Rick, thanks for the picture. I did not even go out and look for the eclipse, I think it was too cloudy at the time I could have seen it anyway. I did see where someone filmed it on TV.

My greens are growing slow, some were planted 4 weeks ago, some 2 weeks ago. In the picture the one you can see of the 2 week planting is the spinach, which is right of the onions, about half way between the onions and the broad leaf mustard, they look about like green matchsticks standing in the soil.

It looks like I will have to spray, because I am getting a lot of damage from grasshoppers, blister beetles, and something else that is too small for me to see.

I have 196 garlic planted, and have around 200 onion sets to plant. I am still looking for more elephant garlic to plant.

Here's pics of the fall garden at Jennifers;

Left tunnel : Green Beans and green peas with some brassicas in between.

Right tunnel : Greens assortment.

Just took the shade cloths off. And laid a row cover over the green beans and peas for a possible light frost in the morning.

Rick

Rick, those really look nice. What is your trick for getting plants up in the hot weather?

The only greens I got up early were planted under a tree where they did not get much sun, and now with the cooler temp and shorter days they are not producing well either.

I lost all my carrots, I think I will try again and see if I can get them to over winter, I have never had a lot of luck with carrots anyway.

Shading and watering was the trick. I planted the green beans around the middle of Aug. I watered down the furrow first then dropped the bean seed in and covered them. About a week later when the beans started to sprout up I put up the hoops and put on the shade cloth and kept watering them about every other day. Did the green peas about the same way around the end of August.

On the greens , I planted the seed around the 1st week of Sept and wetted it down and covered with mulch for about a week and watered it about every other day. Had to take the mulch off after the greens sprouted or they would get leggy. But then I put the hoops up and covered with shade cloth. So I had both tunnels shaded with shade cloth and kept up the watering.

The real trick is shading it with shade cloth after it came up.

You can get seed to sprout in hot weather by wetting it down but if you don't shade it the hot sun will just fry it. And you can't just keep it covered with mulch for long because it doesn't get enough light. But the mulch will keep the soil cooler for a while while it's sprouting.

After sprouting take the mulch off but then shade with shade cloth held up over the hoops. That way it stays cooler but they get enough light too.

The shade cloth I used was 50%.

This was around Labor Day Sept 4th.Green beans and peas all wetted down and shaded with shade cloth.

The other thing is that I didn't have much of a grasshopper problem there at Jennifer's.

Rick

Thanks, Rick, it looks like I need to invest in shade cloth, where do you buy yours? I should not worry so much about growing food, but I am trying to impress upon the kids that being able to grow food may be very important some day. I should not complain, I can remember being the same way. I always worked every hour of overtime I could get. I felt that an hour of pay would buy more food than I could grow in an hour, but I felt that in America food would always be there, but am not so sure now, plus I just enjoy playing in the dirt. For many years I had a small garden, just sort of a hobby.

I have been saying that I cut slips off the ends of the potatoes in the south garden because I had let them get so weedy that I was afraid they would not produce, and I did not want to lose the Covington potatoes because they have done so well for me. I planted 4 slips from my south garden potatoes. I just cut off the ends of 4 runners about 12 to 14 inches long and carried them to the north garden and lay them in a small furrow, covered and kept watered for a few days. Even though the 4 plants are much younger than the ones I dug last week, it looks as tho I will get more pounds per plant.

Here is a picture of the first plants production. You can see that the potatoes are much fatter than my wallet. There are more potatoes in the ground, but I expect that I will have to use the tractor to get them.

I got mine online from places like Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Agfabric-Sunblock-Shade-Cloth-Plants/dp/B00KM9JMUI?th=1

The ones I'm using now are 6 ft X 50 ft long .

Places like Home Depot or Lowes may have them too or can order it in.

Rick

I dug the potatoes from under the other 3 vines in the north garden.

Jennifer, I think you mentioned that you would like to have some nice big sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving, I sure have some nice ones. I hope you get a nice harvest. This is a picture of the harvest from under the 4 plants in the north garden.

The small and damaged potatoes are on the tight along with 5 green tomatoes and 4 or 5 radishes. Some of my potatoes are too large, but I have never been able to get the plants to grow all perfectly sized potatoes.

Larry, my sweet potatoes aren't bad, but there's not many of them. There is one giant one and a few nice sized medium ones and a few small ones. The giant one is the Covington. It was a small harvest. It will probably only make 6 recipes of the various things I like to do with sweet potatoes--black bean, sweet potato enchiladas is a favorite. I also have a chickpea, sweet potato kale soup that is delightful. BUT....I only did 3 tubs of them.

Jennifer, I am asking Madge to branch out and try different things as far as cooking goes. I asked Madge to try making a sweet potato dish using raisins and pineapple, she did, it was great, I ask her to use jalapenos and green onions in the greens, she did and it also was great. It is so easy to grow many things we can use, we just have to use them to our taste. I have also ask Madge to try using sweet potatoes like carrots in a salad, I have a small sweet potato on the cabinet now that I plan to shred for a salad. I like the sound of your chickpea, sweet potato kale soup, but I would have to use collard, or some other greens in it because I did not plant any kale this year, but I have seeds, and that may happen. Madge is a great person, but too concerned about what other people like or think. I think Madge is a great cook, and if someone cant stand what we have to eat, they can go to town and get a burger, that has never happened, most of the time they brag on the meal.

Madge and I both grew up poor, but my mom was no wimp in the kitchen, she made do with whatever she had, and we were glad to have it, and I cant remember ever going to bed hungry. We had friend that were worse off than we were, I don't think they ever went to bed hungry either.

I did not harvest the sweet potato that I had in a mineral tub. The tub was too heavy to lift, and I did not want to go get the tractor to lift it. I felt around the base of the plant and could not feel a potato, it was a purple sweet potato and I don't like them as well anyway.

Larry, you can use whatever greens you have for this recipe.

The Red Thai Curry Paste really adds the flavor to this soup. You can use garden peppers, onions, kale (or other greens), sweet potatoes.

I often look for recipes that use a lot of garden food too.

Vegan Sweet Potato, Kale and Chickpea Soup - Cookie and Kate

Jennifer, thanks, I like Thai food and seasoning. There is a Thai place in Ft. Smith, on Dodson ave. that Madge and I like to go to. I like to add a little more spice than Madge does to my food, but we pretty much like the same things.

It was 35 when I got up this morning. Our average frost date is around the end of Sept., I looked at the long range forecast for Ft. Smith, and it does not show any temp low enough for frost through the end of Sept., but in this valley we usually get frost before Ft. Smith.

I think it has warmed up enough to get out and till another bed for greens, they serve as a cover crop and food, and the deer don't seem to care much for them. I also still have onion to plant. I found a nice pile of onions where I clean out the mineral tubs, I had planned on replanting them weeks ago and forgot about them, they are pretty well dried out, but I think I can I can discard the tops and plant the bottom back into the tubs.

We had a low of 39 here. There was a little frost on Tom's truck but none on my car. I'll check the plants later to see if there is damage.

We've already been to Lowes and Walmart to get a couple of panels to finish the "bad chicken" coop roof and to get a few things for packing. The ounce limits on carry-on luggage is annoying. Some evil people messed it up for everyone.

I have a very ambitious list for the remainder of the day including finishing up laundry, helping Tom with the coop roof, cleaning the house a bit. Maybe pulling the Scarlet Sage and planting my pansies. The Scarlet Sage really reseeds well--too well.

The potatoes were sorted through and moved to the utility room, as well as the onions. I haven't had time yet to sort through the onions but some are getting very soft. That is a job for another day.

Some of you in the originals group, might have seen my idea for onions next year. It's something I want to experiment with. It could be a huge failure.

The garlic was moved to the utility room too.

Hopefully garlic will be planted Sunday or Monday. We return Sunday afternoon.

Last night there was one remaining monarch caterpillar on the last milkweed. It was the little one I thought was sick. I'll go out to check on him in a bit.

Just watched the weather. Looks like we might need the shade cloths again! lol

And rain next week. I'm sure it will happen just in time for my large outdoor event and that will bring the stress of moving a 1000 people into the building.

Larry, Thai food is one of our favorites. I always want to order Spicy Basil Noodle with tofu...and usually keep my "heat" level to a #2, but each restaurants' levels are different.

Well, there is the dryer buzzing, time to get busy.

Y’all’s stuff looks so good. Pictures keep popping up on fb for the past successful Garden years. I need one of those years again

The talk about Thai food made me hungry, so I as Madge if she would like to go to Ft. Smith to our favorite Thai place, I wanted to go by the Farmers Co-op also. I had planned to buy another pound or 2 of turnip seed, but they were out of the pound packages, so I rewarded myself with more onions sets. I bought some yellow onion sets, and some kind of bunching onions, just what I need, more onions that I cant get rid of. Anyway, I would like to get set up with more perennial food plants.

I need to go out and sort my potatoes also. I have some good potatoes if I can get them to cure properly. I don't like to dig my potatoes the late because of not having a good way to cure them. I also have a fair harvest of Red wine Velvet sweet potatoes, that I like better than the Covington, but I have not learned cure them properly. I think the RWV potatoes are sweeter and more moist, but so far I am lucky to get them to slip making time the next year, where as, I have a couple of Covington from last year, they have been stored in our bedroom for a little over a year.

I went out and sorted and weighed the sweet potatoes from the 4 plants in the north garden, and they came out to 61 pounds. That is not a record for me, but it is a nice bunch of potatoes. I told Madge that I was sure glad the 100 plants in the south garden didn't do that well, because we would have run out of storage space. We sorted out 33 pounds of large potatoes that we will place in our bedroom, hoping they will store well. The other 28 pounds will be stored where we can easily get to them so can use them first. Plans are to use some of the 28 pounds to make slips for next year. I still have the south gardens potatoes to go through. I don't intend to try to grow as many plants next year, it is easier to take care of a few plant well than to have thousands that you cant care for.

That is so true Larry. When I worked in Lubbock growing 5 acres it was too much. In Quitaque I had a half acre and it was perfect. People would comment how beautiful it was. And it was easy to maintain.

Larry, what is your soil like? The soil where you grew the 4 sweet potatoes that gave you 61 lbs.

Jennifer, some of this I will have to guess at. I think the soil in that area would be called silty loam, shallow, almost no rocks, amended well over the past 15 years, but because my disc or tiller will only work to a depth of about 3" the soil stays tight after 3" and hard to get a spading fork into if it is dry. My north garden is my oldest garden, it was started about 15 years ago. I have not had a soil test in a few years, but I would guess the PH is around 6. Because I planted these slips a little later than I would have liked to I pushed them a little with 10-20-10 fertilizer, and I did not let them hurt for water. Judging from the looks of the roots, I pushed them about all they wanted to be pushed. I like to keep an organic berm around 2 sides of my garden for drainage, and to have organic matter to toss on my garden when the berm decays, these 4 slips were planted up next to the berm, which I was hoping to help hold the moisture, and I watered the plants if they looked a little wilted.

I was concerned about losing my Covington sweet potatoes because I had let the Johnson grass get out of control in the sweet potato bed in the south garden. I cut the ends off of 4 runners and planted them in the north garden where I could baby them a little. I think I will have both Covington and Red Wine Velvet slips for next year. I got about 37 pounds of RWV, the 61 pounds of Covington, and another 75+ pounds of Covington from the south garden, so I should be ok with sweet potatoes, If I can get them cured, if not I will be canning or freezing sweet potatoes.

I recently read this about curing sweet potatoes.

Another way to cure. Quoted from Ellaberry Gardens . 10 days single layered in ventilated plastic bags in a warm humid sunny spot inside. 6 weeks individually wrapped in paper in bins.

Any way you slice it, curing is a difficult task for me.

Jennifer, it was dark last night when I read your question, so I went out this morning to try to get more info for you. I found a few more potatoes, some in the wood chip berm, some in the very hard soil. The ones in the soil I had to run water in the hole to try ro dislodge them. One of the potatoes I broke into 3 parts and still did not get it out.

The larger potatoes in this picture is about the size of potato that I prefer.

This may give you and idea about the texture of my soil. I have stated many times that my soil would go from soup to sidewalk in 10 days without rain, it get so hard that I can't get a spading fork into it.

Most of the time when I grow sweet potatoes I plant the plant in a straight row, then mulch heavily between the rows and let the runners go free and send roots down into the mulch, because that is where I get the best potatoes. I most often use a tractor with a middle buster to plow out the potatoes under the plants. The potatoes under the plants are much larger, and many are cut or broken from plowing them out of the ground. The broken potatoes are used soon or made into pie filling and frozen.

My mom always said "poor people have poor ways", I would like to have better soil, but you have to play the hand you are holding.

Jennifer, you wont believe this, but I took a Walmart bag out to pick up those lose potatoes to weigh, and noticed a couple of bulges in the edge of the garden that had potatoes under them, so I dug them also. I wound up getting another 10 more pounds of potato from those 4 slips. I know that it had to be from those slips, because I had no other potatoes planted in that garden. I took the bag of potatoes down to neighbor's produce stand and weighed them on his high dollar scales just to make sure. That brings the total from the 4 slips to 71 pounds, I wont be able to count them all as good because some were damaged in the digging process, and some are too small to be of any use.

I think a person is better off to plant fewer plants and care for them properly. I think you use less space and less water that way.

Kim, if you really miss the grasshoppers, I am sure I could send you some.

Madge has been putting out fire ant bait, I have been brush hogging my wildlife garden and neighbors garden. I must have chopped up a bushel of pretty peppers.

Larry, thanks! I'm trying to figure out growing sweet potatoes in our clay soil. Next year, we're planning on growing things in the Survivalist Garden that don't require canning. Sweet potatoes are on the list.

We've talked before about how we interchange sweet potatoes for winter squash in recipes. Becau

se winter squash/pumpkins are so difficult here (dumb squash bugs!) sweet potatoes could be a great alternative. It's something we would use....and that is important to me. I like to grow what we'll truly eat. And can what we'll truly eat.

I worry about our soil, though.

I'm really looking forward to next year. I'm finally going to work on some garden things that I've been putting off for awhile. We have a ton of beans and diced tomatoes in the pantry, so we won't need to can any of that next year. We're just not eating as much of those things right now with it just being the two of us. We don't make a lot of pasta sauces or soups and chilies any longer. We will do some.... but it's different without our son here. He could eat a LOT.

I always feel like I need to say.... If food becomes scarce, plans will change of course. Although, honestly, we would probably focus on growing meat. I've been very privileged to enjoy a vegetarian lifestyle.... but if things ever got bad, meat has calories and whatnot.

I just finished up getting everything/one ready for our trip. It's been a crazy day with work, watering for two hours, and getting the animals situated. Oh, and packing. And texting with all the various parties. Daughter and son-in-law went a day early, so they're already there. Got the rental car and checked into the Airbnb. Ethan's gf's family is very different from our family. We are planners and....they're not so much. Hopefully everything will go smoothly.

It's gonna be hot and dry for the rest of the week, so hopefully the deep watering today will sustain everything until I can water again in a few days.

Kim, there were several grasshoppers out here. They weren't as active, but they're around.

I planted pansies last night. It was fun.

The Vego beds are ready to start adding cardboard and compost items. The Greenstalk is still sitting empty.

It will keep until next year.

I love October and want to fully enjoy it again someday.

I don't want to be boring, but as Madge and I were trying to find places in the house to store our sweet potatoes, we drug these out from under the bed in our bedroom.

We still have a few in the center bedroom, we thought that they were the last. The kids often go pick out what ever potatoes they want because it is a little tough for Madge and me to get down and drag things from under the bed. These potatoes were harvested one year and twenty days ago.

The potatoes are a little "picked over", the nice pretty ones always go first, but I bet a hungry guy could still eat one of these potatoes. This is one reason I like the Covington potato, they are more forgiving than the other sweet potatoes I have grown, even with my weak curing system, I still get a pretty good shelf life.

They make a really nice "house plant" so you can have green indoors, keep it in control by clipping the ends and eating them.