[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.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Mine are doing well. (I did find a Southern Armyworm chewing on a tomato today and I dispatched him/her>) They do seem to have more problems with being knobby and misshapen, it does not affect taste, but there is more waste than I would like. I do not have any cucumbers. They do not seem to like my Garden, the heat, and all the Cucumber beetles.

These tomatos were picked today. Washed and drying on the counter. (Varieties; Sweet 100, Black Krim, Annannas Noire, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Pineapple, Thorburns Terracotta. I do NOT vine ripen. It invites animal and insect damage. I pick at at color break and ripen inside.)

Tomatos I previously picked that have mostly ripened.