Tomatoes, peppers (hot peppers produce better in high heat than sweet peppers as a general rule), summer squash, winter squash, pumpkins, ornamental gourds (great for fall sales if your market remains open into Sept/Oct/Nov), southern peas of all kinds (pink eye purple hull, blackeyed, zipper, cream, lady, crowder), muskmelons, true cantaloupes, winter melons, and watermelons (icebox melons produce more fruit per vine and have shorter DTMs than standard-sized watermelons), cucumbers, Armenian cucumbers. For some things, you are caught in an odd in-between period right now where it is kinda late for spring/summer crops but too early for autumn crops. When I find myself in that situation, I usually plant southen peas, but sometimes go ahead and plant fall peppers, tomatoes or cucumbers early. It doesn't usually hurt to put them in the ground a few weeks early.

Thanks so much Dawn. Plant g is good therapy

I have ripped out a bunch of stuff including most if the seed heads I was waiting on. No sense saving sprayed seeds. Next year...

I was just about to rip out the lettuce bed and the blooms are purple and some yellows. It is so pretty I left it one more day. I have or I will have 6 empty beds when I am done. I have seed so I will get busy planting.

I also trimmed a lot of dead stuff from tomatoes. Wow. I had piles of branches from about 80 of the plants.

You're welcome.

I agree. It is the best therapy.

I left some lettuce plants on purpose. They are at the west (shady) end of the garden where a lot of song birds hang out. Finches, in particular, seem to like lettuce seed, so I always leave a few plants for them. The rest of the lettuce I've been pulling out, a few plants per day, to feed to the chickens. Well, I throw the spent plants on the compost pile and the chickens follow me to the pile, like baby ducks following their mama, and promptly gobble up the plants.

Six empty beds will give you a lot of new space to plant, so have fun and enjoy it. I love planting. I love planting those seeds and thinking about what soon will sprout and grow.

Because we've been constantly wet since mid-May, my tomatoes are diseased and look like crap, despite the fairly consistent use of fungicide. I've removed all the crappy foliage I can without taking away so much that the existing fruit will sunscald. We'll get tons of tomatoes and they're already piling up everywhere indoors awaiting being made into salsa, but my plants are sad, pitiful and pathetic-looking. I've carried loads and loads of ugly tomato foliage to the compost pile. It is about the only compostable material that the chickens won't and don't eat. They must have brains after all.

See...I wouldn't be so sad about the "fungus' and all on my tomatoes if I had plenty of tomatoes already. But I don't. I have several small green tomatoes, but that's it. And fungus doesn't seem to be my biggest problem right now. It's white flies and maybe something else too. I'm not sure about spider mites--but maybe. The ladybugs are trying..and I think some babies are on the way as I've seen some mating ladybugs...in fact it was a ladybug orgy in my old pea patch...lots of aphids in that patch... but I'm wondering if I should Neem my plants. Does Neem hurt ladybugs? Do ladybugs east spider mite?

I'm tired. I cleaned out the new pumpkin (Old fashioned Tennessee vining pumpkin) bed today.

Hey, since we're talking about June. I'm about to pull out the onions.. I should look for a video about how to do it. Does anyone have any advice. It rained yesterday and misted today...does that matter. Do I need to use a shovel and get the roots? Any advice is appreciated. Also the garlic which is laying over.

and I'll put Seminole pumpkin seeds in once the onions are pulled out.

What is DTM's?

Days to maturity. It is an estimated number and varies based on location, climate, and weather conditions, but it gives you an idea of how long it will take after it is in the ground. Sometimes it is from transplant and sometimes from seed.

I think you are right on with blackeyed peas and okra. They will thrive in the summer heat and from what I've seen at the Lubbock Farmer's Market and at farm stands in Lubbock, they are in high demand and the price growers get seems staggeringly high to me. Summer squash is always cheap at the market and it is what is left at the end of the day, from my observations. This is probably the last or next to last good week to plant peppers and tomatoes in the southern Panhandle, if you can find the transplants. As Dawn said, winter squash and pumpkins will also do well, though you might not be able to compete with the flood of reasonably priced winter squash and pumpkins available from the big commercial growers in Floyd County. On top of the Caprock, late planted melons frequently don't mature properly with the cooler nights of late August and September and are often ruined by fall rains. They will probably do better below the Caprock with warmer temps and especially with a sandier soil. Pickling cucumbers might be an option. I never see good quality at the Lubbock FM or at local farm stands. In fact, you might contact local people who pickle and get your market made ahead of time. The biggest risk for the late crop is the pickle worm. Don't see it every year, but if it gets here it's all over for pickling cucumbers.

Glad you are planting and good luck with the recovery.

DTM=days to maturity.

Hazel, They say that neem oil does not harm beneficial insects as long as it isn't sprayed right on them in large amounts, and I believe that is true. It is not really a contact poison so just getting sprayed with it likely won't kill anything. Generally, the neem must be consumed by the insect in order for it to be effective on them. Neem oil sometimes is used by beekeepers to deter certain pests that are a problem for bees. Be careful about spraying it on any plant foliage if the day's high temperature will be 90 degrees or above. If I was going to use neem in my garden at this time of the year, I'd spray it in the evening.

Lady bugs do eat spider mites, but in hot weather the spider mite reproductive cycle speeds up to a very fast rate, and if you have a bad infestation of them, you're unlikely to have enough lady bugs to wipe them out. You might have enough lady bugs to keep the spider mites from killing the plants though.

I am thankful to have many tomatoes to harvest daily because, you know, I plant a huge number of plants expressly to have a heavy harvest all at once for canning. So, while both spider mites and fungal disease make the plants look awful (which I don't like), we still get lots of tomatoes. It is just that fungal diseases move from the bottom up and spread quickly so they can totally defoliate a tomato plant fairly quickly.

I plant as early as possible in late winter/early spring precisely because it allows the plants to grow, get big and set tons of fruit before diseases and spider mites (and stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs) arrive. It also guarantees the largest yield from the plants. Some years the weather conditions and pest pressure are so bad that it is hard to get a tomato harvest, and the later the plants go into the ground, the harder it is. That is one of the reasons the damage to and loss of Kim's tomato plants is especially egregious----her months of work growing her own tomato plants was pretty much wiped out by a careless herbicide applicator just at the same when she should have been getting close to harvesting her first tomatoes. Planting new plants now is doable, but it pushes the harvest out several months later than it should have been.

Pull the onions out of the ground. Lay them out on a flat surface in the shade (to avoid sun scald of the onions) to cure for a week or two. Once the necks have shrunken down and shriveled, you can cut off the stalk and trim the roots close to the onion bulb (without cutting into it) and put your onions into dry storage. It is better to harvest them when they are dry to avoid having fungal diseases start growing on them while they're curing. If it is time to harvest them and they are wet, I harvest them anyway. They're going to be wet if they sit longer in the garden anyway.

Kim, You probably could start any warm-season herb you want right now. Basil is a fast-grower and should sell well at market. It is, of course, too early and too hot to start cool-season herbs to sell in the fall.

One of my favorite southern peas is Six Week Purple Hull. It really does produce in six weeks, and sometimes the first few peas are even earlier. Mine are blooming now, and I don't think I've had the plants in the ground but about a month.

kfhimmel, I'm glad to see you here giving Kim advice and suggestions from someone in her local area.

Pickle worms. Just the mention of them sends a chill down my spine. I agree it is very hard to find any high-quality pickling cucumbers to purchase, although sometimes a person gets lucky and finds some at a farmer's market that were just picked the day before and which are somewhat fresh. I'm a pickling maniac and grow lots of cucumbers to feed the pickling addiction, so in that sense, I don't know why the pickle worms haven't found us, but I'm glad they haven't. The next batch of pickles I can will push my total for this year's pickle-making to over 100 jars. My cucumber plants are starting to look old and tired, but I'll probably plant more in a few weeks for a fall harvest.

What happened to Kim's garden just makes me sick. No one should have to start over at the peak of the growing season just because of another person's carelessness. Herbicide drift is such a huge problem, and it seems like it gets worse every year. I sometimes get hit by it several times over the course of the growing season, but the damage I've seen is fairly mild and is nothing compared to what happened to Kim.

Dawn

I've been following Kim's story and have even shared it with non forum friends--it's just such an outrage and so very sad. It's hard to put those feelings into words other than sadness, anger, and outrage. I'm really sorry, Kim. It makes my bug and fungus problems seem really insignificant. On a small scale, one of our older neighbors likes to spray the "weeds" in fence lines and thinks he's being nice and helpful to spray everyone's fence. Ugh! Stop spraying my property.

Kim, I know very little about gardening and market compared to most people here, but I have noticed a trend in the farmer's markets around me. Butterfly gardens. Any kinds of herbs/flowers/weeds that attract butterflies are being successfully (I think) sold around here. I picked up some Rue and a couple of other things at the OKC Old Farmers Market (at their spring fest) and commented to one of the vendors that I'm seeing a lot of Rue this year and really haven't in the past and he said that it's for the butterflies gardens that are so popular. Also, I've noticed little pots of culinary herbs seem to sell well at the markets. There's something that feels nice about buying a potted herb from a market instead of Walmart or someplace like that...especially if the pot has a cute little homemade label.

I really know nothing about growing succulents, but they are also a big thing. People are planting them in all sorts of interesting containers.

Hmmm...about the neem oil. I should probably just avoid using it. I've already burned some of my tomatoes with soapy water. I think it's supposed to be in the 90's everyday this week. Maybe my plants will produce too, Dawn, even if they start looking bad. Only the tomatillos and Brandywine look bad at this point. And the Rutgers finally produced it's first tiny fruit.

Yay. soonergrandmom posted. I'm always happy to see you show up at a thread. You were one of the first forum members I noticed when I started coming here, along with Dawn and couple of others.

Hooray for the tiny Rutgers fruit. Rutgers is a favorite, especially for those who like old-fashioned tomato flavor.

We had all sorts of things we could have had for dinner last night, including leftovers from the night before, but Tim wanted BLTs so thats what we had. Actually, he adds onions to his so I call his BOLTs. I probably should find a way to hide all the tomatoes piling up in the kitchen, awaiting their fate to be eaten or turned into salsa, because if Tim sees a big beefsteak or slicer, he wants to eat BLT or BOLT sandwiches. I think he could eat them every day. I like them, but maybe not every single day.

It makes my dad when I see Carol here too.

Somebody on one of the Oklahoma gardening facebook pages mentioned a day or two ago that in her semirural area there is such a big issue with herbicide drift that they cannot even grow tomatoes any more. That made me both mad and sad on their behalf.

Dawn, where do you get your Six week Purple Hulls? I see baker creek has them. I have PEPH I should plant. But these sound really good.

I did get them from BCHS and I do believe they are sold out for 2016. I don't know if anyone else has them right now, but in some other years I have bought them from other places. There are a couple of other 42-day pea varieties, though I don't remember their names. One is a crowder pea. (So many peas, so little time.) Iron and Clay is also quick--roughly 45 days to mature, but its quality is not that great for fresh eating, so I don't grow it. Quickpick takes about two weeks longer than Six Weed Purple Hulls, which isn't bad. It still usually is quicker than PEPH. I tried to time all my souther pea and shelly Lima bean plantings so that I'll be harvesting southern peas and beans in succession, one variety after the other, for a couple of months. If it works out that way, I'll be a happy camper and if it doesn't, then I'll be spending longer hours shelling too many peas and beans daily.

Y'all sure are going to be planting in the heat. I hope your tractor has a shade canopy, Johnny.

My bush beans are done, but I planted really early and we did harvest from them for at least 6 weeks. The pole beans have been producing for a couple of weeks now. I hope the heat doesn't mess them up. My southern peas (at least six varieties, and maybe I planted 7) have just started blooming within the last few days. They're liking this heat wave more than I am.