I’m here in Zone 5A (New Hampshire).
Vegetables are doing good (lucky we have an old swamp in back to use to water the gardens, otherwise we’d be running our well out this summer).
Fighting Voles all summer this year. Wish there was an easy way to get rid of them.
Weather forecast from Weather.gov:
Sunny and hot, with a high near 103. Heat index values as high as 108. South southwest wind 7 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.
Hate to heat up the house, but probably a good day to can tomatoes.
Provided they have water the fig trees are doing just fine in this heat! ( Note....I do not use any black pots. Over 100 degrees F results in potting medium of > 130 degrees and even figs do not do well with that! White pots? 115 degrees. Mine are also subwatered and have a 1 1/2 gallon reservoir. )
At the top o’ the thumb here in WI, and my first tomatoes are blushing. Decided to use Bonide rot stop product since they are in containers and it has been hot and dry here. Potato plants in grow bags are seeing a little Japanese beetle activity (tried diotomaceous earth and can’t say if it worked or not) and starting to show signs their life cycle is coming to an end. My small outdoor pvc pipe hydroponic system has beautiful lettuce, kale, beans, peas and is sucking up solution in the heat!
Some of my tomatoes have some kind of disease. I’m not sure it’s blight as the potatoes mare not affected and most of the tomatoes are not.
I have started harvesting garlic yesterday. I do the plants as they are ready. The plants were some of the smaller plants, but I was impressed with the size of the bulbs. If the bigger plants produce bulbs proportionately bigger, it’s going to be a fantastic crop.
Once the garlic is up, I’ll put in some Brussel Sprouts, turnips, and beets.
Got my water bill yesterday and was pleased to see I'd used less water than I did June-July of last year - still in Tier 1. Pulling out the lawns was the correct thing to do when we are under water restriction.
I am harvesting grapes.
These are so old that I've forgotten the variety:
And roses are starting to come back:
Hibiscus too even though I'm battling wretched white flies (again):
The last of my apples (they don't like the heat). We made an apple pie and it came out great:
My helpers were busy hiding in the house with the air conditioning.
It’s been really hot, and we are under water restrictions, so a lot of my herbs and flowers have died.
But they are mostly perennials, so there’s always next year!
I was drivng through Norwell Ma , yesterday and spotted a lone well-trimmed bush in the middle of a persons property.
The only deliberately grown bush of this species that I have ever seen, it was a bitter sweet vine, (Celastrus scandens).
My property is filled with this invasive vine, growing 55 feet up on one of the trees in my backyard, as well as growing everywhere else.
The person who has that vine as a maintained shrub, has to keep his eye out for that vine taking root amongst his other plantings. - Tom
Diana in Wisconsin; All
Got a sick tomato plant (beefsteak) ...it was bought at a chain store with a sweet cherry tomato plant. Both were just fine and starting to blossom and have little greens and then all of a sudden, the beefsteak has turned yellow and wilty :(
Have checked for bugs, worms, leaves have no fungus or spots.
Any ideas or help would be appreciated. I sure hope I don’t have to pull it out and or remove the cherry tomato too if it gets sick!
How bad was the storm? Looks pretty bad on the radar, about a couple hours away from us now.
We actually got some measurable rain last night ... shock, surprise ... but welcome!
Weather forecast, as it often does, calls for “isolated” T-storms and we rarely get them. Our yard ‘grass’ is literally “crunchy” & browning it’s been so dry. I’ve been watering most of the garden plants daily (or they wilt) & the tomatoes every 4-5 days. I just did a “heavy” watering yesterday.
Anyway, I had looked at the radar earlier .... nothing. Around 9:30 - 10:00, I thought I heard a rumble ... then there was a BIG rumble. Checking the radar, there was a fairly small patch of storm showing yellow/orange that looked like the edge might cross our place. The next radar run showed an expanded area & we were definitely going to get something. What we got was at least a 1/4 of an inch in the rain gauge. The grass is not quite as crunchy this morning; however, we need 2-3 days of steady, soaking rain for the crunch to totally disappear & ‘green’ to return, but in this heat/dry spell, we’ll take whatever we can get!
Ok gardening pals! Important gardening questions here for you review.
It seems the hard, solid caliche, rock below the area I am planning on putting my raised beds over is about 2.5 feet deep.
Caliche is essentially all the I gradients to make Portland cement and as rainwater seeps through the soil over the years....whammo...a layer of concrete with unknown thickness.
Now if I am to avoid a shit ton of jackhammering....how deep (or more accurately, how high do I need to make my raised beds to avoid issues with plants such as tomatoes and peppers?
My initial idea was to bulldoze up 4 foot wide swaths of the soil to sift out the rocks then drop it back into the hole....followed by taking up the adjacent 3 feet of soil, sifting the rocks, the pouring it on top of the raid bed area.
If ai do that on both sides of the raised bed (topping the bed with soil from each sode...I can get the raised bed up to about 5-6 feet of soil above the caliche layer.
I think that will be enough for the plants with the longest taproots roots that I grow (tomatoes and peppers.)
Anybody have ideas suggestions or a spare jackhammer?
It was another hot week here in Central Missouri. Several days with real temps >100°F. Still watering trees. Getting some rain this morning. Looks promising on the radar but I’m not going to put my hoses away.
In spite of the crazy heat our cucumber plants are still producing well. Mrs. Augie put up another half a dozen quarts of fermented pickles last week, and I made 14 quarts of spicy dills. Pole beans have kicked into high gear - I’m picking every other day now. I pressure canned seven quarts yesterday.
Tomatoes are just about ready to run me crazy. We’ve been able to eat enough BLTs to keep up with production so far, but I think that’s about to end. Yellow squash is done. The plants were still in good shape, but you can only eat so much of the stuff and we’ve had enough for now, so I yanked em. Zukes aren’t producing due to the crazy heat, but I’m going to see if they’ll snap out of their funk when the weather cools a bit.
For the most part, my pepper plants look great, but they’ve been a bit late to bloom this time. That’s starting, so I’m hoping they kick it up a notch real soon now because I’ll be wanting them when I start making salsa.
Okra looks like it’s about to start blooming. It’s been a few years since I pickled any okra, and we’ve been out for awhile, so I’m hoping for a good crop this time.
Winter squash has been mostly harvested. Wheelbarrow is half full. There are maybe half a dozen each of spaghetti and butternut that weren’t quite ready to pick over the weekend, but they won’t take much longer.
Liquid on top of the sauerkraut is staying nice and clear, so it looks like I’m well on the way to having a nice batch of that stuff.
What do you all like in the way of an electronic garden soil moisture / PH / sunlight meter? (Actually, I don’t really need a light meter.) This one is cheap, but apparently the tips of the probes break off easily!
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Moisture-Light-and-PH-Meter/999989626
Reviews online of this and similar devices are all over the place.
This being a Friday, hopefully a few people are still on this thread?
Thanks in advance!