[Diana in Wisconsin]

You’ve got it MUCH worse than me...but I’m STILL going to complain about MY weather. ;)

Are ANY of us here going to have tomatoes this season? Grrr!

I don’t normally panic about this stuff, but my V-8 recipe really CAN be made from canned goods and everyday grocery store produce - and I’m down to my last dozen jars of, ‘The Good Stuff.’

I’m hoping we’re not entering into, ‘The Seven Lean Years!’

One can only do so much with Cucumbers! ;)

[Pollard]

Went out and looked at things last night.

In between rows and elsewhere: Grass is going wild. Would be a really good time to not have anything growing, cut the grass short and cover the whole thing with black plastic. Kind of makes more sense than hanging on for 1 squash, 2 bean, 1 cucumber. I can chop off and then dig up a couple of celery plants and stick them in pots to hold them over for a month or two. Keep gathering goat manure and grab some of my humus/soil pile to amend the area once the grass is dead. Prep it like I should have prepped it instead of parting the grass and trying to grow there.

I’ve got drip to just water the veggies. How was I to know the grass would get watered under the tunnel from all sides? Mid June to mid Sept doesn’t have rain — until it does.

[Qiviut]

I’m hoping we’re not entering into, ‘The Seven Lean Years!’

**************

I often think of my two grandmothers when it’s gardening season. Granny K had 6 kids, Granny N had 5. They both had gardens and canned so they would have produce for the winter - feeding their families well depended on a successful garden. I’m sure they had years where, for whatever the reason, their garden didn’t do well & I have wondered what they must have been thinking & trying, to salvage what they could. They had meat in the smoke house (both grandads butchered hogs) & chickens/eggs so they would not have starved with little or no garden during a ‘lean’ year. My grannies were some of the hardest working women I’ve ever met - both had different ‘styles’ of cooking, but were excellent cooks.

[Pollard]

Sat in the truck this morning before work and started making To Do lists, getting them all in one place on the new phone. First item -- Kill the Garden.

For now just take out the sickly veggie plants, cut grass/weeds short and tarp it. Will leave the squash/beans/melons as long as possible. I just went up through them and pulled grass/weeds and tiled it with sq bale hay cards. I'm not getting on my knees and pulling more now though with chiggers out and about. I am a chigger magnet. Might have to work around my lone Shishito too and their neighboring habaneros. I can pulse water them and only them with shorter sections of drip and some toothpicks to plug up the emitters not needed. Something like 20 seconds every 2 minutes while the sun's on the tunnel area.

Well there's a Pollard original idea. The emitter holes are about that size.

I'm not going to loosen the soil right away because I do need to stand a step ladder up in there so I don't want it fluffy and soft. Now that I'm doing simple roll up sides, that's all done from outside so I can Kill the Garden right out to the edges.

I've got five lists so far;
To Do Mechanical
To Do House
To Do Yard
To Do Tunnel
To Get

Here's what my nameless environmental tomato condition(meteorologic r.shitius) looks like. Mottled ripening with yellow/orange spots and internal whitening, around the edge in my case. They were also fuzzy feeling while two good tomatoes were not.

I bet those crazy heritage cherry maters would have laughed at this year's weather.