Fantastic Forum the Original Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert and Coast to Coast AM Forum

Early morning July 1 - kaboom!

Rain and wind - noise and a long tree limb that came off a neighbors tree - luckily did not cause damage to house and property. Nor to the garden - though haven't checked every area of the garden - just a quick 'look' - as it was dripping outside.

Will be checking later before the next round of storms reach us.

Do hope everyone is having good garden growing this year.

Hey all, never grown pumpkins before, can I train their vine to go over a rocky area or do they need to plant sucker roots from the main vine? Ideally it will trail out of the garden onto a river rock area right next to it. I figured it would be good for the pumpkins as well since they will have airflow beneath them a little.

ahh might want to watch for formation of those pumpkins and make sure they don't start growing on rocks or they can do a funky shape

Cherry Kelly wrote: ahh might want to watch for formation of those pumpkins and make sure they don't start growing on rocks or they can do a funky shape

they are on small smooth river rocks so at worst it might put a few tiny dents.

What I am wondering about is if the vines actually need to root down into soil further like english ivy etc...

From my experience the vines don't really need to root as much as hold to something to keep spreading out. If they do take root all the better.

With the lack of pollinators here it looks like it will be a bad crop season. Some are getting pollinated but I don't see all I have in years past.

I have been doing some by paint brush but it takes a long, long time.

Not sure I want to start up raising bees as they are another job and critter for me to take care of. Maybe if I build some Mason bee boxes things will be better next year. I have seen a few of them around so they must be nesting somewhere.

LeslieV wrote: From my experience the vines don't really need to root as much as hold to something to keep spreading out. If they do take root all the better.

With the lack of pollinators here it looks like it will be a bad crop season. Some are getting pollinated but I don't see all I have in years past.

I have been doing some by paint brush but it takes a long, long time.

Not sure I want to start up raising bees as they are another job and critter for me to take care of. Maybe if I build some Mason bee boxes things will be better next year. I have seen a few of them around so they must be nesting somewhere.

It is incredible but we have more honeybees around than I have ever seen before. My garden is just constantly filled with them. We live in a semi-urban place too.

PS: thanks for advice

Fan as Lesie said - don't worry about the vines - have yet to see them root.

Was thinking rocks - like river kind - not smooth ones.

Good luck with those pumpkins!!

YES, we have more honey bees around here this year as well as bumble bees. The hummingbirds are also here.

where are my swallows? One pair - had two babies - after flying - haven't seen any since. Talk strange.

Got corn tasseling and ears forming. Now to get out the water, Dawn and oil to keep bugs off the silks - won't harm the silks but should keep the bad bugs away.

yeah my rocks look like

with all the rain we had to finally pull the onions. Amazing the sizes ... for the supposed table onions - some are as huge as the packaged ones in the stores.

Got a half wheelbarrow load. Soon as they dry a bit, some will be hung for later winter use.

Getting fresh tomatoes now.. not too many at a time, but vry good eating!!

Corn is sweet, but ears very short this year -- got to be the weather situation - too many rainy days and not enough sunshine days.

Still - with the first pickings did manage to blanch, remove kernels and get three full pints and one cup. Pints frozen in ziplock freezer vacuum packs - for winter eating.

Have several flats of tomatoes now to can several pints (whole/half/quartered) -- BUT - had power outage last night and til later in morning. With the solar power the pump was busy busy pumping water (2"+ rain) and thus did not get to canning today.

Zuke growing as are the funny fuzzy cucumbers. Even found some baby watermelon so is on little flats (wood type).

Peppers -- nice Bells! Even had some jalapenos, ghosties and hot moruga - guys liked that in tomato sauce!

Canning tomatoes

whole, sauce and all kinds of salsa from milder Sante Fe to ahh -- hot hot hot Ghost Pepper salsa.

Picked a wheelbarrow half full of onions. Now I only got onions that you normally grow for table eating - they grew - sizes that you buy in bags at store. LOT of nice bigger ones on down to some small table size (well just a hair or two larger).

sweet corn done, green beans done, just the zuke, cuke, tomatoes and peppers.

was gone for a few days and ohh ya - now to wash, cut tomatoes for -- hmm -- not sure at the moment - but some more canning for sure.

Cherry, glad you had a great harvest and plenty to store.

We got hit by one-inch hail on Friday and it pretty much wiped out the garden.

The deer had done a job on the tomatoes and most of the other crops. We have a Doe who seems to know her way around about anything you put out to keep them away and I notice she has a fawn now so will teach the kid tricks.

Most all my winter squash got damaged that I doubt they will recover enough to finish off the squash on the vines now.

I am getting some yellow summer squash but not enough to store and the vines are pretty well shredded so this late in the season I doubt they will produce much more.

It's cool here now around 80 but will be back in the 90's starting Wednesday.

I am afraid it will be a long hard winter so I need to move efforts to getting wood split and stacked and any repairs done before the weather turns cold.

Leslie

ouch -- hail not good.

Don't have deer problems - cats! BUt before then what I did was hang some old scratched CD's in areas where deer bothered sweet corn - never had them bother tomatoes - of course I have wire baskets around the tomatoes, but have heard others say something about that as well.

What I do with the CDs is hang them so they can move in breeze a bit - usually do two so they can touch and make noise or flash in sunshine. The other thing I did when I had deer problems was got some of those rubber Fake type snakes and put them around loosely so they too could move if breeze or disturbed. Some people have also used such things as lights (motion kind) and radio's on some type of timer set up at night. Also had people used Smelly socks and hung them around - moving the things on a two week basis. Might try any of those next year.

As for hail - ya.. not sure if anything would help except some kind of "roofing" that might help some. I did use old window screens - you can actually get rolls of that kind and put on posts above tomatoes. (squash as well)

Did have hail one year and the screens did keep it from destroying what I had under them.

Tomatoes not big this year as they should be normally, but with the excess plants - am glad I did plant a lot more! It helps in winter for sure.

with weather temps back to "normal" and rain once a week - tomatoes taking off again - blooming and producing bigger sizes - FINALLY!

Peppers producing and ripening nicely ....

now - to work on sun-room and getting it ready for the influx of plants --

Time to plan fall things and deciding the next year's garden.

Always a difficulty due to unknown weather situations each year.