[greeneyes]

Greetings everyone. Really nice day today. Dry, Sun shine, not too hot or cool. Lots of Cherry tomatoes on one of the Walmart plants are various shades of red.

Several small plum size volunteers are orange, and I picked them to let them ripen indoors. Found some wilted cuke leaves on my pot of cukes, and some bugs, which I picked off and squashed.

Had already sprinkled DE on them, but may make up some pepper/garlic spray too. Best luck with cukes for several years, so maybe next year I'll plant 2 or 3 pots of those.

Hate to just post and run, but have to go now. Will catch up later.

Prayers up for all. Have a great weekend. God Bless.

[greeneyes]

Pinging the list.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Is it Friday again - already?

I’m still wading through tomatoes - plan on freezing some for soups and chili this winter and making salsa, of course! The ‘Juliet’ tomatoes have been used for drying. They’re a small Roma-type tomato. Highly recommended!

I’m so sick of cucumbers I could barf. Two plants are PLENTY for us, though I planted four. I need to just knock it off!

I haven’t been down to the other garden this week; it’s been rainy and that slope is slippery for the 4-wheeler, but thanks to said rain, I’m not worried. Watermelon, cantaloupe, butternut and spaghetti squash down there. I’m sure they’re fine, though Beau tells me the raccoons got ALL of the Sweet Corn. Our fault - we didn’t put up an electric fence, or put a dog and a house down there this season.

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!

I have peas started and lettuces and spinach and beets to go in next week for Fall crops; the Weatherman assures me we will FINALLY cool off. This has been one hot and humid and rainy growing season. Good for veggies and weeds; not so much fun for gardeners!

Still have plenty of basil for more pesto and I’m also in the process of cleaning out the big freezer as Beau is determined to have bear and elk and wild boar for us this fall into winter. We’re getting a second chest freezer from a friend! Wheeee!

I’m pretty sure we’ll make it through Winter. ;)

[Twinkie]

Lots of tomatoes of all sizes here. FANG gathers them before
they get too ripe; so we have some coming along all the
time. - Funny. FANG brought in a pretty little hinged
shell that a raccoon had cracked open & ate the meat from
it. The raccoon left the shell in the garden; evidently was
trying to pay us something for what ever bit of food he
ate from the garden. - We had another raccoon to get caught
in a trap and died from the heat because FANG hadn’t been
out to the garden for a few days. Poor little raccoon. It
had to be a terrible death and I shamed FANG for not seeing
to his trap. I didn’t know he had set the trap. The little
raccoon that left the pretty shell for us had evidently
come up after FANG found the dead one in the trap. - I
hated that so bad! He is going to have to take a different
sort of attitude to things or he and I are going to just
operate in separate lives. (After over 52 yrs.; we do
anyway. I don’t put up with foolishness much any more.)
IF FANG had just told me that the trap was there and set &
asked me to check it - I would have!! I’m just not able to
navigate much in the heat any more like I used to. I’m
old. :o(

[tubebender]

Thanks for the ping. I’ll see what I have to post after dinner and after checking on some Mole traps I have set for a friend about a mile away...

[tob2]

The four o’clocks finally bloomed! Pretty fuschia(?) color. All four plants seem to be the same color. Tomato plants are now so big the pot keeps falling over and now looking for a way to tie them to something. Not many places to do that but will try. All the tomato plants are loaded with green ones in varying sizes Gonna have a very large crop all at once!

[CapnJack]

I got a question for you folks ... my wife loves her garden so much, but when the fall and winter comes to NH, she just looks out the window and gets sad. She stays home to take care of our 2 yr old and spends a lot of time with her in the garden when I'm at work.

So, for next year I plan on making her a small 10 X 12 greenhouse.

So, do any of you have a greenhouse for winter growing? I would like to be able to put in small wood stove at on end to keep it warm all winter (I have TONS of wood available year round).

From what I read the best glazing to use is double walled polycarbonate sheets. I don't think a hoop style would work up here due to the snow load and so I would like to make a wooden frame house.

Any good plans or even kits you know of or have experience with?

Thanks in advance.

[metmom]

My sauce tomatoes are coming in nicely. I’m collecting them until I have enough for a big batch for processing.

I planted pumpkins and out of six vines have ONE pumpkin. What a waste of garden space.

I’m fighting a losing battle with squash bugs, squash vine borers, and cucumber beetles. Much as I’d like to grow zucchini again next year, I’m thinking of trying to sterilize the soil where there squash plants were and taking a year off next year. Maybe they’ll move on.

After I pull up the plants, I’m going to pour boiling water around where the roots were to try to take care of any bugs that might have it in mind to overwinter in the soil.

[sockmonkey]

Here in TX we seem to be drying out. Two weeks of baking, then a week of rain. My poor garden doesn’t know what to think. Pulled up most of my tomatoes. I have some cukes, a lemon boy, and some peppers that are doing okay. Of my six cucuzza plants, of which I thought I would be drowning in cucuzza, I have had a grand total of two. My pollinators are few and far between this year. Hope the fall garden will do better.

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

help....2nd year in a row all my heirloom tomatoes are showing 100% blossom end rot.....treated the soil, plenty of calcium with th eplanting....lots of fertilizer and it is happening again. Beautiful Black Krims, Purple Cherokees, Anna Russians, Brandywines and Mortgage Lifters all going south. Any advice.

[NTHockey]

Too late for this year, but the new garden has been an absolute disaster. Except for my wife’s herbs, all I’m getting is weeds. Excuses abound - not level, too much sun, bad soil, bad choice of crops, too much water, not enough water. You get the picture.

I live in DE and this year, the spring was cold and wet and the summer has been hot and dry. My old garden , same orientation to the sun, is doing very well. Got one pickle that weighed 1 lb. 9 oz. Plenty of string beans and now tomatoes and peppers are coming in. Heck, I even planted asparagus and it’s doing fine.

Back to the new garden, I would appreciate any and all suggestions to prevent another disaster.

[Jumper]

I am in the process of collecting seeds. This weekend I came across a beautiful Red or Scarlet Cone flower. I already have several types of blue and purple, and a white, but this will make a nice addition to my garden.

I am going to take out all my perennials like the cone flowers and replant them after reworking the soil and landscaping.

Any recommendations for similar flowers to add to these and my daisy's.

[Augie]

It was a beautiful weekend, weather-wise, in Central Missouri, but the mood around my place was not a happy one. The vet came out and euthanized Mrs. Augie's 37yo Arabian mare Friday evening. Overall, the old girl was in quite good health, but she had a melanoma on her hind end that was beginning to cause a lot of discomfort. I rented an excavator so we could honor her life with a proper burial on the farm.

I also spent a couple hours with the excavator in the pond removing some dirt that I couldn't get to with Nanner. I was able to get all of that loose dirt hauled out on Saturday. Mowed the grass. Picked tomatoes. Mrs. Augie picked pumpkins. Picked more tomatoes. Washed graded and packed tomatoes. Green beans are ready to be picked. Butternut squash and Russian cucumbers are loaded. Okra is loaded. Pepper plants are loaded.

One of Mrs. Augie's friends spotted a baby chicken loose in the road last week. She stopped and picked it up. Now it lives at our house. It's a banty cochin and is the most affectionate baby chicken I've ever seen. This is where she sits while Mrs. Augie is working in her flower gardens.

Dobby the cat helped me seed ten flats of fall-crop broccoli on Saturday. Well, helped might be a bit of stretch. Mostly he just got in the middle of what I was trying to do and knocked stuff off the shelf.

[Black Agnes]

I discovered a youtube video on dehydrating blueberries. I tried doing this ONCE and vowed never again (looking at the comments I’m not alone in this). This lady freezes her blueberries whole before dehydrating. Just put on a tray full to try this. I’m thinking these would be great to add to pancakes or muffins after rehydrating in a little hot water beforehand. Would free up the several gallons of ziploc freezer bags worth of space in my freezer too.

Tomatoes have petered out. I need to get in there and tie up, feed and spray again but have been busy with other stuff like dehydrating 6 bushels of pear dices. We use those in muffins, pancakes and what have you and love them.

Probably a bushel of sweet peppers that need to be picked this afternoon and ‘something’ done with. Probably make dried pepper dices out of those.

My Fast Lady Northern Southern peas are hauling behind. Fastest blackeyed peas I’ve ever planted. We’ll see how they taste. Right now they’re covered in ants so I’ll have to take my DE down there and go on an ant rampage.

I wish for 26hrs in a day.