Mystery Seedlings

[surviort_wwdnet]

Rainy day, so no watering. The cukes are about spent, so next week I'll tear them out and put something else in their place. I cut a length of landscape fabric long enough for the new row of four containers, then sprayed the weeds etc. that wanted to live under them. Tomorrow I'll hoe up the dead weeds, lay down and stake the landscape fabric, and get ready for a lot more soil so I can plant. The irrigation sprinkler for that area needs to be raised up about three inches and hopefully I have the right size extension. This is in an area that gets sun during only part of the day (mid-morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon), so I need to be particular about what I plant there.

[surviort_wwdnet]

Every day is a rainy day. The cukes are history, and peppers are coming on strong! The last yellow squash is still growing, and the new zucchini plant is getting ready to bloom. The beans are growing, but the sugar snaps are getting overrun with eggplant leaves. If we get a dry day, I'll go trim some leaves back. We've been eating something from the garden every day: last of the cukes, tomatoes, peppers, and today a summer squash & sausage casserole.

Weeds are also loving all this rain, and I'm going to need a few hours to pull them all out once it dries up.

[surviort_wwdnet]

Another monsoon day interspersed with brief periods of sunshine - just enough to almost dry everything before the next gully wash. I give up for today.

The sugar snaps surprised me as they have grown halfway up the trellis in spite of the intrusive eggplant leaves. There are a couple dozen blooms on the eggplant but no eggplant babies yet. There are still a couple of young yellow squash, and the new zucchini would like to generate some blossoms if it ever stops raining. There are a lot of peppers ready, or almost ready, to harvest. Tomorrow is another day.

In the meantime, our contractor called to tell me he has the building permit and they want to start digging for the new foundation on Monday. That will put a crimp in my gardening style while I make sure they don't destroy anything!

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

sorry, been MIA...had a bit of a time logging back in..was working at med job when a provider went on 3 week vacation...and now off camping for 3 nights. Garden is doing okay, despite my lack of time with it. Sunflowers are starting to produce flowers, have picked 4 tomatoes and another 20+ more on plants. Still no watermelons that I can see...beans are done and need pulling. Pepper plants are blooming so should have peppers soon.

[surviort_wwdnet]

My garden is drowning! At least today we had moderate periods of sun between the showers. I picked tomatoes and peppers this morning and checked everything else. The sugar snaps are near the top of the trellis and flowering. I'll have a ton of jalapenos once they grow to maturity. Yesterday I cut up and blanched the rest of the zucchini and yellow squash I had harvested, and threw it on trays in the freezer. This morning I vacuum packed all of it and put it back in the freezer. My tomatoes aren't doing well with all the rain, but I've managed to pick a few. I don't really need to can tomatoes, except for the Romas, since I canned a lot of them last year. Had to spray because the fruit flies are all over them. Tomorrow I'll slice up the peppers and flash freeze them before vacuum packing.

Construction is scheduled to begin on Monday so we'll see how much I get done once that mess starts. Husband is still fighting with the chain assembly on his new bike, and it's been raining too much to hang the bosun's chair on the pulley system to get him in and out of the pool. I have a sandbag to fill to hold down the new pool steps, and a fifty pound bag of sand in my garden cart. I'll get to it someday...the pool is overfilled by about 3-4" from all the rain, so we're not going in right now anyway.

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

we are still out camping...luckily we are only 45 minutes from home and need to go home to ship items from our e-store. Rain, OMG RAIN here as well. I have not checked my garden except once as it has been raining when we are there. Lawn chairs from the fire pit were scattered, not just tipped over, in the back yard. Not sure if I told you but we were able to pick 4 ears of corns. They were small, but enough to go into a rice/ground beef meal she made in the Insta Pot.

Truck broke down on a trip home, so we extended our camping trip. Park likes us, and we can stay in our spot as they are a small mom & pop kinda place and have few short stayers this time of year as they do not even advertise. We get a lot where our camper is backed up to the Intercostal so we see Dolphins and manatees daily. The mechanic could not get to it Thursday when it was towed to him, or Friday. Hope that he can start on it Monday. Something happened where the left front wheel froze up when I was driving...he thinks wheel bearing...I hope thats all it is. I never heard anything until it felt like my left wheel was going to fall off....weird.

[surviort_wwdnet]

I hope you make it home safely with a small repair bill. Camping would be fun but tomorrow the contractors start, so we're grounded.

Garden is a mixed bag: tomatoes got drowned and many burst from all the water, but the peppers look great. Summer squash is done, but I have 3 baby eggplants on a bush with about 30 more flowers. Potato plants, sugar snaps, and limas are in bloom, but weeds are on full court press.

[surviort_wwdnet]

Gardening and having contractors in the yard isn't a good combination. I don't like having an audience...

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

picking up truck today...$1000 lighter in my wallet. Then home to ship items, then back to campground, hook up and tow back home. Gonna be a busy day, but at least we are close....

When we were homeSunday for a bit, I was able to pick 10 tomatoes...more should be ready today/tomorrow. Have one watermelon the size of a small volleyball though, so that makes us happy. It is so hard to see them under all the foliage.

[surviort_wwdnet]

Sorry about the repair bill, but happy about the tomatoes and watermelon. I have one more zucchini still growing and it's time to tear out the rest of the squash plants. Poor tomatoes aren't doing well - picked a half dozen this morning just to keep the fruit flies from eating them before we can! It was 98^o at 10:30 this morning! I'm inside cleaning bathrooms instead of working in my garden.

[surviort_wwdnet]

We are under construction - can't use the pool (they tore the steps out), can't water the lawn (they tore out the irrigation system manifolds), can't mow (utility flags and construction materials everywhere), plumbing for the new bathroom addition has been roughed in but the inspector apparently wasn't scheduled, and our guest bathroom was torn out and the new tile laid, but that's it - and they're off work for the holiday weekend.

However, I can still water the garden! This morning I spotted new blooms on a summer squash plant that I thought was deader than a doornail😂 and my sugar snaps are already growing pods, and so are my black soybeans. Life is good in the midst of chaos!

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

So, I pick my tomatoes and within 2 days they are soft and leaking on the counter. I pick them when they have just turned red, maybe a slight hint of green. Now, we have what appears to be stink bugs all over them....When we cut into them they do not have any bugs/worms we can see...ideas? I have never had tomatoes go bad so quickly....

[surviort_wwdnet]

I picked some tomatoes that were almost ripe, and within 2 days they had split and leaked all over. Some of them get dark speckles and just go bad. Part of the issue could be that we've had unrelenting heat rotating with copious amounts of rain, and it's weakened the plants/fruit. I'm not going to be canning tomatoes this year because there won't be enough good ones to bother. I do have a bumper crop of peppers and they're calling my name. It's 103^o, so they can call all they want to. I'm busy moving the oscillating sprinkler around the yard so my grass doesn't dry up and blow away. Tonight, after the sun abates, I'll water the front yard. I keep getting a shower from the sprinkler and it feels pretty good😂

[surviort_wwdnet]

If I can catch a break in the weather, I'm going to tear out the tomato plants and the rest of the summer squash. Everything is burning up in this heat! Only the peppers, eggplant, and beans look healthy.

[surviort_wwdnet]

I watered the garden, so of course it rained cats and dogs shortly thereafter. Oh well, at least I went outside and got some fresh (oven-temperature) air.