Honey Blonde Honeydew is near the camera, then the trusted Diplomat or the NEW Visa Galia and the Goddess Cantaloupe is more to the back. There are some more of these 3 but not a whole heck of a lot. I hardly know how to behave with so many coming on at once. (There were split ones that were pretty much okay and were cleaned and peeled and put in a big bowl in the fridge.)

Thanks for the report. It is sometimes good to be reminded that it isn't only our area that we haven't been able to be outside enjoying our yard.

We have had good harvests but have had to wear an N95 mask on many days to harvest it.

We had it a little clearer in the morning the last couple of days so my husband has started to cut back some of the bushes that need trimmed. Generally our yard looks very ragged.

Ragged would describe my garden, MMM. Showing up for 2 hours every 5 days, sure isn’t enuf.

No, you aren’t alone with the bad air. There are 3 fires that I know of within about a 2 hour drive that are several thousand acres each. Air rates the

Unhealthy standard nearly every day this month.

The melons are always at risk of inappropriate temperature swings, in my garden. They astonish me this year. I should have said that after the SECOND harvest (not shown in the picture) that there aren’t many left of those 3. Not yet picked are the Petit Gris de Rennes. I am probably nutz to have that 85 day melon out there but it did okay in a hot 2020.

There were few of the honeydew vines to begin with. The Goddess cantaloupe will have more melons. I have gotta say that cantaloupe remain a lifelong favorite. The Galia do well just about every year. I feel lucky that they came along.

Steve

More melons came off the vines. Sooo many melons! My thought that they would play out quickly was only because I am not the one venturing into the vines -- I'm the one carrying the buckets back to the truck.

Sweet corn and green beans, edamame and plenty of summer greens ... The kale varieties have all pulled themselves out of any snits caused by the extreme heat and the young tender leaves are nearly as good as in the fall. The broccoli were the most upset by the heat but with a few weeks after I put a little fertilizer down around them and did some hilling - they are back gang-busters! Plenty of the chard and the amaranth that was new-to-me in 2020.

Lemon cucumbers come on late and they are appealing! Lots of eggplant and we are having stuffed bell peppers for lunch. (Wouldn't even have considered turning on the oven during some of the summer weeks!)

We are also finishing the 2nd half of a winter squash for lunch. Trust yourself, you can recognize a mature winter squash even if the plant hasn't been touched by frost and on its way out. The flavor will be nearly as good as one properly cured, during winter weeks.

Peaches from the front yard tree and melons (... did I mention melons ;o).

Steve

It was 39° at a weather underground volunteer's home near the garden, 42° here at home. What a change in the weather! Still blue sky, sunshine and only Moderate for air quality but, of course, we have lost over 2 1/2 hours of daylight since the solstice.

Back to the distant garden to rescue more melons from splitting. Could the neighbor be too conscientious about running the water? I don't know but I don't want to discourage him. Only 2 melons haven't looked like they were worth saving.

Everything else is waiting for a trip back to kitchen or carport fridge. EVERYTHING! It's that time of the year and things like broccoli have recovered from from the heat and flea beetles after a little fertilizer and hilling up. Tender kale leaves on all 3 varieties, with the summer greens of chard and amaranth (oops, that last one is purple :o). Maybe, a little between crops of sweetcorn and bush beans but we will see and there should be pole beans and edamame soybeans. PLENTY of peppers and Asian eggplant!. Cukes - hit the lemon cucumber season, maybe some Gris de Renne melons. Seems like with such a good melon year, they should be finishing up. I mean, it's September!

Steve

This gives you an idea of the percentages of what is coming out of the tomato patch this year. Yes, there are a few of the larger tomatoes but so very many are these - cherries and the Bloody Butchers.

(Anything larger that a Yellow Jelly Bean in the basket is a Bloody Butcher. Why they come in so many sizes off the same plant, I've never understood but I've grown them for about 10 years and they are always variable.)

Yes, there are a few from the larger slicing varieties to bring in but there have been a sudden abundance of the cherries that toughed-out the 113° heat (our hottest day, in very early summer ;o). Right with the Jelly Beans, Sun Sugars and Sweet 100's are the Bloody Butchers in recovery and production.

We had 3 mornings last week at 42°. It warmed up again but these were sunny days with 35 & 40 degree overnight drops in temperature. A little rain may come Friday with some cooling. If there is more rain and cooling next week, a frost may be the result. This would be quite normal for this time of year, at least, with regards to the time of a first frost.

It's been a surprisingly bountiful year. Having a diversity of garden crops has been an important part of that, as always. Makes me wonder if I had planted 8 or 10 varieties of shell peas, for example, if one of them would have come through like a champ in July (rather than seeing them knocked for a loop, as it was ;o).

Steve

Steve, What do you with all those melons? Part of the reason I don't always grow melons is that most get ripe all around the same time then I have all these melons and not enough time to eat them all especially with all the other stuff coming in. I suppose I could give some away.

Agreed about having diversity. Most years for whatever reason somethings do well and others not so. This year beans and cucumbers have done really well. I planted a lot of different beans so it has staggered the harvest out nicely.

I've been getting seeds from the Experimental Farm Network. Almost everything I grew with their seeds has done well. A lot of their suppliers are market gardeners/small farmers. Landrace gardening is one their main themes growing diverse open pollinated varieties.

Greg

this is my first year having a garden and ill share my experience for anyone that cares.

i have a greenhouse, unheated, so does that make it a cold frame? anyway, i got going super late and planted everything from seed the first week of june. lol

i had heat issues in the greenhouse, 120 degrees one day when it was upper 90s here, and everything got somewhat stunted , i think. Got the heat under control now. also i have a soil issue. seems to be some residual herbicide ir somethign in the soil i brought in, some stuff has funky curly leaves.

anyway, peas did not do well. most died, but the few that lived grew huge and gave, and are giving tons of peas. bush beans only about 30% lived, but those are pumping out beans! good bang for your buck with these. super delicious. tendergreen, blue lake and big kahuna.

tomatos just barely starting to ripen. they seem to be affected most by the soil issue. fruit looks good though. cherry and marglobe.

corn is just starting to get big ears. took forever to get going. pretty sure it got stunted. i planted more in early july and that batch is almost caught up with the other stuff. that tells me the soil

chemical has leached out or the ither batch got stunted by the extreme heat early on.

i planted and let wayyyyy too many cucumbers grow and now they are taking over, but am getting a crap load of them.

same story with cantaloupe. i have hale’s best and minnesota midget. i have like 15-20 midgets that are growing and hopefully have time to ripen. ate one today, but was not quite ripe, but still super tasty.

i have some roses in the gh, but they did’t do that great, so i potted them up.

lettuice grew amazingly in there.

bell peppers are taking forever!! slowest growing plant known to man. doubt i get anything.

i built the gh over an existing honeycrisp apple tree. got about 35 apples that arw coming along nicely. should be tasty.

carrots did pretty well. got stunted, but really started to grow well starting in august for some reason.

that’s all i got! it‘s been a real learning experience. i already know about a million things ill I’ll do differently next year. humbling honestly . so fun and so rewarding.

hope you enjoyed my rambling thoughts of a first time gardener.

-Lane

Greg, it sure is a "for whatever reason" situation as to successes and failures. A good guess on weather and practices is often all that I can come up with.

Yes, they have been given away but that's been true with cucumbers that came on with such a rush. The proverbial zucchini, which we try to harvest small so that rolling eyes won't be the first response. The overwhelming peach "download" was the biggest giveaway ...

My mother wasn't much of a gardener. One year, Dad said that he was too busy with work and the cows to have a garden. He told Mom that she could have it. I think that there was some diversity the first year. The second, she grew nothing but melons. That was A-ok with me! I would "swipe" a melon (I'm sure she knew that I was doing it :o), and carry it out beside the blackberries growing on the other side of the irrigation ditch. Just me with my cantaloupe, the quail, and Tina the Border Collie, enjoying the day!

This was southern Oregon where it was easier to grow melons. These days, if there is the good fortune of a decent melon year, it helps that DW is a big fan of fresh produce. Emphasis on fresh and not canned. Likely, 2021 is our best melon year. And here I was expecting the worst - after the hottest weather that I may have ever experienced in 70+ years at the end of June, 2021.

Steve

We grew cantaloupe one year. It was fabulous! We tried for several years after that but could never get them to grow again. Maybe this is the year they would have done well.

Lane, I wonder if we were posting at the same time. I didn't see what you had written until now. And sure, we enjoy reading about the gardening experiences of others! You must have a very sizable greenhouse to fit all of that in there.

MMMM, it was the discovery of the Galia melons that was a stroke of luck for me. Goddess cantaloupe comes through nearly every year but that's been nearly. Having either Passport or Diplomat has given me consistent production. (Now, there is Visa Galia and I still haven't found the plant marker!)

Steve

treebarb Z5 Denver

Do you have any roses that are cane hardy here in Denver and have alot of blooms (not just once blooming in the spring)?

Last year's fall temp swing and -14 degrees F in winter did a number on a lot of my roses that usually don't get much cane damage. I only plant own root, no more grafted roses for me. For repeat bloomers, Morden Centennial is usually my top performer, little cane damage and it usually pumps out flush after flush, but not this year. I lost more than half the bush, it's still recovering and stands at about 4 feet. It's usually over 6'.

Morden Belle, planted 2 years ago, had some cane damage but has recently thrown a 6 foot blooming cane. It's supposed to be a 3 X 3' bush, so I don't know what's up with that, but I'll take it!

William Baffin came though unscathed, although that one is not for the faint of heart. It's a monster and if I'd known what it would do I wouldn't have put it on my arbor. Give that one a lot of room! I read the size ( 5-8' free standing) before I bought it and thought, it'll never get that big here. It's 8 X 8' now and swallowing the arbor. First flush is spectacular and it does repeat, but nothing near the first flush. I'm going to hard prune that one back next spring.

Baronne Prevost and Louise Odier were planted about 10 years ago, both had some cane damage, but seem to have recovered more quickly than the others. Both smell wonderful and have good repeat. Yes, I'm a little heavy on pink roses, lol! Abraham Darby is another favorite.

Thanks Treebarb! That is incredibly helpful. Can you full bush pictures of them?

Question - what time do you all start your various crops? Do you start them indoors and then plant them out later, or do you all live in favorable enough climates that you can get whatever you want by sowing seed after threat of frost has passed? What are your favorite veggies to grow? Mine were hands down green beans. love 'em!

This is my GH. My thinking this year was to see what grows well and what we like then grow more of that next year. Spacing was all wrong. Not enough room for what I tried. Oh, well. Next year will be better!

Minnesota midget

Beans and peas are directly sown in the garden. Otherwise, I start nearly all the garden plants in the greenhouse. It gives them a head-start. I wouldn't say that since they had that protected growing for 6 or 8 weeks that they have a 6 or 8 week head start. Maybe it's as little as half of that but that certainly is something!

Some plants would have little chance planted directly from seed into the outdoors. I often save some volunteer tomato plants. Usually, they are cherry types which might have meant that they would produce early if started indoors. Most of the time, they come right up to time of frost before ripening any fruit. So, I could have a 10 day season and have plants with 80% of their fruit still green.

It isn't just length of the frost-free season. Days to maturity designations mean very little here and probably are even more meaningless at very high elevations. The swings in temperatures thru 24 hours can be so significant that the plants require too much recovery time. The result is very slow growth.

I've tried to grow all sorts of things - even plants like okra and peanuts. Some things are important to be able to bring in to the kitchen, on a personal level. I have struggled to grow melons. Hey, why not try? One thing that I'm happy about is developing a taste for leafy greens. You know how plants grow. Leaves come first. Months later, the plants blooms and develops fruit. Risks increase day by day.

Steve

Good stuff, Steve.

So are you saying that places that have large swings in temperature are hard on plants? It still gets down in the 50s where I live even on the warmest of nights.

mmmm, I'm working on it. I'm having some issues with downloads from my phone pics. I'll pm you once I've worked through them.

Lane, I like this guide from the Farmer's Almanac. Click on the link, add your location and it'll give you a pretty good guide on starting spring and fall crops.

Farmer's Almanac Planting Calendar

I know you asked Steve, but I'll chime in and say yes, large temp swings are brutal on plants. We're getting them with increasing frequency. I used to start peppers first, in February, tomatoes 2 weeks later. I've tried putting things out in Walls of Water in April and May. I just didn't feel like I was gaining much by going early. The plants just sat there in the WOWs without growing until night temps came up. I was concerned they were being stunted.

Now I start later, mid to late March and don't plant anything out until night temps are solidly in the low to mid 50's, late May/early June most years. I do haul the flats out on nice days in May to begin the hardening off process and so the wind can firm up the seedlings but everything comes back in by sundown if it'll get below 50.

Jerry, for example, does use WOW's, plants early and gets spectacular results. I know they can work in some settings. I'm rural, in the middle of farm fields, so much colder than in the city or subdivisions. A greenhouse would be much more forgiving than what I'm doing. It looks like you're having a great first year!

treebarb said, "temps are solidly in the low to mid 50's, late May/early June most years."

That would leave me with a start date of mid to late June ... having just checked WS data.

This is one reason that I have struggled a bit to find varieties of warm-season veggies that I would like to grow but can both mature in a fairly short period of time and deal with temperature swings. It seems to help to be very gentle with the start of hardening off, give the plants lots of days in the process, then, hope that they can handle life in the open in May. I realize that it is difficult for people who aren't around the house during daytime in the spring. (I have had a few advantages in that regard. Part of that was that the "house" I was around at work was a greenhouse. ;o) And yes, I think that my peppers especially are stunted most every year.

Steve

Thanks, treebarb

We have returned to quite common weather for the last few weeks. It's a little warmer than usual and, of course, the landscape looks parched from the heat and drought. Still, our 1/2" of rain the other day and more rain in the forecast looks normal even if my garden may slide into October without a frost.

L Clark's photo of the nice cantaloupe in Gardengrl66's thread inspired me to comment on the Visa and Honey Blonde melons that were coming home from my 2021 garden. AND, the Diplomat for this morning's breakfast. I have to "stick with" the Diplomat.

First of all, the Goddess cantaloupe can come through for me most years. Yay! Cantaloupe is a favorite but gotta go with galia in my limited experience with growing melons. Every year that either Passport or Diplomat has been out there, they have produced ripe melons ... maybe not so danged early as this year but they have come through in normal and not-normal. The Visa did this year but it wasn't as flavorful. The Honey Blonde honeydew is too different and won't be a priority in the future.

Steve

Steve - What's your favorite cantaloupe variety?

Weelll,

Since a charentais melon is supposed to count as a cantaloupe - the Honey Girl charentais was the favorite of my home grown. Now that I have piqued your interest, I don't think that seed for this hybrid has been on the market for a dozen years. There's something that I wrote on this Gardenweb thread way-back-when LINK. I tried a number of other charentais and not one ripened properly.

I have to stick with Goddess until something else shows up.

Steve

They had extra days. Some aren’t mature but we can start with those. Burgess Buttercup Cha Cha Kabocha & some kinda ”landrace”

Steve, Looks like your winter squash has done well. We just harvested our bounty of winter squash before the squirrels ruined any more. Quite a few landrace types that look gorgeous. Picked the seed up from the Experimental Farm Network https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/products/pueblo-new-mexico-landrace-squash

Some of this years harvest.

Greg, that looks very much like the La Madera squash that I bought thru Native Seed Search several years ago.

I'm not sure if even with the first season that I had consistent fruit. Last year, I had a plant that was a hybrid with one of the other C. maxima. The fruit was a GIANT one of those. Squash cross so readily! I thought to buy more seed for La Madera but it was no longer available ... The plants aren't very productive, sprawl everywhere, but the large fruits certainly matured. The skin was so hard that the knife shattered it rather than cut thru. The flesh was quite thin but very tasty.

I've had a couple of the plants each year and things have kinda gone okay. The grey and orange fruits are in the picture and you can just see the oblong shaped one in the lower left corner. You may have to click the picture. That one doesn't seem mature nor is it shaped like the others.

This is all a little frustrating to me. Saving seed thru some sort of isolation or bagging of blossoms is something that I have never done. I want to "know what I'm gittin" and "git it!" (That's just my personality and I can't help it. ;o)

Steve

Very interesting seed source, Greg!

The Zebrune shallots:

An open-pollinated variety that is now available as seeds. I saw nothing but hybrids for the first few years growing shallots from seed.

I suppose that replanted, a Zebrune will develop a flower and seed. Hope to learn that in 2022. Perhaps, they will propagate themselves by division, as the varieties of shallots from sets do here. Perhaps, they will do both. I'll probably plant both bulbs and seed (as a dedicated shallot fan :o).

The first kitchen trial was with the potatoes, milk, and sour cream in a simple potato soup - they were delicious! Very productive an well worth growing.

Steve