Really bad year. Too much heat, too much rain all at once and I let the weeds get out of control. Time to focus on a Fall/Winter harvest. Cabbage, save me!
When August arrives with this kind of cooler weather and lower humidity, it really is welcome! Wow!!
Anybody getting smoke carried in from Canada?
Where in the world has the year gone?
We DID get rain - I heard it about 3 a.m. Unfortunately, we have a puddle of water in the front foyer - roof leak. :-( There’s a dormer window directly over the foyer so no (slate) shingles directly over the leak so I’m betting it’s a flashing problem with water infiltrating into the ceiling over the foyer.
My app said .40, but I think it was more than that. The app shows ‘last 12 hours’ so if you’re within a half hour or so, it’s accurate, after that the ‘average’ starts kicking in. My guess, based on the puddles & river of water going down the driveway when I took out the trash, we got an inch at least. I need to get our rain gauge set up again - it got moved off the patio when mom was washing the slate.
The straw bale garden solves so many of my issues:
I don’t have to get dirt to fill more raised beds.
No weeds.
Composting bales put off warmth so you can start plants earlier.
Easy to trellis.
On the trellis system, you can use row cover, plastic or netting to protect against frost/cold (makes a little ‘greenhouse’), sun, bugs/deer, etc.
You have great compost for the following year.
The garden can easily be moved if you want to change locations.
Bulbs/tubers do well - dahlias & potatoes.
Carrots grow well in bales.
Depending on space, you can have one bale or 20+ & you can put them in places (like next to trees, on a driveway, tight space) where you couldn’t put a raised bed.
Relatively inexpensive - living in a rural/farming area, straw bales at a reasonable price should be fairly easy to come by .... would have to buy wire for trellis, have 2x4s already for supports or to go between T-posts (if I use them - probably will).
Bales are higher than the raised beds - easier on my back.
I cannot believe I forgot all about SBG, even after doing it fairly successfully one year!
For anyone not familiar with SBG, here is Joel Karston’s website:
Every year I plant seeds. Every year the possums eat the first green leaves. I replant and replant apparently for their pleasure and I get nothing. This year, they left one lonely cucumber vine. Woo hoo, 3 cukes so far!!!
My 3 Okra plants in a pot on the porch are doing well. The Okra is the fattest I’ve ever seen, lol. Peppers galore here too. The heat has been horrible here. We just got a 3 or 4 day break with 80 temps. Hallelujah...
Already looking forward to cooler weather...
Grapes are ready to harvest - not sure of the variety, these are wine grapes and have seeds in them - but are very sweet and juicy:
Tiger Lilies didn't last long in the heat, unfortunately:
The Tiki garden is going strong for now:
My neighbor was throwing away this plant stand:
And, my helpers are hunkering down inside where it is much cooler: 
Happy August to All!
Hello, all. Zone 7b reporting in from Salem, Virginia.
This has been a mixed season. A very wet spring brought LOTS of mosquitoes. The local FB garden group has LOTS of complaints about that and a few suggestions to deal with it.
But it’s bad enough that going out there is an unpleasant experience this year. A veritable war zone. After I came back inside a few weeks ago looking like I had a medieval skin disease (nickel and quarter sized bites and welts on every exposed piece of skin including my face) I almost decided let it all go to seed.
But I put on my my Big Girl Panties, and knee high socks, long pants, long sleeve shirt buttoned up to my eyeballs, a hat, and copious amounts of Vick’s on any exposed skin and gave it another try. That did work pretty well, and I’m getting out there every other day. The weeds are coming back and have to be dealt with - waiting for a sunny day.
Aside from the wet spring and bugs, the weather has been HOT, muggy, unpleasant, stormy ... some sunny days but it seems it’s been mostly cloudy.
But anyway, I finally got tomatoes! Yay! I’m picking them at first blush; the last 3 years they either didn’t grow at all or went straight to rot.
I’ve got so many I’m either making sauce to freeze or just cutting and freezing them fresh. I never learned canning and don’t think my kitchen is large enough to try.
However, they are all dying back and going brown now, maybe another 2 weeks. looks like late September out there.
Peppers were doing well until 2 weeks ago. I have an overabundance of jalapenos - trying to let some ripen to red.
Bells and bananas are getting smaller and fewer. I planted 3 cayennes because they are great to dry, but only 1 of them is cayenne, the other 2 are jalapenos.
String beans just failed.
Eggplants! 4 plants keep producing. I don’t have enough freezer space. 8 of them went to breaded, fried and frozen slices the other day but I’m reluctant to keep using canola or vegetable oil. There are 8 more on the counter and a whole bunch in the garden. The next batch may be a baking attempt.
Lots of pasta fagiola made and froze - Eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, (and canned beans, onion, potatoes) and blitzed into a thick sauce.
My cukes are done. Got maybe 15-20 before the plants just died off. Tried various slug killers that failed, but, without canning and pickles, there’s only so many cukes one can eat in a day, ya know?
Zucchini - not enough to celebrate Annual Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day (coming up Aug 8 ??). But, enough to make and freeze bags of zoodles and the pasta sauce, and some in salads. Funny thing, the best plant grew in my front flower garden out of nowhere. Complete Volunteer. Under the holly bush, it went from one scraggly seedling to an 8 x 5 monster. It grows dinosaur sized zukes that are very light green in color. It blocks the walkway and porch but I’m such a Chaos Appreciator I can’t take it down.
Lastly, 2 little watermelons went in against the garage and have taken over a third of the 20 x 20 veg garden. There are some very dark green melons and one light green. 3 years of trying and I still don’t know when to pick them. Out of all that have grown in 3 years we got 2 good ones. The others were not ripe or exploded from lack of picking.
And THAT is my tale of joy and woe from this corner of the earth.
I hope you all are doing better than I am, but I wouldn’t mind doing better myself.
Bkmk
Hot, rain, more hot, more rain, then not hot over the past week here in Central Missouri.
I’ve been picking from the garden pretty much every day. We packed another six quarts of lacto-ferment dill pickles yesterday evening. Zukes are hanging in there, spaghetti squash are thriving, pole beans are acting like they might do something, pepper plants are loaded, tomatoes are on the verge of making enough to start canning.
The plums, peaches, and wild blackberries are finished for the season. I got a really good crop of plums this time. Peach crop wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible either. My apple trees are absolutely loaded. It won’t be long before we need to start processing those.
It’s August. Why do I feel like turning on the heat? Because it’s 55 degrees with 100% humidity. A few days ago, I was running the AC in the truck on the way to work because it was 80 with the same 100% humidity. This morning, I’ll be running the heat.
A month ago, I was dealing with bare 98 degree soil. No wonder the plants aren’t happy this year.
A couple questions and notes:
Under good conditions, how tall do Mortgage Lifter tomato plants get? 8 feet? Ten? Mine are finally really taking off, and it looks like I need to build taller supports, as they are harder to “loop back down and around” than, say, the Cherry Falls tomato plants, as the stems (vines) seem “stiffer” at a given diameter.
Are Lemon Boy tomato plants sort of a “one round of fruits and then done” variety? The Lemon Boy of mine that fruited first did so seemingly early (considering development of the plant overall, but, it “seemed healthy”. But, after one round of fruits it suddenly died for no reason I can ascertain. Other plants around it seem ok. All are in similar pots w/ similar soil, have had the same watering, etc.
Notes:
1) I’m pretty convinced now that Roundup works better with rainwater than our (pretty hard) well water. I don’t notice much difference (rainwater vs. well water) with 2-4D, but, I’ve only tried the 2-4D once with rain water.
2) Mortgage Lifter tomato plants are unusual in that, kept in a small “starter” pot, but otherwise well cared for, they usually don’t try to outgrow the pot. So far, most I didn’t transfer to a “larger environment) have just stayed “dwarf” Mortgage Lifters under 8” tall (most didn’t even get to 6”), with no flowering (but even the ones outdoors in the ground have not flowered yet). They don’t even grow a dense root ball / don’t look root bound. THEN put them in the ground or in a 5 gallon pot — after a bit they’ll they grow slowly, and then a few weeks later, will begin to take off.
Most tomato plants will grow faster and exhaust a small pot (and then often die or look very bad).
The ML’s I transferred early to medium size pots, and then again fairly quickly to 5 gallon pots or (one) into the ground*, grew slowly but steadily until about 4-5 feet tall, and now they are taking off, it seems.
*I gave the 1st ML in the ground a spot on the slightly higher side of the garden area, so, it didn’t drown!
3) At least some “organic” fertilizers / plant foods will attract critters that dig. Ditto for chicken guano that has gotten a broken egg(s) into it. :-(
4) Lemon Boy tomatoes not allowed to FULLY ripen are pretty darn tart. But, once fully ripe, then you have to use them quickly.