I'm watering them now, HU.

Because you can't check email at work...I found another sheet, but still could use a couple more. It's possible the corn will begin shading the first row of tomatoes in the later afternoon, so maybe we won't need to worry about it. I'm better today, btw. Just needed sleep and alone time. haha)

Dawn, I'm sorry for your allergies and especially sorry about your neighbor. Admiring flowers always counts.

That's a nice website, Nancy, and a good picture of you.

Picked about a meals worth of green beans today. There are lots of blossoms but if it doesn't cool off soon, they'll be done. There are a couple of rows of Mascotte in that bed, because they are meant for containers. I think they would be good for that, kind of small plants with delicate blooms and thin beans, more like you get in cans. It is an all America selection, so probably a hybrid. Renee's has it. Wonder if they'll have a mid season sale. I have 2 beds full of cowpea volunteers. You would think I intentionally planted the dang things. The sorghum never came up, so I guess i'll let them grow. They might be whippoorwill. I can't remember if I planted any red ones last year (of which I have 3 varieties.) I thought that bed had root knot nematodes. These don't seem to be bothered.

I forgot to take a picture of Ron's compost bins. He used scrap lumber and pallets. Maybe tonight.

The 3 volunteer cucurbita volunteers have small flowers. But the leaves look too big to me to be cucumbers. I'm guessing melons. Not sure how they got across the yard, but they will make Ron happy. Though last years wasn't very tasty.

I want to say you could use sunflowers to remediate herbicide contamination and King oyster mushrooms for 2, 4-D. I have no idea if mushrooms would grow in our heat. I've always wanted to try. I can find lots of sources about sunflowers for heavy metal remediation, but so far none mention herbicide. Maybe I should grow them in the poison bed.

Sasquatch wants to go out with daddy, but he's cussing whatever he's working on and it's just too hot.

I was laughing thinking of Dawn sleeping late.

our gardens are doing so good. I am so thrilled after two years unwanted hiatus it is so great to have harvests.

we got carrots potatoes today

We're binge-watching Bosch. And I'm being super lazy with the hot weather. My big job for today was watering. And NOOOOO, dbarron, lots of our gardens are way behind. And the rest of you. Mine is. I have a couple puny pepper plants producing. Tomatoes at the school look like Marvel comic book heroes. They're so thick I can't even see into them to see what tomatoes there might be. Mine here? Well they're better than usual, but still don't have any breaking color. Don't get me wrong. I'm pleased, however with all. I guess my main thrill is that my tomatoes don't have fungus!!

GDW and I realize that we'll be watering intensively probably every single day for a while. And the school system will be. paying water bills for the school! HalleLUjah!!! I was over last week, in the afternoon, and everything was SO dry and did not look great. I visited about it. . . and said we needed MORE MORE MORE water. LOL. Well, I was there 3 days ago and it looked AMAZING. What happened was that the guy who waters began watering in the evenings instead of the mornings. Result: The water didn't evaporate. It's so spread out there that fungus is not really a worry. The plants looked.fabulous! Oh my! HERE, we have little choice. It's so spread out, and there is so much lawn involved, that we can't just water "in the morning" or "in the evening." I watered all day long today and still only got maybe 2/3 of the place watered.

I did not do much today. I planted about a 8 x 35 food bed of PEPH in the wildlife garden. I did it all with a tractor, except tossing the pea seed, no work was involved. I have not been feeling great, got an appointment with the Cardiologist tomorrow. I had an appointment last week and forgot it. Madge and I are both slipping. We write it on the calendar and still forget. When you get old and beat up it seems as though one of you is going to the Dr. every week.

I have all kinds of projects each day I want to do, but I manage to spent most of my time here in the recliner. If I could just wiggle my nose and get it done, I would have to put hinges on my nose to keep from breaking it off.

dbarron, I hope you get rain. I hope we all get rain. Why is it that we get rain when we don't need it and don't get it when we do need it?

Jennifer, Those tassels are your male flowers and pollen. When the silks come out on the ears on the sides of the plants, those are your females, and then the pollen sheds from the tassels and falls down onto the silks or is carried by the wind, and you get corn. Isn't that awesome?

I feel like my allergies get worse every year, and I've had them since I was a small child, so you'd think that I'd be used to allergy misery by now. I just hate it.

Tim just came home from our sweet friend's house after helping load him up on the ambulance to go to the hospital, perhaps for the last time. Tim made sure the paramedics had the DNR form on their clipboard before he left their house to come back home. (sigh) It is so hard to see people you love going through such an awful time, and they are doing it with grace, faith and dignity. My heart is breaking for them all.

Amy, If you can shade the green beans they might manage to produce a bit longer. Some summers we have had them last fairly well, maybe into July although that is not necessarily common in the summer heat.

I don't know if Renee's will have enough seeds left for their usual sale unless they have gotten more in stock. The last time I was on their website, a lot of stuff was sold out. I blame the pandemic gardeners for that. : )

Kim, The rain and soggy soil have given much of my garden a hiatus, but I'm okay with that. Well, it would just drive me crazy to not be okay with it, so I have to pretend I only wanted a half-garden. If drought doesn't eat us alive, I can grow more in the fall. This year is still better than last year when most of my time was spent in hospitals, nursing homes and at funerals. At least I can be out in the garden, even if I am sneezing my way through the weeding and feeling like I'm not yet winning the weeding war. I let all the volunteer flowers that sprouted in the pathways stay there and now they are starting to bloom. The pathways are a mess, but a beautiful mess of zinnias and cosmos.

I truly do not sleep late. Usually I'm awake by 5 or 5:30 a.m. and if something happens and I sleep until 7 or 8 a.m., Tim is checking to see if I am alive or dead. Even if we are out at a fire half the night or most all of the night, I cannot sleep in the daytime. Every now and then I can force a nap on myself but it usually happens because I was sleepy to begin with and took allergy medicine that knocked me out.

After tonight's medical page to our neighbor's house, I bet I will not be able to fall back asleep any time soon and it already is almost 1 a.m. I need to hurry up and fall asleep so I can wake up at the usual time. lol. Tim turns off his fire pager on work nights so he can get a good night's sleep before he gets up to go to work. I usually do too, but I left mine on tonight expecting we'd get a medical call next door. I'm glad I did because I was able to wake up Tim to make that medical call after the pager woke me up (he slept right through it). He would have felt terrible if he'd missed making that medical run.

We had a wicked fire down at Thackerville today....somebody's property with at the very least dozens of tires piled up on it (I suppose an illegal dump, I'm not sure) and our firefighters were out there for hours, and that fire is expected to burn all night tonight and maybe all day tomorrow. You cannot extinguish a big pile of burning tires. It stinks up the whole area too. They bulldozed a fire break around it.

Nancy, I only water the garden. I used to try to water all the yard and just got to the point where it was just too much. I suppose if fire danger was really high and the grass was a crispy brown, I might water for safety's sake, but I hate pouring a lot of money on the ground just for the sake of a green yard. All our shrubs, trees and vines are well-established though, so they can survive on next to no irrigation. It will be different next year when we have a landscape of newer, smaller, younger and less well-established plants.

Larry, I'm laughing at the image of you sitting there and wiggling your nose, so thanks for the giggles.

Some areas have a 10-20% chance of rain on a few days this week. I don't think it is expected to be much in inches or anything, but even a few sprinkles might cool down an area temporarily. The QPF is showing a better chance of rain around Days 6-7, so roughly Sun night through Tuesday. Let's see if anything comes of that.

All those wildfires in western and northwestern OK are so horrible. There were tons more of them today, and I've noticed they're creeping closer and closer to the OKC metro area as the dry conditions advance. It looks like it is going to be a summer to remember for all the wrong reasons.

Dawn

Amy—pink oyster mushrooms are tropical and will fruit in our summers, in shade. Brown ones do better in spring and fall, and blues like cold so they like more winter and early spring temps. They’ll grow on all kinds of materials (straw, sawdust, coffee grounds, grains, wood), but not in dirt.

I honestly checked my calendar for Mercury Retrograde as soon as I got to work. Yep...there it is...we are almost there.

LOL

Please let our gardens get rain (except the few of those who don't need it, of course).

That is all.

I think we all need it by now (correct me if I'm wrong)?

Technically, it's raining...however, the rain is composed of a fine mist that is cooling..but not really wetting. Anyone get lucky with real rain?

I need rain, its hard to believe that 2 or 3 weeks ago I was wanting it to stop raining. Rain may be about a week out for me,from what I can see on the computer, but different sites tell me different stories. I have been watering some, but not near enough. I bought some parts to repair my irrigation tubes. I have not used them in about 5 years. Many of them were broken by the tractor roll bar as I would drive the tractor in and out of the shed, they were stored on the roof and would hang down low enough to get snagged.

I still have card board I can put down to mulch over, so I really need to get that done, but I am like Dawn, my allergies give me fits when I get to fooling around with hay or compost.

It is disappointing for me to read about green beans not doing well in the heat. I was so late getting some of my stuff in that I may not even get my seeds back. I have not grown a lot of different kinds of vegetables so my experience is very limited. I have grown okra, tomatoes and peppers for quite a few years, but not a lot of other gardening experience. This is just my second time to try pumpkins and butternut. I grow PEPH about every year, but they grow well under a lot of different conditions. I have been doing more experimenting since I started the wildlife garden, because I feel I have much more room to play with, plus the extra room permits me use the tractors, which also takes a lot of the work out. I am just not man enough to till or work with my hands like I use to.

I will check on the wildlife garden this afternoon, and if there is still anything over there I may get some cattle panels to try to protect it. I can buy several cattle panels for what a solar fence charger cost, and I can find more uses for fence panels. I already have 2 or 3 ac fence chargers, just no solar charger.

Y'all stay out of the heat.

I had given up, and then it came...I won't need to water for at least 2 days I don't think. Rain...unexpectedly.

All my rain came through a garden hose, and I didn't even get through. The mosquitoes ran me back into the house. There is one thing I can brag on my garden about this year, it has produces the biggest crop of mosquitoes I believe I have ever had.

Larry thanks for the suggestion about planting corn in the tomato ring that has herbicide damage. I’m fairly sure it was Grazon/Remedy so yes the corn should not be affected. The straw in there as mulch may be contaminated now but originally was safe. I’ve used it in several other beds without any problem. I’ll let you know if it works.

farngardener, I think Dawn was the one that suggested corn, although I do agree with her. I dont grow corn often because I have too many coons, plus I have high winds often that really mess up my corn. I favor short plants or ones I can stake. I supporting corn with "T" post and hay twine, but it was a lot of work and still turned out to be a mess. The grass plants that I like are small grains that I grow for the critters, but that is a waste of money for most people, but I like to watch the birds getting after the seeds. I have a 50# bag of Brown Top millet that I bought to plants for the birds, but my time and weather have been working against me. Fox Tail millet is another grain I like to plant, it will produce more biomass than the Brown Top.

For those growing corn this summer :

https://www.google.com/search?q=putting+oil+on+corn+ears&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=putting+oil+on+corn+ears&aqs=chrome..69i57.12406j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

for control of earworms the old school way is to put a few drops of mineral oil onto the silks of the ear after the silks have turned brown (after pollination is complete but not before or will inhibit pollination ).

There's other ways to such as spraying the ears with BT.

https://www.vegedge.umn.edu/sites/vegedge.umn.edu/files/styles/panopoly_image_original/public/cew_larvae_0.jpg?itok=udXjDPmh

https://www.vegedge.umn.edu/pest-profiles/pests/corn-earworm-sweetcorn

Here's a good youtube vid from OSU about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxGMMdsHA3Q

The earworm problem is much worse for late planted corn or corn grown in the fall.

Also heat can be a problem for late corn or fall corn.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2090223/how-late-can-i-plant-corn

I tried to plant some sweet corn last July for the fall and couldn't even get it to hardly come up.

The OSU fall planting guide gives a date of July 15 for planting fall sweet corn.

Oh , and there is a way to keep corn from blowing over in a windstorm , similar to a Florida weave for tomatoes ( first time I've seen this):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCoduHBiJnE

HU

Here’s our corn silk, HU.

A gopher got my largest and most pepper-laden Anaheim plant. Came out and found the plant half underground, eaten just to the middle of the stalk. I managed to salvage a couple of small peppers, but this means war. In previous years I have been content to plant extra bean plants and live and let live, but the truce is ended.

https://tenor.com/view/arnold-schwarzenegger-sneaking-out-camoflauge-camo-prep-gif-5272373

—Marleigh

Marleigh, I am sorry about your plant, if you don't have a box trap or two, better head to town. I think I made my first money by trapping gophers. When I was very young, I could trap gophers and save their front feet and take them to town when mom went in to do laundry. The county would pay $.10 for the feet. We had a peddler that came by about every week or so, I had to have a pineapple, the first one I had ever seen. I paid $.25 of my blood money to get a pineapple, which the whole family got to enjoy.

The deer got into my okra, beans, sweet potatoes and butternut last night. I have to put up an electric fence almost every year. I don't know why I have to wait till the deer start eating something before I put up the fence. All of my plants will survive if I don't have any more damage, but some have really been set back. The butternut were hit the hardest. I normally just put the fence up on 3 sides, but this year, because of the way the garden is laid out I will have to place the wire on 4 sides. I still have the charger hanging on a post near the south garden. All I will have to do is drive a few post into the ground and add a little extra wire for the area that I added to the garden to protect the south garden. I will have to start from scratch on the north garden.

Thanks for the gopher memory.

I'm heartbroken about your friend, Dawn. How very sad for all of you. Prayers for you all.

I hadn't realized the green beans would be gone about now. Well. Now I know something else new. I'm bummed for the school, because I planted quite a few there. Oh well. More room for squash and cucumbers.

Garry was on a mission this week to find a new truck. He had a list of "must haves," including CD player (good luck with THAT one, buddy), power seats (good luck with that one, too), running boards. . . He went to Muskogee first, then to Wagoner; on to Broken Arrow yesterday. We didn't care about color--cept I said no black and no white. He found it in Broken Arrow. Yep, he did. Dawn, I'll always think of you with this truck. He brought it home to see what I thought. I loved it. He did good. So we'll go back tomorrow to seal the deal.

Gardens are ho hum. Flowers are good. . . veggies. . . . And now have to fix dinner.

I’m not happy. I bought my Porter seeds from Seeds n Such, because they specified they had the small egg shaped fruit. This is what they’re growing like. Anyone know how they are to work with? The egg shaped ones taste better and produce better in the heat. Either they have the wrong strain or they put the wrong seeds in the envelope.

Just to be looking ahead , fall gardening planting schedule;

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/fall-gardening.html

HU

Rebecca, Whatever that is, it clearly is not Porter, and the owner of Seeds N Such is an experienced Seedsman who has previously owned other seed companies that were very successful, so this little mistake surprises me. I suspect the seed was mislabeled at the wholesale level before Seeds N Such received it. I suppose it might be Porter Improved, or at least the TomatoFest version of Porter Improved, which I do not think matches the original Porter Improved released around 60 years ago, but I doubt there is anyone living now who was affiliated with the Gene Porter Seed Company to confirm that. Here's what the TomatoFest version of Porter Improved looks like:

Porter Improved at TomatoFest

Nancy, Thank you. Our friend departed this earth today and, to be honest, it was simultaneously both devastatingly sad and yet also a relief to hear that his suffering and pain had ended. As you know so well, cancer is extremely cruel.

We have friends who love the Ford trucks and I hope that Garry got a good one. If it says Texas Edition, it has to be a good one, right? Those rowdy Texas are hard on their pickup trucks.

I had to laugh thinking about our "new" truck which was new in the early autumn of 1997. We had just bought this place and needed a new truck. Our neighbor up the road had an old farm truck that was about 20 or 25 years old. He kinda poked fun at our shiny new truck and teased us about it being a pretty city truck cause it was not yet all beat up and worn out. He was in his late 80s then and is long gone and so is his old farm truck. Now, our truck is the old farm truck in the neighborhood so I guess life has gone full circle. We talk about getting a new truck, but the nice thing about an old one is that you can haul absolutely anything in it and not have to worry about messing it up, so it would seem a shame to get a new one now.

Jennifer, I'm not sure what it means for Mercury to be in retrograde but I hope it is a good thing.

I think all of us do need rain now. No matter how much rain we had in the past, the entire month of June has been very dry for most of us. At our house we've only had about a tenth of an inch in June so far. Our average for June is about 4.25" so we are extremely dry compared to an average June, and all the tons of rain that was making us muddy is long gone, dried up and, you know, the clay is doing its usual thing of cracking all over the place and looking miserable. I bet on paper our year-to-date rainfall still is above average, but that's misleading because the plants cannot survive on whatever fell in February or March and is long gone. The good news is we're seeing fewer mosquitoes!

The forecast for us doesn't show us getting a lot of rain, and our best chances aren't until next week, but we'll happily take whatever we get, if we get anything at all.

dbarron, I always see that any rain is better than no rain, but you misty rain is trying t prove me wrong. We have clouded up two days in a row as if it was about to rain, and then the clouds just evaporate and disappear, so it isn't our turn yet.

Larry, Well, all you need is an occasional cool day when the beans are in bloom and they could set beans, so you never know. I had late beans in 2012 and they produced on and off all summer. I was surprised. That usually doesn't happen here.

Hu, I always have worm-free corn if I plant an early season crop in late March because the corn matures before the ear worms show up. Obviously I didn't plant corn this March when the garden was under water, and most years it isn't worth the headache of growing it for fall. I have, at times, grown Red Stalker or some form of Indian Corn for fall for decorations and don't seen to have as much corn ear worm or European corn borer issues with those. Since this seems to be a fairly bad army worm year, I'm not even thinking about autumn corn.

Marleigh, I'm sorry about your pepper plant. Are y'all drier than usual this summer? That usually is the only time I have trouble with gophers or voles, and more so with voles than gophers here. Good luck with the looming Gopher War of 2020.

It was very warm if not quite hot today and I really stayed indoors and avoided the outdoors as much as possible. Tim had taken the day off because Jesse was having very minor surgery (a cyst on his should drained) and Jesse doesn't like going to the vet, so taking him there is a huge ordeal that requires superhuman strength and endurance. The vet sedates him to examine him because he REALLY doesn't like being there, but if we had any brains at all, we'd find a way to sedate him before putting him in his dog crate in the back of the SUV in order to go to the vet because he fights that too, and he is a strong dog. It is funny. He is fine going to his crate to sleep inside the house, but put the traveling crate (identical to his crate upstairs) in the SUV and he becomes Godzilla trying to rampage across the countryside and avoid getting in the crate. After Jesse was home from the vet, I sat in the living room with him and kept an eye on him as he recovered from a little bit of wooziness. He was all happy and excited to be home, his unpleasant trip to the vet seemingly forgotten. He did sleep more than usual though. He is not much of one to sleep during the day but he sure did sleep away the afternoon.

I need to harvest tomatoes tomorrow and will try to get outdoors and do it early. There might be more peppers ready as some were only half mature the last time I did a big pepper harvest.

It will be interesting to see tomorrow's Oklahoma Drought Monitor and to see how much further east the Abnormally Dry and drought conditions have advanced. The wildfires in western OK remain really bad for this time of the year and if rain is going to fall anywhere, I hope it falls there and lots of it too. They need for actual rain to fall and not just dry lightning storms that start more fires. Between fire calls and motor vehicle accidents, our VFD has been increasingly busy the last couple of weeks, probably paying for the long quiet winter and spring we had. Still, even our worst fire this week is nothing at all compared to the big monster fires they've been having in western OK.

The forecast for rainfall is looking a lot better with each update of the QPF and it looks like we might get a bit cooler if the rain comes. Our local forecast is for Saturday to be a miserable combination of heat and humidity though, sort of the price we pay for the chance of rain that's coming in a few days. Whatever rainfall comes probably will be too little too late for the summer wildflowers. They've been burning up in this heat and lack of rainfall and already are trying to go to seed. It is too early for that, but it is happening anyway.

Dawn

Dawn—So sorry about your friend. It is some comfort that he is no longer suffering. Lord have mercy.

We are fairly dry, though I’ve been working hard to keep the moisture in the beds consistent so the veggies don’t suffer. My yard on that side slopes downward (hence raised beds, because we get our neighbor’s runoff), but there is a shallow depression all the way around our house that funnels the water down to the creek. The garden is higher than that, and one particular area is always a magnet for gophers. I suspect that is probably the driest part of the garden underground, and that’s why he/they are busy. No matter. Amazon had overnight shipping on traps, since our TSC had NOT ONE!

Larry—I love that story! Thank you for sharing. It is a timeless battle. One of my favorite memories of my grandmother was after she broke her hip the second time, and was still walking with a cane. We were out in the garden and she saw a gopher peek out of his hole, and yelled for me to get the hose. We flushed him out with that, and then she thwapped him with her cane. He was done with one good whack. 86 years old and killing gophers with a bionic hip and a cane; she was quite a person.

Rebecca—Both Annie’s Seeds and Victory Seeds list Porter as egg-shaped with photos, and Willhite carries Porter Improved. Hopefully you can find stock you’re happy with!

—Marleigh

Hi Everyone.

Looks like we might all get a bit of rain. Maybe it will be "just right"....sorta like Baby Bear's porridge...and chair and bed too, if I remember correctly.

Anyway...our gardens are good. We have tiny grasshoppers showing up, squash bug eggs, but oddly no adults that I've seen. Do birds eat squash bugs? It seems like it would be hard for birds to see them. Aphids, of course, and a bit of spider mite damage, I think. We do have a ladybugs...and I was SO excited to see a green lacewing in the survivalist garden. I don't recall seeing those around my garden in the past.

But, even with all the buggies, we are getting good harvests of stuff and will probably start canning soon.

Sorry...this is for HU because he can't check his personal email from work but can look at this forum. (HU, sure come over. I'll be home around 4. We are taking the K to the splash pad today so I'll be tired and would welcome any help. I thought the same thing about the sheets. We can just put them in a large trash bag until we need them again. If you get there before me, you know where everything is. )

Mercury in retrograde isn't really a good thing, Dawn. The planet appears to move backwards. Mercury is the planet/god of communication and travel. So, it's said there's often communication issues during a retrograde....and there's a shadow period before. Tuesday started out with a bang of communication and travel issues for a lot of people I know, in a lot of areas including a major cell service that was out nation wide...and that's why I checked my calendar. I was sorta joking. Sorta.

And if I believed all of this, I just realized as I'm typing that I probably made a bad call about communicating something to a group of people last night.

If we get all the rain they're showing for the next week, I'll be stuck indoors and will hopefully be able to fully catch up here instead of just scanning through the posts.

Marleigh, Thank you. Being diagnosed at Stage 4 cancer is cruel in and of itself because it usually means a person's time is so short, and the patient and family hardly have time to absorb the diagnosis and what it means and then it quickly is over. It just sort of leaves everyone feeling shell-shocked.

Here's this week's Oklahoma Drought Monitor. Those of you who are in central OK may find your area classified as Abnormally Dry or Moderate Drought this week, depending on your location, as the Flash Drought conditions continue to move across more of western, southwestern, northern and central OK.

Your grandmother sounds like she was simply marvelous! All the old gardeners here kept gardening (and ranching and riding their horses) through various ailments and illnesses, even when frail bones and joints finally put them in a wheelchair. They were so happy as long as they could do some of their favorite activities, even at a reduced level. One of them was so determined to keep his garden tidy even after he could barely stand and walk that he'd carry a folding chair out to his garden and sit in the chair, hoeing from a seated position, progressing slowly down row after row.

Here's the latest Oklahoma Drought Monitor map, showing continued spread of the flash drought conditions, particularly in northern and central OK this week.

Latest Drought Monitor Map

Here's the United States Drought Monitor Map for the same time frame for those of you in other states, and for us to look at the overall drought and place our portion of it in context:

Latest U S Drought Monitor

Ever since the Gene Porter Seed Company in Stephenville, TX, shut down in the 1990s, it has become harder and harder to find the correct Porter and Porter Improved that are true to what was sold by the seed company that originated it. For some reason, Porter Improved seed has been corrupted the most and anyone who grew the original has been disappointed by what now is sold as Porter Improved. TIt is pretty easy to find Porter, although the seeds Rebecca bought definitely were not Porter. I believe the retailers with Porter seed that produces fruit that is closest to the original include Texas seed company Willhite Seed and Victory Seed. Hopefully they are growing their own seed or sourcing it from a different wholesaler than the one used by Seeds N Such. Unfortunately many of the big seed companies buy their wholesale seed from the same large multinational seed producers so, often, when a specific variety is not true to type in a given year, the same crossed or mislabeled seed is being sold by all the others as well. I grew up on Porter tomatoes, not that any of us particularly cared for them. The only thing they had going for them was that they produced well in July and August when other varieties were shut down by the heat, which is precisely why my dad grew them.

I already harvested tomatoes this morning, except for the cherry types, and I have a lot of SunGolds to go back out and harvest. They produce so well that keeping up with picking all the fruit gets tedious.

The chances of rain still seem pretty good, so maybe our gardens will get some relief over the next week. Fingers crossed!

Dawn

I’ll be emailing Seeds n Such and attaching the picture. And buying Victory next year. Definitely disappointed, even though I’m very happy with the other seeds, and these plants are growing well. I will see what they say. The Diva cucumbers that wouldn’t grow last year were his too.

Birds are messing with the cherry tomatoes this year. Normally I don’t have much trouble with that. Got the bunny fence around the green beans, and planted some pole beans. They all get afternoon shade, so I can usually keep them producing. Onion necks are soft, but mostly green. How long is too long to leave them in? No baseballs, but I’m pretty pleased for the first year. I need to fertilize more next year.

Rebecca

ihave several year’s worth of porter seeds saved. I could send you some These were all isolated but not bagged blooms. Every one I’ve grown has grown true. Pinkish almost red oval. The only difference I notice is every year they seem bigger. Not much just slightly noticeable.

i will be growing out 2 eachOf all of the different years for fall. The re won’t be any other tomatoes in the area so it will be a good time.

Garden as of 6/19. The rain is here now, so no watering or weeding for me today!

All is growing well, just a lot of grass trying to grow where it ought not. Not a new tale.

Robert, you have a beautiful garden. I have never had a garden that looked that good.

I just got back from Tractor Supply Co. I bought 5 more cattle panels in hope of saving some of my wildlife garden, from the wildlife. I planted people food over there this year along with the critter food. The deer cant seem to tell the difference, they hit the pumpkins hard last night. There is plenty of clover for then to eat, I guess pumpkin taste better.

Robert, your garden is so pretty! Not even any bad foliage!

Larry, good luck with saving the people food!

Rain started here about 15 minutes ago. It's a beautiful thing to feel rain come in. One minute you're outside in the muggy sun and suddenly there's the cool breeze and clouds. Then, the smell of rain...and finally the actual rain. Lovely when you've been dry for a long time.

Our weekend plans sadly changed, so I spent the morning outside doing gardeny things and enjoyed it very much.

When I'm in the garden, I often come up with several questions I want to ask y'all, but then forget them once I come indoors.

Here's something though. Winter squash trellising. Does anyone else have a hard time trellising winter squash? It is like it purposely avoids the actual trellis that was built especially for it...and instead wants to grab hold of any other item around, including other plants and/or sprawl on the ground. I have to constantly tie it up and try to force their little curly things to curl around the trellis.

The intermediate day onions are still in the garden and are currently being rained on. We could have several days of rain this week. All of the varieties have leaves that are at least half green still and some are mostly green. Some varieties are lying down and some are still upright. They are all a very good size, but because the leaves are mostly green, I didn't harvest them with the short day varieties which had mostly brown leaves. ANYWAY, the question is: how long should they dry out after the last rainy day before harvesting? Or do they need to dry out in the ground at all? I hope that is not a dumb question.

So, there's been a lot of talk over the years about Heidi and Porter tomatoes. I looked up pictures of Heidi after Dawn mentioned it's better for canning because the actual fruit is bigger than Juliet. Does it still produce like Juliet? Is it as...vigorous and tolerant of Oklahoma conditions? Tell me the virtues of Porter.

We are growing lots of different types of tomatoes this year--many, many varieties and I'm making mental notes on each of them. With the way my brain is, I should make more than mental notes--take the time to jot down my observations. I'll use these notes for seed purchasing for next year's garden. Hopefully will be able to find seed.

Two of the seven Fowler beans are growing. There is a bit of disease or spider mite damage to the plants. Is it okay to save seed from plants that have been damaged like this? I enjoyed the few Fowler beans that I was able to harvest last year...and would like to try them again but apparently it's hard to find their seed. Although, this Contender that HU brought over is impressive and very tasty too.

I can't remember my other questions.

Something I noticed yesterday. The Survivalist Garden gets practically zero shade. HU and I put up shade cloth and sheets to provide some afternoon shade. We removed the shade cloth and sheets last night and after looking over the plants, it seems like that shade helped them set fruit even though we were so hot this week. Shade cloth, People. Try it.

Sure hope everyone is blessed with the rain that we're being blessed with right now.

I am going to try to come back with pictures. We'll see if it works.

I would pull those onions on the first dry sunny day after the rains. They need to be dry in the ground to avoid introducing bacteria (rot) from pulling in wet soil. Being in a raised bed they should dry pretty quick. The ones with the bent over necks could have already been pulled but not now in the rain.

https://www.growveg.com/guides/the-art-of-harvesting-onions/

https://www.google.com/search?q=harvesting+onions&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=harvesting+onions&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.14294j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

HU

We've gotten an inch and a half. We're good now. haha.

I'll keep the cooler temps, though.

HU, the reason I didn't harvest those intermediate day onions is because I thought I read here that even though the tops had fallen, if the leaves are still mostly green, then they should not be pulled for the best storage potential. That it's best to wait until the fallen leaves turn mostly brown. (also that strong wind over a week ago bent most of them. They didn't fall over on their own) Now, it's possible that I dreamed reading that advice. I promise I wasn't just being lazy.

Either way, the soil in those beds dry out way too fast, so they should be fine. Something is wrong with the soil. And I topped it off with composted chicken droppings back in October. Oh well...it worked great for the onions this year. This is the best year I've ever had. Oh, and that one volunteer melon just up and died. No idea. The others are fine.

It feels weird to not have anything to do tonight. I mean, there's tons to do but nothing pressing on me.

2.95” thus far here in Canadian County between Mustang and Union City. And it is still raining.

It has been cloudy and thundering here all day, and not a drop.

HJ, I remember that coming from Dawn, about the onions. All my necks are soft and fallen over, but mostly green still.

I was out after work tonight, building a bunny baffle out of chicken wire and pecan sticks. He likes green bean and cantaloupe leaves, and does not care who sees him eating them.

Rebecca, So, you've got a bunny now? Do you still also have your squirrel? Your garden attracts wildlife!

Marleigh, The rain largely missed us too, though we had lots of thunder and some strong wind. We had about 1/100th of an inch of rain in the gauge before dark, which is not exactly worth getting excited about. We received more rain after dark, so maybe when I check the rain gauge after sunrise I'll find we have a quarter-inch or a half-inch in it.

Jennifer, The green leaves will continue to enlarge the bulbs as long as they are green. What happens is that the green leaves are the storage portion of the plant prior to bulbing up. When daylength initiates bulbing, the energy stored in the leaves begins to flow into the bulbs, a process that takes several weeks. Each leaf gives you one layer of onion flesh and the layers get bigger if you don't harvest too early. The energy from the leaves creates the bulbs, so to speak. Most people get overly excited and harvest while the leaves still are green, sacrificing some of the bulb size their onions otherwise would have achived. One of the OSU ag extension agents, then based at Lane, OK, used to come on here every summer and do his best to stop everyone from harvesting their onions too early while they still were green. He would comment on literally every photo he saw of green leaves on harvested onions. I believe it was Jim Shreftler, Leftler? I don't remember his name as it was long ago, but I surely did absorb his message, and Dixondale Farms later went on a similar education tangent, trying via their monthly newsletter posts, to get people to stop harvesting too early. I have found that onions allowed to dry down from green to brown leaves while in the ground also cure better and store longer. In the years that I grow some of the long-day types, like Copia, Highlander or Red River, they will store from their harvest/curing time in July until at least March or April of the following year, and often will last much longer than that in dry storage.

Yes to the question about winter squash. They are obstinate plants that want to trail all over the garden, rambling and roaming, climbing tomato cages, trellises of beans or southern peas (when I grow the vining types), the garden fence, even nearby trees. I, by contrast, want them to climb the trellises set up just for them. It is a constant battle. I am pretty sure that all winter squash varieties have the same motto: "you are not the boss of me". In 2011, I watered our poor drought-stricken garden for as long as I could, but it was hard to overcome the highs in the 107-115 range and a couple of summer months with no rainfall at all. What did survive? The Seminole pumpkins, which took over many hundreds of square feet, climbed asparagus plants, tomato plants/cages, bean trellises, the garden fence, the corn plants, okra plants, the trees, etc. I was so busy with as many as 5 wildfires and grassfires per day and often all night long, and a huge number of structure fires and car fires too, that I would just turn on the sprinkler, let it water whatever was hanging in there (I actually wanted moisture on the leaves of the plants because they weren't getting any moisture otherwise) when I was at home, but didn't step foot in the garden for a couple of months. All that time Seminole was running wild while everything else died. So, we had a lovely green garden of nothing but winter squash when even native cacti in the fields unirrigated were dying, and in the fall, we harvested dozens of winter squash from the Seminole pumpkin vines that would not and could not be contained by any contraption in our garden. Every C. moschata type squash I've grown has been the same, and so are some of the other types of winter squash, but most of them eventually succumb to SVBs while the C. moschatas do not.

Porter is not that special. In a choice between it and Juliet, Juliet would win every year. Porter was much beloved in the 1960s and 1970s because it would set fruit in Texas when nothing else much was setting fruit. I personally find the flavor and texture less than inspiring, but have become spoiled by the many excellent heirloom varieties available even if they don't set as well in the heat. I have tried growing it several times in recent years to see if it can change my mind and make me like it/want to grow it. Nope, it just isn't that special.

You can save your Fowler seeds from spider mite-infested plants. The spider mites will not stay on the seeds and survive, so there is no worry there.

Shade cloth has been a mainstay of my garden for many years. It can make a huge difference in fruit set on sweet peppers and tomatoes. I don't know why more people don't use it. I also like to plant heat-sensitive plants at the west end of the garden where the shade from the big old pecan tree west of the garden will begin shading some plants as early as a little after noon, and will have much of the garden shaded by 3 pm---at least half the garden is shaded that way. I usually grow the toughest sun lovers (okra, southern peas, roselles, etc.) at the eastern end of the garden so they never are shaded because they do fine without it. In the one year I tried roselles in the afternoon shade, they stretched for sunlight and got so tall that they toppled over sideways. Even zinnias benefit from afternoon shade in our climate with no appreciable loss of flowering.

Larry, Good luck saving the plants from the wildlife. I don't plant anything I love and wish to have all summer outside our eight foot garden fence. I have long lobbied Tim to put up an 8' tall fence around our entire yard so I can grow what I want in the yard and haven't convinced him yet, but one day I'll have my tall prison fence, as he and his best friend refer to my garden fence, around the yard and it will exclude the deer and I'll be able to grow all the ornamentals I want without having deer snacking on them. Our yard has deer in it day and night here lately, and they aren't afraid of us. I'll walk out and yell at one that is eating in the front yard and it just looks at me and goes back to whatever it was munching. Dry conditions make them a little feisty and less likely to turn and run when they see us. I've been sitting out at the swimming pool watching our granddaughter swim the last few days, and the deer come wandering right by us within 20' or less of us while we are out there. This is why all my pretty flowers are in the fenced vegetable garden. Yesterday the largest raccoon I've ever seen showed up in our front yard and on our front porch around 10 am looking for something to eat, and I ran that beast off just by opening the front door. There wasn't anything on the porch for it to eat and I didn't like having it hanging around while the chickens are out free-ranging because coons are vicious chicken killers.

Rebecca, You can leave the onions in the ground as long as the leaves are green and the necks are unbroken. Even as the necks soften and become limp, energy still is flowing from the leaves to the bulbs to further enlarge them. Leaving them until the leaves are brown and withered ensures the bulbs are achieving their maximum size. Just watch the bulbs carefully. I plant rows of onions close enough to one another that the foliage of one row of onions will fall on top of the bulbs of another one and cover them from the sun, so there is no sunscald of nearly-mature onion bulbs. If your foliage isn't falling over in such a way that the bulbs are protected, there might be a risk of sunscald and, if that is the case, you might want to harvest earlier to avoid the sunscald.

I haven't done much except harvest tomatoes this week. I need to weed but am waiting for next week's cooler weather. I've had one granddaughter here for several days and have been spending all my time with her, and enjoying every minute of it.

Tim and I had planned to go to Dallas today, fully masked up and extra careful to maintain social distancing, to enjoy plant shopping at some favorite nurseries today for the first time in several years, but then life intervened....the granddaughter came to stay for a while, our friend's funeral is scheduled for today, etc. Just last weekend we said that nothing would get in the way of this plant shopping trip planned for today, and then our friend passed away and everything changed. I probably would have taken our granddaughter and just gone shopping at the nurseries anyway if not for the funeral, even though Covid-19 cases are exploding in the Dallas area. We just would have shopped in the outside parts of the nurseries and avoided going indoors. I wonder what sort of message God/the Universe keeps sending me because every time I want to plant shop, something happens and I don't get to go. Perhaps the message is that I don't need more plants, but personally I think that I do!

We're supposed to get good rain next week, but now the forecasters are making me nervous by pushing the good, heavy rainfall amounts out from the Sun/Mon time frame to later in the week. Often, once the forecasters start doing that, the rain never happens. I hope that is not the case next week. We're about 4" short of rain for the month of June and really could use some good rain to stop or slow down these summer grass fires, which are occurring early and often this summer.

Dawn

I've noticed that too, Dawn, when they start pushing the rain back, it often doesn't happen.

Sorry about your plant shopping trip...and very sorry about your friend.

I'm sure hoping that Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck (it's c moschata) isn't has rowdy as Seminole. Although, we planted Seminole around the burn pile and they're not doing that well. But maybe they will after this rain. We got a good amount.

SVB have shown up in the SG. Found them Thursday night...or rather found their damage to the summer squash stems. I'm happy that we've had a decent amount of squash to eat, though. It's just what it is. You grow those types of squash, you know that their life isn't long and just enjoy the harvest while it lasts. It's sad, though, those plants are putting out new leaves trying to live...those grubs will kill them soon, though.

It's weird that I can find NOTHING online about leaving the fallen onions until their leaves are mostly brown. Everyone says to harvest once they've fallen. (of course I only looked for about an hour). And it's not just the YouTubers who've only been gardening for a few years--it's everyone. Hopefully the rain didn't hurt my onions and we'll dry out and I can harvest them. They are big and look good.

I'm totally trying Copra next year if I can get it. HU wants to try it too.

I'm hoping to weed the pathways on the west side of the KG on Monday. And add woodchips. The East side of garden looks so good with the fresh chips. Especially after the rain. I just walked through and it was beautiful (to me). The asparagus has tall ferns and the winter squash is recently tied up. It seems like everything is green and happy after the rain.

What type of plastic do y'all purchase for solarizing. I would like to begin solarizing the future path around the garden. Not all four sides at once, but one or two at a time.

Rebecca, hopefully the chicken wire will keep your bunny out of the garden! I had them in my garden towards the end of summer last year, but they were getting things like Armenian cucumbers...and they were welcome to them. I'm the only one who eats them. I'm sure my last year's garden was a perfect place for them to hide. It wasn't just the Armenians that were everywhere, it was the Seminole that webbed the entire garden.

Thankful for the rain. Hope Dawn and Marleigh get some too.

Rebecca, I am so happy you have a little bunny to play with. I think I could help you with your bunny, it may be that your bunny is lonesome, and I have a lonesome bunny also, that I will be happy to send you. My bunny is about 2/3 grown, a little shy, and not a picky eater at all. If you had both, maybe in a short time you could go in the bunny business.

I have what is left of my pumpkin plants under mineral tube. I will go over in a bit and remove the tubs. I may also plant some PEPH. The computer says that we may get a shower at 10:15. If you read a little doubt in this post, you are correct. I am so bent out of shape because the deer eating my pumpkins, they were just starting to bloom.

I have both house gardens weeded. I also keep finding damaged tomato plants from the wind and hail storms. On the good side, I picked green tomatoes off one of the damaged plants and brought into the house for Madge to fry, I like fried green tomatoes better than ripe tomatoes. I think that I would also like a green tomato casserole, but I have never heard or one.

Well, I tried to post pics. If this comes through twice I apologize.

The compost bins are the wooden bins with vertical white in the back of the yard, center of pic.

And here is a red headed helper

Your gardens look wonderful, Amy and Robert. I'm ready to take mine out. I'd forgotten how rapidly things deteriorate in the heat. I'm also going to cut most of the echinacea back, just leaving a few for the butterflies--and the red hollyhocks. The bees are quite happy sticking to the bee balm.

Rabbits! So glad we don't have rabbits.

I don't know what you all are talking about regarding rainfall. WHAT? I'm so far behind with gardening and yard work, I need for it not to rain tomorrow. And since we haven't had any rain, I've been watering nearly every day.

We had a productive yesterday--we were out for 5 1/2 hours--half an hour to get there and get the boat in; half an hour to get back. And a stop at the marina for a cool drink along the way. We ended up with 8--all were 1-3 lbs except for one bigger one I caught, 5-6 lbs. Then back to the house for a quick shower; in to town to pick up groceries (I'm liking the grocery pick-up at Walmart); back to unload groceries, then back to the marina for dinner. However. After today and the big rally in Tulsa, I'm not going to feel comfortable going to the marina or anywhere else for a while.

I have a mess of green beans for dinner, a few cherry tomatoes, and small potatoes. Our potatoes aren't going to amount to anything much again, so no potatoes for us next year. Also, the okra here--I'm not even sure the stunted plants will even survive. Leaves are increasingly riddled. I'll be quite happy to leave the onions until they've gotten as big as they possibly can.

My battle with the Japanese beetles is going pretty well. I knock 1-2 dozen off into my soapy water every day, and the pheromone trap need to be empties every 2-3 days; hard to say how many in it. . . maybe 4-6 dozen. But I'm seeing far less damage from them this year than I did two years ago, or even last year.

Amy, your little redhead's hair is beautiful!

Amy, I love the pictures. How do you get stuff of your trellises? They look higher than I can reach.

I worked in the gardens, weeding and watering, then mowed the the bar ditch along the east side of my wildlife garden, all except a strip that was so steep that I was afraid of turning the tractor over. I could never work for the highway department.. Well, anyway, I came in for lunch, after lunch I sit down in my recliner, just for a short rest. My short rest turned into a nap, and I was awakened to a very hard rain, I dont know how long it rained, but I was sure glad for what ever we got. It did not rain long after I woke up, but it was sure nice while it lasted.

I seem to be finding more than my fair share of squash bugs, and I have not picked any squash yet.

I am going to go ahead and post this, because I cant stay awake,

Larry—I haven’t made it, but the green tomato casserole here sounds delicious:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/claire-robinson/green-tomato-and-vidalia-onion-gratin-recipe-1948790

I do make green tomato mincemeat because we love mincemeat pie, but I know that isn’t for everyone.

Still no rain, so I watered this morning and gave the tomatoes some blooming fertilizer. Temps are supposed to be perfect later this week, so hopefully it’ll push them to keep on blooming. Got ahold of the only tub of Super Bloom I could find in Tulsa!

—Marleigh

Marleigh, thanks for posting the recipe. It does look good. I showed the recipe to Madge, I think she will make it in the near future.

I tried to get Bloom booster a month or two ago, I did not have my glasses on and came home with an acid type fertilizer, bur if all my blooms set, I will have plenty tomatoes. I have not fed my plants, so the fruit is a little small, but I had rather have small tomatoes anyway. My wife is sorta funny about the size of tomatoes. I think she would want one as big as a water melon is we could grow one that large.

Wow. That is an interesting recipe, Marleigh. Thank you for posting. I'll make it, too. We'll have to compare, Larry and Madge.

I made the green tomato mincemeat, too, Marleigh. I love it, but can't get anyone else to even try it. Chickens. I even like it straight from the jar. But also in pies.

Dawn, soaked up your squash story(s). Always enjoy your gardening stories. And will hope the onions stay green for another couple weeks. They have grown, but not enough. yet.

Jennifer, I simply won't try to grow zucchini or regular squash. We tried zucchinis our 3 years ago. We got 2-3 squash before the SVBs hit. I LOVE the Meot Jaeng c. moschata. Though they are light green, they taste, to me, just like the yellow crooknecks. Dawn, how do you think the taste compares?

I got weeding done (not enough), some of the beat-up flowers cut back. I was marveling that I expect all the flowers and herbs to take care of themselves. ALL the flowers here get too tall. I'm going to start cutting back more than I previously did--including tithonia--and the bronze fennel are 6-7 feet tall now. Sometimes I hate my yard.

I still haven't harvested any tomatoes (except for the cherry ones---SS100, and I was less than impressed by them) but there seems to be more than enough out there. It will be fun to test them. I sure hope I like some of them! TBD.

Nancy, this is the first time I've grown a non c moschata in at least 3 years. Maybe 4 for the same reasons. Normally I do get a large harvest before SVB, but I just was tired of dealing with SVB, so stopped growing them.

But, the SG is also HU's garden and he wanted to grow them, so we did. And I'm not sorry. I've enjoyed eating them and sharing them. I was able to give quite a few to friends/family. I suspect I'll be pulling out some plants by the end of the week.

I've also grown the 3 varieties of "Korean" C. M squash that Kitasawa Seeds sells. I liked them too. I gave all my seed to Dale and Carrie a couple of years ago and never ordered any more. But maybe we'll do it next year again. The trick with those squash is to get them while they're still small. The C Moschata varieties do seem to outgrow squash bug damage. It's disappointing that the squash bugs still bother them even though they are resistant to SVB.

Amy, your backyard looks huge. You live in a "regular" neighborhood, right? Cute little redhead! <3

We've enjoyed our first tomatoes. They are so good. I sure wish the cherry tomatoes would ripen up, though! I have plans for them!

Probably a night of canning tomorrow night after work. Beans, and possibly greens.

Tom is taking some days off work this week. One project is to clean and organize the utility room. Somehow we've got to squeeze in another pantry type of cabinet for our (to be) canned goods.

BTW, I just remember one of the questions I've wanted to ask: How would seedlings do on a light shelf in an unheated shop? I'm talking February seed starting? Not great right? What if I put the trays on heat mats? I'm considering moving my light shelf to the shop to make room for the extra pantry. I sure wish basements were common in Oklahoma. And that I had one.

Does anyone have a gut feeling that we're heading for a cold winter?

Oh! I finally ordered a Weston tomato press. Super excited about it.

Thanks, Jennifer. It has been sort of a tough week around here. You always hope and pray for the best for someone with cancer, as you know all too well yourself, but things just didn't work out for our friend. His sweet wife and family are hurting so much, and my heart goes out to them.

For me, PA Dutch crookneck was not nearly as rampant of a grower as Seminole, but then not much else is. I have had some butternuts grow that rampantly, and many pumpkins that did so in the first 7 years here when I could grow any and every squash variety I wanted (and, boy howdy, did I!) before the squash bugs and squash vine borers found out garden.

Congrats on ordering the tomato press. You'll love it!

I don't have any special feeling about winter. I'd love a cold one, but we haven't had a good, cold, snowy one for so long that I have little expectation we'll have one now. I'd be happy if we did though.

The only time I've ever seen anyone write about leaving the onions until the foliage browns was when Jim Shreftler (I'm probably spelling that wrong) wrote about it here over a decade ago, and a couple of times in Bruce Fasier's Dixondale monthly newsletters a few years back. I felt like he was quite perplexed that he even had to tell people to slow down and harvest later. I have found that 99% of people harvest before their onions are really done, and then those same people bemoan the fact that their onions only store for 2 or 3 months, never understanding that the storage issue is primarily related to the onion type but also to whether the onions were allowed to fully mature. Onions that are harvested with fully green foliage tend to sprout much more quickly while in storage. I like to let them fully mature so they'll store well. They're usable either way, so it is just a matter of somebody's ultimate goals. My ultimate goal is to have home-grown onions for as long as possible for cooking. Some people are eager to get them out of the ground and replace them with a succession planting of something else even if it means their onions only will last half as long in storage.

Dixondale has Copra every year. You'll find it in the long daylength area along with two other long-storing types: Highlander and Red River. In Red River I finally found a large-enough red onions because a lot of the short day and intermediate day types of reds just never size up nearly as well as the whites and yellows. In the years when I plant short day, intermediate day and long day types, my harvest usually is spread out from May through the end of July, and then the long daylength types store forever and forever.

It is raining here this morning. For a few hours we got all the lightning and thunder and not so much rain while they were flooding on the Texas side of the river from persistently heavy rain, but then the rain finally has shown up on our side of the river and now we have a little over 2" in the rain gauge, and about 1.75" of that is new this morning. It is such a relief to get the rain. I was looking at the wildflower meadow yesterday afternoon and thinking that all the flowers were drying out and surely would be going straight to seed soon. Hopefully today's rainfall will push them back into a blooming cycle and we'll get to enjoy the flowers a bit longer before they burn up in the heat. I also hope the rain heals the cracks in the soil. It is a relief to think I won't have to water the veggie garden this week. I sure do need to weed it though. I went outside a minute ago to check the rain gauge and there's already new fire ant mounds popping up above ground. One thing about the hot, dry weather is that the fire ants retreat back beneath the ground and we are not, at least, stepping in fire ant mounds.

Larry, I hate when deer do that. In the last year in which they could jump the shorter garden fence and get into the garden, they ate literally every pumpkin, squash and okra plant (and most of many other types of veggies) right down to the ground, big prickly leaves and all. They devoured whole sunflower plants that already were 3 or 4' tall, though they never eat the native sunflowers that way. They drove me crazy. I lost most of the garden to them that year, but life in the garden returned to normal after we put up the taller fence. I've never regretted having that tall fence, though I surely hated spending all that money to put it up. Tim's best friend calls it my prison garden fence because it is so tall, but I don't care. It keeps the deer out, and if having a prison-like garden fence is the price I have to pay to be deer-free, then so be it. I wish I had a prison fence around our whole yard and I'm never going to stop wanting that tall fence to protect the plants in the yard. I have a husband who hates fences though, so we're in our 22nd year here and I don't have a tall yard fence yet. I'd settle for one six feet tall, but I'm sure the deer would jump it so it wouldn't do what we needed it to do. It really is going to need to be 8' tall and it will be...if I don't die before we ever get a taller fence done.

Amy, Your garden looks great and your red-headed garden helper in his Little Tykes Cozy Coupe is just so adorable!

Nancy, Some years I have a great garden all summer. Some years the heat and drought dry it up. The very first year that I surrendered, stopped watering, closed the garden gate and just walked away kind of broke my heart. At the same time, it felt good to not be out there fighting the drought and heat every day. You can get to the point where no matter how much water you pour onto the garden, you just cannot beat the weather conditions. I no longer regret surrendering to the weather if I think that is what I need to do.

Last fall I bought landscaping plants for the landscape renovation that heavy rainfall prevented us from doing in the winter/spring months, so they've been tucked into a "nursery bed" (formerly known as raised veggie bed #1) in the garden and look so good. It has been nice to see how they grow, bloom and perform in our weather before I actually put them in their permanent beds up around the house. I was telling Tim yesterday that I'm tempted to go on a buying binge right now (because the stores near us just got huge new shipments of plants like they normally get in late May) and fill up more raised beds in the fenced garden with plants-in-waiting for the new landscape. If I did that, I could have everything growing and getting larger in nursery beds while awaiting the sod removal and soil prep in the permanent growing beds that will be needed when we take out the large mature hollies. We find ourselves in the peculiar situation where it is either much too wet or much too dry to rent a sod cutter and take out the Bermuda, and we never can catch the sod at just the right degree of soil moisture. I am watching this week's weather carefully, thinking we might get enough rain to soften the baked-hard-as-a-rock clay, and then maybe it could be dry enough by next weekend that we could rent a sod cutter.

We are so lucky that we do not have Japanese beetles down here. I have seen maybe 4 or 5 total since we moved here as they apparently have not yet migrated this far south and west. I kill every single one that I see because I never want for them to have a chance to get a population established.

I like all the summer squash, and the Korean ones ended up having better flavor than I expected. I still think yellow summer squash has its own special and unique flavor, but the Korean varieties all are close seconds. Honestly, when I cook them, no one call tell which is which in any given recipe. I like to grow yellow straightneck or crookneck early in the season before the pests hit. Once the pests arrive, I just yank them out. I can get locally grown yellow summer squash (I am sure it is not organic) all summer long at the grocery store/meat market we frequent in Muenster, TX. We were just there yesterday buying steaks for Father's Day and Lillie was entranced with the locally grown veggies which she said looked just as good as something from the garden---she could tell the special display of local veggies was different from the regular produce section and seemed excited to see it. At a young age she already is learning a love for gardening and appreciating that they are harvesting their own produce from their potager garden and bringing it into the kitchen to prepare it.

I try not to hate on unruly plants that are butterfly host plants because at some points their caterpillars show up and do all the pruning needed and more. Our bronze fennel is getting awfully tall and wide, so hopefully the swallowtail cats show up soon and do their thing.

Yesterday afternoon we were out with a To Do list and a desire to just get everything done and to get back home so Lillie could swim, so I didn't plant shop since it was our last day with her. I did notice there were tons of new plants in the HD garden center when we stopped there to get a new water filter for the refrigerator, and Lillie and I walked through it briefly while Tim was indoors getting the filter. They had all the usual hot weather type plants they normally get in the stores in late May, so I guess they are late this year, but better late than never. Tim and I agreed that today would be all about planting shopping and nothing but plant shopping, except for the fact that we plan to grill steaks for dinner. Even I cannot imagine I'd shop for plants the entire day, but maybe for a significant portion of it. Well, Mother Nature has a sense of humor, so we still are as dark as night here at almost 9 a.m. with intermittent heavy rainfall and thunderstorms. I am going plant shopping today even if I have to shop in the rain wearing muck boots, but now we need to wait for the flooding on the Texas side to end before we drive down to Gainesville. This year it seems like it always is something. Yesterday afternoon, after we got home it was endless wrecks and fire calls including two separate wrecks that shut down part of the Red River bridge, and Tim had to leave to go some of them but he didn't go to all of them because he wanted to spend time with our granddaughter while she was here.

Yellowstone, the TV series, returns tonight and there is a marathon of last season's episodes running all day today, so I can get my fill of western drama if it rains most of the day. I'm determined to get my fill of plants too though. I have been patiently waiting to buy plants long enough. I intend to come home from shopping with the back of the SUV fully loaded with plants, which probably is Tim's greatest fear. lol. I need to get him hooked on watching Yellowstone. He'd love it if he ever could stop what he is working on long enough to watch it.

Oh, and Covid-19 plagues Tim now at work and follows him home from work, metaphorically speaking. His first employee tested positive and went out sick with it about a week ago. Then a second, the work partner of the first, became ill at midweek, has been tested and is awaiting his test results. That was Thursday I think. Now, after a phone that wouldn't stop ringing yesterday, last night and this morning, Tim thinks his group is up to 7 potential cases. In fact, there are so many on a particular shift that the lieutenant in charge of that shift cancelled her vacation and came back to work, planning to vacation later in the summer instead. I admire her dedication. With every potential case you have, you have to do contact tracing to be ready to notify everyone at work if a person's test results come back positive, and that is time-consuming for the supervisors because they don't know every other employee a person might have made contact with on any given day, so there's a lot of research and investigation involve. I think I would have gone ahead and gone on vacation, but she also is conscious of the fact that she may have been exposed, might be an asymptomatic carrier, and doesn't want to travel and give it to anyone else. She's a really good person. This morning Tim said it might be as many as 9 cases. They will have to wait for test results, but it is hard to work around that many employees out on sick leave on one shift so they have challenges ahead I betcha I know how the plant shopping will go. We'll go to the store. I'll get a big metal nursery cart and Tim will be pulling it along behind us while I fill it up with plants. His phone will be ringing nonstop and finally I'll send him to the car to handle his calls while I plant shop. You know, if you are walking through a store and you're on your phone discussing who seems to have Covid-19 symptoms and who needs to go for testing, people look at you in fear and almost flee from your presence, so he is better off just going out and sitting in the vehicle where people cannot overhear his work-related conversations. I am almost positive this is exactly how our day will go!

Dawn

The back yard isn't huge, I was sitting close to the house when I took the pictures. Larry, the straight trellis is about 8' tall. Most things don't grow that tall, but if they do it's Ron's job to get them. He has a "scaffold", it is like a 3' tall table he can use if he can't reach. The arches I can usually reach stuff. That little red head got filthy. He wouldn't cooperate with picture taking, but I had to shower him off and change his clothes, LOL.

we've gotten no rain at all. I watered pots last night, but the beds need water and the sky keeps teasing me. I want to lay out soaker hoses today so I guess I'll water a little. Supposed to be 70% chance tonight.

It ended up We saw all 4 kids yesterday so we got together for father's day after all.

Dawn...is Tim really being good about washing his hands thoroughly, wearing a mask always, stripping in the garage when he comes home...all the things medical personnel would do? I sure would hate to see him contract this virus.

Sharon