Posted on 06/01/2025 5:48:14 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Those are beautiful eggs!
~20 % chance of rain this morning said NWS (starting around 6 am it was lower) and we’ve already had 3x HEAVY thundershowers. At least the ground had dried out “some”.
It looks like this ramps up for ~ 3 days and then hopefully tails off.
If very hot and sandy is ok, come see me.
I’ve had good luck with “Easter Eggers” avoiding predation, and they generally seem to be quite durable and hardy.
It gets worse as you approach 70... :-(
Early Girls are rather bland and heat seems to do them in. BUT, I’m trying one I overwintered after it managed to survive last summer, this year in a pot in a partially shaded spot. So far, it’s doing ok. Best so far, possibly because I’ve pampered them the most(!), are the Golden Jubilees (new plants, this year), and they are beginning to produce. Ditto for a couple Romas I overwintered* in pots.
*It take a a LOT of light - ordinary grow bulbs don’t do the job well for me. Possibly radiated heat from the 10k lumen (claimed) shop light I eventually put up 2 ft., above the plants, did the trick, as the “overwintering” room gets pretty cool on really cold days.(?)
What kind of luck have you had with either Better Boy or Bodacious? Those are the varieties I’ve got in containers. The Bodacious did produce a couple of early tomatoes, but sadly, I lost them to blossom-end rot. The foliage itself, however, still looks good, and there are several new blossoms appearing, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I think that all of OK’s recent extraordinarily heavy rain for weeks and weeks must have something to do with why some things that always grew in prior years have died, and others that never grew before are going crazy now. Mother Nature is a weird lady.
<>I have the bad habit of trying new dishes on the family at Thanksgiving. So far, I’ve only had one flop.<>
My wife had only one flop too.
It was when she popped a bottle of champagne over the Turkey spread. The cork hit the overhead chandelier sending shards of glass all over everything.
I’ve had pretty good luck with Better Boys started from 6-packs from Menards. They are tasty, too! They don’t always do well directly from the 6-packs though: I usually put them in 6” tall pots I make from the bottom of 2L soda bottles, with holes drilled or melted into the bottom(s). Then move ‘em to the garden itself (soil) when they are 12 - 15 inches tall and I can see good root growth through the pots’ “walls”, but not so dense as to be rootbound. IMO they are a bit tricky in hot dry weather and our clay soils, and left in pots heat really seems to get ‘em. (Granted, that was right beside / compared to some Heatwave II’s, which tolerate heat pretty well. In our nearly impervious ground soils, then, trying to keep Better Boys going in dry heat*, it is easy to overwater them and lose the roots.
Bodacious I have not tried, nor seen around here.
I definitely agree about the rain. This was a very tough Spring, here, too.
I think that could accurately be called a ‘disaster’!!
I rescued the confab with Bubba Burgers.
Nice ‘save’! :-)
Oh, you'd know! It spreads like wildfire.
Not for me. I'm growing under a roof this year so no rain. I'm about ready to put what little bit of gutter I have on the tunnel and run it into an IBC tank.
I had planned to stop by the creek for water on the way home from work, but it's raining. Tunnel tank is getting low. I'm going to head to the shed here shortly and reduce the watering schedule from three times a day to one. Seeded bed has almost been too wet and it looks like cloudy weather through the weekend so there won't be much sun to bake it dry. Hopefully it won't be raining at 4pm tomorrow or Monday when I come by the creek after work.
Swapping to weekend shift gave me a little pay bump; $100/wk - $400/mth (half my bills). My review is still in limbo but when it's complete, I should get another bump. This paycheck will do vehicle ins/reg renewals but in two weeks, I can spend on homestead stuff, and myself.
I went to that site and bookmarked it for later. The chicken and dumplings caught my eye. I have a small crockpot that would do nicely.
Well, poop. I went out after our heavy rains this morning and early afternoon, and the remaining Opo, in the pot, looks a bit worse than B4. It certainly has stopped growing and the fruits are rotting B4 they barely get started. Up to a week ago this thing was growing a foot or more a day and flowering. There is no obvious external evidence of insect pests. Leaves well up the vine still look ok, but newer small ones are not growing and new leaves are not appearing. The leaves past 6 ft. from the ground look ok (nice and green, not wilting, but I can tell the failure is moving ip the vine. Blooming has stopped.
FWIW, the pot drains well and has new potting soil in it. Nothing fancy, it’s just the Wally World “Expert” brand potting soil, but potted tomatoes and eggplants in same are doing fine to great. It worked fine for the Opo 3 years ago, too.
This sort of thing has happened to most of my plants in this group (melons, gourds, cucumbers, etc.) the last couple years. 3 years ago the Opo was fantastic & produced until frost. Now I can’t get ‘em to make it to July? (Well, ok, last year a couple of the Opo plants were “ok” until the squirrels attacked them.) But other melons, cukes, and squashes failed in late July, similar symptoms. Some sort of vine stem attacker?? :-(
Maybe I should break open stems right when the plant completely dies and look for marauders?
This is depressing. Opo especially is just so ridiculously useful (soups, salads, spaghetti sauce filler, etc.) And “normally” it grows huge fruits.
Rain broke and it cleared up a bit so I made a water run. I lose a lot with the jury rig setup I have to transfer water from on IBC tank to another so I’m going to Menard’s tomorrow to get an actual transfer pump. Also moved the one tunnel IBC tank to line up with tunnel side for gutter.
blackflies, mosquitoes, deer flies. And! Aurora and long summer days! :)
“Maybe I should break open stems right when the plant completely dies and look for marauders?”
The way they’re dying off so fast is more than likely vine borers. :(
https://www.epicgardening.com/squash-vine-borer/
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