Squash bugs may go after your watermelon, they went after my cantalope last year when they had destroyed the squash. I don't have answers to your other questions.

Ah! That may be the answer to the tomatillo problem. The plant is almost as tall as I am (I'm 5'3) and full of blooms. BUT there is only one. The others didn't survive May/June. I can't remember the variety--something from Southern Exposure. The seed packet has disappeared. I think "verde" was in the name.

On the soap, I used about a tbsp in about a gallon of water and just poured it on the cucumber plant. Let it set for awhile and then sprayed it down. Maybe it worked. New fruit showed up this morning. I wiped the leaves again this morning and rinsed again. For some reason I love that plant and would like to keep it going. I think it's cooler here than it is where you are, Dawn. It's actually not bad. Maybe we've had one or two really miserable weeks. Of course, 2011 is my standard for comparing a summer's awfulness. That year, kids couldn't play outside until dark and even then it was in the 90's. We did a lot of jigsaw puzzles that summer and my son's piano skills improved greatly. :) We were in town then and didn't have a garden, so I can only imagine what gardeners went through. 2015 has been awful in another way.

The watermelons were planted about 2 months ago. I just picked up a couple of Bonnie plants. One is a icebox variety--maybe a Sugar Baby? The largest melon may be ready to pick. The spoon leaf (that I read about) is dried up, but I can't tell on the tendrils. The other is Red Diamond. I know it's not ready. The melons are still small.

I planted peas today! And carrots. First time for carrots. They are Scarlet Nantes. Anyone have advice for that particular carrot variety? Atwoods had their seeds for .10 a packet a couple of weeks ago. I was there picking up chicken stuff and grabbed up several random packets. My little Sunday class that week was Day 3 of Creation---so a seed center was a great activity. Kids love playing with seeds and for .10 a package--why not?

What's everyone else doing in their garden this August? I start back to work full-time tomorrow so garden time will be limited.

Most tomatillo varieties need two separate plants for cross-pollination in order to produce fruits, but I know people who've gotten a great harvest from only one plant. It may be the bees found another tomatillo plant in another garden somewhat close by or even a wild tomatillo plant (we have them here, though I don't see them often) and carried pollen to the lone tomatillo plants that did produce a harvest. Sometimes tomatillos are just really late so I wouldn't give up on it yet. When I grow tomatillos from seed, I transplant 6 into the garden, but in the space I'd allocate for only two. Then, as they become established and grow, I remove 3 of them and leave three. Once they've grown enough that the plants are starting to get crowded, I cut down one of them and leave two. That's the best way I've found to ensure I get two plants to maturity because if I plant only two, sometimes always seems to happen to one of them.

One tablespoon of Dr. Bronner's soap in one gallon of water shouldn't harm the foliage of any plants, although I've never sprayed soap on anything above 90 degrees (well, not in many years) because I know that soap sprays + high heat can result in damaged foliage whereas soap sprays of the same concentration in lower heat will not.

I think our horrible heat may finally have broken, although we still hit 99 degrees three days in a row this week, and on a couple of these cool days we still had the highest temperature (tied with several other Mesonet stations) in the state, so our cool-down hasn't been as strong down here. That is typical though. Geographically we are much closer to Dallas than to OKC so our weather is much more like the Dallas weather than the central Oklahoma weather. That is true this year. Dallas has had almost exactly the same weather we've had----going from intense flooding for a couple of months to hot, dry, no rain and high fire danger in the blink of an eye.

Sugar Baby doesn't produce a big melon anyway. I grew it this year and wished I had planted Harvest Moon instead because it produces a much larger melon, but even small melons are yummy in the summer. It just takes experience with melons to learn how they feel (weight in relation to diameter), how they look and how they sound when ripe. When we moved here and I had space to grow more watermelons, I worried and fretted about when they'd finally be ripe, especially that first year. By the second or third year, I had a much better understanding of it all. I'd grown melons before in my brother's sunny garden (mine was too shady and too small) in the D-FW metro area, so I already knew that watermelons never are ripe when I think they should be. Even now, when I look at a watermelon and think that it looks ripe, I wait another week to harvest it, typically with great results.

One thing you could try next year is to plant one of the watermelon varieties that turn golden yellow when ripe. That way, you would get the feel for how the melon sounds (when you thump it) and how it feels (weight in relation to size) as it matures, which will help in the future with non-yellow types, but you'll have the peace of mind of knowing the rind will turn yellow as the melon approaches maturity. I don't grow many of the watermelon varieties that make large melons because they take up too much space in comparison to how few fruit they produce per plant. I usually plant the small icebox melons and grow them on a trellis. They produce tons of fruit per plant and we usually harvest more than we can eat. This year I grew muskmelons on that trellis instead.

One thing that most folks learn the hard way when growing watermelons for the first time is that too much moisture ruins the texture and flavor (watering it down to the point that there is not flavor) and too much fertility (generally from synthetic fertilizers since organic ones usually have a relatively now N-P-K) gives the watermelons hollow heart. So, be aware of those issues and avoid feeding or watering the plants excessively once melons have formed.

All carrots are more or less the same and what works for one variety will work for them all. The biggest issue is just getting the seed to germinate. It germinates better in hot weather than in cold, so I prefer fall carrots to spring carrots just because it is easier to get the seeds to sprout. Remember to thin them while they are small. They will not produce well if too crowded. Keep the soil moist but not sopping wet until the seeds sprout as tiny carrot seedlings can have a hard time breaking through a crusty soil. The seeds are real divas, but once they sprout and start growing, they're as easy as can be to grow, and will store well in the vegetable drawer of a refrigerator for a very long time.

My garden is full of flowers, weeds, herbs and the few veggies still producing (tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, watermelons, muskmelons and volunteer pink eye purple hull pea plants), but it looks hot, dry and miserable, so all I'm doing is watering and harvesting. I only planted fall tomato plants for fall, intending to do more planting when rainfall returned. I'm still waiting for that rainffall to return and won't plant anything else if it doesn't. The ground is too hard to pull weeds unless I have just watered, and it is too snakey for me to weed the flowers, so the zinnia bed in particular is really grassy at this point. That won't change because I'd rather have grassy weeds than be bitten by the snakes I see most commonly in my garden at this time of the year---the timber rattler. Copperheads usually stay in one spot (in the shade of the honeysuckles that cover the entrance arbor) but the timber rattlers really like the zinnia bed. I am not sure why. I always do a pretty good job of keeping weeds under control until I see a venomous snake in the garden. After that, my enthusiasm for weeding wanes.

Oh my goodness! Beck's Big Buck Snapping Okra! I had NO idea. Just randomly purchased the seeds last spring. Most of them drowned, but two lived and have just started producing. For the last week, I kept looking at those pods and wondering about them--"Are those blooms?" Then it hit me last night and I actually looked at them close up---they are pods! I knew "big" was in the name, but...just wow. Has anyone grown this okra? How do you prepare it to eat?

Dawn, I did cut open a watermelon last night and while it was close, it still needed a few days. It was good, but it would have been better had I waited. That's a good idea about growing smaller melons on a trellis. Just my two plants are sprawling everywhere--into the okra and seminole pumpkins. Are the vines strong enough to hold the fruit off the ground? I guess they are or you wouldn't be doing it. How about the seminole pumpkins? I've thought about putting a giant trellis around it if the vines can hold the pumpkins off the ground.

I really hope I can get the carrots to sprout.

It's so strange that I haven't seen a snake since we've been out here. I take a flashlight with me when I shut the coop door, thinking I'll step on a snake on the way. So far I haven't seen any. Our property is pretty flat. We have a few trees. I did almost walk into a giant scary spider tonight.

I have spots in my garden that need to be weeded too. I try to water the down the area about an hour before going out...and follow the shade. We have two wonderful trees just a few feet to the west of the garden that provides shade in the late afternoon. I weed wherever the shade falls. Love me an overcast day.

Happy weekend. Hope everyone who needs it gets a good soakin'.

It's not mid August anymore, but one more comment on this thread. I got eggs! Four in 2 days!

And peas are sprouted and even some potatoes. Does anyone grow potatoes in fall? Carrots have not sprouted. Sigh.

Congrats on the eggs. They are so yummy fresh. I don't grow potatoes in the fall because I usually get a year's supply from the spring harvest, but it can be done. The fall potatoes will yield less per plant though, as they are maturing in increasingly cooler and less sunny conditions due to fall's shorter day-length. Sometimes I accidentally grow fall potatoes when any tiny potatoes I missed when digging potatoes in May or June decide to sprout and grow in the fall.

Carrots are that way. They are such divas.

I have grown Beck's Big Buck okra. Isn't it amazing? I prepare it the same way I prepare other okra...just slice it, dip it in cornmeal and fry it. The Beck's Big Buck looks like gigantic mutant okra from outer space, doesn't it? You also can use okra in soups, stews and gumbo. Sometimes, I slice it and oven-roast it until it is fairly firm and stiff, giving us okra chips.

I grow the icebox melons on trellises made of green metal fence posts (commonly called T-posts) and have some posts that are 6' tall and others that are 8' tall and woven wire fencing. I simply attach the wire fencing to the posts with zip-ties, so that when I put the garden to bed, I can remove all the vines, cut the zip ties, roll up the fencing and store it for summer. I do that because I rotate the trellis bed from one raised bed to another each year. All the icebox melons do just fine on the trellis. In fact, they are better off there because they are largely out of reach of the pill bugs and sow bugs (I've had them climb wood trellises but not metal ones) and the turtles. I love having turtles roaming the garden eating bugs, but when it gets hot in the summer, the turtles love, love, love muskmelons (commonly called cantaloupes in this country, but they aren't true cantaloupes), cantaloupes and watermelons. Even Harvest Moon, which produces much larger melons than the icebox melon varieties, can hang onto its melons when trellised. I grow watermelons that have orange, red, and yellow flesh every year and find that if you add up all the pounds of small melons we get that the icebox melons give us more pounds of melons (and more quickly) than the varieties that produce large melons. Many big watermelon varieties only give you a couple of big melons (and sometimes a couple of smaller ones) per vine but the icebox melons produce nonstop as long as you pick up the ripe ones.

Seminole can climb anything and will hang on to its fruit. In my garden, I have grown in on the same trellises as icebox melons, cantaloupes and muskmelons. It has grown on my fence. It has grown on tomato cages. It has grown on the raccoon-proof corn cage (picture a fenced-in area with a fencing roof to it, to keep the coons out of the corn. It has grown the fence, climbed into adjacent shrubs, and climbed 20-30' tall into the trees. In all those cases, the Seminole pumpkins held on the vine until I pulled the vines down in fall as the first freeze approached. The shells of Seminole are so hard that the fruit is not harmed when I yank down vines out of trees.

You can grow almost anything that vines on a sturdy fence, pergola or trellis. I use structures like that to get four times the production from my garden as I otherwise would. Almost every row in my garden, except for the ones with root crops, will have plants climbing some sort of structure.

I'll try to list everything you can grow on a trellis, pergola, tomato cage, bean teepee or fence: vining peas of all kinds, vining beans of all kinds, vining cucumbers and Armenian cucumbers (technically melons, not cukes), gourds, icebox melons, muskmelons, cantaloupes and all the miscellaneous melons that fall in other categories, winter squash of all kinds, indeterminate tomato plants, luffa gourds (and all other gourds) and mini-pumpkins through mid-sized pumpkins. I'm sure there is some sort of vining plant I forgot, but you get the idea. Even pepper plants produce more heavily for me, and stand upright all summer instead of falling over sideways underneath a heavy fruitload, when I tie them to trellises or cages.

I also have lots of ornamental annual flowering vines on the fences and trellises every year, and I try to let them stay as long as they aren't outgrowing the edible plants. In any given year, I generally have morning glories, moonvine flowers, the purple-flowered moonvine, cypress vine, cardinal climber and black-eyed Susan vines. Often I cut them back hard several times during the year, but let them roam more as the season goes on and the food plants begin finishing up. Growing vertically just makes sense to me because it allows me to get a lot more food per square foot of garden space than I otherwise would.

With carrots, they can be hard to get to sprout. One thing I often do is rake the seed bed nice and level and pat it down gently to firm it. Then I surface sow the seeds and just barely press them into the soil. Then I mist very lightly (too strong of a stream of water will wash the seeds too deep to sprout or will wash them away). Then I lay down a piece of cardboard or plywood on top of the bed, being very careful not to scoot it around, which will disturb the seeds. The cardboard needs to be weighed down with bricks or something so it won't blow out of the bed. Each day I lift the cardboard or plywood and check for tiny green sprouts. If the soil is dry, I lightly mist it and replace the board. Once I see the first green sprouts of carrot plants, I remove the board but still water only by misting until all the carrots are up. This is a lot of work, but it ensures a good stand of carrots.

The very first time I ever planted carrots, I just scattered handfuls of carrot and lettuce seed around my caged tomato plants, and had tons of lettuce and carrots sprout and grow. They formed a lovely living ground cover beneath the tomato plants, and since it was a very cool and wet summer, we had carrots, tomatoes and lettuce almost all summer long. It hasn't been that easy to get a stand of carrots ever again, but I live in a different place with different soil now, so that may be why it is more challenging to get carrots to sprout.