Hazel, I think our chance was 10% for either today or yesterday and it sure doesn't look like it will happen today. We have a 20% chance Sat and a 30% chance on Sunday. Seems like you'll be more likely to get rain than we will and y'all sure need it. I hope you get your 40% and it brings you a nice couple of inches---you want enough to help make up some of the deficit that has caused your flash drought, but not so much that fruit starts bursting open and spoiling before it can ripen.

Amy, The weird apostrophe is because that's how Keith Mueller's paternal grandmother spelled it. He has had to correct people to keep them from changing it, incorrectly, to O'Sena.

I found a huge Early Bulam just like that today. It was hiding in the aspragus bed. My Korean squash are out of control. I am going to try, sometime, somehow, this weekend to reel them in a bit but I am not sure what I'll do with them. I've already removed their ever-reaching tentacles from the tomato bed where they had crossed the path and were attempting to provide heavy shade to the pepper plants and also I have been trying to redirect their growth towards the asparagus bed as they are trying to grow west into the former onion bed where the fall tomatoes are growing. I told them all "go north, go north" but they ignored me, so then I pulled the vines up off the ground and hoisted them across the other pathway and into the asparagus bed. I think the 3" of rain over the last week just made the garden explode, especially the squash plants, and they are too busy trying to grow and take over the world to care that I want them to only move towards the north. I am seeing squash bug leaves and a few squash bugs, which I'm not even attempting to control (at this point, I kinda hope squash plants will start dying because there's too many of them). Today I harvested a lot of deer chow (overly large yellow squash and zucchinis) that were not at all big when I looked at them on Monday or Tuesday and said to myself "I'll come back and get these in a day or two". I now fear I have too many squash plants for the pests to kill them, at least until the SVBs show up. I've always read that if you grow enough squash plants, you will find damage on only a few of them (this is why commercial fields largely escape damage---just too many plants) but I didn't think I had planted that many squash plants. Now I'm wondering if I did. I'll try to count the tomorrow morning and tell y'all exactly how many squash plants is too many, and then I'll make a note of that. Oh, and umm, it is possible I planted too many okra plants too. Time will tell. I can put lots of okra in the freezer though, so it is hard to ever reach a point where I think I really did plant too much.

I do not know why the Korean Kudzus are being so uncooperative this year. They always go north towards the asparagus, but this year they all want to go south. Talk about stubborn plants! Next year I may plant them right at the garden's north fence line and try to keep them going up the fence and into the trees above. (It would make harvesting more difficult, but even if I only harvest from the 8' tall fence, we'd get plenty of squash.)

I have learned swallowtail cats do whatever the heck they please, so I just try to grow equal amounts of fennel, parsley and dill for them and then maybe if they don't want to feed on any given one, they'll be happy with the others. They seem highly variable in what they choose from year to year, and this year they are almost uniformly choosing dill and ignoring the parsley and fennel. I've been using the fennel flowers as filler in bouquets since it is a second-year fennel plant and isn't going to last much longer anyway.

I think Roselle would do great for Nancy. I've grown it in morning sun/afternoon shade at the west end of the garden and it was perfectly happy so I think it would like Nancy's shaded lot. As a bonus, Roselle jelly is awesome---it isvmy favorite---I even like it better than blueberry. It is the only jelly I make that I selfishly do not give away to anyone else. It's mine, mine, mine.....all mine. (grin) If anyone likes Red Zinger tea, it is the Roselle that puts the zing in the tea.

I am not productive today. Tim had an appointment at the eye doctor so I went to Gainesville with him just to get out of the house. We went to Walmart. Not much going on there. We made it all the way home and unloaded the small handful of items we bought at W-M, and realized we had forgotten hen scratch so off we went to the feed store in Ardmore. (sigh) We wouldn't have had to go but we had run out of hen scratch (I think the squirrels are stealing too much of it so we need to put it out later in the day or more selectively or something). I feel like we wasted the whole day going to the store (though I did get tomatoes and squash harvested before we left) but by the time we got home, it was too hot to do anything at all.

I don't want to look at the thermometer or Mesonet readings because then I'll know how hot it is. Our heat index was 99 degrees when we got home from Ardmore a couple of hours ago and if it has gotten any worse, I simply do not wish to know. Because we have 4 or 5 VFDs out at a large grass fire in NE Love County, I decided to go look at the Wet Bulb map to see how it might feel out there. Our VFD wasn't paged and I don't think the fire could be bad (given that we have had 3" of rain in the last week) enough for them to need us to travel that far....but I thought I'd check and see what it feels like out there. It is shocking how bad the Wet Bulb Map looks. I think it is worse today than it was yesterday:

Max Wet Bulb Globe Temperature Map for Today

Do y'all know how I make it feel cooler here at our house? I click the switch to change our Min-Max thermometer from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Somehow, 35 C sounds so much better than 94 F.

Dawn

So, one of my big Brandy Boys is missing. The fruit, hose, zip tie, and stem.

I don't want to have to stop growing tomatoes.

Rebecca, I am so sorry. I think you need a cage to drop over the whole plant. Or the bed. You don't have an old dog crate, do you? I am so frustrated for you. I remember the chickens eating half my tomatoes last year only too well.

Dawn, that wet bulb got really ugly! Tomorrow it will be different, so those who didn't see it, all the state, except for the panhandle were in high or extreme risk and a good 2/3 of the state was extreme. It was just flipping hot.

I knew 'O Sena was a name, I can just never remember where the apostrophe belongs.

I MEANT to be productive today. DH had Tues off, took a vacation day wed. This is like his vacation, so he decided we needed to go somewhere. We talked about movies, but nothing we wanted to pay to see. So we went to the Asian market and had lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant there. I wanted oyster mushrooms, like they had when I bought the shiitakes. But they didn't have any today. I got some kelp to make dashi with. In the restaurant I had a salad made from green papaya, beef jerky, basil and their dressing, which was kind of a subtle sweet and sour. Now I know, this sounds weird, but it was a very interesting flavor combination. It was very strong basil. I'm thinking maybe cinnamon basil, and it made the dish! The jerky was dry, but not crunchy tough dry. And not overly salty.

Rebecca, Dang it! I thought we had found the answer. I hate that some beast has circumvented the zip tie/panty hose thing.

The clear answer is a fully enclosed tomato pen or cage. Lots of people have to have these in order to grow tree fruits (generally dwarf fruit trees pruned to a fairly short height) or tomatoes. Picture a dog kennel type thing but with a wire fence over the top. It would be a permanent solution to a problem that may never cease now that it has started. It wouldn't have to be heavy chain link fencing like a zoo animal pen, but its openings would have to be small enough that little squirrels can't squeeze through. For many years I had one of these but mine was a corn cage meant to keep the coons out of the corn. Mine was a mediumweight woven wire fencing. Later on I had to attach chicken wire to the sides of it to keep the coon arms from reaching through the openings in the woven wire. It was a PITA to use and sometimes little coon hands/arms still squeezed through the wire and got the nearest ears of corn, but they didn't get all of it.

You could built it like a hoophouse, but covered with chicken wire or something similar.

Or, possibly you could just use an electrified poultry fence, like one of these, but I think overall with the charger and such, it would cost more than building a tomato cage.

Electrified Wire Fencing

With the electrified fencing, a fencing roof wouldn't be necessary as long as there's nothing (wooden fence, tree, buildings) nearby that a squirrel could climb and then jump down into your tomato pen.

For many years in the 1980s/1990s I watched as our neighbor tried to defeat the squirrels that raided his pecan trees and got virtually all his pecans before they matured. He lost every battle because his trees were too tall (obviously) to enclose and the squirrels could jump from rooftop (his and my parents' roofs both) to trees, and then from tree to tree, without ever touching the ground. He fought them vigorously and lost every single year, and he tried everything under the sun. Those squirrels about drove him out of his mind. Ironically, the squirrels never touched my garden or my dad's (this neighbor was in between our houses)---why should they waste their time on melons, corn and tomatoes when they had an endless source of pecans?

I don't think you have to give up growing tomatoes, but at some point, you probably have to build a structure that excludes them permanently from your plants.

Amy, I watched the wet bulb thing climb for NE OK and was appalled at how ugly both it and the heat index climbed. Tomorrow may be better for y'all, but I don't know if the cold front gets down here early enough to make any difference for us.

It sounds like y'all had a nice (and tasty), non-productive day. You know, every day doesn't have to be productive. We all work so hard in our gardens from mid- or late-winter through fall that I think we just need to cut ourselves some slack and give ourselves more days off here and there. What does it hurt? The garden isn't going anywhere. I have gardened hard forever, and I am trying to scale it back some and take it easier more often and give myself more frequent breaks from the garden. The wear and tear on the body is real and the older I get, the more my body tells me that I need to pace myself a bit better and not push myself so hard all the time. I also love being in the garden less and less the hotter and snakier it gets, so I expect that the rest of July will be all about harvesting and not much else other than cooking, eating and/or processing the harvest. By the time August arrives, I'll know if I should be doing fall planting or just trying to wait out the drought.

*Edited to add...so, I am watching the 10 pm news and the TV met just said that our current temperature here is 84 and our heat index is 91. That is ridiculous for this time of the night, but also is typical for what we've seen this summer. We're still often at or above 80 at midnight. I guess I should be grateful we drop below the 80s before sunrise, because later on (usually late July or early August), we sometimes have an overnight low only in the 80s.....making me wonder how the poor wildlife ever get to cool off.

Dawn

I laughed, Amy, when I saw Gary 'O Sena, thinking "YEP, see what you mean (re the apostophe)."

Well. I read most of the day, to let my vocal cords recover. Like Amy, I can't remember when I last talked and laughed SO much. PLUS, I had to read up on roselle and how to grow it (cause gosh darn it, I want some yesterday!), and ground cherries, and tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes. Who knew. I do think Amy might be about as bad as Dawn, in the enabling department. And now I know, Dawn, why you grow a tomato in the winter! I fell IN love with the taste of the Gary 'O Sena and the black cherries. Can hardly wait to try the Gma Susies and the Cherokee Carbon, but I'm pacing myself. I feel a fresh tomato sandwich coming on, say tomorrow evening, for me. Maybe two. AND even GDW, took the biggest of the last 3 slices of GOS I had left over from last night. I don't think he is totally convinced yet, but he DID say he could sure tell a difference between it and store tomatoes and this is much better. He may never LOVE to eat them, but he took the first big pretty slice before I got to them. I see that as a big step forward!

Alexis. . . I am so sorry I laughed and laughed and laughed about your tomato dilemma. . . just because I was/am in the same situation. And in dives Dawn to save the day. Honestly, what a blessing you are, Dawn. I enjoyed that thread so much! You are so amazing! And as much as you know, you are also a perfect teacher. So kind and loving, encouraging and joyful. What a delight. Although, Amy is no slouch, either. Nor is Bon, nor is George or Jerry or, in truth, YOU, and ALL of the rest of you.

I spent some time checking out Tatiana's tomatobase. . . . isn't that incredible!!! Amazing. Thanks for that, Dawn. It's really irrelevant to me at this point, because I trust and rely on all of you. . . . but the varieties are mind-boggling. Enchanting stuff.

I tell you all. . Amy may have inspired me to leave my home occasionally. I loved the visit from Ron and her so much, I might be tempted to come visit some of you. . . and vice versa. . . ALWAYS would love for any of you to come visit me. And really, come to think of it, nearly ALL of your would add to MY education, that's for sure!

Yep--it WAS hot today. But I kinda don't mind hot and humid, because I can almost see the plants growing. Hot and humid is ever so much better than hot and dry. I loved that about MN summers too, when the humidity was high--the plants would be reveling in the party atmosphere (for THEM) while the humans would be wilting. As hot as it was (and looks like it was pretty much the same for all of us today, in the shade (which, by now, all of you know about, for us) and the fans blowing, just isn't that intolerable for ME. But when I did my walk-arounds, I'd return to the porch with sweat dripping. GDW teased me and said, "Looks like hard work, you better quit for the day." And then he went out with me to gather tomatoes (which took all of 10 minutes), and I said, "OKAY, tomatoes, let us be done!" And returned to the porch with sweat dripping in our eyes.

One thing about loving to garden. Mary, I'm thinking of you with love. The love of gardening keeps us going sometimes when nothing else will. Next year I'll do this and this and this. . . . in five years, our fruit trees will be producing! It's a beautiful gift, the love of gardening, and I know you all agree.

HJ, I'll send you a FB message, been meaning to, need your address. And you need mine because you have to send me a few LB petunia seeds at some point. LOL

Got your email, Kim. Hey, I know you haven't forgotten. Love to you!

Okay. I'm here to complain, not catch up. So, it's raining in OKC and Moore. Not Norman. BUT, it's not fair because our neighborhood is 2 sides Moore and 1 side OKC and 1 side Norman (our south side). Ugh! Punches the couch. Punches the air. I want some stinkin' rain.

Okay. It wasn't going to be that much anyway. But still...

Nancy, I'll send my address to you via FB. Tomorrow.

Oh--meant to comment on swallowtail cats. I have 3 plants of dill in various places and a couple seedlings, will have to remember to plant some more tomorrow. I see the caterpillars on two now (which are probably about 50' apart.) But the dill is not plentiful. I have an enormous clump of parsley and a huge bronze fennel. Nada. Come on guys, quit being so finicky! Yep, it's the dill they're loving. I don't blame them, I love dill too. And because I'd like some will keep planting and maybe even go buy some more seeds so they will share with me!

I hear thunder a ways off but doubt it will visit here. . . although it has cooled off beautifully at the moment. I told GDW a while ago that if we do get any of the rain, we'll Know without a doubt that we are in the rain loop this year.

I did set the water today, and every time I went out to water, came back dripping with sweat. All I can do is laugh about it.

BTW, Amy, Titan DID like you both--obviously he thought Ron was a soft touch. When we first adopted him, he was much more comfortable around women. He was not good with men, not at all, and in fact, it took him a month or so to warm up to GDW. But GDW did such a number on him, as did a couple of our SILs, that now he almost always goes to the guys first. On the other hand, it's also guys that he's apt to take umbrage to. We have had a few visitors that despite out telling T they're okay, he thinks otherwise, and growls or has the hair raised on his shoulders, which he has never done with any woman, even if they don't like dogs. (And of course, his opinion and feeling always impacts our feeling about a visitor he doesn't like. . . )

Even more significant was that the cat (Daffy) came on over to join the party at a couple points. She's NEVER done that before with company. Now I see that as HIGH praise for you two! LOL

Okay. . . . guess I've babbled on long enough. . . I get a little embarrassed to be rattling on here, but love that you all cut me slack. I AM a stranger in a new land, and just so appreciate you all so much.

You're apparently the hole in the doughnut this year, HJ, like we were last year. I was so fascinated by watching the radar last year, seeing a storm approaching (yay) and watching the storm split as soon as it hit our neighborhood. Freaking amazing, and finally, all we could do was laugh. If we couldn't laugh, we would have been cursing or crying. . . . oh, were our water bills high last year!!! Blessings to ya, bff. (That tickles me so much.. . . I'm 69 now and have a bff. Life couldn't be better!)

Dawn, as much as I'd love to have a real tomato cage, it's just not in the budget and I don't know when it would be. It would have to have a top, because there are multiple places where squirrels could jump down from. Ironically, they have two giant old pecan trees that they have full run of every fall, but they'd rather have my green tomatoes. No peppers, or squash, or eggplant, or green beans, or herbs, or anything else I've planted. Just green tomatoes. And even if I set traps, there will be plenty left to take that one's place. I wish the Midtown Owls would come over and handle the problem for me. I don't know what else to do.

It's raining cats and dogs here. Made my way to the farmers market in Broken Arrow to get some Cherokee Purple tomatoes ($2.75/lb). Had to try some.

Rebecca, are they eating tomatoes as a water source? Read that somewhere.

Nancy, Amy, sound like you guys had lots of fun! Haha come to my place in Aug/Sep. I'm between Hard Rock and Redbud Valley.

Well guys as Willie Nelson used to sing.

"Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over"

"They Say That all Good Things Must End"

I know a lot of you guys are begging for water. Here we are literally drowning. Its pouring cats and dogs Again now. I'm sitting here now listening to air from the septic lines bubbling back through the toilet making me sleepy. It's hurting too.Havn't been able to mow the yard in two and a half weeks and its starting to Jungle. More rain forecast tomorrow. I already had about 3 inches or so standing in the furrows because the ground just can't take any more. Drivway has a million earthworms crawling out ot the ground trying to get air. My saturated round bales have now had 5 rains on them and still sitting there as I can't get to them without tearing up the ground.

I got off work yesterday and in the 2 days of heat most of the stuff is starting to die back. Its just drowning and there is nothing I can do. I usually water my ten tomato plants through the dry spell until it cools off in Sept. Then the plants are around 6-8 ft tall and when it cools down again so blooms can set I get humongus bumper crops even bigger in the fall than spring. Not so this year. the plants are starting to yellow 2/3rds up and about half are wilted so bad they probably wont make the week when the sun pops back out hard,

Crazy Year. Crazy state. That's Oklahoma, half the state is in a drought and I am getting drowned. It's usually ground cracking dry by now and you need to limp along watering at night. Luckily I got more tomatoes than I can use already as the plants really loaded up earlier heavier than usual and had an awesome bloom set in all the cool weather.

The red potatoes still have not completely died back and I am not sure if they are rotting in the ground as we speak. No matter, I cant get to them without losing a boot. The white ones are still green and probably the same.

I had about 40 ft beautiful green pole beans on an 8 ft trellismy that were just starting to grow about 4 inch beans and a row of bush beans. I noticed yesterday that the leaves are now turning yellow 3/4 up the trellis and the wind was starting to blow dead leaves off across the yard. I did get about 4 qts though and might get one more picking. The roots just cant get any oxygen or a break. The lima beans don't seem to mind the damp feet as much.

I got the corn in ok. Squash is dying but it usually does about now and I have to much of that.

I have cucumbers, squash and tomatoes running out my ears anyhow. I found a cuke I thought was a watermelon off in the cowpea vines yesterday. Ha

My only hot pepper bush is now dropping its leaves but I will get maybe 70-80 off it now so that will do.

The watermelons and cantelopes seem to love it so there is that.

But the rest? Well that's just how it goes, you get a bumper crop of some things some years and not quite enough of others. Bit you always get something. So

"Turn out the Light's

'The Party is over"

" They Say that all Good Things Must End."

"But Tommorrow Bring a Brand new Day."

Damn, I can saaang gud. lol

Garry enjoyed me reading your post to him, Jerry! He said, "Yep. As Nancy says, 'it's a crap shoot.' "

We DID get the rain, a little over half an inch. Thankfully it all drains in a timely manner. So we're not drowning, but we sure aren't thirsty. And it's July 8 and 75 degrees, Wow. Definitely did not sweat picking tomatoes (no doubt flavorless ones because of all the rain--ha--) this morning.

Amy, yes, that salad did sound weird. Jerky! What the! But not doubting your take on it.

Rebecca, plant three times as many next year--they can't get 'em all!

Eleven little swallowtail caterpillars on one smallish dill. I might have to take them extra food. Maybe I'll move the third one over to them. :) . Too funny.

Nancy, It boggles my mind how much info we have at our fingertips now with the internet. Here at our house, useful internet was very slow to arrive. We had satellite internet in the earliest years, but it was not that great as the satellites seemed to be out more than they worked, so our son used it but Tim and I didn't even bother. FInally we got dial-up which still was excrutiatingly slow but somewhat more reliable. That likely was around 2004 or 2005. I don't think we got wireless inernet for a few more years yet---maybe around 2009 or 2010 and we finally could stay on the internet long enough to actually read things. I was amazed at what a person could find. After Dr. Carolyn Male's Book ("100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden") was published (1999) and long before we had decent internet service, I set out to try as many varieties listed in her book as possible. I was so excited to discover the 100 tomatoes she listed in the book as I had only grown a small handful of them prior to that. And, so I did. I grew some of those heirlooms every year and was so pleased to have them, until......we got wireless internet and I could spend even more time reading online. That is when I began to understand that there were thousands and thousands of varieties of tomatoes a person could grow, and so many were coming into wider distribution that you didn't have to rely solely on SSE member listings to obtain many of them. I've been in hog heaven ever since, trying way too many heirlooms and not cutting back nearly as much as I should....so I still grow too many merely because I want to grow and eat them all. WIthout the internet I doubt I would have found 2/3s or even 3/4s of the tomato varieties we love to grow and eat. It can be overwhelming, though, to have so many choices available.

Hazel, I'm sorry you didn't get the rain. It is very frustrating to have it all around and still missing you.

Rebecca, Maybe at some point the fencing can be worked into the budget. Our earliest garden fencing was just 1" chicken wire and cedar posts that were nothing more than tree limbs cut from some of the danged cedar trees that try to take over every square inch of our property. It wasn't real pretty but it mostly kept deer out of the garden for 6 or 8 years, even with the fence being only 4' tall. I am not fond of spending money on garden fencing where there's so many other things we need, but it became essential to do that here---or I might as well have stopped gardening (which wasn't going to happen). I hope the squirrels don't push you to that point, but my experience with wildlife since moving here is that once they move in and begin devouring your garden crops, each generation passes on that behavior to the succeeding generations and stealing from your garden becomes the permanent new normal for them. For us, all that ever has worked with wildlife is to exclude them from the garden with fencing. They have circumvented every other method we've ever tried.

Eileen, Congrats on the rain. When you're done with it, can you send the rest to Hazel? Her area continues to suffer from horrendous flash drought conditions.

I hope the CP tomatoes you purchased have great flavor. They're a long-time favorite of ours and were one of the first heirloom tomatoes I ever grew. I think that once I became aware of what heirloom tomatoes were, the first ones I grew were, in this order, Brandywine, Black Krim, Lemon Boy, Cherokee Purple, and Mortgage Lifter. Prior to that I had grown some red heirloom varieties without knowing which tomatoes I grew were heirloom open-pollinated types versus hybrids.

Jerry, I truly am sorry for your troubles with excess rainfall. It is just as vexing to have too much rainfall as to have too little. We had that sort of year in 2015 when we got slightly over 200% of our average annual rainfall, including 24" in May alone (and over 12" of that fell on one day, leading to pretty serious flooding). As one would expect, we lost a lot of plants, and most of our root crops that year, to the excess moisture. There's nothing you can do....until someone invents a giant vacuum cleaner that will suck up the excess moisture out of the soil (don't we wish!). As much as I hate drought, I'll take too little rainfall over too much rainfall any time. At least with too little rainfall, we can try to water enough to keep the garden alive and producing but when you get too much, you cannot just snap your fingers and make that excess moisture go away.

Oklahoma weather is crazy and there are times I think we all must be nuts to try to garden in it...but we do. Sometimes we win. Sometimes Mother Nature wins. Sometimes nobody really wins. I envy people in milder climates who can plant a garden and be pretty much 100% secure in the knowledge that they'll get a harvest. Here where we live, if it isn't the late freezes or tornadoes, it is the flooding rains or the droughts, or strong winds or giant hail, or swarms of grasshoppers or wildfires that seem to post constant and unrelenting threats to our gardens. OK has more ways to wipe out gardens than we even can list.

I hope the rain stops falling there where y'all certainly don't need or want more of it, and starts falling in the parts of the state that desperately need rain.

It is hot and dry, hot and dry, hot and dry here. Our temperature so far has topped out about where they said it would in the mid-90s, but the heat index has gone a few degrees higher than forecasted (104). Y'all know there is nothing on this earth that is going to make me leave the house to work outdoors in weather that is as hot and miserable as what we have today. I fed Augustus (the turkey) watermelon a while ago while making him a big mud puddle to stand in to cool off. He hates heat and it really stresses him out, so I spend some of every hot day trying to keep him cooler.

Our chance of rain today, tonight and tomorrow is low, but I'll keep hoping for some of it to fall here anyway. Hope doesn't cost a thing, and neither does wishing, so here I sit, wishing and hoping for rain that I'm pretty sure will not manage to find us.

Dawn

Hello all. Enjoying and learning from your posts as usual. At your collective suggestion I planted several Korean squash varieties this season (late may, actually rather late). As you say, Korean kudzu is right! I've never seen anything like it. It may be outgrowing the horrid bindweed!

Actually the vines are so voracious that although I know where in the beds I sowed which variety, they are so thick and tangled that I'm not positive which is which. I ha e a bed with teot pat but summer squash and shishigatani winter squash?).. I bet some of you have grown these before. I've been eating the fruit that looks like this, assuming it to be the teot or avocado squash:

Now i wonder if it isn't immature shishigatani. Any thoughts or experience about how to tell the difference?

Inch and a half in the rain gauge this morning. When the temps get into the upper 90s later this week, it's going to be hell around here.

My other big BB was gone this morning. Fruit, hose, zip tie, and stem.

Amy, I know the squirrels ate half your crop last year, are they doing that again this year?

Eileen, they have water out. I've never seen them touch it.

Nancy, I don't have room for 90 tomatoes! And yes, they CAN get them all, because they already did that once.

Brought in the first eggplant today, as well as peppers and cucumbers. Squirrels don't bother those. Little Leaf cukes are growing so slowly.

Never got the butternut squash planted. Guessing it's too late now. I'll put the beets in that space instead.

Well here is the picture of todays pickle factory 4,5 qts dills and 2 pints bread and butter. Used the last of me dill weed and garlic and bay so its Mrs Wages quick mix from here on out.. The one leaning on the jar is the King Kong Kuke I found in the cowpeas that I thought was a watermelon yesterday.

Bad thing is when you leave one that size its a signal to shut down new pickles to the plant. Yer gotta keep em picked off fer max production. No worries though I have wwwaay too many. Darn things hide from you everywhere and if you don;t catch them in 2-3 days welll.......

Its taller than the qt jars as you can see so its not gonna fit. Its even bigger than it looks in that pic as its leaning. I measured it and its 9-1/2 inches around. Its not even bloated in shape so I think you could use it and the center would still be solid. But, I think its safe to say it might be past its prime. Mebbe I could whap the top off it and make a one pickle quart with a wide mouth jar but it would be tight. HA

In other news the Only thing I could do today was dig a few drainage ditches to try to drain water out of the garden.

The ripe tomatoes went through the Weston. The new dog gate has been installed (a walk through variety you don't have to reattach every time). The dog is sleeping, so late tonight she will be wild. ::eyeroll:: The tomato corer works well on ripe tomatoes that don't have tough skin on top. I'm trying to decide if slicing the top off with the knife is less wasteful or gouging out the core. The thing is, since I have to cut the tomatoes anyway, I don't have to put one tool down and pick up another. Maybe DH will like it for strawberries.

I am reminded how much I like Arkansas Traveler, and how flawless the fruit is. I tasted one tonight, I think it was labeled Fred. That would be Fred's Tie Dye. It had very good flavor. Exceptionally good flavor.

Jerry, sorry about your drowning garden. Pickles are tomorrow here. I think fermented, SOMEWHERE (NOT in the hanging baskets) is the gallon jar we bought to replace the fermenting jar that broke. DH put it away. Not feeling the Dear Husband version tonight, Nancy. He doesn't know where he put it.

Rebecca, it was my chickens that ate my tomatoes last year. If the squirrels visited, I didn't lose many to them.

Fitzjennings, I planted the other 2 Korean kudzus, but that looks a lot like Early Bulam. I've never heard of your winter squash. What shape is it supposed to be?

Eileen, your area certainly has changed in the last 40 years. I don't think I've been that way since the Hardrock opened.

Haha!!

Amy, belowis the shishgatani image from kitazawa, showing the mature winter squash.

Early Bulam seems to be another "avocado" squash?

my assumption at this point is that the mature fruit Ive been harvesting and eating are the summer squash, and the that winter variety hasn't developed yet, but I still can't tell the vines apart!

Let's see, did I do any gardening today? Does taking pictures count? We ran into town to get a power cord to replace the one that's fraying, some more bamboo stakes, raised bed soil, peat moss, and compost. Came back with the bamboo stakes. GRRR. Ended up working out, though, when I realized I have no mulched leaves, and I LIKE mulched leaves! So, not in a hurry to get it done now. Oh, but the BBS's probably won't have that stuff in November, so guess we'd better plan a trip to Muskogee.

And, most of the rest of my day was spent studying up on a few things, one of which was tomatoes! I had more fun reading about tomatoes today! Fascinating stuff! Love it! Arkansas Traveler was one whose story I read, Amy. I also loved reading the stories on some of the rest, too.

Favorite tomato books? Is Carolyn Male's still one of the good ones today, Dawn? What about Craig LeHoullier? Others?

Now look what you've done to me!

AND GDW went out and WEEDED while I was studying!!!!!! Obviously he has a fever. I was floored! He was proud of himself. He was confident enough to pull what he KNEW were weeds, and if he wasn't sure, he left them. And his jeans looked just like mine do when I've spent a day weeding. How cool is THAT! And we dug up one of our last two potato plants. . . a little disappointed that there were only six, but 5 of them were big old potatoes! (Kennebecs, I think.)

Okay, tomato machine coming up. Wait--I can use it with the frozen tomatoes, right?

Uh, yeah, Jerry, can't comprehend a cucumber of that size! Got a good laugh.

Oh and back up the thread to amuks corn. No, thats not a pollination problem it is pollinated nicely. Usually if you can get 4 rows/plamts deep you will be OK. Corn is an amazing plant really wind pollinated from the tassel. Each and every grain on the cob has an individual silk. As impossible as it sounds, at least one grain of pollen has to land on each individual silk for the ear to fill properly. Don;t have that and you will notice missing grains and gaps in the rows or missing spaces in with no fullness of the grain.

You have a reverting problem. Your corn looks exactly like my landrace did when I first crossed Silver Queen and Alan Kapular's True Gold corn which is a yellow that he stabilized to breed true OP over several years from Golden Jubilee.

You have simply got to research Alan Kapular. Such an amazing person. Graduated top from Yale in plant science I believe, worked for the gov't developing chemical warfare agents, drove home listening to Bob Dylan one day and blammo, something snapped. Could'nt live with himself designing things that kill. He checked out for freaking good. He not only talked the talk, he walked the walk. He did the whole hippie commune thing and ate things he grew. He eventually started a seed company Seeds of Change but sold it and now sell seeds online with his daugher and has developed some of the most nutritous and unusual variietes. But thats another story into and of itself of an amazing life and an amazing brilliant man .

The first year I got the cross going I got the bicolor ears like yours, (and I'm presuming) Hybrid . But when you replant a hybrid, you unlock the genie out of the bottle and some of the corn will revert to its parents that was used in the breeding of the hybrid. You will get a little of everything. One of the parents of silver queen for instance is Ashworth, an older smallish white ear that was know for tenderness and only popular around NJ. This is were Silver Queen gets it;s famous tenderness from and Ashworth was chosen as one of the Parent for that reason. So you see you will get a stalk or two of Ashworth corn doing this. Sometimes its even crazier and you will get forms of corn that can barely be called such, as corn was breed up from just grass, to a seed-head with a few intermediate types before something with even a cob and then some funny shaped ones at that.

To make a long winded story short, your bicolor corn you chose is not 100 percent stable yet in breeding true to form. That's where the years of selective breeding for certain traits you desire come in. ie; heavy stalk, fat cob, more rows, drooping ears or whatever you are tying to achieve. I have worked on mine for 8 years now and I still get some crazy stuff on occasion. IN short, they just hurried the breeding process or it has crosspollinated with something else. You can still eat them, they just might not be as sweet or uniform as you would wish or get some prehistoric looking corns like the spiral one.

Me? I think you struck a gold mine and have an Op landrace with half the hard part done to play with and go any direction you like from there, but I'm crazy like that. Really good OP sweet corn is few and far between and is what started me on my own journey 8yr ago. I now have one that will stand up to any Oklahoma wind or drought with deep roots and stout stalk. I planted a purple corn in the middle this year and it got flattened, but mine was standing true and tall and it was on the outside. Still working on it though. For me now nothing is more boring than corn that looks like it joined the Army in perfect uniformity in all the wrong areas.

Oh and Amy, I love the Arkansas Traveler too for the same reason and a few more. I bought mine at Awoods this year and they have been contaminated with patio tomatoes as the were way to small for Travelers which are usually 8-10 oz med pink high quality fruit. I have grown the stuff for years and I know for a fact its not the ground as all the other tomatoes right beside them were normal in size. Kinda aggravates me as I got too much smaller stuff this year and works you to death.

And, Dawn, you hit the nail right one the head with your best seed house recomendations as to getting true to type stuff especially, Seed Savers, Victory, and Southern Exposure which is the ONLY place I will order Whipporwill or Grey goose pea seed from. He has the clean real deal like my Grandfather grew that had been grown by my family since before the Civil war.

Loved your post, and will certainly be reading up on Alan Kapular (though won't be growing any corn. :( . My favorite fresh vegetable to eat.

Oh he is Phd Nancy, and has some simply amazing work to his credit. He has tons of proprietary stuff, unusual vegetables from around the world on his website he has breed for nutrition and such. I know for a fact he will have some things that interest you. He has flowers, veggies, plants the whole nine yards. Internet is full of stuff about him when you look. You will have a ball reading about "Mushroom" his nickname. Peace seeds is his new company with his daughter who is a bonified Flower Girl in more ways than one I might add.

http://awaytogarden.com/giveaway-peace-seedlings-world-of-woddities/

http://peaceseedlingsseeds.blogspot.com/

http://peaceseedslive.blogspot.com/

Thank YOU, Jerry!!!

Fitzjennings, The squash in your photo is an avocado squash--either Bat Teot Put or Early Bulam---they look the same to me and mine grow into a solid mass so I never know which of the two I'm harvesting. The shishigatani have the same shape when young as when they are older and the skin is not the same as the avocado squash either as it is more textured---the fruit are broader at the top than the Korean Summer Squash. I assume your shishigatani plants haven't set fruit yet.

Here's a photo of a young shishigatani fruit that I found for you by Googling:

Image of Shishigatani

Rebecca, That's the sort of crappy, hot, humid weather we've been having here for a while. Yesterday was cooler than we were a couple of weeks ago, with a heat index of only 107. That might not sound great but it is better than 110. Still, I just hibernate indoors through most of the day. The best hour to be outside here is the hour around sunrise or sometimes the last hour of daylight before sunset.

It wouldn't be too late for butternut. I planted some in July last year and was harvesting in October. The baby butternut plants that I just planted in late May already are loaded with fruit in various sizes and stages. They took off and grew really quickly---likely because they love the horrible heat and humidity.

Jerry, Nice pickles! When I find big cukes like that, I make mock apple rings or, just in order to be able to make mock apple rings, I'll let the last round of cukes near the end of their season (you know....when the plants and their production start dropping and you know the end is near) get large on purpose just so I can make mock apple rings.

Nancy, I love Dr. Male's book and I think Craig's Book is superb as well. Dr. Male and Craig together brought back so many heirloom tomatoes we all love and appreciate today that I think both of their books are well worth reading. Amy Goldman also wrote a book on Heirloom Tomatoes but I've never gotten around to buying it and reading it. I do have her books on heirloom melons and heirloom squash and they are superb books with incredible photographs of different fruit shot in beautiful still life type settings. I have read gazillions of tomato books. I'll try to compile a list for you later. I have to get outside and feed the animals.

You can use the tomato machine with the frozen tomatoes---after they are thawed.

Rainstorms flew by us all night long and we awakened to 1/100th of an inch in the rain gauge this morning, but we have a light rainshower now. I'm so relieved. It probably won't be enough to make a huge difference but any rain is good.

Jerry, I used to love Seed of Change but they have changed and aren't what they were when Alan Kapular ran things. It is sad. We've seen that sort of thing happen with far too many seed companies once they are sold to someone else---like the new owners are in it for the money, not for the mission like Alan Capular was.

Another unsung hero in the breeding worlld? Tom Wagner. He's done amazing stuff with potatoes and tomatoes.

It took me a while to learn which seed sources I could trust. It was painful at times to have to choose one company over another, but if you're growing heirloom tomatoes for the special unique qualities that each of them possess, it doesn't make sense to patronize retailers who sell seeds that do not produce true to type. Too many people either in the wholesale seed industry or in small cottage seed-growing firms that are contract growers for specific companies probably are not roguing out the plants that aren't producing true to type. When they fail to do that and that sell seeds that are not the real deal, they are doing a disservice to gardeners everywhere.

I love Southern Exposure Seed Echange and, if I had to choose only one seed company from which to purchase any/all garden seeds, it would be them. Luckily I don't have to choose because I'd hate to give up buying from Victory Seeds. SESE is also my favorite trusted source for all southern pea seeds. No one else I've purchased seeds from is as consistently correct with their varieties producing true to type.

Dawn

Fitzjennings, I want to know how that winter squash tastes and it's production. If it's any thing like the kudzu, it would be well worth growing.

We found the fermenting jar, but several of the cucumbers we bought were rotting. We bought cucumbers from both Sprouts and Aldi's that rotted almost instantly. These were from Carmichael's. I am chanting grow, grow, grow at the cukes now. I want some fresh ones! Next year I need to start some earlier.

People are enamored with certain seed sellers, who, to their credit, promote heirloom and OP varieties. But I know some of my problems are with the seeds and not me. I have been especially disappointed with tomatoes that just aren't as good as advertised. It is funny, my beloved Large Red Cherry was a cheapy off a seed rack, probably Ferry Morse.

Oh, and speaking of cowpeas, Nancy, the Pink Eye Purple Hulls I gave you stemmed from 2 different seed packs. One vine grew longer than the other.

I have never purchased anything from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange that I was disappointed in. I love the Yellow Cabbage Collard. My roselle seeds came from there. Lettuce. Cowpeas. But apparently that is where I got the Amy's Apricot seeds this year, and the 2 plants of that lable are not producing apricot colored fruit. I would say it was my fault, but I'm not growing many cherries this year. Hard to mix them up with black cherry, Tigerella or sun gold. I guess I should contact them.

I need to look more closely at the peace seeds site. Like I need another vendor?

Thank you dawn for the advice. I feel pretty confident these are the avocado. And they are delicious.

Amy, I will let you know!

Anyone have a reliable resource to learn about seed saving?

Where are you Fitzjennings? George's Green Country Seed Savers group met today in Tahlequah. They meet monthly, and have this forum.

George also has thisFB page and website.

Seed to Seed is supposed to be a good book.

Teh Vegetable Seed Saving Handbook website offers a lot of info, too.

Amy, Did you read the description of Amy's Apricot on the SESE webpage (or in the catalog) before you bought the seed? When I grew it I believe I got only apricot colored fruit, but a lot of people get the red like you're seeing. It has been several years since I first grew it (I think I got the seed either the first year or the second year they offered it), and I think I grew for at least 3 years using the seeds from that one packet and they all, as far as I remember, were apricot. However, if you go to the webpage now, they describe how this variety has defied their efforts to stabilize it to the point that it would only produces apricot/orange fruit without throwing off some red ones too, so clearly others are seeing red fruit like you are. In fact, they have renamed it to Amy's Apricot Mix (truth in advertising!) to reflect the fact it remains unstable and may produce other colors of tomatoes. They don't mention the flavor being any different in the off-colors though.

Fitzjennings,

What I know about saving seed I learned from the book, Seed to Seed, and I used to do a lot of it, but only when I can grow properly in isolation or by bagging blossoms before they open. I've also learned a lot from discussions with George over the years.

Dawn

I'm in nw Okc, technically Warr Acres

I'm sure I read the SESE description when I bought it, but I've slept since then. I will have to pay special attention to the taste. I will say it is a dark red color, pretty, so it's interesting in that way.

Fitzjennings, it would be a long trip to Tahlequah, but it might be worth it to do it once. I went to a meeting...it was fall. The leaves around Tahlequah were gorgeous and it was worth it just for that. They are great people.

Anyone up for hide n seek?

I asked Stringer's about my non-productive Big Bertha, and they suggested she might be TOO happy, so not feeling pushed to make seeds. Told me to leave her alone, let her dry out and hold all fertilizer and see if she gets more stressed. I can certainly do that.

No fruit left on the Brandy Boy. They quite politely brought back the hosiery bags, though. Intact. Found some SVB frass on the squash, so I went out this evening and doused it with Sevin, see if I can stop it in it's tracks. Good thing my next plant is coming up quickly after that good rain. First planting of cukes is going strong, just need to feed them, and the second (larger) planting is starting to climb the trellis. I wanted to put pole beans in there after the cukes, but I don't think they'll wear themselves out in the next month. I need to build more trellises for next spring.

And I guess I'll have to figure out how to protect the tomatoes next year. Anywhere I should go to look at plans? I'll have to do it myself, and I am SO not handy with tools, nor do I know anything about construction.

It's officially becoming too hot to cook. This morning I spent some time making egg salad, with my own scallions, pimento cheese, and Thai peanut noodle sauce to put with my own carrots, green beans, peppers, and cukes, plus roasted a couple chicken breasts in the toaster oven to toss in with them. Have fresh berries and cantaloupe. So, no cooking this week in the heat.

Amy, I think I remember the Amy's Apricot description mentioning the possibility of red tomatoes even when I bought the seed, but it probably went in one ear (or eye) and out the other. I don't think the change of the name to Amy's Mix happened until either this year or last. I don't remember seeing it further back.

Kim, Are we supposed to hide or to seek? lol.

Fitzjennings, I agree the Korean summer squash are delicious. I'm on a mission to get everyone to grow them. Why endure endless SVB-induced heartbreak every year? I'll always grow yellow straightneck squash and zucchini because I have room and generally can plant early enough to get a good harvest for a while before the SVBs show up. I like using the Korean summer squash as the succession crop following them so that when the SVBs take out the early squash, I don't care because I have the Korean stuff already growing (and sometimes already producing). If I was space-challenged and couldn't grow a variety of kinds of summer squash, I'd just start out with the Korean summer squash to begin with.

If you ever get a change to meet George and Jerreth, go for it. He is a first-class human being and he and his wife are doing awesome work with their new homesteading website.

Rebecca, Except for being heartless tomato-stealing thieves, your squirrels are very polite! I cannot believe they returned the hoisery bags. Now I am a little concerned that they may think the hoisery bags are Christmas stockings and you are Santa Claus and they're wanting you to refill the bags with more tomatoes. Maybe you could surprise them with a few habanero peppers inside the bags. I'm thinking that might make them flee forever.

I Googled 'how to build a fruit cage' and found you gazillions of options to look at. I'm not a builder type person, but I looked at a lot of these and thought to myself "I could do that!" so I bet that you can too. There's many ways to do it. Here's the result of the Google search to give you some ideas:

How To Build A Fruit Cage

Stringers may be right, but more often I have found that with tomatoes than with peppers. I do not know why. I hope being more cruel to Big Bertha gets you some fruitset.

While we did not get much of the rainfall today (a mere 0.05" when all was said and done), we did seem to benefit from the rain-cooled air from areas to our W/NW and S that got a lot more rain than we did. Our high temperature today was only 89 and our heat index topped out at 99. It still was too hot to cook, but we had planned-overs (like leftovers, but not truly left over because I cooked enough to last a couple of days so I wouldn't have to cook every day in the heat), so no one had to cook today.

I spent time with Tim today and only went into the garden long enough to water the fall tomatoes and to check to see if, by chance, any squash plants are dying yet. Nope. They aren't. Apparently the SVBs are asleep at the wheel, so we will have too much squash again this week. It is funny when you plant a certain number of squash plants expecting to lose some along the way, and then you don't lose them. I'd never just pull up a squash plant for the fun of it, but I keep looking at those 3 straightneck squash plants that I planted in March and wondering how they are still alive and still producing heavily. Then add to that the 3 sucession yellow squash plants that I planted in May. Maybe the SVBs don't like them, but then why aren't the SVBs attacking my 12 zucchini plants? Yes, 12. Why? So I could freeze a lot for winter cooking before the SVBs killed them all. Since the SVBs aren't killing them all (or any killing a single one, so far) , and I've frozen all I wish to freeze, I may pull these up soon. Right now, I am feeding the excess zukes to the deer, rabbits, possums, coons and chickens. The deer like them the best. I just slice up a few of the extra ones, toss them on the compost pile, everyone feasts on them and we're all happy. That will work until I want that space for fall plants. Once the Armenian cucumbers start producing, I probably will take out the excess zucchini plants because the chickens much prefer to eat Armenian cucumbers.

I'm not saying the squash vine borers will not show up eventually and start killing the plants, but they sure are late this year. I wonder if my gardening neighbors don't have squash plants? I'm pretty sure everyone planted squash back in the Spring. Usually they sort of travel from garden to garden, so maybe they are in someone else's garden and just haven't made it here yet. It is odd for folks far north of me in OK to have SVBs and somehow the dreadful little things missed us. I appreciate having squash, but we have too much of it.

Tim is on vacation the next two days, sort of for VFD-related stuff, but I also have a To Do list of things around the house that need to be done. I may not be out in the garden much while he's off because I'll be working with him on that To Do list. My garden is so overgrown and potentially snakey that all I want to do now is harvest as quickly as possible and get back indoors before snakes or skeeters find me.

Dawn

Dawn, you sure do have lots of confidence in my construction abilities, or you can build pretty much anything, lol. I wouldn't be able to do half of one of those. Of course, being limited to lifting no more than 25 pounds probably precludes a lot of that. It's amazing how people come up with things to make gardening easier. Lots of those gardens are in the UK, did you notice? I love the geodesic dome cloches. However, those links did give me an idea. I'm wondering if I can find an old greenhouse frame somewhere, and just attach the bird netting to that. I'd just have to have someone pick it up and deliver it for me. My mom has a wonderful handyman who knows how to do pretty much anything (and if he doesn't, he'll fake it), so maybe he could build me a frame too. And secure it somehow so that it doesn't end up in the neighbor's yard when we get a good storm, but also where we could get in with a weed eater or mower during the off season. Hmm.

Dawn can I hide while someone else seeks for awhile? Trying to find plants in these weeds is getting tiring.

My little man told he was putting me in time out the other day and I said yes please. For at least one day. Doesn't that sound nice? Time out

Hahaha Kim! Was he being kind to you, or were you misbehaving!? And my question is the same as Dawn's--were we supposed to be seeking or hiding! LOL

Oh goodness. I'd rather tangle wth a 2-foot long rat snake youngster than a little copperhead--right?! (Oh--that was on the other thread, That comment was for Turbo Cat!) And we did, in the dining room right next to the kitchen tonight! LOL All 3 of us (GDW, Titan and I) were coming in from a walk around in the yard and garden. . . Titan spotted it first, then me, and by the time GDW looked, it crawled through the bookcase and the partial wall between kitchen and DR. The 5 shelf bookcase is really two stacked shorter ones, and I wanted to be sure to try and get him/her without hurting it. So I quick unloaded the top bookcase, we lifted it off, and then pulled the bottom one away from the wall, and sure enough it was hiding under that one. We were both laughing so hard we could hardly stand still and Titan was backed off but not happy. (He steers clear of snakes since he got bitten by the poisonous one last year and was so so sick.) I ran and handed the broom to Garry and asked if he thought he could just sweep it out the door. He finally did manage to get it pinned down with the broom and then did indeed sweep it out. Bet that poor snake was glad to get away from US! High laughing drama for us!

I am SO glad I began learning a bit about snakes this year and learned to love some of them because of the vole problem. It has helped me greatly--with the fear factor AND the small pest predator factor. (I know I wouldn't be quite so okay with them if I had chickens. . . but don't, of course.)

Anyway, that little adventure only took us 30-45 minutes. Good time. And now I have something to do first thing in the morning; organize and put all the books back.

But now I'm totally discombobulated with reading all your posts from today. Have to backtrack. I DID see your earlier comments on books--thanks! And now I finally know what SESE is! Love acronyms.

We had the C Carbon tonight, Amy. It was RIDICULOUSLY sweet! Bet it'd make good jam! Question--can I save some of THOSE seeds? Where'd you get it? From SESE? I simply could not believe it! Saved enough for either seeds or a tomato sandwich tomorrow or both!

I do like SOME squash Dawn--but I'd be freaking out that the many squash! Laughing laughing.

Gosh, Rebecca--maybe you have a human pest/thief! Hmmmm.

The next time George and Jerreth and the group meet in Muskogee, I will NOT miss it! Am excited! Or even Tahlequah, which is a beautiful drive. Amy if you decide you'd like to go again--or Rebecca or Eileen or anyone else, maybe we could meet up and go together! George, are your ears burning?

And Dawn, thanks for the Tom Wagner tip. I was googling yesterday for these kinds of amazing people and never could get a good idea of how to word the query, so didn't get a list of amazing gardeners, except, you know for like TV personalities or prolific authors. . . . I'd appreciate any names you guys have of these amazing people--actually a lot of YOU are!

I spent the afternoon on the phone--I HATE the phone! I'd been trying to call my 95-yr old mother for 3 days. She often misplaces the phone on the holder thing, and then I have to end up calling the office (she lives in assisted living). So I freaked today and called the office. Come to find out my mom was admitted to the hospital on the 6th (!!!!!) in the morning. I was in shock--and the aide I visited with was so upset and angry that the powers-that-be didn't let me know! (SHE happened to be off for 3 days and wasn't even aware Mom had been taken to the hospital until she to work yesterday. Yes, they certainly dropped the ball there, and of course we will have a little chat tomorrow by phone. Well, Mom has gotten in trouble at least 3-4 times the past four years for dehydration or UTI's. I called the hospital and they'd ruled out the UTI and stroke, so figured it had to be hydration (apparently; will talk with them further tomorrow). Mom was better today and we have a cheerful visit, at least, but she is definitely tired and I can tell she is kinda just not wanting to be here, bless her heart. I think I'll ask her again tomorrow if she'd like for me to come get her. (We've invited her down twice, but she hasn't been ready; my worry has been that by the time she is, we won't be able to GET her down here. Oh well, this is life.) . My other distress is that she lives 15 hours away and it's not easy to get to Buffalo, Wyoming. I am so sad I can't be visiting her every 3-4 months.

So thankful for my lovely sister-in-law there in the same town (my beloved brother David's wife), who keeps in close contact with me, just for friendship. And she's very good to Mom, too.

Will order my tomato machine tonight. I finally have 50 lbs of tomatoes, and the small freezer is filling up, so time to can, right? But afraid I'll just have to wait til my tomato machine gets here! LOL .

Oh and will be SO glad to have another bigger area for garden, but it's not here yet--drat! So I have no idea where I'd plant anything more for fall. . . doggone it!!!! Oh well, I'm a baby gardener. Baby steps, NRW. But I'm so OLD!!! I don't have enough TIME!!!! LOL DagNABBIT! Seven cucumber plants. Really, Nancy? Only new things in the beds. . . the cucumbers, sweet potatoes and more potatoes. What can I say. We love our potatoes. I got this one awesome tomato in an unlikely bed. It's gotta be a Betalux, I've decided. . . but it's gonna be one of those 10-footers. I'm just letting it sprawl over a 12-inch rock border next to it, where it can just grow to its heart's content over into a bare area of Bermuda grass lawn near the driveway. There are a billion tomatoes of various sizes on it. . . and despite the shad has been producing a few ripened ones; there's another one in the big center "flower bed" that's doing the same thing. Must be Illini.

Nancy, how come squirrels aren't getting YOUR tomatoes? I know you've got them.

Nancy, you can save seeds from the Cherokee Carbon. Bot remember, it wasn't bagged so a cross is always possible. I'm glad you didn't bring out the pet snake while I was there. Anything other than a garter snake freaks me out.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother! I hope she feels better soon.

Ha ha ha Kim, what did you do to deserve time out? Cussing weeds under your breath, were you?

I find it VERY odd squirrels would bring back your stockings, Rebecca. Maybe they had human help.

I picked tomatoes tonight. All the cracked ones I gave to my grand son and he threw them to the chickens. The puppy found an errant cherry tomato tonight. I'm going "What have you got?" (It's like having a toddler!) She tossed it in the air and chased it. She was not impressed with the taste (thank goodness!) And it didn't bounce well, so she moved on to other things.

Rebecca we shoot 'em, Every morning GDW kills one or two . Every single morning, What the squirrel problem here for us is, first the lack of predators-- so. the bird feeders and then them trying to make a home in the shop roof. We kill them RUTHLESSLY AND ON THE SPOT. I am so done with squirrels! Bless their hearts! LOL but npt.

Well our moisture has quit at both places and it is getting dry. Has been a little hotter here in SW KS than in W Central OK. Rain both places has been spotty and nothing for a week in either location. Grass is turing some in both places but still a lot of green but it won't last much longer. More fruit set in OK. Cherokee Purple continues to lead the pack in both places which it does many years for me. Fruit set in KS is sparse and I imagine it wll be for anothe 10-14 days as the temps overall will be high. Then in late July if the long range forecasts don't change we should see some moderation which should allow fruit set hopefully. Will be planting some more things for fall eating this week. With the drip tape I have been deep watering once every 7 days and plants have been holding in great. Going to mulch more this week. Glad others are getting more fruit set on their tomatoes. Mine is normal for this area. And the set in OK is much better.

Rebecca,

There are all kinds of options. For example, you know those pop-up canopies you can buy for camping trips or tailgating or whatever? They have a metal frame and then you put the canvas top over it and tie it to the frame? I think it would be easy to take the frame of one of those and attach one-inch chicken wire to it. You could use zip-ties (which evetually will break from the UV exposure weakening them) to attach the chicken wire, jut taking care to attach it every few inches so the squirrels couldn't find a gap to squeeze through. The only construction involved would be to use wood framing to build in a door so you could easily enter and exit the cage. I use one of these frames as a trellis in the back garden with woven wire fencing attached to it so that cucumbers and vining squash can climb it. I merely left an opening with no fencing for a door so I can harvest from inside or outside of it since mine wasn't meant to exclude any varmints.

I'm talking about canopies like this:

Pop-Up Canopy

If I were doing this, I'd put pressure-treated lumber around the bottom to attach the chicken wire to so that the squirrels couldn't squeeze underneath the chicken wire there.

The canopy frame I use in the backyard is a 10' x 10' but they come in different sizes.

Or, for a larger tomato-growing area, you could use the framing from one of those portable garages. The frame is about the same as for the canopies, but bigger and (I assume) likely is sturdier. Here's an example of a portable garage:

Portable Garage

I know I've seen this for lower prices at times than the one I linked---I just wanted to find a quick example.

If you want a geodesic dome style, there's kits you can buy to do the framing. Often you can buy the hubs used to connect the PVC pipe online or buy starplates or something similar and then just have your handyman buy and deliver the PVC pipe or wood locally and built the frame. Strombergs sells the starplates and people use them to construct wood framing that then can be turned into the structure of their choice---everything from solid wood chicken coops to chicken wire-covered chicken runs or plastic-covered greenhouses. The starplates are meant for wood-framing, but there's similar hubs available meant for use with PVC or pipe framing.

Starplate Building System

One of the easiest ways to build a simple greenhouse involves building a high tunnel you can walk into using PVC framing or even cattle panel framing built into a hoop house/high tunnel shape. To make a fruit cage (more accurately, a tomato cage structure) you'd just use chicken wire for the covering instead of greenhouse plastic.

You can do this! Or, you can get a handyman to do this and then you'd have a way to keep the squirrels off your plants.

Kim, Oh, I play that sort of hide and seek with the snakes. With three people bitten by copperheads in my county last week, I've officially given up weeding for the rest of snake season. It just isn't worth it.

Timeout sounds nice. I am giving myself timeout indoors on every hot day....so probably most of every day from now through the end of August. For the rest of July and August, all I will do is water and harvest.

At some point, I'll pull out the excessive number of tomato plants (which are well-mulched and almost weed-free) that have been in the ground since March (whenever disease and spider mites hit a certain point, I'll take out those plants) and put fall crops in those beds. My two early tomato beds remain in production so far, and the interim bed of 10 tomato plants at the other end of the garden (planted at the end of April and meant to provide us with fresh tomatoes in between the time I yank out the 4 rows planted in March and the time the fall tomatoes begin producing) already has fruit breaking color. I should yank out those older, tired and increasingly sickly plants this week but that would require working outdoors in the heat for more hours per day than I intend to spend outdoors so I might not do it this week. I wish I could do it at night, but that's when the snakes are the worst.

You know that it is too hot and I am too tired of dealing with it when I am contemplating pulling plants out of the ground just to give myself a break from having to deal with them. It is scary enough harvesting southern peas while just hoping no snakes lie beneath the plants, which are planted close enough together to shade the ground....eliminating weeds by shading them out but also providing dense shade that the snakes like. There's no way I am weeding anything at this point, and sometimes harvesting feels sort of iffy in terms of safety. All my muskmelons and crane melons are trellised, and so are about 80% of my icebox watermelons, so I can harvest those off their trellises easily enough without being too worried about snakes. Usually the only snakes that climb the trellises and hang out on the plant foliage are the rought green tree snakes and I don't mind them. Sometimes they startle me when I don't see them before almost accidentally touching one while harvesting pole beans or lima beans, but the green snakes themselves are very shy and not aggressive and all I have to do is take a couple of steps back and they quickly disappear, generally racing across the garden, through the fence and into the woodland beyond.

Nancy, Sorry about the snake scare. I don't like having them in any building. Snakes are free to roam about 12 or 13 of our 14.4 acres as they wish, but they had better stay out of the house, garage, greenhouse, shed and garden. Even in the yard, if they will leave, we won't even shoot the venomous ones....but if they are determined to stay there where we and the animals are inhabiting the same space and they won't turn and flee, they get shot. We haven't shot a non-venomous snake this year, but if we had chicken or rat snakes getting into the coops and eating eggs or chicks, we'd shoot them if we caught them in there. I can tell when snakes are in the garden even if I am not seeing them because all the frogs, toads, lizards, etc. disappear and that aggravates me a great deal because those creatures help out a great deal with garden pest control.

Cherokee Carbon is a hybrid cross of Cherokee Purple x Carbon, so if you save seeds from the fruit produced by these F-1 plants, you will have the F-2 generation. That means that you have no idea what sort of plant or fruit you will get. Generally in the F-2 generation, you will get a variety of results--and some of them might produce fruit that strongly resemble the original Cherokee Carbon and some of them might not...and it is possible that none of them will produce the sort of fruit you want. ("Life is like a box of chocolates....."). What you get has to do with the way the genes resort themselves within the hybrid plant's offspring. Some people have successfully dehybridized a hybrid through multiple generations and eventually (often only after many generations of plants) ended up with a fruit that resembled the original fruit from which they saved the seed, but it is not easy to do. I have bought seed of supposedly stablized dehybridized versions of hybrids in the past and found that the plants and fruit I got were nowhere near the quality of the original hybrid plant/fruit, so after trying that for a couple of years, I went back to just buying the hybrid seed. I don't have garden space/time to waste on saving seed from hybrids and replanting it only to be disappointed in whatever fruit the plants produce. YMMV.

I'm sorry to hear about your mom. It surely does sound like somebody dropped the ball in terms of notifying the family. I hope she makes a quick recovery and I wish she would come visit you while the yard and garden are so beautiful so she can see what you and Garry have done.

Amy, The thought did cross my mind that returning the stockings did sound like a human activity. The thought that a person might be entering Rebecca's yard and stealing her tomatoes seems 1000 times worse than knowing squirrels are doing it. If they are watching how hard she is working to protect her fruit and returning the stockings, that seems vaguely stalkerish and disturbing.

I had a lot of trouble with a mentally ill person who lived up the road from us (he passed away sometime within the last year, I guess) coming onto our property while I was in the garden (and other people had different sorts of problems with him), so I started locking the driveway gate all the time, whether we are home or not, and that stopped that. I don't have locks on the garden gates but could and would add locks if I thought someone was sneaking into the garden and stealing stuff. (People here know I will share produce with them if they want some, so why steal?)

Jay, I'm sorry the rainfall is missing y'all. The 3+" we have received in July saved my garden from certain death (or at least postponed certain death for a while), but we remain in Moderate Drought and conditions are unlikely to improve during the summer months. I hope we don't go the rest of the month with no rain since that 3+" is more than our average July rainfall. I have little expectation of getting more rain any time soon.

Despite the recent rainfall, our portion of our county has the highest year-to-date rainfall deficit in the state and that is so discouraging. I do think the OKC area in general is worse off than us though, because their rainfall for the last couple of months is much more severe than ours.....and the rainfall they got in March or April isn't helping them at all now.

How much can I complain about drought? Well a lot, I guess, but it does no good. We spend most of each summer in drought so I should be used to it, but I just hate seeing all the green turn brown and production drop.....etc. I think the heat wouldn't be so bad if it would just rain every now and then. Well, dry heat doesn't feel as bad as humid heat so the benefit of rain is a two-edged sword.

Dawn

Nancy I am so sorry about your mom. It's hard to be a distance away and not know what's going on. My mom is only 5 hours and it's hard for me. I hope everything is fine.

Amy I get in trouble all the time when little man is in charge and I try to boss him lol. Usually not letting him on my computer is enough to get in time out.

I have to play hide in seek to find my onions. The bind weed and careless weed have smothered them. If it weren't for my drip line I would probably miss more of them.

Dawn, I'm confident it's not a human taking the tomatoes. The yard is fenced and I'm on good terms with the neighbors. (In fact, 2 sides of the fence are 8 foot privacy fences.) The gate is secured. The hosiery bags I've found have been just tossed on the ground casually. The last tomato I found had obvious squirrel damage. And, they only take very green tomatoes, before they start to break. The hosiery bags have seemed to slow them down, at least. Maybe I can get some tomatoes. They have good taste to go for the Brandy Boys.

It's time to yank out some tomatoes and it's too hot. The brussles sprouts aren't yet ready to go in their places, though. Do I need to give those part shade when I plant them?

Nancy, I'm to the point where I'd shoot them, but along with it being illegal in town, I don't have any experience with guns, therefore, I have no business handling one. Our neighborhood association is pretty active, too, and they'd call police if they heard anything.

Rebecca, Well, I'm glad it is not a human! I admire the squirrel's taste in tomatoes, but still wish they'd leave yours alone. I won't shade transplants once they are in the ground if I had time to properly harden them off to the sun for a couple of weeks first. Otherwise, I probably would shade them. I do try to keep their soil really, really moist (but not soggy) for the first couple of weeks because their young root systems just cannot take up enough moisture if the soil gets dry and the moisture is lower in the ground than the roots can reach at that time. Really, fall brassicas tolerate July and August sunshine and heat surprisingly well considering they are cool-season plants.

People out here in the country shoot everything---it is a survival mechanism for them and their animals. We try to not shoot anything unless it is necessary, but some days I hear gunshots on and off 24/7 and wonder what in the world everyone is shooting.

Someone near us must be shooting a lot of skunks this year. I keep smelling them but not seeing them. I am not complaining about that.

Dawn

Rebecca. . . I don't know if this has helped, but I also have chicken wire guards here and there in a confusing array, along with 6' tall cages here and there, along with fishing line fences around the beds that are not enclosed in the raised bed veggie area. Perhaps seeing all this human machinery has helped critters think twice? Thee are still dozens, if not hundreds of squirrels crossing over from the "woods" across the street in the front. And we leave them alone out there.

Mom was returned to Agape, her assisted living "home," today; thankful. But I had a very serious talk with her, along with our laughing and humor about getting herself down here. (No I'm not talking visiting, I'm talking living here.) . This was actually Garry's idea 2 years ago. She adores him. We tried to talk her into it then, so I brought it up again today. She'll "think about it." She said she wasn't quite ready yet, and I reminded her that if she ends up like she was over the past four days, she won't be able to make that decision--and then her assisted living people would probably call us and we'd have to figure out how to transport her down here. . . she allowed as how that might be a concern, so she promised to thinking about it. Right, Mom. And the thing is, she would think she had died and was in heaven. . . she would love my home-cooked healthy meals, and sitting out here on the deck when it isn't too hot or cold. . . . I'm praying about this. I nursed two very seriously hurt sons and found out, quite unexpectedly, that I am a really good "nurse." Keep your fingers crossed for us. We would be so honored to serve her for her for what must surely be her final days.

I thought I'd love to share my "everything bed" picture with you all, since I refer to it often! :)

Nancy that is beautiful. I do hope your mom makes the decision to come stay with you. That would be so good for you and her. I am not a nursey type at all. When my mom was sick at new years she hollared for me. I tried to help but threw up instead lol. So she would have to call on one of the others.

Nancy, Your place is so gorgeous and I feel confident your mom would love it and would love being there with you and Garry. Maybe you could convince her to come for a 2 week trial visit to see how she'd like being down here and then, if she loved it, the 2 week trial visit could become a permanent living arrangement? It is so hard to get folks her age to change their living arrangements, I think, because they have to push themselves out of their comfort zone.

Kim, I tend to throw up when other people do too and always have been that way, so I would have been a lousy nurse. One of Chris' friends starts nursing school this fall and she is very excited about it. She already has 2 school-aged children so I suppose that alone has prepared her for whatever she'll encounter later on. Anyone who can survive their children's first 4 to 6 years of seemingly constant colds, stomach viruses and other illnesses probably can handle being a nurse.

Dawn