'll yank them out.

In this kind of heat, veggies can go from looking great to looking pitiful in a day or two. That's one thing I hate. Your garden can look great today and then by tomorrow it can look like crap.

We are in exceptional drought right now too, which is hard to do, in a desert.
I did pick three yard long beans which must have set in this heat. I hope more come-along, else what can I do with three beans?
My red-ripper peas and yard longs look fantastic, although I only planted 8 feet of each. I do hope that's enough to be able to eat some meals of them.
My heirloom corn is at least ten feet tall and still not tasseling. This is the first time I've grown corn and it's almost worth it just for the amazing sight of those corn stalks, although I do hope we get some roasting ears.
Okra just started blooming and I planted more okra this week which actually germinated in two days.
Melons aborted. Cucumbers, even the armenians, are only producing male blossoms but at least they're alive. I'm sure it's heat related. Eggplants are sort of stalled, too.
But, at least some things grow in the heat. I'm still getting quite a few tomatoes from the garden, which is just amazing, considering I was six weeks late planting and planted tiny little two leaf plants. Goes to show how resilient tomatoes can be sometimes.
My fall and winter garden is really much better than the summer garden. Its just that there are no tomatoes after about November.

You could make three-bean salad. Sorry, I couldn't help myself...that was just such a great opportunity.

Do you remember the variety of corn you planted and how long its been in the ground? Some heirlooms have really long DTMs and the tasseling would occur very late.

I love Red Ripper. I think with supplemental watering it would grow for miles and miles.

Corn almost always produces well here even though I have to fight the raccoons for the ears. There's practically no corn earworms this year which is a bonus, but there are plenty of Eurpoean Corn Borers around.

Okra germinates really well in high heat. Isn't it amazing?

Even in the worst heat, I get hot peppers, winter squash, okra and southern peas even after the heat shuts down every other thing.

Dawn, How funny....Al said the same thing. LOL

Tracy, Ignore them! Add the beans to a stir fry.

We are getting some wonderful red jalapenos, although we lose some to sunscald. They will set even heavier when it gets little cooler in the fall. I keep the hot peppers next to the house and blanket them when it freezes so that I can usually keep them alive over winter. I did lose the habaneros last year.
Three bean salad, ha ha! Well, they are almost long enough to make a small salad.
The corn is Texas Honey June, 98 days!
Okra is such a pretty weed, isn't it? I hope I get enough for a big batch of pickles this year.

Carol, Tell Al I said that "great minds think alike". lol

Tracy, My Texas Honey June is tasseling right now. I think I sowed the seeds in early April. It has been slower than usual this year. I think it just got too hot and too dry in April and it had a hard time getting going and making good growth. When rain started falling in May, it resumed growth, albeit slowly. Usually by now I've harvested Texas Honey June but the flakey weather has made all the plants flakey too. The early corn, Early Sunglow, was about 2 weeks later than usual too.

Dawn, I didn't plant my corn until May 7. So, I guess I can expect about another month or so. How tall is yours? I'm so glad someone else is actually growing it! I was beginning to wonder if I'd made a big mistake, not choosing some "normal" variety. I really want something that tastes like Mexican street corn roasted on the grill.
I could call this the year of the mutant squash. I have the largest squash plants that I have ever seen. They are really producing, despite heat, except for my kabocha, although I think the one I hand pollinated looks like it has taken. I think since there is only one kabocha and it doesn't have a huge abundance of flowers, it could use the help of some more c.maximas, which I just don't have.
Last year the squash bugs destroyed my patty pan, which is the only one I grew. This year, I have costata Romanesque, spaghetti squash, patty pan and kobacha. They are giant plants, trying to take over the yard, crawl over the utility shed and over the wall. I planted very late, this whole garden was planted May 7. I filled the bed with pure, composted horse manure.

We had two drops of rain this afternoon! No cool down but this is the first actual raindrops that I have felt in at least 100 days! I think this weather pattern is changing and we're headed into monsoon season. Yeah!

Omg, it's raining! No notice, no warning and all of a sudden, pouring rain!

Tracy,

Congratulations! Two raindrops! Surely it is an omen that the monsoon season is coming, and hopefully soon.

I've grown Texas Honey June on and off for years and we love it. Mine is about 6' tall. In a good, rainy year it will get taller. The ears have good old-fashioned corn flavor and it has tightly wrapped husks that resist earworms pretty well. It also does tolerate heat and wind fairly well. It recently was blown down two nights in a row by so-called thunderstorms that gave us wind, thunder and lightning and almost no measureable moisture and I never straightened it back up. It did straighten itself back up, except for a few stalks that were snapped in half by winds in the 60-65 mph range.

We like the heirloom corns the best, but I also usually plant a short DTM hybrid for early corn. Usually it is Early Sunglow and usually we harvest it no later than Memorial Day. This year it was a week to 10 days later than that. We normally plant either Texas Honey June or Shoepeg (aka Country Gentleman) and sometimes both. Every now and then when I'm in the mood to grow a really sweet corn, I'll plant a Triplesweet type like Serendipity. For a long, long time we grew Silver Queen and really do like it, but after growing it every year for 10 or 15 years, I started growing other ones just to have more variety.

Living in the bend of the river and surrounded by abundant wildlife on all sides, we have to fight the raccoons for every single ear. It is worth it though because fresh corn is so amazing. I freeze oodles and oodles of it every year as corn on the cob. We eat it boiled or grilled.

It sounds like the squash are loving that horse manure. I'm having a good squash year and haven't lost a single plant to squash bugs or borers so I am expecting them to show up and cause trouble any time now. I'll enjoy these plants for as long as they produce, and when they die, I'll plant new ones. The local TV station, KXII, aired a story tonight where they interviewed local farmers who grow for the Farmer's Markets and they talked extensively about what a horrid year it is, how nothing's growing, nothing's making a crop, how "the beetle's" took out their squash (I'm guessing they meant cuke beetles or squash bugs) and it was too dry in the fields for the second planting to sprout and grow. Hearing that made me grateful for my little squash plants.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. After all, tomorrow we'll be one day closer to the next good rainshower or, in your case, the monsoon.

Dawn

A drought in the desert. Now that's just amazing. I cannot complain. Nope. I'm glad you got some rain!