We got another 0.75" of rain yesterday which was just in time, that 2" we got 5 days ago was already used up in this heat. 100F is expected today with unbearable humidity so I'll be inside after I repot my fall tomato plants, hope to plant them in the ground soon. The late cuke plants have been transplanted in the garden now and look good. Also picked the first cantaloupe yesterday and have about 20 green ones out there.

Will be picking corn #2 in about 2 days along with a boo coo amount of tomatoes. The watermelons are setting a good amount and are plumping up daily with the rains and some help from the well. Steady she goes, maybe the tropical storm heading for Texas will spread some more rain our way and break the back of this heatwave.

No rain here, vgkg. Maybe Monday.

Hovering around 100 all month and no sign of rain. Beryl is supposed to be here on Monday. We are in the direct path of it now, but that changes every day

Light rain in NH and very muggy. fingers crosssed RD Texas that you don't get a bad hit.

Really hope that Beryl veers away from you, RD.

Thanks Cindy and defrost49-it barely (1/2 inch) even rained here with maybe 25 mph winds. My sister lives in Houston and I can't get ahold of her-the hurricane is blowing through her area now

Richard - I’m glad you escaped this time. I hope your sis is doing ok.

Glad that you are ok, Richard. Hope your sister is as well.

It's 98 degrees here right now.

Glad you are OK RD, hope your family stays well.

Garlic is pulled, so good, The spoon tomato is turning red- and they are indeed tiny! About the size of a pea, lol. Not much else going on, just a lot of weeding. Picking greens and herbs. Got a new 6" and a new 10" chainsaw to help with yard cleanup and trail maintenance.

99 degrees now at 3:30pm.

100 degrees at 4:30.

How about where you are, vgkg?

I'm melting..melting! Oh the Humanity! Doing ok I guess Cindy, similar to your temps...I miss winter ;-).....Also glad you are ok RD, my SIL in the Woodlands near Houston is into day 2 without power, ugh. Just as hot there as it is here and without AC I wouldn't last long. We did get 1/4" of rain yesterday and on Friday we may get a few inches more if things jell together, hope not too much. SIL may not get power for daze?

RD, I'm glad to hear you are OK, I hope you hear from your sister soon and that she's OK.

We've been very lucky here in Northern Michigan. It has reached 90F a few days, which is unusually hot, and the humidity has been over 90% too, so it's just sticky, but it's rained about every other day so things are growing like a jungle. The only real issue is the biting flies, no amount of repellant is helping me or the cattle, the minute I set foot in the garden, something bites me!

I pulled 250 heads of Music garlic and it's curing in the pole barn, since I can't get 2 days in a row without rain and I have hay that needs cutting, everyone is a couple of weeks behind on that.

Annie

Thanks for the concern Cindy, Margi, Beesneeds, Vgkg, and Annie1992-all the family in Houston and surrounding areas are okay (most important)-some had to go without power a couple of days, but no significant Home or property damage-cell tower still down

My SIL got back power at 4am today. Cost her $400 to have the downed tree limbs cut and removed. Nothing significant fell on the house, got lucky. Hot here again today but it was mostly cloudy with a brisk breeze so I mowed the grass before the predicted rains coming up the next 2 daze. We could get anywhere between 2-5", hope it's just 2" with the maters ripening up.

Glad Houston friends and family didn't have serious damage. our neighbor farmer does round bales and was able to do a second cutting.

vgkg, I'm happy it didn't get any worse than the tree for your SIL. I'll cross my fingers for your tomatoes, mine won't be ripening for at least a couple more weeks but at least they are consistently wet.

defrost, we also do large (1,000 pound) round bales, but haven't had enough days without rain for the hay to dry after cutting to bale it. I don't usually cut a second cutting, we cut in late June or early July, the I wait until September and then turn the cattle out onto the hay field as part of the grazing rotation. I have grass hay, but the neighbors have alfalfa and second cutting is their "money crop", so I'm hoping they can get the first cutting done soon. My hay is still nice and green, so it's not a problem yet.

Annie

Annie, after cutting there was a light rain and brief. the next day they mixed it (don't know the proper term) and it must have dried enough to bale. We live on what used to be an apple orchard but the orchard wasn't able to continue in the 70s. the old trees were cut down and used for feed corn and hay. We are lucky our neighbor is also a logger and needed more hayfields so we get our firewood in return for the use of our fields.

I ate the first few cherry tomatoes which are planted in my small high tunnel. I also have a few plants of slicing tomatoes that still need some weeks but are looking good. the paste tomatoes are planted outside and not doing so well possibly not getting enough attention. They weren't planted as early as the others since I no longer start my own plants and had trouble finding 6-packs of paste tomatoes. nurseries around here seem to have switched to more expensive single plants. i like being able to get one each of several varieties however.

Potatoes weren't planted until mid June so here in NH they don't get infested with Colorado potato beetles if planted after June 1. But thanks to not enough rain and wayering I think I just lost my second planting of carrots. i don't seem to know the right tricks. Eating sugar snaps but I just planted my summer squash. Not enough energy anymore to garden like I used to.

Like many of you here on the east coast we're getting a good rain today, maybe too much for some nearby areas with flash flooding going on, but so far here we've gotten just 0.3" with much more on the way through Sat morning. This mini-monsoon is just what we needed to break this ongoing drought. Took some more garden pics yesterday....

Tomatoes to be picked before the rain....

3rd and 4th corn plantings...

Cantaloupes coming along...

...more to follow....

Watermelons shaping up....

Clash of the Titans.......Sweet potatoes vs Watermelons, both are filling the gap where carrots, beets, and bush beans were growing....

Pears Plumping....

One of my extra early cheatin' tomato plants, a Pink Brandywine below which has a case of early blight. Once most of these tomatoes ripen up I'll pull this plant, it's the only plant infected.

And lastly a Surprise......I had an old pack of Black Beauty Eggplant seed so planted the last 10 seeds where just one germinated. Result : Not Purple but White.

....as I was typing we got another 0.3" of rain

oops, the "clash of the titans" pic is missing above, here they are....

Sweet potatoes vs Watermelons...

...by this morning there is no longer any space between them

Whoa, we're up to 1.75" of rain as I type, thanks but that's good for now....but it will continue off & on over night so no telling how much rain we'll get. Flash flooding all around us but so far not here, that may change. Too much rain and my melons and tomatoes may split open. It seems like either feast or famine these daze, drought or flood, ugh.. Hope you are cashing in on some of this rain Cindy, just not too much!.

We've had some flooding here in Michigan too, fortunately it was a few miles south of me.

Defrost, Dad always called it flipping or "fluffing up", LOL. We just take the hay rake, flip the windrows so they can get dry on the bottom. Sometimes we flip twice, then bale. If it gets wet more than once, though, it's pretty much a loss, so we haven't cut yet, nor have the farmers around us. We have 6 days with no rain in the forecast next week, so maybe...

Bartering for your fire wood is a good thing! Last year I traded a nice beef bull for 40 round bales of hay, LOL. It works well, mostly. Dad told me the best deal was when both people thought they got the better part of the bargain.

I staked up some tomatoes today, they are encroaching on the peppers. The tromboncino vines are attempting to overrun the potatoes, but the potatoes are nearly 3 feet tall and taking care of their own territory. I try to not plant vines next to other vines, like the above "Battle of the Titans", but sometimes the vines have other ideas about how far they are going to grow. I pulled beets for supper but got interrupted by a neighbor, so beets will be tomorrow night. I have been picking zucchini for about a week and picked the first white cucumber today. It was still pretty small but I was impatient, I"ve never grown them before. Oddly enough, it tasted just like a cucumber, go figure.

vgkg, I hope it's stopped raining there.

Annie

I am awake early this Saturday morning. Surprisingly, there’s a small shower going on outside. I bet we won’t get even .1”. It’s dry here in KS and the next three days are predicted to be 100 or so, humid too of course.

Annie - Last week my daugher-in-law and I whipped up a double batch of your salsa. It has become my go-to salsa recipe since it can safely just be waterbath canned. I’m so glad I found that recipe several years ago. We got 12 pints and 4 half-pints.

My tomato crop has been nothing short of remarkable this year. I’m not quite sure what to attribute that to. Perhaps its because the plants went out so early. Maybe it’s because we’ve had very little rain, so next to none of them have cracked. I canned 7 quarts of tomatoes a couple days ago and last week I made marinara and canned it - 7 pints. I took this pic last Tuesday. At this point all the roma-type toms have been used up and many of the big ’uns too. I have 14 tomato plants in my garden.

Yesterday I picked over 11 pounds from the four Tonopah plants and nearly 6 pounds from the Celebrity plant. Today I’lll hit up the Supremo, Little Napoli, and Yaqui plants. I expect to nearly fill the two containers on the left again.

Interesting thing with the Tonopah plants. I have 4 in the main garden. I think 2 of them perhaps aren’t really Tonopah, because they are taller and the tomatoes ripen to a deep pink, not red. The shape of the tomatoes from both types of these plants are all nice and meaty and blocky, but something funny must have been going on in the seed packet. I need to check what my source for the seeds was, I’m not remembering which company I got them from.

VgKg - Your watermelon are a bit ahead of mine. It was just on the 4th that I found the first swelling melon. This pic was taken on the 10th, when I KNEW I was really going to have a watermelon…finally. There are 6 or 7 in the patch now.

Vgkg, those eggplants look like Casper eggplants. I have grown them in past years-they are sweeter than regular eggplants-kind of a pumpkin flavor.

Annie, I had my worst year ever for cucumbers-not sure what is going on-had lots of insects this season-can never have too many onions

Looking great Margi-I kept track of all my tomatoes through June and will put the totals here in a few minutes-the Hybrid Beefsteak was awesome and produced the biggest tomatoes by far

Harvests are getting pretty meager now

Woke up to another tropical downpour this morning but the winds are calm so that's good. Had 2" of rain in the gauge last night and right now it's up to 3", but it has stopped for now and hopefully has ended as this very moist system moves north. Will need to pick more blushed tomatoes and cantaloupes before they split, and also prop back up some leaning corn stalks. It's great to get this rain, just not all at once, we're back into the 99-100F range in the coming daze so this deluge saved many farms and gardens out there.

The tomato totals were as follows: (not including loss to hailstorms and worms): Tomato BHN-589=4071g (5 plants) Avg. 178g (Averages were calculated by dropping the 0-6 smallest tomatoes via each type depending on the total number of tomatoes harvested, so these are more like median numbers); Tomato Celebrity=6452g (6 plants) Avg. 130g; Tomato Tycoon=3894g (5 plants) Avg. 157g; Tomato Amelia=4941g Avg. 151g; Tomato Cherokee Purple=3415g (3 plants) Avg. 190g; Tomato Medium Rare=1032g (2 plants) Avg.166g; Tomato Black Krim=969g (2 plants) Avg. 132g; Tomato Classic Beefsteak=1179g (2 plants) Avg. 129g; Tomato Brown Sugar=504g (1 plant) Avg. 101g; Tomato Large Barred Boar=676g (1 plant) Avg. 135g; Tomato Black Truffle=1874 (2 plants one was Japanese Black Truffle)=1874g Japanese Black Truffle Average=144g; Black Truffle Average=84; Tomato Old German=1442g (2 plants) Avg. 194; Tomato Mariana's Peace (John's plant only-think there were actually more)=405g

Avg. 135g; Tomato Hybrid Beefmaster= 3816 (1 plant) Avg. 290; Tomato Creole=823 (1 plant) Avg. 109; Tomato Super Sweet 100 (by far the largest producer); Tomato Chocolate Stripes=442g (4 plants-by far the worm's favorite flavor) Avg. 147; Tomato Dark Star=561g (1 plant produced) Avg.112; Tomato Goose Creek=516g Avg. 74; Tomato Carbon=718g Avg. 74; Tomato Druzba=1354g (2 plants) Avg. 152; Tomato Mr. Stripey=445g Avg. 68; Tomato Saybrook=694g (1 plant) Avg. 174; Neve's Azorean Red (1 plant-only got 2 tomatoes)=387g Avg. 194; Tomato Nebraska Wedding=694g (1 plant) Avg. 87; Tomato Tomande=475g Avg. 119; Tomato Fejee Improved=295g (1 plant) Avg.98; Tomato Brandywine Sudduth=302g Avg.81.

Smaller tomato plants: Tomato totals only: 42 Day (3 plants) Total: 177; San Marzano (2 plant) Total: 157 tomatoes; Honeycomb (2 plants) Total: 288; Sungold (2 plants) Total 68; Sugary Total 42; Super Sweet 100 (by far the largest producer-3 plants) Total: 495; Blackberries (2 plants) Total 291; Chocolate Cherry (1 plant); Total 27; Apricot Zebra (1 plant) Total 8; Thai Pepper Total 123.

Tomato totals: Medium-beef master sizes=282; Cherry-Small tomatoes= 1277

Worms got at least: 4 Medium Rare, 6 Cherokee Purple, 3 Black Krim, 6 Amelia, 4 Tycoon, 6 Celebrity, 3 Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, and 8 Chocolate Stripes (I am sure I missed several more that I tossed out). Hail got 15-20 more big tomatoes and lots of little ones

That's Quite a Haul and Wide Range of Variety RD! My Hat's off to you. Mine are coming in strong now, many 2 lbers in the mix. Not much of a mix here, nyuk, got Cherokee Purples, Pink BWs, and a beefsteak hybrid. My only pest so far this season are Stink Bugs. Once the last patch of late corn is harvested I expect those earworms to find a new home in my late tomatoes. But the stink bugs are the worst, can turn a nice tomato into a punchered speckle ball in no time. They also like my pears, ugh.

3" of rain was the end of the storm this morning, so glad to get it since the heat will be back on high next week. I won't be going outside very much Tues/Wed with 99F-107indexes. Without that 24 hours of rain the many local farmers & gardeners might have lost it all. Corn fields were tassling at 3 ft high around here, it's normally 7-8' by now.

itsmce, I'm glad you enjoy that salsa, my family loves it and we are nearly out. I'm hoping for a bountiful tomato harvest this year so I can put up a couple of large batches. I'm envious of the watermelons, I just can't seem to grow them. They grow, get big, ripen until they are nice and red inside, they look beautiful and they taste like....nothing. I might as well eat crunchy water. Cantaloupe grow well here, but not the watermelons, for some reason.

RD, I'm also low on bread and butter pickles, my grandson eats them by the jar. So, hopefully, I"ll have lots of cucumbers too. A local farm market has them right now, 25 for $6, so I can default to them if I need to. Meanwhile, you are winding down while I'm just starting. No tomatoes will be ripe for another couple of weeks and my first planting of corn hasn't even started to tassel. I did harvest the first head of Napa cabbage along with the first hill of Kennebec potatoes, I was just checking to see if I had creamer sized potatoes yet. I got these:

The one with the toothpick on it was the average size, so not nearly as big as Kennebec will get, but a nice size to eat. The skin was so tender that it just rubbed off in a couple of places with my thumb. I will check the Red Pontiac and the fingerlings next, after I use these up.

vgkg, I'm glad to hear you got the much needed rain, but you are right, it would have been nice to spread it out a little!

Happy gardening, everyone. I'm always happiest in the garden and in Michigan, that time is limited!

Annie

Lovely harvest, Margi and Annie. We are in desperate need of rain and even though vgkg is getting some, we are not.

Cindy, I'm going to cross my fingers for you, hoping you get some of the rain you need so badly.

Today I picked the first cucumber. My husband's brother and wife are coming to visit in another week and bringing their 8 year old twin granddaughters. The cucumbers should be ready about that time, so they might have to cook a meal for themselves while I make pickles!

Annie

Thanks, Annie.

99 predicted for today and 101 predicted for tomorrow. Right now it's 96. The chances of rain keep dropping. Maybe Wednesday.

Ugh, Cindy, you make me feel ashamed for complaining that I'm not working outside in our 84F heat. I'm definitely a Michigan girl, anything over 80F is just too hot for me!

THat said, we got several days of 90F or over last year, and several already this year. I don't like it at all, but the garden loves it, especially now that we are getting rain every two or three days. I can only hope that continues, I have the capacity to water the garden, but not the hayfield or the pastures.

Zucchini season has hit with a vengeance here, I have a couple of crisper drawers full. It's time to sneak out in the dark of night and leave bags of them on the neighbors' porches. Don't even think about leaving your truck unlocked. (grin)

Annie

Wish I was up a little closer.

it's a different world down here.

High heat (100's and it sucks) and grass hoppers.

Okie HU

Annie - Enjoy your weather. I used to live in Michigan and I loved it.

I feel you Cindy-it hovers around 100 for 4 months a year here and close to 90 for about 3-4 months. Still lots of worms and the grasshoppers are coming back like always

Well I yanked out all of my cantaloupe vines today since they appear exhausted, got about 20 loupes from 6 plants so it was a pretty good year for those.

Also cut open our first ripe watermelon, pics below...

I planted a couple of different orange varieties and I think this one is OrangeGlo?

vgkg, that's really pretty. How did it taste?

I picked about a pound of green beans, some white cucumbers and the ever faithful zucchini, LOL, buckets full of those things. My hay got cut today, no rain until Sunday evening according to the weather people, so maybe....

Annie

the heat wave finally broke in NHyesterday with perfect weather to enjoy a picnic supper and free outdoor concert. i picked sigar snaps early in the day before they got too big during the heat wave. Since there's only two of us my garden rows are short amd I'm trying to do some succession planting. Pole beans are almost ready for first picking and first cherry tomatoes are in a bowl on the counter for easy snacking. Need to pick more today and maybe the first cluster of slicers which I suspect are 4th of July. plants are too close together and didn't get pruned. i have some sweet peppers ready for picking, probably Carmen.

I've lost plantings of carrots and beets and lettuce possibly due to insufficcient watering. i saw germination and then disappeared. My zucchini and Delicata squashes are only recently planted. Friend gave me some summer squash which was tasty. first one I boight at farmers market had bitter area. Yellow summer squash and crooknecks are not my favorite for flavor. i prefer zucchini Costata romamesque, an Italian variety, and patty pans.

Tomato plants grown in my high tunnel are healthy. Amish paste tomatoes outside needed more attention and fertilizer. Liquid fish fertilizer to the rescue but also additional Pro Gro dry fertilizer. Music garlic needs pulling.

I boight fingerlings at the farmers market that were delicious split in half, tossed in evo and air fried. My potatoes weren't planted until mid June to avoid Colorado potato beetles.

Looks like a few days of great weather and then heat comes back. ack!

Annie that melon is very good and sweet, it's so huge that we shared it with a neighbor too. More will ripen in the coming days. Yesterday I planted my late tomato plants (7) and the late cukes are now in the ground. That wraps up all of the summer veggie planting and in 5 weeks I'll be putting in the fall crops to fill in the plot vacated by the cantaloupes. Glad that the 80's temp are expected for at least the next week as well as rain chances improving all next week.

Defrost49, it is supposed to cool off here (at least to 90 degrees or so) for the next4-5 days as long as the rain makes it here-fingers crossed even though I only have potatoes, onions, strawberries (none blooming now), and trees (Meyer lemon tree got eaten by worms again, the Ice Cream Banana tree still looks pretty good, and the main trunk of the avocado tree died, but a side branch is still growing into a tree, hopefully) left-pulled most of my sweet potatoes and vines, so my yard looks less like a jungle now

Hi everyone! We plant our tomatoes mid summer here in Southern Louisiana for a fall harvest as the bugs are really bad in the spring and ruin the tomatoes. We are growing pink banana squash for the first time. Looking forward to trying it out! This year we are growing Peron Sprayless heirloom tomatoes, which have done well for us in the past. Luckily we have had passing showers this week to help water the garden.

So far the main insect pests here have been/are the Stink Bugs, Squash Bugs, Striped Cuke Beetles, Grasshoppers, and now the Japanese Beetles are coming in strong. The JBs are mainly going after my sweet potato leaves, the zinnias, and the persimmon tree leaves. The tomatoes are slowing down since we had a 2 week stretch near 100F. We got 1/2" of rain yesterday but some areas got up to 7", more rain to come all week long but at least the high temps will be in the 80's range.

Some pics from yesterday....

Pears....lost 2 top branches from the weight.

Early tomato plants still going strong...

New tomato plants close to first bloom...

This is what happens if you leave the allotment for 10 days in July.

Plus all 6 zucchini plants and 4 dozen kale and broccoli for winter have been demolished by the snails.

I 've been harvesting watermelons the last few days. I brought in a 30 pound Sweetheart today. Charlene is a good one too.

hi all

Hi Wayne! We ate our last watermelon yesterday.

Below is the Sept Veggie thread, hope your garden is growing well. .....https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/6463420/veggie-tales-september-2024#n=9