My family would be trying to survive on kale and peppers and now even the kale has been picked down to looking like green lace. We have frozen gallons and gallons of chopped kale and peppers and pickled peppers too! Tomatoes, very few, although my Chocolate Cherry and yellow pear are reviving now that the heat is gone. Cucs did great for a month and we made LOADS of pickles but i think once the bugs got done with the zucchini they moved over there because all the sudden one day ...they just withered and died. Bugs have been my garden's NEMESIS this year!

Things keep moving along in the yarden...sorta. Tomatoes are still setting, but slowly. I get a handful of assorted cherries every couple days. Not the explosive production everyone else seems to get...but they do taste so good. Cukes are taking off, but are in their male-only flower stage. Lots of flowers on the eggplant, but no fruit yet...still. Greens aren't happy with this week's heat, although carrots kinda might like it. The bunching onions I planted almost a month ago haven't come up yet. Should i re-plant? They're in sun and I keep them damp. Do I need to do something different?

With all the cool weather and rain we have had my tomatoes and peppers have exploded with fruit. This week we have heat so it is looking good for a big haul for market Saturday.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are visiting my grandmother's sister in Arkansas City. She had a big farm pretty much surrounded by the city, with cows, chickens, you name it. She was probably in her 70s, still slaughtered her own meat, and I remember the one time she served cereal for breakfast because I asked why she heated up the milk. I never connected that milk from a cow would be the same temperature as the cow.

Garden is limping along. I have lots of green tomatoes but they seem to ripen one at a time. I'm also getting one okra pod a day, so I'm just going to let them go and make seeds. I'm not a huge fan of okra anyway. But my basil is going insane, I've already harvested enough to last a year so I'm just letting it go to seed.

I went out to check on new seedlings today and found several things wilting badly, so I did some watering. I guess I could deep water tonight, but I got 3/8 of an inch of rain Friday night...I guess it was really hot yesterday. I have carrots coming up, turnips and I uncovered beets today, because there were a few sprouts, but not many. There are tomatoes out there, the CHICKENS keep finding them. They won't eat the caterpillars off the parsnips though.

Amy, I a puzzled by your determinate tomatoes lack of productivity. Some years it is hard to figure out what went wrong or why. Plants are very vexing at times.

My favorite part of gardening is starting seeds too. I like the little miracles that we call seeds and that can go from being small and tiny seeds to big and mightly plants in the blink of an eye. It always astounds me every year that the small tomato seeds sown in February will be plants that are head-high and fully loaded with fruit by June, and that crop will be translated into piles of fruit on every countertop for weeks and weeks in summer, and many dozens of jars of canned tomato products on top of eating fresh tomatoes until we are sick of them. All of that from such small, unassuming, unimpressive seeds, and just a few months of growing time. If seeds aren't miracles, then I don't have a word to describe them.

Rebecca, If the onion seed is sowed outdoors, the problem (assuming the seed was fresh) likely is the soil temperatures. I believe the soil is just too warm for good germination of cool-season biennials like onions. Average soil temperatures in OK right now, based on the 3-day average Soil Temperature maps on the OK Mesonet webpage, are running in the upper 70s through the mid-80s. The ideal soil temperature for onion seed germination would be in the upper 60s. So, if I wanted to sow the seeds of bunching onions right now, I'd soak them in a cup of cold water on the kitchen counter (not ice cold, just not hot...so more like room temperature water) for a few hours. Then I'd wrap the wet seeds up in either a moist paper towel or a coffee filter and put it inside a ziplock bag. I'd put it in a cool place in the house where the temperatures would be closer to the perfect 68 degrees than anything you find outside right now, and I'd check the ziplock every morning and every evening to see if the seeds had started sprouting. You want to keep the paper towel or coffee filter moist but not dripping wet. Once you see seeds germinating, you can take them outside and plant them in the container in which you're going to be growing them.

Kim, That's terrific news and I'm glad you're getting rain and that things are going so well. After all the problems you've had to deal with this year because of somebody else's improper application of a herbicide, you certainly deserve to have things go your way this autumn.

Jen, I love hearing about your grandmother. I let my basil go to seed last month. I'd rather have been harvesting it and making pesto, but the heat was brutal and we were starting on the kitchen reno so I was kitchenless (and still am) so it would have been hard to make pesto anyway. There's always next year, and with all the flowers and seeds on the basil, I expect we'll have tons of basil next year.

Amy, The heat has been brutal this week. I keep thinking the heat will break, and then it doesn't. The only thing the rain has brought us is a high amount of snake activity and heat index numbers that are more like July weather than September weather. Yesterday, our little black and orange tabby, Tigger, got bit by a snake. It probably was a copperhead, based on the fact that she still is alive (our cats, in general, usually survive copperhead bites as long as they aren't to the head/face and do not survive rattlesnake bites) and it seems like she didn't get too much venom because she is at least making a half-hearted attempt to eat and drink. The day before that, a black rat snake was after the eggs that one of the Black Copper Marans is trying to hatch in the turkey coop (she is in love with the old male turkey, Augustus and prefers to stay in his coop with him rather than in the chicken coop). I'm tired of seeing snakes. It was much nicer in August when the weather was so hot hat we weren't seeing them out and about. Now that they are out more often, we have to be more careful when outdoors.

The hummingbirds have been moving through in heavy numbers as they migrate south, but I'm starting to see a slowdown in hummingbird traffic, so the day is coming soon when I'll realize I haven't seen a hummer in a while, and then I'll realize I've already likely seen the last hummingbird of the year. So far, I think I last saw a hummingbird on Monday morning. Hopefully that wasn't the last one of the year.

My chickens aren't overly fond of many caterpillars either, though we have one little banty rooster (a Mille Fleur d'uccle) that does love white grubs). The wild birds do a better job of eating cats than the chickens do, although the chickens in general do eat a lot of insects overall.

My garden is completely abandoned, but green and with many things blooming. One day we'll get to the point in the kitchen remodel that I can slip away from the kitchen for a day and venture into the garden again, but probably not this week and maybe not next week either. I am garden-starved, but if that is the price I have to pay for a new kitchen, I'm willing to do it. Honestly, with as many snakes as there are out and moving in the daylight hours right now, I'm probably better off staying out of the garden until the nights are cool enough that the snakes won't be active in the early morning hours.

Dawn

I sometimes wonder about the abundance of snake sightings in rural Oklahoma (now watch me get hit with a tidal wave of snakes). I've been out here over four years and I've seen one. Ok, it was under a bale of hay I just turned over, but that's the only encounter. When I had 40 acres way out in the sticks near Bentley, OK, very near the bottoms of Clear Boggy Creek, I only saw that one. And now that I spend tons of time walking about areas of brother's ranch near Durant I haven't seen any. Getting bitten by a snake seems about as likely as getting struck by lightning. I've only known it happen to two people in my 53 years. Do gardens perhaps attract snakes? Or perhaps gardeners?

Much of the ranch here is lightly "flooded" during the rainy season, so much of it being flat bottomlands along creeks. And there's *plenty* of tall grass and weeds in sections of all the pastures, sections I've walked through frequently without incident or sightings. My brother's wife however is very nervous about tall grass anywhere on the place. I do remember a neighbor saying that all the rains of the last two springs caused snakes to move out of the bottoms seeking drier parts. Maybe some people have snakefestations and others don't.

I'm thankful. Not wanting things to change or anything.

Met my first Io caterpillar last weekend,I touched it with my finger. Bad mistake stung like a bee sting. They are eating my hardy hybiscus, all top leaves are gone. I put on my Rose gloves and removed about 15 of them. Found one more this morning but I think I am getting ahead of them. I refuse to spray got to many friendls in the garden.

question. Does anyone grow flowering ginger in pots or in beds. I was gifted one and not sure if I should put it in the garden or pot to bring in? I am in zone 6b with improving (still working on it) clay soil.

I don't know if gardens or gardeners attract snakes, but woodlands are a prime snake habitat and about 10 of our 14.4 acres are very heavily wooded. We have several creeks and ponds too, so that adds the dreadful cottonmouths to our snake census. I used to have a beautiful water lily pond in between the back of the house and the detached garage, which sits about 20' from the house. During the 2011 drought when all the creeks and ponds dried up, the water moccasins moved to the lily pond (which only had water because I added water to it with the water hose continuously) and then they never left. After fighting the cottonmouths in that pond for a couple of years, we gave up and filled in the pond. With the walkway between the house and garage passing directly by the lily pond, letting the pond and the venomous snakes stay became too much of a liability. I miss my lily pond.

In 1998, I drove up here from Ft. Worth to be present on our property while the water co-op and electric co-op employees were here installing our water meter and water line and also installing an electric line to a contractor's pole so that construction of our home could begin. The co-op workers from both utilities had emergency radios that connected them with the local sheriff's office dispatcher, so they could listen to police and medical calls all day long. They warned me to watch my feet and to be careful as two people in our neighborhood had been bitten by venomous snakes that day and both had been transported by medics to the local hospital. So, I learned early to watch where I put my hands and feet. As far as I know, no humans have been bitten by venomous snakes on our property, but lots of cats and several dogs have been bitten. Next door to us, two people have been bitten by venomous snakes since the late 1990s, and both times it was copperheads. You just learn to be careful.

Rural property is filled with little creatures that snakes love to eat---field mice, voles, moles, gophers, frogs, lizards, etc. Our best snake year ever was 2008 because we just didn't see any snakes that year---they apparently all had been carried away by the massive river flooding in 2007. The best way to avoid being too snakey is to try to control the wildlife, but I like having wildlife around (not so much the rodents, but all the other stuff) so we just have to put up with the snakes.....it is not as if we could control all the field mice, voles, etc. even if we tried. Coyotes eat a lot of the small rodents, so when we have a year when the coyote population is down, the rodent population tends to be higher, and then we see more snakes. The summer hasn't been the worst one for snakes, and it has had prolonged periods in July and August when we weren't seeing many. However, in September of every year, they start coming out earlier and earlier at night in order to catch some of the heat remaining on concrete pavement and such. You learn to watch your feet as you walk.

The biggest surprise so far, according to all my friends and family members, is that I haven't been bitten by a snake yet because I am outside so much when the weather is nice. They think I've been lucky, and I sort of agree, but I'm also very, very careful. I mulch my garden heavily in spring, but keep my hands out of the mulched beds once the snakes are out and about a lot. We have cats and dogs and the cats are pretty good about rodent control, but we also have a lot of poultry, and the snakes come and steal their eggs, so we just have to always be alert and keep an eye out fr slithery unwelcome visitors.

One year I came home from a bad wildfire and found what looked like a dead chicken lying upside down underneath a tree with a snake sort of underneath it and wrapped around it. Knowing from experience that you cannot leave a snake to go inside and get a gun because the snake will disappear while you're fetching the gun, I stood and watched that snake while a friend was en route to our place with his gun. He shot the snake for me. It was a rattlesnake. When we moved in closer, we discovered the chicken (I thought it was a Buff Orpington) actually was a red-tailed hawk. The hawk had swooped down and caught the snake in its talons, and the snake apparently bit and killed the hawk. The snake was all caught up in the hawk's talons and couldn't get away. It was probably our oddest snake encounter, and not one I care to repeat.

Normally flooding drives snakes up out of the bottomlands adjacent to us and onto our property, but it varies depending on the flooding. If we get a foot of rain in one day (which has happened twice since we moved here), that sort of flash flooding happens quickly and washes everything away and we don't see more snakes for weeks or months. If it is a case where the river rises for weeks and weeks before it hits flood stage, the snakes gradually move up to higher ground and that's when we see a lot more of them. Personally, I like the flash flooding years better than the gradually-rising-river years.

How many snakes anyone does or doesn't see also depends on what sort of predators they have on their property or passing through their property that eat snakes. Possums are worth their weight in gold around here because they can eat venomous snakes (and often do). When you're seeing a possum out in the yard every night, you probably aren't seeing snakes. We'd been seeing a possum a lot in July and August and we weren't seeing many snakes. Now the possum hasn't shown up in a while, but the snakes surely have. It's always something. Snakes aren't even the worst of the wildlife we have encountered here (by far), but they're probably the ones that scare me the most.

Hi. I am so far behind on my replies. I've read everyone's posts but just haven't had a chance to reply. I need to start back on Dawn's post from Sept. 13. I read The Worst Hard Time maybe 3 or 4 years ago. In a way, I wish I had not read it--some of the images of the human and animal suffering stay with you and I am very sensitive to that. For some reason I think that my family (at least the part of the family that I know) didn't suffer as much as some... including your family, Dawn. I've seen photos of my maternal Grandma and her family and she doesn't look underfed at all. In fact, she was a little plump. She was born in 1926. I'm not sure if the Gotebo area was as bad as other areas....and they did own their farm. The Worst Hard Time brought to light that some areas of Oklahoma (and Texas and Kansas) were in a much worse way than others. I know they weren't rich, but I think they didn't suffer as much as others. I'm not sure about my Grandpa's family. I think they may have been a little worse off. In fact, I'm sure of it. Some of them did go to California...but eventually came back. My Grandpa's family is a bit of a mystery to me. I knew part of them....but something was weird there. He had this giant cauldron--I mean REALLY giant--and he and my Grandma kept it in their backyard garden. I'm pretty sure it came from his family. They are hard to trace back too. Unfortunately (for me) my uncle grabbed the cauldron when my Grandpa died and my cousin has it. I want it so badly for my garden....like I yearn for it even.

My Dad's family is traced back to the crusades and there's an ancestor's effigy in an abby in Dorchester. His parents died when I was a baby (grandmother) and barely 2 (grandfather). I have a vague memory of my grandfather and the memory feels warm and good. I didn't really know his family though...and didn't ask enough questions. My Dad died early at age 53.

Anyway...not sure what that has to do with gardening.

jlhart, my husband is from Arkansas City.

My garden is hanging on and only because I haven't had time to do anything to it--like pull it all out. We are still getting Early Girls and peppers. I think the storms did something bad to my melons. I probably won't have much to actually say about gardening for awhile. BUT, y'all remind me to plant garlic this fall, please. :) I wish it was time to harvest the horseradish root (because I need some fire cider) but I'll listen to y'all's advice and wait until late winter.

Ok, the genealogist in me has to ask, what's his family name? I doubt there's a connection, but my mother drilled in to me you always check to see if they're a long lost cousin. My aunt's married name was Jarvis or McKinney, maiden name Roughton.

My garden has been largely ignored for weeks, but I do still harvest a little. Today I probably picked 30 peppers and could have picked more. I also picked 3 summer squash, and will have more tomorrow. Of course the monster winter squash is still producing. I have a few green tomatoes on my vines, but have already yanked out a few plants.

I walked into the garden yesterday and could see what had been a healthy vine that was being stripped. Then I spotted 3 or 4 tomatoes that had big chunks eaten out of them. I looked and looked for a horn worm and couldn't find one. Then last night after dark, I turned on the yard light to take the dog out, and as I stepped out the back door I could see this huge horn worm. It made for one happy duck. LOL

*sigh* How do you kill Johnson grass without killing everything else around it? It laughed at Roundup. Nursery guy suggested napalm or a blowtorch, but that seems like it would bother the neighbors. Sod that the city used after digging up past of my front yard to fix a water leak was contaminated with the stuff.

I'm not even sure if goats eat Johnson grass. Smother it and start over? I don't have an answer, it grows outside my fence, I hate it.

I'm glad to see all of you posting, I was beginning to worry!

Y'all were talking about snakes. I found our first snake last week! (I'm sure they have been around, but I just haven't seen them.) It was a small and in the shop. I can't tell the bad ones from just the regular ones--no idea what kind. There was also a larger one on the road next to our property but it had been ran over. This past week there have been several fb posts/pictures of snakes that people have found on their property--even in town. And for some reason people like to take pictures of the dead snakes and put them on their fb. Not my favorite pics to scroll past. ugh.

Let's not forget: Dawn started off this month enjoying the cooler weather. Wonder how many days that lasted.

Rebecca, I'd go with the napalm!!! Of course then it would kill everything but the johnsongrass. Ha ha

sorry I just thought your post was funny. Anyone who fights Johnson grass gets it. I have no idea how to kill it we fight it every year and it usually wins.

have not seen a snake since the Saturday morning earthqake that shook all of the southern Midwest. We had a rash of small ones shortly after the quake, not sure why but they have went back into hiding.

Happy Fall Equinox! I think we are heading towards cooler days. Finally. Goodbye Summer. Thank you for your blessings, even though you are often brutal.

I thought I might try some brush killer I got to kill a wild vine in my back yard. The Johnson grass is in my FRONT yard, of course. Right by the street and partially on my neighbor's property. So it grows at a rate of about 1,000,000% faster than the Bermuda around it. Yeah, the only grass that grows in my neighborhood is technically a weed.

The cukes are silly with flowers. I mean, you can't see the vines for all the yellow. All male. I did see 2 girls ready to come out and play, though, so hopefully soon there will be cukes growing.

I think EG is coming to the end of her life. Pretty much stopped flowering, and I picked 3 blushers today to bring in. Lots of greenies left to ripen, though, so she's done good. EG is on my definite list for next year. Mom is really liking the flavor of them. Just wish I could get something else to ripen so she has something to compare to. Got 4 Sungolds too.

So, now I'm getting concerned about the other tomatoes. Lots of flowers and a decent amount of green fruit, but we're now (likely) 4-6 weeks out of our first freeze. Anything I can do to hurry everyone along, to set and ripen whatever fruit they're going to? Right now I'm feeding about every 10-14 days with Alaska MoreBloom and fish emulsion. (Non-fruiting things get just a bit of weak fish emulsion.) Maybe do it every 7 days? Thinking I may need to get fall tomatoes in earlier than I did this year, if I want a decent sized harvest. Last half of July is too late, I think. Best harvest is coming from EG, who was in the ground in May, but didn't start setting fruit until she was good and ready, and big. Thinking I'll aim for late June, early July at latest next year.

Kind of disappointed in Royal Hillbilly, Arkansas Traveler, Delicious, and Bloody Butcher. All are flowering, but even with twice daily shaking for the past few weeks, still haven't set fruit. They look very healthy, RH maybe less so than the others, but that's the one the hornworm went after. Not putting them on the 'never again' list, because I'd like to see how they do planted in spring, but I did expect more out of them. Especially AT, since it's recommended for our heat. Tommy Toe and German Johnson are being just meh - both set a couple tomatoes, and look healthy, but not wowing me. German Johnson I definitely want to try in spring, though. Fourth of July is going like gangbusters, so this one is almost definitely on the list next year. Big Beef is starting to set lots too, so it's a good maybe for a fall planting.

Oh, and the bush beans are flowering! Pole beans are just getting eaten up with something and I can't keep up with it. It was a fun experiment, but bush beans will work best for me, I think. The t-posts will build a cuke trellis next year, and the bags I planted in will build up the flowerbed in front of my front porch. Pole beans might have done better not planted in bags lying in grass. I'm setting up an appointment with someone to build me a couple of raised beds this fall for next year, so beans might just go in there.

Next week is a full 7 days of not getting above 80 degrees. Heavenly. Going to re-plant the lettuce and spinach that never came up, as well as the bunching onions. I think it just got too hot for them. I guess the tomatoes will be ok with nights in the 50s, right?

And oh yeah...today's harvest. EG and Sungold.

My fight right now is bind weed. I am going to get a blow torch.

It has smothered several tomato and pepper plants and shows no sign of slowing down.

Won't work. They require physical devotion of which is grueling. I know the torch would bring emotional validation, but ... yeah ...they prefer to be pulled. Bastards.

My experience with bind weed is its like gray hair. Pull one and 10 come to the funeral. And I doubt even a blowtorch would help.

I can't decide if I hate bindweed more than Johnson grass or not. Johnson might win by a blade.

jlhart, my husband's family is Grimes and Bagby.

Rebecca, congrats on your harvest!

My kitchen is finished. The remodel is over. (We still need to do the bathrooms, but they may not get done for a very long time. Like years. I can't take another remodel ...or the expense. I'll try to post a pic soon. Also, Carol, I finished the chalk paint on the entertainment center. I'm glad I did it. It looks okay. I like it. We still need to put everything back together--find all the dishes and stuff. The new utility/laundry room is a mess and we need to get it in order. Put shelves up and maybe a cabinet. I want to move my seedling shelf and grow lights to the utility room instead of the extra bedroom.

How's everyone's chickens doing? Mine are a little stingy with the egg laying right now. I'm only getting one or two a day. They've been a bit neglected lately. We came across an artist a few years ago. She does a whimsical stylized type of art. I mentioned to my husband that it would be so wonderful if she would do a pic of me with my two cats, Harry and Asher and my dog, Percy. They all had died recently within months of each other. They were older. SO...he contacted her and commissioned a painting. Such a sweet gift. BUT...now she's doing a painting of my four hens. In the future I'll have many more chickens, but these four will always be super special to me. The painting will be so cute in my kitchen. Surprisingly, original art doesn't have to be expensive.

Is everyone ready for the cooler temps?! Dumb question, huh?

Interesting, I have a connection to the Grimes through my Carrico line. Mom never followed it since they weren't direct ancestors, though. If his family came from Missouri, we're probably distant cousins.

You are probably distant cousins, jlhart! lol

Husband's dad is from Missouri--grew up there. His family (mother's side not Grimes) actually owned Elkhorn tavern until the 50's when it was purchased to become part of the Pea Ridge museum/park thing.

And my husband recognizes the Jarvis name.

Oh great, we need to see a picture of that entertainment center. Stick a plant on it so we can call it gardening. LOL

I bought broccoli, cabbage and one cauliflower plant today. All my cabbage and broccoli either dried up, got stepped on by chickens or eaten by granddog. We'll see if purchased does any better than my seedlings. My Brussels sprouts are bigger than the ones at the store. Yes, next year start sooner.

I have an Anneheim and a pablono pepper right next to each other. The poblano is wilted and seems to be dying. The Anneheim looks fine??? The carrots came up great. The beets, as usual, barely at all. Turnips came up well. Turnips are brassica, right? I should hit them with some BT.

I bought some sulfur today. Supposedly you can treat the lawn with it to kill chiggers. I think what was suggested here was dusting it on your shoes/socks. Have to research that some more. I still didn't find copper fungicide and forgot to ask the guy when we checked out.

Waiting for rain, please. At least take away the heat. I can't deal with it anymore!

Ugh. I typed up a post and lost it. That's what I get for trying to post from my phone.

Anyway...I just came in--was sitting on the back porch with the dogs--and it was lightening. (I had said something on the lost post like "I hope everyone enjoys the rain. All we're getting is lightening and I'm sitting on the back porch 'cause I'm smart like that) And as I was typing that, a cold breeze came through. It was nice. I decided to move the dogs indoors and came back out for my phone and it was sprinkling.

So...

Amy, I wish you great luck with your new fall plants. I'm a little jealous. I want to plant a fall garden! It's just not gonna happen this year. There's so many things I want to try like lettuce in the fall and winter. I wanna grow lettuce that tastes like the lettuce I purchase at the store. Mine never does...in the spring.

Carol, I will take a pic of the entertainment center soon and put my basket of Seminole, EG, and peppers on it! That will make the picture gardeny. Did you notice how I slid in the comment about moving my seedling shelf/grow lights to my utility room in my post about the remodel? It made the remodel post into a garden post then. :D

jlhart, I think my last post was confusing. My husband's father is a Grimes. He was from Missouri. But HIS mother's family (Husband's paternal grandma) was the family that owned Elkhorn tavern, etc.

I'm worried about my cat. She has been gone for 48 hours. I feel a little sick.

Lol gotcha. Any time you talk about a generation or two back, things get confusing. I grew up hearing "his father's mother's brother is your grandfather's mother's father" and understanding what that relationship is.

Amy, if you can get into Tulsa, I got copper spray at Stringer's.

Rained most of the day here, so I didn't get out to check the yarden. Had a few more EGs breaking color yesterday, so I'll probably pick them in the morning. Plants should be happy with the temps this week. I had the first few leaves of fall spinach on a homemade pizza Saturday night.

What am I missing with carrots, beets, and bunching onions? Are those the ones I need to put cardboard over until they sprout?

I don't understand how anyone can still have tomato plants producing, mine were deader than a door nail from Septoria Leaf spot, a month ago. I don't know what I'm doin wrong.

Icdollar, I'm not sure how mine are still producing either. It's only the Early Girls though, which is why they will have a place in my garden every year. These things were left under the grow lights way too long. I thought they were damping off at one point. Then they were left on the porch looking horrible in their little starter pots until nearly June. I decided to plant them and they took off... and looked good for awhile. Then hornworms attacked. They haven't been pruned at all. No removal of dead leaves, not properly trellised--half of them are practically lying on the ground. They look horrible. Still making fruit. The fruit is small, but it's tasty. Then there's the ones I babied along in the back garden. Babied ones didn't do near as well. Not sure if it's the variety or location or being babied. ?

I haven't been to the back garden in a few days where the other tomatoes are planted. they didn't do so well--but did okay. The last few fruit the Brandywine put out looked horrible and were really inedible. There's a new player back there--I think it's a leaf footed bug? I'm not sure. I've a found several and squished them. Those plants were also attacked by white flies, aphids and who knows what else. There was a population of ladybugs back there as well and that's probably the only thing that kept those plants producing during the summer.

I think I'll wander back to the back garden and see what's going on...I'm curious now.

About the second week of July, I found some Jet Star and Champion plants at Marcum Nursery, they were closing out. I bought four, two of each variety. All have died except one Champion. It has three tomatoes on it now, bout as a big round as a quarter. And even that plant as Leaf Septoria working on it, and I mulched heavily for a big area around the plant.

Don't know why the other three died, they never really adapted to being transplanted.

Sorry, Icdollar. So disappointing! I get very confused by all the virus, bacteria, bug damage, etc. I'm not experienced enough to know what is what. And it seems like so many of the 'conditions' look the same. Even lack of nutrients look similar. To me.

I did look at my back garden and all the half-dead plants are making fruit, but all the fruit have those spots that I think are from that leaf footed bug. I didn't see any of the bugs, though, today.

...and those tomatillo plants, they seriously are almost just sticks in the ground, but they have set a few fruit. But...they don't look the way I thought a tomatillo would develop. They don't have a shell. They are very small still.

Just noticed I spelled lightning wrong a couple posts ago. lol.

I don't remember if I said this or not lol

My herb garden was taken over this year by borage mostly, which was fine with me. Parsley bush and fennel bush were eaten by caterpillar. So I tore it all apart and planted the last sweet potato slips in there, think experimenting. I left the sage and it thanked me by growing 10x bigger. in a month. Now I have big borage plants with blooms small parsley huge fennel and the sweets! It is an above ground jungle. We will see who wins. I am going to wrap trough in black plastic to raise the temp a little, well I will let you know if it works. I think my dog ate my thermometer.

She's teething. The other day the pups ran off with my new glove. Into the pasture next to me. I yelled and scolded and scared em pretty good. Trying to figure out how to get through the barb wire without ripping my clothes my smart dog ran and picked up the glove and as sweet as I could muster which was difficult I said bring to momma

AND she did. Well I was 14 dollars worth of thrilled. She was so excited to not get in trouble she stayed close all day. Those 2 girls keep me busy. The tomatoes are going wild. One of the plants has never had a tomato all of a sudden put on about 70 or so. Cherry tomato and porter are the best most consistent.

And my naked ladies bloomed. I did not know what they were at first beautiful thank you! It's nice to have surprise blooms

Brought in 3 more EGs today to ripen. Had one of the ripe ones from last week chopped up on a pizza for dinner, with a few leaves of the first spinach. I also got to take a handful of Sungolds to work in my lunch today. Really hope I can get to do that every day next year. I just hope the greenies on the new plants are able to ripen before we freeze. Everyone sure looks happy with the cooler weather and the rain. Including me!

I didn't think I liked eggplant but recently discovered I did so I planted a small "patio eggplant" and it is FINALLY producing..now I don't know what to make with it...other than Eggplant Parm and baba ganoush! Ideas?

I was going to try this Baked Eggplant Recipe if I had gotten any.

Thanks Amy - that looks yummy. I recently had something similar on toasted bread with herbed goat cheese and it was delicious!

I heard a lady at market talking about eggplant lasagna that sounded really good.

For someone who had 3 plants this time last year, I've accumulated quite a collection. Now I'm trying to determine what needs to come in for winter,what can survive, and what gets sacrificed. I've got a pot of columbine that came up in April and are now 3 inches high. Can they survive that small, or should I move them indoors? Same with my morning glory vines, which now have 3 leaves. I spent all summer trying to get these silly things to grow and I hate the idea of just letting them die now.

Morning glories are annuals, they only live one season. I don't know why they aren't bigger and flowering. I have my doubts that they will thrive indoors. Columbine is a perennial, it should survive outdoors. I've not grown them, but if you started them from seed it's likely they won't bloom till next year. If they are in a pot I would winter them in a sheltered location (on a south wall maybe) and insulate the pot. However, they are pretty hardy, so they should be okay.

I'm so, so far behind on this thread that I'll never catch up, but I'm going to try.

Hazel, The Worst Hard Time is a difficult book to read because it breaks my heart into a million different pieces each time I read about the suffering of the people and the animals. And, yet, that's why I read it. I want to know what they went through, I want to remember it, I want to understand it. My dad's mom died in 1933 and his dad died in 1937, so neither of them outlived the Dust Bowl. I never truly understood the sort of suffering they endured until I read this book. Perhaps that is why the book struck such a chord with me---it helped me understand more about the lives of grandparents I never knew.

The large cauldron sounds like the sort of sugar kettles they used back in the day to boil down sugar from the sugar-type grain of their choice. In my dad's family, it was sorghum they used to boil down into syrup, which could be bartered at the little country store for salt, sewing needles and other things they couldn't produce on the farm themselves. In parts of the south, it was sugar cane. The sugaring kettles varied in size from merely very large to gigantic. Let me see if I can find a photo of one and link it.

Raising Cane and Making Sugar---100 Gallon Kettle

The kettle in the link is 100 gallons. I've seen them much, much larger. Some people, especially in the Deep South, continute to use this traditional method to make syrup and sugar from sugar cane and syrup to this day. It is becoming a popular thing again amongst homesteaders. Nowadays, you often see the sugar kettles repurposed, often in landscaping projects, as containerized water gardens or with fountains and statues set in them, or even as fire pits.

Rebecca, Johnson Grass, if it is in an area you can mow regularly, can be kept under control by regular mowing. I don't think it ever will go away. If you want it to go away, you have to dig it out, repeatedly, for years and years, getting every single piece of rhizome. I have found rhizomes as big as my thumb down a foot below ground. I'll never be rid of it, but I try to keep it out of the garden at least (and sometimes I fail at that completely). I don't know of any chemical that will kill it, and if there was a chemical that actually would kill it, it would be something so strong that I'd never use it. You know, the Soil Conservation Service (it had a different name then), brought us Johnson grass and many other African grasses in the 1930s in an effort to find grasses that would hold down the blowing soil and reverse the Dust Bowl damage. The planting of these grasses also provided desperately-needed employment for people whose families were teetering on the brink of starvation. I know they did what they had to do at the time, but I hate that we are still dealing with the invasiveness of Johnson grass even now, in 2016, so many decades later. Johnson grass is hardest to control in dense, compacted clay soil where digging it out is almost impossible, so one way to eventually get rid of it is just to pile tons and tons of organic matter on top of the ground to eventually improve the soil enough that you can dig out the Johnson grass.

Cochise, The cool weather didn't last nearly long enough!!!! I have enjoyed every bit of coolness and rain that we've had, though. September has seemed like a roller coaster with the way the temperatures have been all over the place. I do think maybe we finally, finally, finally have had our last heat index of over 100 degrees (just last week) and I am glad. Snakes and coyotes have been a massive problem lately, but then, here in OK, it is always something, isn't it? Right after we got an inch of rain, we had a couple of days filled with grass/hayfield fires, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect. That was a sort of tough weekend for the firefighters---and for the ranchers whose hay burnt up.

Rebecca, The seeds that haven't been sprouting for you are very picky any moisture and temperature. Putting cardboard over them until they sprout does help maintain soil moisture and keep the soil cooler. Now that the weather is cooler, if they haven't sprouted yet, I'd try them again.

Kim, Your little girls sound precious. Dogs can be either a garden disaster (usually while they are still young and silly) or a wonderful companion (my old dogs finally learned to dig only in the pathways, where they liked to excavate cool holes to lie inside of while I worked....and stepped over them). One thing I want to say---if you add bone meal or blood meal to the garden soil to improve it, the dogs (and vultures) will drive themselve bonkers looking for the dead animals they are certain are in your garden. I have to leave the dogs indoors for a few days after applying bone meal, or they dig up the garden looking for the bones they are sure I've buried there.

Hooray for the tomatoes! I bet they make going to market more fun than ever.

Katie, Fried eggplant, maybe? Some people slice it and fry it similar to fried okra.

Jen, I don't understand why the morning glories didn't grow. That's peculiar. I wouldn't take them inside. They need sunlight and heat that they cannot get indoors. Want morning glories next year? Broadcast sow the seed in November where you will want the plants next year. The repeated cycles of moisture and temperature changes over the course of autumn, winter and spring will prime the seeds and they'll sprout when the time is right. I have morning glories to the top of my 8' tall garden fence every year, and haven't planted new ones along that fence in over a decade. They self-sow and sprout everywhere (to the point of invasiveness). If you love the look of morning glories, their self-sowing and rampant growth are a blessing. If you hate to pull out hundreds of volunteers that are many more plants than you need, you're probably better off without morning glories because they will fight to take over every inch of space. I pull out hundreds of them deeply into the summer because they just keep sprouting. I let them stay on the fenceline though.

I agree with Amy on the columbines. I don't know what kind you have, but if it is one of the ones that's native here, they would be fine. They grow in the wild without help. If it is a cultivated variety that might be a bit more delicate, overwintering as Amy said should be all it needs.

Dawn

Glad to see you Dawn, I hope the remodel is going well.

I thinned turnips and carrots today. I don't like thinning. It kills me to pull up seedlings. I left things close enough I will have to thin again, but all the "what if" scenarios ran through my mind, like chickens or hail or rabbits. I had ONE carrot left from the summer sowing of supposedly heat resistant carrots. The chickens broke it over this morning. I swear they like cow peas! They tromp on my carrots trying to get to them and I find green pods on the ground. The carrot was the size of a pencil after having been planted 6/21. Of course, this was a variety that Baker Creek gave me a gift certificate for because they weren't true to type, so test is moot.

I have lots of cool weather starts in solo cups. Where the heck am I going to put them??? Finally finding green tomatoes up too high for the chickens to peck. I hate to pull out tomatoes that are FINALLY producing. What possessed me to buy 2 9 packs of cabbage??? I've never successfully grown cabbage before. I lost most of my cabbage starts, but I still have a few of those, too.

Here's a mystery that worries me. A bed with thriving peppers, tomatillo, basil and catnip. Today I laughed when I found potatoes growing in it that I must have missed when harvesting. But a poblano pepper and the biggest tomatillo are wilting and dying. Plants next to them look fine. This bed might overlap the area where phone lines are under ground, but I would think that would run the length of the bed, not accross the middle. I know I need to pull up the plants and look at the roots. What should I look for?

Thanks, Amy. It felt good to be back here "at home" on the forum for a little while. The remodel goes slowly, but we make a little progress every day. I have half a working kitchen....stove, sink, dishwasher and fridge all work. That's a very new development, and I not only was able to cook dinner last night, but to wash dishes in the dishwasher. Hooray! It's the little things you miss.....One side of the kitchen (the west side) has its cabinets and counters installed. Hopefully, this weekend we'll get the cabinets installed on the east side as well. It's hard to work around Tim's work schedule and the fire calls, but we are plodding along as best we can.

I miss my garden and might venture out to it after sunrise to pick peppers and whatever else remains alive. I've been skittish about going out there because of the recent high level of snake activity---but it currently is 47 degrees here shortly after 6 a.m., so I feel like I could safely venture into the garden while it is still cool since snakes are unlikely to be out moving around while the temperatures are so low. (I have to be careful, though, as the ground remains comparatively warm.) Both a snake and a chicken here were bitten by a venomous snake last week. The cat survived, the chicken did not.

I hate thinning too. Often I let thinnings get a little bigger than I should, and then I wash them and toss them on top of salads, depending on what I'm thinning.

Can you fence the chickens out of the beds of veggies ? If you cannot, I don't know how you can enjoy your garden and your chickens. Some years I have put hoops over the beds and put 1" chicken wire over the hoops, attaching it to the hoops with zip ties. To work in the beds or to harvest, I lift up the entire hoop and set it in a nearby pathway. I usually do this while the chickens are locked up in their chicken run. I think this also could work with deer netting, but probably not with bird netting as the bird netting is so delicate that the chickens can walk on it and tear it up.

I will let the chickens enjoy the garden itself----in the winter time when there's not much left for them to destroy. (They will nibble and sometimes devour garden greens, so in a year when I have a lot of overwintered greens, they don't get to go into the garden as much as they do in a year when I am not overwintering greens.) Our chickens are compost pile maniacs. I don't know how I'll ever end up with enough compost to add to the garden beds this winter because the chickens devour every single thing I throw on the compost pile.

A poblano pepper and a tomatillo wilting and dying will send you some clues by how they die. If they die fairly suddenly and if their death was accompanied by wilting, it might be bacterial wilt. Here's how to tell:

Bacterial WIlt in Tomato Family Members

Although the link addresses the tomatoes, the same disease can affect all members of the solanum family, though it sometimes doesn't get every plant in the same bed. Note their instructions for cutting a plant stem and placing it in water to look for the oozing goo that signals bacterial wilt. If that's not the problem, there's plenty of other things it could be, and sometimes you never know. Something could have been feeding on the plant roots. Watch the roots for the types of galls that signify the presence of root knot nematodes. My soil is too clayey, in general, for RKNs, but apparently I brought it into the garden once on a purchased tomato plant (only that plant had the nematodes and they were not a problem ever again in that raised bed). I have heard of people infecting their soil with RKNs by bringing them in on plants and then having them spread in the soil, but you normally have to have really sandy soil low in organic matter for them to spread like that.

Otherwise, if none of the above rings a bell, Google and read about verticillium wilt and fusarium wilt. Both affect all solanums as well. Normally, here in OK, we are generally warm so our main issue is with fusarium wilt during the warmer weather. However, late in the season, our temperatures can drop low enough that verticillium wilt could become a problem. Each has specific symptoms. Another disease that often gets the solanum family plants is southern blight, but that would be apparent pretty readily because you usually will see a fungal growth on the plant right at the point where the stem comes out of the ground.

Without even seeing your plants, my best guess is bacterial wilt just because it is so common but I don't know what your weather has been like for the last few weeks. Mine has been all over the place with temperatures from the 40s to around 100, and often with high humidity, which in and of itself can contribute to plant diseases as well. Good luck figuring out what is killing your plants.

The pablano roots looked pretty normal. I have a stem in water now, but no white slime last I looked.

The aphids are back on the lady peas. I think that bed will get cabbages. But what do I do to keep the aphids off the cabbages!

Okay. It has started -- full-blown marching season. I will not complain about missing my garden or my animals or being unable to decorate my house now that the remodel is over. I will not. Because I am grateful that my son is involved in such a wonderful program. And he will only be "little" for a only a short time. He's really not little. He's in HS...but you know what I mean.

We are the "food chairs" which means we will cook 2 meals a day at all the contests this month for nearly 300 people. Husband was looking for frozen onions/peppers. I'm like...I have a ton of onions in storage and there's a ton of peppers out in the back garden--get to chopping, Dude! That's one thing that did well this year- peppers and onions. Need to get those onions used up soon, though.

Dawn, my family's cauldron wasn't quite as large as those sugar kettles. Those are so cool, though! It was a black cast iron type that they had hanging from chains on a holder/stand thing. I don't know how to explain it because I'm so tired. I have a pic of it that my cousin sent to me. If I can find the picture--I think it's on my fb--I'll post it here.

Feeling your pain on the remodel. I'm glad yours is going faster than mine. Although, I'm sure it's not fast enough! Being without a fully functioning kitchen for even a day is much too long. First world problems. ;)

Tomorrow is October! It's my favorite month. But I'm not going to complain about being too busy to enjoy it the way I like to enjoy it.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and are enjoying this great weather and are having fun in their gardens. :)