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Greetings from Missouri. We have been having nice moderate weather with sunshine and temps of around 75 degrees. Scattered showers of around 5 or ten minutes duration, but no accumulation.

We will have to start watering the plants now it seems, and the swimming pool doesn't have enough water to make it all the way through growing season, since we had to drain it to repair a leak. Once again it's looking like we may have to pick and choose which crops to water.

We have our first batch of strawberries. I have some in the Refrigerator for eating plain, and am making syrup and fruit leather for grand daughter to eat this winter.

Just harvested around a pint of ripe cherry tomatoes from Mr. indoor tomato. Have some lettuce ready to eat in the patio container.

The seedlings are all out in the garden, and have a few more starting in the good seed starter. I am going to be making a sour dough starter this weekend, and start experimenting a bit more with baking some bread using my winter wheat.

Hope you are all doing well. Have a great weekend, and God Bless.

Been AWOL from this thread for a while, but popped in to show off my Black Krim tomatoes!

The HOT summer is in full swing here in Phoenix so the only gardening I'm doing is trying to keep some of my veggies alive until the monsoon weather gets here. Then they get much needed rain (even though I have an automatic drip system) and moist air. They perk back up around end of July and then August and Sept. I get my bumper crop of eggplants, cucumbers and peppers.

The Black Krim tomatoes are beefsteak type - most of the ones I've harvested fill my hand when I hold them in my palm. Delicious flavor and supposed to have lots of anti-oxidants. I'm pleased how they turned out this year.

Just found an interesting link: (free for download) Vegetable Garden Worksheets for Planning Your Home Garden; a Gardening Diary, Zone Chart, and Planting Guide

http://www.vegetable-gardening-online.com/vegetable-garden-worksheets.html

They also offer other free helps and an online garden planner for small gasrdens or individual raised beds:

http://vegetableplanner.vegetable-gardening-online.com/

...and much more.

Thunderstorms have been hampering garden work: 1+ in the last three days; just enough to keep the soil too wet to plant anything; but just right to yank out weeds. :-) The coming week is supposed to be dry until the weekend.

Storms didn’t stop the chicken plucking project. Dunked in 180F water for 15-20 seconds, and the feathers came right off; 10-15 minutes per bird, since I’m picky. *<];-) They dressed out at or just above, 4 pounds each.

Now that the chicks and the seedlings are out of the utility room, the power bill should drop about $15/month.

—showers of around 5 or ten minutes duration, but no accumulation.—

We have been back to the old country for a few days. We drove through heavy rainstorms in 3 states, seeing flooded homes, businesses, roads. An 8 hr trip turned to 12 each way. We figured we got plenty of rain at home too, probably, since it moves from west to east. We got home yesterday evening, and we only had 1/4” rain!

We were not home to feed the squirrels and birds so they took they’re revenge by eating our green tomatos. We found 6 tomatos on the ground this morning.

My banana peppers are the biggest that I have ever seen. We have quite a few jalapenos, a bunch of chiltepens, maybe 25 or 30, on one plant and about 10-12 cayenne peppers. I forgot to look at my ghost peppers when I was out there.

All the flowers are very happy. Our wheelbarrow planter is looking pretty nice, too, as are the flower beds.

Pleasant surprise: my “Centennial” sweet potato plants were at the Post Office today...and are now in the garden. Supposed to be 12, but there were 2 extras; and just because I know how hard they are to kill, I also planted the broken off leaf & stem mixed in with them.

Also finally made use of the 2’ planter box we found at recycling: it is filled with freshly planted sweet pea seeds, and placed to climb a trellis on one end of the east-side porch to give some badly needed morning shade to the house.

Mid May, up last week, we had daily heavy “snow” from the cottonwoods. This week, we have entered the Season Of Yellow Windshields, as the pines shed pollen beyond all reason. All the puddles along the roads look like they are rimmed by sulfur, where the pollen has stuck to the wet soil. Wish I owned stock in Benadryl!

Picked a few snow peas yesterday.
Tomato plants have really taken off this past week. Most of them are better than knee high now.
Some of the peppers look good, some of them look like they’d rather be somewhere else.
Salad is growing faster than we can eat it.
Sweet corn needs to be side-dressed.
Garlic is starting to turn brown at the leaf tips so it won’t be long before it’s ready to harvest.

Busy, busy, busy...

The big experiment began today. I think I got the interested parties; if I didn’t, or included someone who isn’t interested, sorry.

Good Friday I planted 12 Russet Burbank potatoes in the normal manner. I bit over a week ago, they still were not up, so I bought another identical package to replant them...then it rained for a few days. When I could again think about planting, all of them had emerged, and I was stuck with the extras. Today, the solution hit me: a competitive trial!

Where the next row over would have been, had I decided to use them in another row, I tilled it today, then moved 5 old 16” pickup tires into place, then dug in fertilizer at the same rate as the originals received, and planted 2 seed pieces in each tire. That allows the same spacing, both inside the tires, and from tire to tire, to be the same used in the regular rows. I have enough tires to stack at least 3 high; and can easily get more for free, if needed; and I have enough straw on hand for this.

Same variety; same soil; same fertilizer; same spacing; same watering. We’ll see what the yields are between the two; and compare sizes as well.