Most things will benefit from the break in the heat if it lasts several days. If it only is cooler for a day or two, you won't notice much difference. Sometimes I get a lot of new blooms and beans on bean plants after a cooldown at this time of the year, but sometimes I don't. It is the same with tomatoes and peppers.

I hope you're really feeling pleasantly cool there today.

We're about 8 degrees cooler, both temperature and heat index, than we've been the last few days so it feels a little better, but not a lot better. The heat index still has hit 101 so far, but that's better than 109, 110 or 111 like we had last week.

There's a part of me that fears neither the real cooldown nor the real rain will find us here. The dewpoint has gone up this afternoon so I am hoping that is a sign that rain might be coming.

The plants in the sandy soil in the back garden seem to have responded better to being watered last week than the plants in the front garden. Of course, the plants in the back garden weren't planted till May, I guess, so they are younger and fresher and not so tired and worn out by the heat and drought. The plants out front have been producing really great but are tired...maybe the word would be exhausted. I don't think I can push them any harder than I have been. At this point they really need the cooler temperatures and a lot of rainfall, or I think they will start to really decline.

It does indeed sound like it's going to be long summer for you. I hate that. Very very wrong!

Well its its not going to be like 1980 right? That was the year at 15 years and 2 days that my dad moved us to Texas from PA. Rude awakening.
I think we are only having 2 days of below 90. Today was so awesome and I am sad for the ones who did not get a cool day. I mostly sat and weeded mowed a little. Nothing too strenuous.

Nancy, I knew it was coming because 2015 was incredibly wet (too wet) and so was the first half of 2016. As soon as the rain stopped falling in 2016, I knew we'd be back to normal in 2017, and so we are. Normal in my county is that there's never enough rain in July and August. This year, Mother Nature decided to start the rainfall deficits a couple of months early, which will just make July and August a lot worse than usual.

Kim, I always thought that 1980 was the worst year we'd ever, ever see as human beings or as gardeners. For a long time it was. I bet it was a rude awakening for a family that had moved here from PA. For what it is worth, I had lived in Ft. Worth all my life and 1980 was a rude awakening for me too. That was the last time I bought a car without an air conditioner! I was proud of my first car and had worked hard and saved up my money for 2 years to buy it, paying cash so I wouldn't have a car payment, but it didn't have an AC. That's not a mistake I ever repeated or ever will.

Then, flash forward three decades and we had 2011, which truly was worse than 1980, though I still find it hard to believe. It was both hotter and drier, which was such a terrible double whammy. For us here in Love County, the drought of 2011 was followed by the droughts of 2012, 2013 and 2014, and that whole era is best forgotten. It seems like Mother Nature then went haywired and tried to make up for 2011-2014 by fixing the rainfall deficit in 2015. We really didn't need to make up all the deficit in one year, but that was her choice. Last year was more of a return to normal after a rainy first half of the year, and then this year we are back to what I know best (and despise!), which is drought.

I used to fight drought pretty hard, but am getting better at drawing a line in the sand and not crossing it. For me, when the water bill gets so high that it would be cheaper to go to the store and buy fresh organic veggies than to grow them in our garden, I stop watering everything but the perennials because it is the smarter choice financially. This is one reason I preserve food like a maniac in June---I'd still rather eat our own produce, even if it has been frozen, dehydrated or root cellared and no longer really is considered fresh produce, than to have to go buy stuff at the store. With our own food, I know exactly what was or wasn't used on the crops while they're growing. With the NOP, even certified organic produce sometimes is raised with stuff I wouldn't use in my own garden, so I'd rather not even buy that stuff. In drought years it can be hard to keep the garden going all summer, but this year I've tried to prepare for it by succession planting tons of hot weather crops that tolerate drought. Even after I stop watering, the southern peas, Lima beans, okra, winter squash, Korean summer squash and Armenian cucumbers normally still provide a really good harvest and so do some of the melons.

Dawn

My Armenian cucumbers didn't come up. Are the seeds short lived? All the other cukes are up.

They're not especially short lived and ought to be viable for at least 5 years after their packing date, possibly up to 10 years if storage conditions were excellent.

I meant to go dig around and see if they're there. I should put out more seed, I liked them.

There are no seeds where the Armenian cucumber was planted. A couple of dried seeds on top of the soil. The paris pickling did not come up either. They were both on the end of the row. Wonder if a bird ate them. I will replant Armenian. I may even put some in the other bed instead of the Paris.

Might have been a bird. Have y'all been wet enough for seeds to rot? To float away? Sometimes it is just a mystery.

I used the last of my seed pack to replace the Armenian. I've lost some lemon cuke seedlings. I need to poke a few of those in the ground, too.

Was 100 here today and supposed to be 73 tomorrow. They are saying 7-10 days at least before we see anything above 95 degrees. Hopefully I will see an increase in fruit set on the tomatoes. Will be planting some things for a fall garden over the next week. Been tilling under the last of the cover crop I planted. Will be planting more in about a month. Hope everyone sees a cooldown. The last 3 weeks have been brutal here. Not sure how many days over a 100 but at least 10. It is good not to have heavy fruit set during the heat as the plants take the stress better. The first 10 days of it we had lots of wind but the last week not near as much. Hopefully we will get some rain also. I have been deep watering with the drip hose once every 7 days. The plants haven't hurt yet. My NM chiles have really took off in the heat. Hopefully will get some fresh seed saved and also some good chiles roasted and froze for use later.

The cooldown arrived along with .5 of rain and some hail. I don't imagine it hurt the plants much but can tell more in the daylight. Looking forward to 4-5 days of cooler temps.

I'd say Edmond has been warm/hot, but pleasant the past few days. I've been outside a lot, but haven't really been watching the thermometer I guess. I know it's been decent out if I don't notice the heat! And I have definitely noticed a bump in pollination/fruit set for sure! Come on tomatoes!

Hi, amunk! Good to see ya, how are you? I am so excited about this next week of temps in the low 80s; hope the weather forecasters have it right. I got more done today than I've gotten done in the past week. Amazing the energy when it isn't hot. I think my tomatoes are on their last leg. . . still dozens and dozens of fruits on, though small. I'm just grateful to see them all. I do have 6-8 others in other parts of the yard that aren't in full sun that are lively and still producing flowers and fruit, so this is even better. I think it has been, overall, quite a good gardening year.

Hey Birthday girl! What did you kids do to celebrate!? I hope you ate something amazing! Food is always the best part of a birthday to me lol I think we're all "foodies" in a way, on here so I'm sure almost everyone would agree lol.

Doing great, garden is growing along with my belly and my little bird, Wren. I agree it's been a good garden year, although I started really early so now I feel like things should be farther along than they are by now. I'm just impatient though. The weather has been awesome, so please Lord keep it coming! Im already over the high temps even though we've barely had any. And we need some more rain!

Like yours, I've got a ton of small fruits growing on my toms.. I planted a lot of cherry, plum, salad, etc types this year in hopes of longer production into the summer. They always set fruit better once it heats up vs the large fruit varieties. Now if I could just keep Wren fruit squealing, "tomatoes!" And ripping the green ones off I'd be all set! Lol

Glad you got a lot done today! We had an estate sale this morning at my grandparents , then went swimming so I didn't do much but fertilizing is on the agenda for tomorrow! Or perhaps Monday.

I did harvest half a bucket of tomatillos today which is a first for me. I'm going to roast a pork butt and make some Verde sauce.. my mom has a killer recipe for it. I'll have to get it and stick it on the preservation discussion!

Kim, hope you've had some more fruit set during our "cool" weather. I can only imagine the stress of going to market!

Jay, You garden in such brutal conditions. I hope you and your plants are enjoying the cooldown.

I'm planning to head outdoors in a few minutes so I can rediscover what 65 degrees feels like. After today, we start warming up again, but even a brief respite from the heat is appreciaed, and we still shouldn't be as hot mid-week as we were just one week ago.

Alexis, The weather in Edmund must be pleasant if you've been able to be outside without being bothered by it. Wren sounds like a developing gardener. Now, once she learns to leave the green tomatoes alone and let them ripen, she'll be a great gardener. She's so young and I know young children love to harvest, even when the stuff isn't ready to be harvested yet.

I think it has been an awesome garden year in terms of productivity, but I've worked hard for that awesomeness---as I know everyone else here has as well. I know that I work like a demon in late winter/early spring to plant everything as early as is humanly possible to beat the heat, but then once the harvest starts rolling in, all that backbreaking work fades into the recesses of my memory. I just wish that all the plants that I grow on purpose would grow as well as Johnson grass, bermuda grass (not in my garden this year!), bindweed, lambsquarters and pigweed.

Have fun cooking with your tomatillos!

Kim, I hope you had a great day at market yesterday and enjoy your mini-vacation to visit everyone in Denton. The last time we were at WinCo (across the road from Sam's Club), they still had Dixondale Farms' cantaloupes. The ones we bought were so good. Brookshire's had them too but at a price about 30% higher than WinCo's.

I might venture into the garden long enough today to pick tomatoes and squash and to plant the first 10 fall tomato plants. Also, to check the onions. While one bed of Red River and Highlander intermediate daylength onions has finished up, the second one only is about half done. The latest variety I grow, Copra, has had 4 onions develop softneck and flop over, so I pulled them and put them in a separate area to cure so I won't mix them up with other varieties that do not store for as long. The Copra have seemed reluctant to bulb up. I don't know why. I've always wondered if I am just a smidgen too far south for them. Of the 4 harvested Copras, 2 bulbed up really well, 1 was so-so and the other was not big at all. Why onions of the same variety have not been more uniform this year is a mystery, but they've all been very inconsistent, so it isn't just the Copra.

Today or tomorrow I hope to process what likely will be the last big batch of tomatoes. And, for enquiring minds, I consider a big batch to be anything that produces enough processed tomatoes for at least 4 canning batches of Annie's Salsa. After that, I think the tomato harvest will begin dropping. It should. We're almost to July and I try to finish my tomato canning by mid-July before the daytime temperatures surpass "Hot" or "Very Hot" and hit "Insanity" levels.

There's no rain in our forecast down here until Friday and that's only a 20% chance, so I'm not very hopeful. I'm hoping the garden can coast along on yesterday's rain for the rest of the week, but of course, I'll still have to water containers. I can't believe we are beginning the last calendar week of June already. This month has flown by.

Judging from FB questions from other OK gardeners, I'd say tomato diseases, spider mites, Colorado Potato Beetles, aphids, and squash issues (fruit rot, spider mites, squash bugs, SVBs) are running rampant in our state. How many here are seeing any or all of the same things? Of all those, the only thing I am dealing with is the annual onslaught of fungal disease on tomatoes and a tiny number of squash bugs. Oh, and stink bugs. The stink bugs are simply everywhere.

I continue to be amazed at the lack of spider mites on my tomato plants because we never have a spider mite-free year with tomato plants here. This year, for whatever reason, the spider mites have been gravitating towards the verbenas. While I hate the way the verbenas look, I'm grateful they're taking the hit for the tomatoes. I'm thinking I need to rototill the pasture across the driveway from the garden and plant verbenas there next year and maybe they'll really keep the spider mites out of the garden. The verbena plants being hit hard by the mites are in the mixed border of mostly flowers and herbs, with 1 tomato plant and about 10-12 pepper plants mixed in. That border is on the southernmost edge of the garden and it seems like the spider mites hit the verbenas there and don't progress further into the garden (yet). That's never happened before and I don't know why it is happening now, but I'm glad it is happening.

Something rare is about to happen in my garden. I am going to hit the end of the tomato canning season in a couple of weeks and yank out most of the plants without having to worry or fret at all about spider mites on tomato plants. Then, what with Murphy's Law and all, the spider mites probably will hit the few tomato plants I leave for fresh eating.

Dawn

We ended up getting .9 of rain. The cooldown has been nice. The timing is wrong for many of my plants. 7-10 days earlier would of been nice. Most of the early plants are between blooming now. The ones open 10 days ago is dead and the new ones haven't opened yet. The early plants that are south of the garage and east of the house that didn't get beat up by the hail are growing great but not setting anything. Hopefully will get fruit set on some of them during this spell. The high winds did beat them up in the cages. Many times plants are better here that aren't in cages and that can sprawl and avoid some of the 50-60 mph winds. Actually the plants that got beat up by the hail are setting better. It did set them back a lot growth wise but fruit set wise I'm seeing more. Had one Goliath tomato that matured at half size after the hail storm. Some of the plants are small to have fruit set but I never remove any here because of the trouble I have getting it sometimes. Finished tilling the cover crop under last evening. Will plant some things over the next few days. Like I stated before the NM chiles are really loving the hot weather and have rebounded nicely from the hail. One has a broken main stem but decided to leave it and it has set fruit now. Yes Dawn the weather here is more variable than anywhere I know of. They claim it is how we are positioned east of the Rockies that create unique upper air flows. During the heat several days we were 10 degrees warmer than Judy in Leedey. Doesn't make any sense. The garden down there is doing good. So far the issue with the striped bugs is all we've had there. I'm on call this week so will be next week before I see it again. Sure it will have grown some. Took down one Black Cherry and one Sungold for her great grandkids to have something to pick and eat. Not sure the Black Cherry will make it. The striped bugs ate a chunk out of the stem. Have it in a cage and put straw around for support. It had fruit on it. The Sungold is doing good. I'm not as big a fan of Sungold as many but thought the kids might like them. Hoping we all get some more rain. They are saying one day at 96 this week and then the rest in the 80's and low 90's. I can handle that. If it will last hopefully I will have another set of blooms start. The hot dry wind killed many of them before they even opened which is one reason for the delay.

Our cool down is extended with overnights in the high 60s or low 70s. Great for the flowers that are surviving.

I've had such trouble with Striped and Spotted Cucumber beetle which are attracted to my pumpkin plant and I'm happy to allow the pumpkin plant to be a trap crop because it's c. Moschata and the monster Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin that will survive and produce anyway. Now, the squash bugs are on it as they have decimated the squash plants.

I keep hand killing the Cucumber beetles which haven't messed with my cuke plants, yet. They've mutilated some squash fruits before the squahs bugs came in and finished off the plants. Now, they're hanging out on the corn plants.

Flea beetles have attacked some isolated pepper plants and also the egg plant, but they don't last long. It seems they go on a feeding frenzy and then disappear.

I saw stink bugs early in the year, but haven't seen any since.

Grasshoppers, but only babies. I don't think the adults are hanging around very long. But I've seen more baby grasshoppers this year than any other.

Squash vine borers. They attacked my squash plants early on. Their eggs were very small this year. I flicked all the eggs off that I could find and they haven't been a problem for the squash plants. I saw their larval frass on the pumpkin plant which, again, is a great trap crop as it will survive. I buried that vine in the ground just beyond so it can grow and thrive despite that one tender spot.

In the end, the biggest problem we have are not those in the garden, but mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks. We're eaten up and shower almost 2x a day. The Deet seems to attract flies. I'm down to using both deet and horse spray on clothing when I water. Deet deflects the mosquitos and the horse spray defects the flies, but I'm swarmed by both as the deet attracts the flies and the mosquitoes are determined to find that one small available spot to suck on. Mainly, I try to stay out of the garden during the worst times.

I'm hearing reports from some of having horrendous flea battles this year. We went through that about twelve years ago when the weather was similar to this year. We had them in the house and we had no indoor pets and no carpet - only hardwood floors! The meter maid complained about them. It was so bad I ended up using Sevin Dust which is toxic, but I didn't have Spinosad at that time and had tried every other activity and/or less toxic option. They just didn't work. Vaccuuming, cleaning, mopping, laundering... horrible experience. But it was the weather that created the perfect environment and I think many Oklahomans are going through this same thing right now. My heart is with them!

Dawn hadn't read all of the previous posts when I posted. I hope you get rain soon. We need more and they have lowered and removed some of our chances over the next several days. Hope they put some back in. 2011 was bad here. I've seen a few as bad. One year in the early 60's and again one year in the 70's. The difference with 2011 is it came during a stretch of drought from the spring of 07 till the spring of 14. We had 7 years of continual drought. Areas around us as you know from my posts got rain but we were in a doughnut hole and got bypassed. Now there are others that seem to be in the hole and I feel for them and you. We were getting real dry. The moisture will help for a few days. A little longer with the cooldown. The problem with the recent storms is they are very scattered and not real big. There were areas that got 5 inches the other night and several didn't get any. A feast of famine deal. Most of the wheat is cut everywhere I go. The hot winds dried it fast and there wasn't as much cut this year due to the price of wheat. A lot of wheat hay put up and for sale now. A lot of acres being sowed to grass. That is from here to down there. I know of several in the TX Panhandle doing the same.

Back to my garden and plants. Wish I was able to plant early like you. It would be nice. I started plants early this year thinking it might be the year I could plan in early to mid April. It didn't happen. Then the blizzard, a late freeze so it was early May before I got any in. And they have had 4 hail storms, the wind and the heat. We had one day at 120 already. But as you know plants will take a lot until they get loaded with fruit. One reason I planted several late. Some last week. As long as we don't get an early frost they usually produce the most. And as you know gardening and especially growing tomatoes is a matter of timing. This year so far the timing has been 180 degrees off. Sure not the best. But just like farming and ranching all I can do is keep watering them and waiting for a better day. Your ground must take a lot of water. That is one place I'm fortunate. I use the drip tapes and usually put mulch over them. Even during the spell when we had 5 days over 100 I only watered once a week. The plants never wilted but I was going down there and didn't want to take a chance. I just deep water once a week and have never had any issues. My peak water bill will be 50-60 dollars.

Jay, The challenges you face there often just astonish me. Why can't y'all ever have a perfect year with no hail, no strong winds, no drought, etc.? Your unique location makes gardening a pain in the neck. It isn't fair that gardeners in your area have to deal with so many weather challenges. I'm glad it is staying cooler at Judy's and think it is smart to garden in two locations because maybe it doubles the chances of having a great harvest. I remember your seven year drought as part of my 4 year drought overlapped with it. We kept watching your radar, remember? It would look like rain was hitting you, based on the radar, but it wasn't. That was mind-boggling.

Bon, A prolonged cool-down would be nice. We're about to roll into July, and we all know that July is when the heat really cranks up, so any cool weather between now and then will be a good thing.

We were forecast to hit 84 and already at 86 and likely to go higher, because you know, the NWS forecast for us is usually about 3 degrees lower than what we'll actually see. Still, the dewpoints are so low that 86 feels really great compared to last week, so we'll take it and be pleased to have it and not complain about it. This week still should feel better than last week even as it warms up a bit more each day than the day before.

Since it rained last week, the garden looks great today, all things considered.

Dawn