Amy, remind me later, but I have a heritage tomato that has set buds and fruit consistently though my summer where the temp is normally well above 90 during the day (now if I could just keep the pests away from them!!) If it helps anyone, they're an oddly striped, yellowish /orangish? tomato but nicely sweet and juicy.
(( 11:00 at night and we're still at 85f; I saw 113f on the thermometer today! ))

So what is a good fruit tree for in the yard with the dogs? I was gonna get a ornamental service berry instead cause I was afraid of dogs eating pits of fruits.

PS I like the looks of those black smaller tomatoes what do those taste like?

The black cherry are really very tasty - good balance of sweet and acid with old fashioned tomato flavor. But you have to let them ripen fully and its difficult to assess ripeness as the black tomatoes will still have some green shoulder. As fully "tomatoey" as the sungold with slightly less sugar - the sungold are really sweet.

I planted tomatoes early but they were drowned by the 15+ inches of rain we had this spring. I'm going green house next year to remedy this, I think.

I have two apple trees. They haven't bothered the dogs at all. The play with the apples that fall but they won't eat them.

Have not updated this in eons.  Last summer, Wayne picked up an old Horse roto-tiller.  And Josh bought a "middle-buster" that he thought he could use to bury his invisible fence line.  Well...a middle buster is sort of one nosed plow attachment.  Didn't work for well for burying the wire (it digs up a swath about 30" wide) but it did a great job for first pass on both his and our gardens.

Here's what we started with - all overgrown with goldenrod (stupid me left it for the bees the first year.  I've been fighting it since:



And here's a close up of the middle buster:



And here's my hubby doing the garden:



Looking north, after the middle busting, ready for roto tiller.  This is the larger half of the garden on the diagram:



And, poopy...going through my pics and NONE of the tiller.  Nor did I take any of the planted and growing garden   Too busy watering with the drought.  And the bear fence.  

Here's the stump left from the tree that was cut down in the center of my garden.  Will be adding a table top to it.  Think probably a 30" round, but may make it square...pondering just boards like an old-fashioned picnic table or....I have some cement board left from the bathroom, possibly a tiled or mosaic top...



In this pic, you can just barely see one of the hives - the circled area to the right is one hive and behind the goldenrod to the left are 2 more hives.  I left the goldenrod for the summer to make the bees fly up and away so I would not be in the flight path while working the garden.



And...while most of ornamentals were puny to non-existant this year thanks to the drought, the Siberian Iris were prolific:




As were the dame's rocket (behind which is the downspout that Ami "removed" going after a chipmunk who thought a downspout was a safe hiding spot)





and the wild rose I transplanted next to the back door (probably a mistake, it is rampantly spreading and is gangly after bloom.  BUt it smells divine...for about 3 weeks



And some harvest pics:

The green beans were outstanding this year.  But still not enough to freeze any (there would have been but hubby devours them by the gallon  



The first cucumbers, eggplant and gold cherry tomatoes (which, in retrospect, I was picking way too early.  They should have been a deep gold, I was picking at dark yellow.  Much sweeter, more complex had I waited)



Then...the jalapenos started to appear:



Then the summer squash and the main season tomatoes:



And finally...the Brandywines, to the right, made their appearance:



My primary goal for next year is to get the whole garden in production and get rid of the slugs!  That will start this fall.  First will be the middle busting and tilling, then I will sprinkle an Iron Phosphate slug bait this fall and again next spring before planting.  And probably throughout the season.

I also have a packet of 250 Jersey Knight asparagus seeds to expand my asparagus planting.  They were ordered to plant this summer but I held off with the drought - that would have been a watering nightmare with new seedlings needing a sprinkle 2-3 times per day, given how dry it was.  The plan is to have one patch harvested in spring and grown in the summer/fall and a 2nd patch harvested in fall and grown in spring/summer.  With 250 seeds, hopefully I'll see 75 mature plants with some left for Josh to grow.

That's about it for this years garden...

And, can you believe this?!!? Tomatoes picked in late October in upstate NY:

This year was a learning year in my garden. So far I need more bean plants. But I have frozen five gallons of tomatoes.

I think a tile top would look cool on your stump but not sure how grout and mastic will hold up to your winters.

Wowwww Amy, your garden is doing awesome! Mine bit the dust very early on I love your property

Thanks Jimmy. Sorry your garden not the dust. But... you have the most awesome landscape!

Jenn... on the beans. It takes a lot of row to produce beans. At least bush beans. I purchased a quarter pound of Roma II seed and a quarter pound of provider green beans. I planted half of each twice, 2 wells apart. They were put into 3 ft wide beds, 3 rows 14 " apart and 13 ft long. Or, 39 ft of row for each variety at each planting. The picking was strong for about 10 days tho 2 weeks... started with maybe a wry the first 2 pickings, then rapidly went to 1-1 1 /2 gallons for the next 3 pickings or so, then dwindled back down. I picked mostly every other day, staggering from one variety to the other.

Even after the 2nd planting was producing, I was still picking enough for a normal meal not a Wayne meal, every 4-5 days.

If what you want is a steady supply of beans for the table, not threes freezer, you might want to try pole beans. The take longer to produce but will produce all session, though not a whole bunch at one time. But, i have yet to successfully grow pole beans. They are supposed to be superb in flavor. So far, I used a variety more suited to a southern climate in a year that was overly cold, i had them eaten by deer another year, slugs another year. But...next year....

I think there is an outdoor grout fortified with... something that will stand up to our winters. I have to explore that further before i just jump in and do it

Thank you Amy

I think the weather here has been tough on everything. Just about a month ago, I could go to the grocery store and pay $5 for 4 avocados. The price has been steadily rising, and just yesterday I had to pay $3 for ONE avocado! Anddddddd, about every other day, they won't even have an avocado in the store! I have my own tree but it's not producing yet

I like the idea of a mosaic table top. I've been wanting to do my own mosaic on a couple concrete benches I have here, like maybe a scene depicting a forest with some wolves or something, I just gotta dedicate some time to figuring it all out and getting it done. Do take pics of your table when it's finished and share with us here, please! I'd love to see it.

So.  Talk of gardening.  And so far, just talk except for my amaryllis and my mom's orchids.  I need to pick up a garbage can to store my potting soil.  I buy a bale of it from the local Mennonite farm stand.  I want to keep insects and fungus out of it and I figure storing it in a tightly covered container will help.  Once I get that, I'll open the bag and start my onion stujff.  My seed order is supposed to arrive Friday.

But... This is  the backyard.  Only thing I can do now is prune shrubs...oh.   though it looks sunny,  3:34 PM,   12°F outside

Love your yard

I think we broke 32 degrees for the first time in a long time yesterday. Headed toward 50 today and thunderstorms this weekend. My tomatoes are around 6 inches tall now and I have peppers and a loofah up. All taking up space in the laundry room making people coming to look at the house scratch their heads. At least now they are old enough it's obvious I'm not growing pot in the laundry room.

I knocked down my butterfly bushes last weekend. Think I'm going to go ahead and cut off the mums this weekend though not clear the dead away just yet. I've got to dig out the plants that I'm going to be taking with us when we move. I knew it had to be known to buyers that some of the yard plants wouldn't be staying with the house. I told our agent that some plants would be going with us but I guess he didn't understand that those plants were outside plants so he didn't add it to the disclosure on the house, so now two roses, a hibiscus and a tree have to be dug up and done something with.

TwisterII wrote:

At least now they are old enough it's obvious I'm not growing pot in the laundry room.

Ha ha ha!
When you mentioned grow lights before, the thought did actually cross my mind!

My husband's cousin was renting a house to some people and got a call from the police. When he drove to the house, he found that the renters had dug up the entire basement floor, replaced it with dirt, and had quite a marijuana farm down there...

We just passed medical marijuana with the option of home grow fairly recently so I'm sure some folks would right off the bat assume we were jumping the gun. Especially since I tend to start my tomatoes earlier than most. The random basement pot farm is so common here. That's a little crazy to dig up the basement floor to do it though. I actually wouldn't mind testing my hand at growing hemp. It has a lot of interesting uses. We are still working toward legalizing hemp growing here.

New York has just passed growing industrial hemp. I think they've designated 2 regions for trails along with university research.

Nope - not growing pot on my plant stand - tomatoes are my high

And - i've got some Boldog pepper seeds. Reputed to make excellent paprika. Last year, all my pepper plants never made it past the cotyledon stage - either mice or fungus gnats, don't know which. It's in an upstairs bedroom and we really don't use the upstairs anymore with just the two of us (our bedroom is first floor.) So, this year, soil gets sterilized and I'm putting mouse traps everywhere up there. We shall see.

Color me excited!! My magenta orchid is putting out a third inflorescence!!! I've never grown orchids before. Therese were my mom's before she died a few months ago so they are especially meaningful.

I had to go look up inflorescence ... something new every day!

I love the board behind the plant - the cat is squeaky clean, huh?!?!

aljones wrote:

I love the board behind the plant - the cat is squeaky clean, huh?!?!

Ahh...Al, that is quite the story.  It is a quote from my son when he was late teens maybe?  He had a dentist appointment in Binghamton, 90 minutes from here.  We drove the WRX and he asked to drive on the way home.  Also, wanted to show me a mustang at one of the car dealers.  As we came out of the car dealer parking lot, he turned right, with heavy traffic maybe a 600 feet down the road, stopped at a light.
 
Now, the WRX had phenomenal pickup - so much so that it could accelerate faster than my neck could tolerate.   Suddenly, this child is accelerating like he's Mario Andretti in the home stretch with a car at his quarter panel behind him...just as I was about to start shrieking at him, I noticed that, while steering around things frantically, he was slamming on the breaks, shifting into neutral and turned the car off.  With precision execution.  Steely nerves.  We had an uncontrolled acceleration event - caused by a floor mat stuck on (or behind?) the accelerator.

There was no accident, no police call, he handled the emergency superbly for one so young.  But.  A half mile down the road, he was shaking like a leaf and asked if I would please drive.  I guess it was the adrenalin rush from hell.

Anyway - when we got home, he told his father "The good news is the cat (as in catalytic convertor) is clean as a whistle, the bad news is, my underwear is not."  It tickled my fancy and up on the board it went.  Always good for conversation.  Though - maybe time for a new quote...

So this year's gardening was a bust. Way too much rain all season.  Rain and cold early season.  The peas were good, I've had maybe 10 black cherry tomatoes, 1 full size summer squash and 1 full size zucchini, the rest, maybe 3-4, were about 4" normal diameter with long "nipples" which I believe is a result of incomplete pollination.  IE, with all my bees, the squash still did not get pollinated!  Mostly what I got was a bumper crop of slugs, snails and weeds  

The peach trees gave me about 3 dozen small peaches. And the flavor was great.  I did thin out about half this year but judging from the size should have thinned 3/4.  Though, could be too much shade.  We need to cut down sumac that is coming up again (at least, I thought it was sumac but after an article today, it may well be an invasive called Tree of Heaven.  Which is a major attractor of a nasty pest, Spotted Lantern Fly.  Have to do some research now.)

The big success this year were my pots.  I'm really happy with them - put some coleus in there after the rabbits ate the marigolds and "pruned" the petunias.

A brief tour of the property:





This clematis hasn't bloomed hardly at all for a few years so happy to see this!



And this clematis blooming now is a complete surprise.  Guess the crappy weather has messed up its seasonal timing:



I loved the silver, white and purple against the chatreuse of the coleus - unfortunately, we had heavy rain last night and its looking a bit raggedy:



This poor little pink and white coleus had a dickens of a time getting started - the bugs got it but it persisted. Will definitely take a cutting or two for the winter:



Well poop. Hit the wrong button and lost all that I was going to add. I'll be back later!

My tomatoes were a disaster this year also. They look more like grape vines then tomatoes and i cant figure out wich plant is which. The 1 plant i have measured ended up being 16 ft long and about 8 ft up. They vined on me

Even the farmer down the road, work the vegetable stand, had a horrible year. He had very few tomatoes and they're almost totally green! But,good news, fried green tomatoes for dinner


The farm market, however has some wonderful Candy onions this year. I slice them thin, you'd them with gf flour and egg, drop by the spoonful in hot olive oil, makes kind of a lacey, onion rings fritter. I'm also gonna pickles a bunch with the brine recipe for bread and butter pickles. I did a trial jar with the leftovers from a batch of bread and butter pickles and they are delicious.



And, eggplants from the farm market. These were the best and they are rather sad looking I'm afraid. Definitely not a good year in the garden. In hope the grapes are better but it's going down on the 40's tonight and the hairs need heat this time of year. The winemakers have their work cut out for them this year!



]

Potato harvest is just starting but ot has been a bad year for potatoes here. The weather was bad at the start and now its an immigration issue, usually like a bunch of migrant workers come. this year the farmers couldn't get enough workers. Last year stuff rotted in the field this year looks the same.

Yeah. This whole immigrant thing is so out of whack. I say check them out thoroughly, give them a green card and let them take the agricultural jobs, the home care jobs, the Nanny jobs, the meat packing jobs... Pay a decent wage and let's be done with this nonsense.

The state of Maine alone has been closing whole wings of nursing homes due to lack of aides. Their home care program has a huge waiting list with funds allocated but no one to fill the jobs. Medicare is finding home care more cost effective yet there are not enough home care workers to take those jobs.

Sorry. Don't get me started on this one...

I keep making jokes about it will all come to a stop when McDonald's runs out of fries. They are processed and dehydrated here in the county i live in. Here everyone has now hiring signs up even the hospital. Places keep closing due to lack of employees. Most of the white ppl here refuse to work and alot of it is the drug problems. I am in one of the poorest regions in Colorado though. Immigration is actually one of 2 reasons i have no interest in what my degree is in. The other issue was when obama declared anyone calling themselves a hacker was a domestic terrorist. Stupid useless degree in cyberwarfare and homeland security. So should not have wasted 8 years in college for it