About the same for me! Tomato and pepper plants are much smaller than last season, but very healthy and much less stressed than last season with the early extreme heat we had. I have quite a lot of peppers setting and some tomatoes. I have not lost a single transplant this year - everything really looks good. Squash and cucumber seeds germinated extremely slowly (almost 3 weeks), so they are behind, but also look good. Cool season veggies - peas, cabbage, kales, chards, lettuce, etc. all still doing well.

Glad I checked the weather forecast before I left the house yesterday morning for work. I leave my shade cloth (hail protection) over the tomatoes all season long, but I generally only put it up over the rest of the garden when they're calling for hail. Literally 5 minutes after I arrived home we got hammered with a 10-minute hailstorm that formed right over our neighborhood and moved N/NE. Most stones were about the size of large marbles and there was little wind, so most covered things fared fine. The first 5 minutes weren't even showing on radar, that's how quickly it formed. The hail hammered my flowers out front, but experience with these storms tells me the flowers will recover just fine and I worry little about them. They were so beautiful, though.. :(

This is how everything looked this past weekend. Thankfully everything still looks good thanks to the shade cloth!

Hall of Tomatoes. Most of these were at touching the tops of their trellises by this time last season. Plants are extremely healthy, however.

Looking the other way:

Barrel of micro tomatoes:

Full garden. Same thing here - the tomatoes in the whiskey barrels were pretty much filling their tomato cages by this time last season. Very healthy, however.

This year is definitely later than the past few years, planting tomatoes and peppers the end of May and beginning of June. Everything except for the tomatoes seem to be slow growers. I've started to dig up the garlic just today and am pleased with most of the harvest. The peppers seem stunted, but there are still close to 3 months left before frost, so there's hope for a harvest.

I'd like to say that "everything vegetable" is doing super.

We have gone until July again, hoping for consistent warm temperatures. Starting the day in the 40's is difficult for warm-season vegetables, especially. Then, the wind ...

Here at home, there is more protection than in the distant open garden. However, there isn't much room. Only my few potted tomatoes can compare with the lovely garden pictured above. They have a little scarring from an unusual-for-here hailstorm but recovered well. I have 4 of these tomatoes. Those in the garden are just now beginning to look okay. The peppers and eggplant are in saaad shape.

Steve with a tank sprayer of Spinosad fought off the potato beetles successfully! Without that intervention, that crop would have been doomed, there were so many larva on them. Hopefully, there will be some nice tubers in a few days for Creamed Peas & New Potatoes!

The snow peas and snap peas have done well and contributed to our dinner table. The shell peas are almost at hand!

Sweet corn is growing just fine and some of it will be tasseling, soon.

Cucumbers and melons are in the miserable category along with those peppers and eggplant. Squash is coming along and the pumpkins, as usual, are doing better than most any of the warm-season plants.

But, today it was warm and the mornings are forecast to be good, plant growing temperatures. So, the future looks bright!

Steve

I wish I had pictures BEFORE the vicious hail storm yesterday evening...tomatoes look like they will be OK, every single blossom and teeny peppers were ripped off, beans took a pounding, onions were pulverized, and the herbs look pretty sad right now. At least it isn't 100 degrees, hoping there is time to recover although the peppers might be a total loss again this year.

nbm1981 - I'm in Erie too, hope your shade cloth (hail protection) held! I might need to go that route myself, I'm liking your setup. Sadly I'm feeling like it's a repeat of last year - too much damaging weather.

Hope everyone else fared well!

SO sorry about your damaged garden, Nicole. Mother Nature can truly be brutal. We lost everything last year in August. Hopefully your garden will recover and give you something to harvest.

Hi Nicole - so sorry to hear about your garden!! We only got a minor amount of hail on Friday night that did little damage. The storm last Monday (July 1) was much worse. The other storms we've had the past few days have only given us rain, including last night. We just barely missed getting hail, but it POURED for about 30 minutes. Whereabouts in Erie are you? We're in Creekside just west of the PD at County Line/Telleen.

The shade cloth is amazing at protecting the garden from hail. I've been using the same pieces for 4 seasons now and it's holding up beautifully. I do take it down in the fall and put it back up in spring once I've planted. I use 70/30 which is just large enough to let enough sun in for the plants to thrive and small enough that most hail either bounces off, collects on top or gets slowed down enough before falling through that it does little damage to the plants underneath. I leave the netting up over the tomatoes all season, but I take the netting on the other side on and off as needed because it can feel a bit claustrophobic having to bend over to work under the netting on that side. It's also a bit wider of a space, so the netting doesn't quite stretch far enough to tent it like I do over the tomatoes (those posts holding it up are 8' tall).

I don't worry about my flowers because they always come back strong(er). After losing almost everything in a huge storm in late August back in 2014, I decided I was going to stop chancing it and start putting up something to protect the garden. It's not the most attractive, but is very effective.

I don't expect anywhere near "normal" harvest this season, though, because the spring was so cool. My plants are several weeks behind last season both in size and fruit set. I guess we'll see - time tells all!

Not great, overall, but some things are having a better than average year.

Tomatillos and peppers are doing well this year.

Tomatoes are not.

Beans are mediocre so far, but finally climbing well.

Squash seems vigorous, melons do not.

Berry crops are having a good year.

Root crops are not having a good year - all my carrots have bolted, which has never happened before - half of my beets didn't make it to June - parsley (for roots) never germinated.

Greens were almost a total bust this year. We got a week of salad greens, one time. Spinach started out marvelously, but all the rain, cold and wet left me wanting for more.

I'm hoping all that green tomatillo salsa will make up for it.

Thanks nmb1981 - that is some great advice on the shade cloth. Most of my garden is in a small raised bed, some in ground, and then containers so it wouldn't be too much to do something like you've got to provide extra protection. I'm in Country Fields just off of N 119th and Tynan area so not that far away and had the exact opposite experience with the hailstorms. I will say our grass looks fabulous though and the less we have to water with what the rates are here the better!

A couple days after the storm, some good sun, and things are looking like they will bounce back - as long as we don't have an early fall! Of course I felt this way last year and it seemed that as soon as the wounds started to heal the next round of hail would hit.

Hope we all can get something out of this season that makes us happy. You are right, "time tells all"!

Wow, Nicole, you're super close. I have lived in the Denver area my entire life and it never ceases to amaze me how much the weather can vary from one street to the next, quite literally. Friends of ours in Orchard Glen got hit by what we think was a small tornado back in 2013 - ripped garage doors out of houses and knocked over tons of trees. We only got wind and rain.

Agreed on the grass! I haven't watered in two weeks and ours looks amazing. Nothing compares to rain.

I am glad your plants seem to be doing okay considering the onslaught. I would highly recommend getting some shade cloth. 70/30 is just perfect and suits me well. A roll can be quite expensive, but it will last for years and is quite versatile. I won't ever have a garden without using some form of netting over it. I would imagine a good ag fabric would work well, too.. just not sure how that would hold up to hail.

Odd season, isn't it matthew? Hopefully the remainder of the season will mellow out and surprise us. What is the issue you're having with tomatoes? Not growing well? Not setting fruit? Both? My tomato plants are GORGEOUS and healthy, but about half the size as last season and setting far fewer fruit.

I am looking forward to this upcoming stretch of hot and drier weather - I think our gardens will explode with new growth! At least there's nothing severe forecast through the next week.. of course, Rocky Mountains are never predictable..

My dill and parsely look good. Got some cabbage as well. The summer squash are producing, but I don't think we'll be trying to find homes for the overabundance of zucchini (as often happens).

Pretty much everything died from the herbicide damage. Out of 30 tomatoes, I had 3 survive. The beans sprouted and quickly died. Potatoes, eggplant, peas, all DOA. The pumpkins are hanging on, but definitely on life support.

The melons and peppers are alive and well so far, but this has not been the year for melons and peppers. We were down in the mid-low 40's as late as the last week of June. They are all pretty puny.

It's mid-July and things are so-so and not so good in the veggie garden.

The 3pm temperature today is 71º. Sunday 3pm, it was 80º. The 3pm temperature on Saturday was 91º. I don't think that this is too inhibiting to plant growth but, if that is true, we have only reached that benign threshold these last few days. Over the last TWO months, there was a little too much of these erratic temperature swings, with plenty of wind to boot!

I'd say that those warm season plants most dependent on warmth have been the ones suffering the most. But, cool-season plants seem a bit stunted, themselves! Sweet corn looks good. Tomatoes look about where they usually are at this time, I'm reasonably sure. However, I doubt if I would have said that a week ago. Cucumbers are beginning to grow. Summer squash is okay. Winter squash has problems! I don't know if Buttercup can mature a crop this year. That will be a first!

Peppers and melons have had a very difficult 2019. I always cross my fingers with melon hopes but finding appropriate varieties several years ago made me confident of success. Shaken!

Steve

Another Week. Friday, the nearest US Weather Service Station to garden had the morning low at 51°f. Second closest in opposite direction had it at 46°. Another high above 90° by ... Tomorrow! We are on a seesaw.

At last, there is some broccoli and an early cabbage could be harvested. One might think that some cooler temperatures wouldn't have slowed the brassicas. It's the seesaw! You know how when you on the playground as a kid, you thought you were really going places?! No. Just up and down on the monkey bars, up and down in the swings ... ya know, seesaws are considered too dangerous for playgrounds, these days.

Usually, I can fit some zucchini or cucumber plants between the cabbage es and cut them back by mid-July, giving the new transplants a chance to grow. Didn't happen this year. Often, I can pull the peas the first week of July and sow a late planting of bush beans. Didn't happen this year. Well, there was open ground for a second planting of beans, the cukes were set in where green onions were being pulled. I think we are alright with the zucchini ...

The broccoli is welcome this year (by yours truly ;o). DW climbed too securely onto the kale stagecoach right through the winter months! Our normal broccoli-centered winter veggie shopping fell almost by the wayside! I like to have it in the garden as the Asian greens season winds down but there is a definite feeling of overdoing a good thing, most years.

The broccoli plants are small but maybe this will be a year with healthy lateral buds. I mean, I didn't find a single aphid on what was carried into the kitchen! Think about those lateral buds on your early cabbage, too. Yeah, those can be tender and tasty for a late summer stir-fry ..!

Steve

with a small bowl full of tomatoes on the kitchen counter and corn tassels & silk showing up in the garden

I'll have peppers to pick soon. Tomatoes are flowering, but only 2 cherry tomatoes have set fruit so far. Eggplants are setting fruit now. I'm finding some flowers from the tomatoes and peppers on the ground, am thinking they aborted in last week's high temps, 98 - 100 degrees. We got about a 1/3 of an inch of rain last night and it was welcome! I'm hoping for a little more this afternoon/evening.

I pulled garlic yesterday before the rain. Not a banner year, but decent and I caught them before the cloves started to separate. I usually wait too long to pull them. I didn't get garlic ordered in time last fall, so just replanted the larger cloves of Music and Inchelium Red I pulled last summer.

I finally pulled the radish plants, will see if I can collect seed from them. They were hiding 1 lone beet, 1 parsnip plant and a row of splindly looking carrots. After I sowed in spring I left the garden gate open while I went inside to get a drink of water. By the time I got back outside, the dog had dug through my nice, neat rows. I've resown the carrots, beets and parsnip and turtle beans. It's probably too late for the beans and parsnip, but parsnip seed doesn't seem to be viable for more than a year, so what the heck.

I'm hoping the tomatoes come through by the end of the season.

Barb

Growing radish to maturity?

Barb, have you ever tried tasting the pods when they are young and tender? I know, it may be a little late asking that now.

You don't need to buy the variety that is supposed to be especially for that (with its distasteful name). No, in my experience, they are very good and more to my liking than the roots!

Steve

I have not digit, but will give that I try when I sow the next batch. I'm not a big fan of radish, but my husband and father are, so I grew 4 types this spring. It was more than either of them could eat. When they started getting past prime, I just left the remaining plants in place to go to seed. Thanks for the tip!

For a long time, I didn't think that I could eat a radish without heartburn. It might have been true because my stomach was more messed up at one time.

These days, I pay attention to quality and don't eat older ones.

The pods, too! Tenderness counts.

Steve

Test for picture

Did that picture not upload?

Maybe I will find something of interest for a picture. The green beans are producing! It was just a big handful that we had for dinner but there will be plenty by the end of the week.

Cucumbers! So nice to have a cucumber on a 90°f afternoon. The vines are still short but it's important to take those nice slicing cukes off so that the plants can continue to grow.

Sweet corn soon.

Steve

No luck uploading pictures for several months. I've tried the desktop, laptop and the phone. Maybe the common denominator is the Pixel phone as all pictures were taken with it. I'll try lowering the quality and try again someday.

The garden here in Aurora seems to finally catching up after the cold late spring. Some of the tomato plants are 7 feet tall but not lots of fruit yet. Harvesting some peppers starting about a week ago. Basil is really taking off. Pole beans are just starting to flower. Surprisingly still harvesting a few peas. Sweet potato vines look awesome. Regular potatoes are probably still a month away from harvest. The grapevines have set a lot of clusters. The hop plant has gotten incredibly LARGE. Harvesting some currants from 2 year old bush. Ground cherries and tomatillos look okay. The Chicago hardy fig tree seems to be coming along. The pear tree died of fire blight :-(

I'm letting various things go to seed this year including lettuce, swiss chard, celery and radicchio.

Sweet Corn!

With my chard and little smokies ... Sunday, it was with the broccoli.

There are green beans but they didn't wait for the corn and we over-indulged last week. We will have both in a day or two.

Premature but it's difficult to wait when the kernels begin to change color and it is oh so tender. Besides, there is plenty more on the way! Have to keep up.

It was 99f this afternoon but we migrated in to air conditioned comfort.

Steve