Winner: Nebraska Wedding

RD - Please save seeds of your Marianna's Peace.

Okay, Cindy will do

Black Krim v Large Barred Boar v Dark Star (all top 20 tomatoes)-Winner: So, so close-all equals in flavor, but I gotta go with the Dark Star

I’m still a long way from picking and tomatoes but I am picking lots of other things. Today I picked 3.4 pounds of beans off of a 20’ row. Friday I probably got 2.5 pounds. Tomorrow I’ll be canning them. I took this pic before I was finished picking, but it also shows the zucchini plants that I worked on yesterday. I’m going to try growing them vertically this year.

Your garden looks great, Margi. I'm actually behind you.

Welcome back!!

My garden is a little bit ahead of my normal due to the fact that I took a nearly 3-week trip right at the beginning of prime planting time. Because of that trip I chose to put things in early and crossed my fingers. The weather gods were with me and I came home to beans and melons sprouted. 😀

Has anyone used marigolds to repel Colorado potato beetles? If so, did it work?

Sorry Cindy, not me.

Speaking of potatoes, this morning I was looking for some smallish ones to have with dinner tonight. Well I found big ones instead. The one on the left was 11.5 ounces!

I picked the last of the strawberries about 10 days ago. Today I reworked the bed. pulled out all the plants and then put back single plants. Hopefully all the work today will mean a nice harvest next year.

and the Winner is: Black Krim

Richard - That Amelia slice looks so meaty! Is that how they’ve all been?

Yes Margi, the Amelia tomatoes have been huge overall and they have a really good flavor-similar to a Celebrity tomato but about 1.5-2 times as big. It was one on the tomato plants I got from the local nursery and I got 6 of them. The average size is between 185-220 grams

Too bad Amelia is a hybrid.

The comeback story-this ice cream banana tree was completely gone and now (that is an 8 foot fence).

The Meyer lemon tree that i gave up on and planted black cherry tomatoes in the container.

#1 Mariana’s Peace #2 Amelia (most productive tomato-Celebrity also a massive producer) #3 BHN-589 (most productive early season tomato-lots of really large tomatoes). #4 Saybrook

Gave away 6 bags of tomatoes this year-probably my most productive year in a decade

Battle of Top 10 titans: Winner: Neve’s Azorean Red (great tomato-minimal production 1-5 tomatoes per plant).

Some pics from this morning...

First Corn at peak tasseling

2nd Corn at near tassel stage....

3rd Corn at 10"

4th Corn will be planted next week

More pics to come....

Watermelons vining out..............

1 of the cheatin' tomato plants, 2 maters with a hint of orange (out of view)

Later tomato plants, many greenies have set....

One lonely Eggplant, that's all we need,....

Cantaloupes coming along.......

Some Squash, one plant under borer attack,,,,

Cucumber trellis, we ate our first cuke last night with dinner...

Sweet Potato Vines, today I dug parallel rows to root the vines for a later harvest....

Blueberry bushes....

Sweet Banana Peppers...

Pear Tree, it's loaded but hard to see...

Fig Trees are loaded too....

Close up of figs...

Apple trees looks promising this year, ...if the squirrels leave us some...

Volunteer Potatoes in the compost pile....

...and lastly a little color...

It's getting dry here with no rain in sight so the deep well will get a workout next week as temps rise into the 90's.

I know what you mean about the rain, Vgkg, your garden sure looks a lot greenier than mine does now. These 98-100 degree days (every day of June) are taking a toll on everything around here. It is supposed to start raining on Monday-but monsoon weather-so I am hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

I just checked out our long range forecast and the next 2 weeks look dry as a bone, and hot too. My 4th corn seed planting will be tomorrow and the heat will be a real challenge. I envy your delicious looking tomatoes RD, we needed just one today for our lunch/club sandwiches. Another 3 day wait to slice a fully ripened one here.

I need to get the crazy weather from the PNW on here, we've been up and down with temperatures. Had a mini heat spell in May, a 90º day (I was shading stuff in the garden like mad), then it turned cool enough to turn on the house heat in the mornings. Had some moderate weather and a little rain but has been in the 60's last few days, however it's warming up and we'll have 90 again on Friday. We are starting into our dry months now. My snap peas, aspabroc and lettuce have liked this weather though-except for those really hot couple of days earlier. Tomatoes just went in middle of May.

The lettuce is bolting now:

The Aspabroc always delivers

I found the way to move 100+ tomato plants around to harden them off-wagons! I start them for family and friends, I can only plant 12-15.

Lea - Love the wagons.

We just hit 94 degrees!

This heat ended my lettuce season too, composted all of it today along with 1 dying squash plant. VgQn is busy pickling the cukes daily and thinking of new squash recipes. Cindy I saw where it'll be hotter up in Maine than we are here, it's 91F here today and the humidity was brutal before noon. Sweet Virginia breezes after 3pm helps a lot. At my age I need to take a break from the garden between 11am-3pm so it's going to be long lunches in the AC for a while. The deep well is getting a real workout to keep things going as the grass over the septic tank turns brown.

Lea, I love the wagons too-wish my tomato plants still looked like yours. It is actually raining here breaking the month long string of 97-100 degree days. The temperature gauge on one of my weather stations couldn't handle it and gave out. Sure is nice to have a cool day for a change.

It’s been hot in Kansas too, and dry in my garden. However, night before last a system came through and I got a tad over 1.5” and yesterday was only 80. A nice drink and break from the 90s.

I missed out on buying sweet potato slips this year but had a sweet potato sprout some growth. I cut off the tops of a couple and stuck them in some potting mix. Does anybody here have experience doing this? What’s my next move? Can they go straight into the garden now? Separate the sprouts from the spuds? Am I too late? Maybe it will be a year without sweet potatoes.

Itsmce, I always start my slips in used cell packs. Generally from the start I'll separate each slip from the potato and plant it in seed starter mix, then after a few weeks it'll have developed enough roots to transplant into the ground. Planting the entire potato (as pictured) may make it a bit difficult to separate the individual slip w/roots intact but it can be done with care. Water well once transplanted and add some shade in this heat to allow for hardening off and promote good rooting.

Yes Margi, you just plant the slips and let the vines run wild. Will take some pictures when I get hone. I just cut mine off the sweet potato leaving a small piece of the potato on them and plant them in a container of soil and water-partial shade when I first plant them.

Thanks for thr SP tips. I investigated these more closely and it turns out the one on the right isn’t attached to the little piece of potato any more. that one i figure i can get in the ground soon, assuming I can give it some shade. I’m not so sure about the others.

On another topic, check out my tomato harvest! First of the season.

2 chocolate cherry and 1 orange ping pong. 🤣

Winner: Carbon

Sweet potato slips

Margi, how are your Pink Ping Pong cherry tomato doing? I am just about out of the chocolate cherry-they were nice while they lasted

Whew! This heat is a killer. I've been watering all of the veggies deeply via ooze hoses every 3 daze but it's all dusty again by day 3. Tomorrow morning I'll resort to overhead sprinklers for 2 hours to give the entire plot a good soaking and the plants a good rinsing. The watermelons are just now setting fruit so they'll need a good soaking, as well as the cantaloupes many of which are green softball size now. The first corn should be ready in about 3 days as long as it doesn't "pop" out there, nyuk.

Lots of gorgeous big green tomatoes coming along nicely, many at least 1 lb. Not more will set in this heat so glad these are in the pipeline. I started some late tomato and cuke seeds for an extended harvest into fall. Our early cukes usually go bust by August and I want some to go with the tomatoes for autumn salads. We're eating those tomato/cuke salads almost daily now as both kick into high gear. The banana peppers are going gangbusters now as well as the squashes. Hope to have some more pics soon....

I picked my first green beans...just a little bit on the young side. They were the most tender ever I would say. These were Strike. The next planting is Provider, the 3rd is Accelerater, the 4th is perhaps Strike, the5th is Derby. the 6th is Derby and Improved Tendergreen. I wanted Florence but they were destroyed at the Canadian border.

Wow that's a lot of Beans Wayne! I also started planting Strike a few years ago and it should be re-named as Homerun! Amazing producer and a 20' row keeps us 2 feed through the next Spring (in freezer). We picked the last of them 2 weeks ago and the melons are filing in that space now. The Ambrosia cantaloupes are close to ripening up as is the Ambrosia corn (in 2 days). Corn #2 is now tasseling, corn #3 is about 18"tall, and corn #4 just popped up yesterday.

We got 0.33" of rain yesterday, not much but I'll take it. I now have thumb sized watermelons and they'll be filling in the space where the beets & carrots were. My late tomato and cuke seeds also just popped up. Hard to believe that in 2 months from today I'll be planting the fall crops.....I hope it's cooler by then.

It's 100F outside but I managed to get some photos before passing out........

...more below, but I'm to hot to label them, but yawl know what they are........

....more....

...and lastly the ground over the septic tank...

It's only 98 here.

^^^ Brrrr........... ;-)

I got a couple nice showers this week.

We ended up getting a little less than 4/10" of rain last night. Better than nothing.

That is a gorgeous hydrangea, vgkg.

Richard - Sorry to leave you hanging. You asked about pink ping pong, well it’s orange ping pong here and it has only produced a couole so far, but i’m on the front end of the tomato season. I’m not a fan of raw tomatoes so I have to rely on Hubby’s assessment. He said it’s no where near as good as chocolate cherry, but better than any store bought tomato.

I just took this pic of the bottom of the

plant. Ther’s quite a few on and they’re close to turning. I guess I did pick 4 or 5 this morning that were showing a touch of color. There’s a BUNCH of plant crammed in this cage.

Most of my tomatoes are pretty loaded. Here’s one of the Tonopah plants. I counted 14 or so nice sized ’maters.

I have pulled out the beans and replanted in the same row. Provider for green beans and Goldrush for yellow beans. They both did great, but the Goldrush REALLY were thick in the plants.

I keep hoping to find a Crimson Sweet watermelon growing in the garden. I have only seen one female blossom so far and I was not successful at pollinating it. On the other hand, there are several ambrosia cantaloupe sizing up already.

Cindy that promised rain passed us on by at 5am with just a little thunder in the distance :-( so it's still dry as a bone here. I did harvest most of corn plot #1 today and will pick the rest soon.....thanks, those hydrangea were panting today. Next rain chance is on Sunday.

Margi, I didn’t get a single melon this year. Still got a few vines but the weeds are about to choke them out. Did get a few more squash pollinated. Most of the tomatoes are gone (maybe 25-30 small ones left)-did get 6 quarts of hot sauce and a couple tomato sauces put up

Yesterday I finished harvesting all of corn plot #1 and removed the stalks to prep that ground for the late tomato plants. Corn plot #2 is now at peak tassel stage. Our Squash is also almost done so I'll be yanking those plants out soon to make room for a few more late tomato plants. We are expecting a decent shot at some rain tomorrow and it would be just in time to save some farmers a lot of heartache around here. Another 95F & humid day here today.

Cindy, in zone 5 NH I was told if I waited until after June 1 to plant potatoes I wouldn,t get Colorado potato beetles. it took a couple of years planting mid June to hreatly reduce beetles. this uear, non e so far. You¡ll have to find out when beetles arrive where you are and wait to plant after that date.

Thanks, defrost. Will call the county after this holiday week.