My raspberries are in full swing. They're in a low spot in the yard, and every few days we turn the hose on them and give them a good soak. Still, the berries are looking a little shriveled compared to previous years.
My nephew and I picked some crab apples yesterday. There's a variety that the city planted just around the corner from my parent's house, in a median strip on a quiet road. This variety has apples that are almost as big and sweet as Red Delicious, and since no one picks them except me and the raccoons, they're free for the taking. They looked red enough to be ripe when I was driving past, so I thought that, like most fruits this year, they might have ripened early due to the early spring. I could tell the moment I touched one that they weren’t ready, though. Unfortunately I have no voice, and my nephew does this stream-of-conciousness thing where he talks non-stop about anything that passes through his head, and he was very enthusiastic about picking apples. As a result of those factors, it took me long enough to grab ahold of him and get his attention that, by the time I got him to stop picking, he had stripped 3 branches already! He's going to be great help when they actually are ripe! I didn't like the idea of wasting food, so I cooked them up as a pie filling and canned them. We got 2 quarts out of it. With enough molasses, brown sugar, and cinnamon, even green apples can be pretty good!
Pinging some of our gardening regulars. If anyone has the official ping list, could you send it to me, please? Thank you.
Does anyone have a good antidote for fighting off flea beetles on my green bean and tomato plants?
Does anyone have an antidote for getting rid of flea beetles on our green bean and tomato plants?
Does anyone have an antidote for getting rid of flea beetles on our green bean and tomato plants?
Thanks Elendra for starting a thread, I was here earlier, but didn’t find the garden thread, and had to get some things done outdoors before the heat got too bad.
We are hot and dry here in eastern south-central Missouri. Yesterday and today was 105 degrees. Rainfall is practically nonexistent since April. We used the last of the rain barrel water last week.
Walnut trees are dropping their fruit, and blackberries are shriveling up without ripening. We did get 7 pints of berries and some juice earlier.
We get 5 gallons of water from the air conditioner, some times a little more, and some 2-4 gallons of water from rinsing veggies etc which I catch in the dishpan. It goes for the perennials.
We can’t risk running the well dry. Fireworks displays are canceled for here and surrounding towns. St. Louis is on no lawn watering alert.
Praying for rain. Have a great weekend. God Bless.
We survived our second ‘derecho’ in a week here last night. A derecho is “a widespread and long-lived, violent convectively induced straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms in the form of a squall line usually taking the form of a bow echo. Derechos blow in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to a gust front, except that the wind is sustained and generally increases in strength behind the “gust” front.” The storm last night was moving at 55 mph with winds clocked as high as 80+. The one Monday was the most ferocious storm I’ve ever been in (including two hurricanes).
No power for two days after the Monday storm. We kept our power last night. A million folks are without power in the DC area, over 100K near us. We were part of a 140K outage around town on Monday. The only ‘good’ thing is that we have gotten rain Monday & last night. It has saved a lot of watering (garden, new lilacs & camellias, newly divided irises, etc.). My sister-in-law’s garden got knocked down pretty badly .... she got most of it propped up again. The triple digit heat is here so it is basically sucking the moisture and life out of all the plants. Ah well, that is ‘good old’ summer time.
I’ve found something to be grateful for this drought for! It’s made it patently obvious where the hidden underground springs on my land are. I was pretty sure there were some there, I just didn’t know how to find them without lots of trial-and-error. Now, they are the green patches in a field of dead dry grass. God might as well have circled them with a highlighter! There’s one less than 10 feet from where I’m building the house.
(God, I am honestly and truly grateful to you for showing me where to put the well. Thank you for this drought, and I’ll be even more grateful when you end it. Amen.)
Interesting article about why modern tomatoes are tasteless
“Flavor Is Price of Scarlet Hue of Tomatoes, Study Finds”
Basically they have a gene that makes them uniformly red. The same gene lowers their sugar and carotenoids.
But if you plant heirlooms that gene is not present.
Anyone have any tips why my zucchini are only putting out male flowers for a month? Lots of flowers not a single zucchini.