So, what about Mint? When it starts flowering do you have to prune all that off too, lest your Moroccan Mint plant goes bitter?

I have never HAD so many tomatoes....But they're all staying green, except the sungolds...


Hmmm, just noticed a slight blush on the botttom of one of the Early Girls... But stillll

Now the marjoram is flowering

Yumyum, you could try this

bitezapper

people say it works!

Akiko -- thanks for posting. I'll check it out.

Today's annoying gardening challenge is two-fold:

1) two houseplants have tiny gnats all over them -- recently repotted and now with a gazillion midgies. Ick. I'm going to spray em down with insecticidal soap -- any other suggestions?

2) my one tomato plant that has ripening fruit has another issue. Just as the little buggers begin to ripen, the bottoms of the tomatoes are flattening and going brown. Looks to my untrained eye like the juicy juice inside is going off and causing them to spoil. effing weather! They are black plums, anyone with experience with this particular variety?

my celebrity tomatoes, which had stayed green for almost a month have begun to ripen. and the plants are putting out lots more fruit. seems like they just didn't like the protracted high temperatures we had in july (which seem to now be behind us).

Sounds like blossom-end rot on your tomatoes. Mongo had the same problem.

Yep, that's it. Shit. My slacker watering tendencies are showing. If I had sexy tomato cages like you, I'd likely take more care with them. (she rationalizes to herself and goes to buy said cages).

edited to add: what happened to mongo's tomatoes? mongo?

the good news, so far at least, is that the other immature fruit on the same plant are not showing any signs of damage.

i'm beginning to get a lot of cherry tomatoes from my sugar snack plants. however, every once in a while a small fruit or two will get wizened, leathery skin and become hard as they begin to ripen. anyone know why/what this is?

Mongo, if you don't mind, did you up the calcium in addition to watering more regularly? The advice is mixed on this point. My plants are in containers so this HOT weather is even harder on the buggers. The other 4 plants look good, especially my favorite -- Husky.

no, i did nothing. i listened to rancho gordo, which, like skin diving in a septic tank, is not something a smart person would normally think of doing, and decided to wait and see if the problem afflicted any other fruit on the plant--especially since the fruit on the plants next to it were fine. i'm still not out of the woods--the other fruit on this plant may yet rot as they ripen. i've also gone from watering on a schedule to sticking my finger past the soil surface to test for moistness.

i don't know where you're located but we get very intense sunlight at our altitude here in boulder county. i've heard seasoned gardeners recommend terracotta pots for container gardening, as they distribute heat better.

We are experimenting with a product called Soil Sponge in some of our containers this year. The jury is still out but it seems promising so far.

Fly

I'm in Boston. The heat has been very bad this summer. I think I'ma try the Rancho Gordo approach myself and wait and see if I can rectify things by more careful watering. What's a schedule?

watering every x number of days whether they need the water or not.

I got some of that After Bite stuff for kids, put it on Logan, and the damned bites got WORSE. I think the key is to do it when they're fresh bites.

Poor baby, he can't stop scratching them.

Yes, I think any bite treatment has to be immediate to work.

It's kind of a pain to apply, but Adolph's Meat Tenderizer really helps. Make a thick paste with water, smear on the bite, and let it dry. Papain, the enzyme that breaks down meat fibers, also neutralizes mosquito venom.

whoops! spoke to soon. the biggest fruit on that plant also has a brown patch developing in the same spot. the other fruit (they're all still pretty green) do not. yet.

I addition to handfuls of ripe Sungolds (which don't count ),
I harvestedTHREE big ripe tomatoes yesterday! Two Early Girls and one Better Boy...Sadly, I have to admit they're way ahead of the heirlooms...

We have had several beautiful ripe tomatoes so far - I think it's the earliest we've ever had some. So far supply is not exceeding demand...

Fly

My lemon thyme is not doing well.

But everything else is doing splendidly, so not too bad.

my first big harvest of cherry tomatoes is nigh. so far have only managed 6 at a time at most. but now about 15-17 of them look like they will be ripe together. have already got one big celebrity (not eaten yet) and a couple of tasty romas; 2 more big sexy celebrities should be ready soon. when oh when will my yellow pears be ready?

We're about to be overrun with Sun Gold cherry toms. The Patio Golds are laden with fruit that's a nice shiny green, indicating they should start to color up soon. All the others are still a few weeks off.

Haricots verts are starting to come, as are jalapenos. Poblanos are covered with flowers and tiny fruit. Cukes gearing up. Eggplant are just starting to flower.

Oh, I know...pictures! (Bizy – backson)

If sungolds don't count, I got nuthin.

Garden:


Sun Golds:


Haricots Verts:


Down with the cukes:


Eggplant buds:

Something is growing in the garden that I can't identify - planted by Eyebrows' sister. It look like dill on the stems, but there are round sort of bud flower things at the ends. Any ideas?

Crush a few leaves between your fingers and see if it smells like anything recognizable.

Got a camera?

Two of our six cucumber plants died (one very mysteriously, overnight) and the rest are not producing - flowers, but no cukes are forming. I think we may have been left without a male plant. Does anyone have any ideas what we can do?

Fly

Looking good!

Oh, I meant, "Sun golds don't count, because they never make it into the house before getting eaten"

Cucurbits are hermaphroditic – I don't know that they're called that in Hort world, but they have both male and female flowers. The female ones will have little tiny fruit at their base (I'll run out and snap a few pics). My squashes (Buttercup and Delicata) are taking their sweet time about producing female flowers. Not sure why. If you have a lot of female flowers, but the tiny fruit are turning yellow and dying, they're not getting pollinated – the rain may be keeping the bees, etc., away.

The ones that died mysteriously may have been attacked by squash vine borers, or something eating at the roots.

Here are some pics:

Cucumbers – male on the left, female on the right. Very obvious mini-cucumber at the base of the female flower.


Delicata squash – again, male on the left.


This should also help illustrate a point I was trying to make to Omni a few weeks back when she asked about harvesting the blossoms for culinary use. You want to take the male flowers and leave the females behind to produce.

OK, that's better. Cuz I got a gazillion sungolds!

I think Hazan says something to the effect that males taste better. Or maybe she's confused the reason males are preferred.

jeffrey dahmer concurs.

They don't call 'em Early Girls for nothing.

Our corn isn't as high as an elephant's eye, but it did grow a foot this week. Literally.

Nothing's come out of the garden yet but summer squash and strawberries, but everything's coming along nicely. The rains really held everything back.

Thanks GG, I was clearly confused about that, and I also clearly was blind, because I took this photo a few minutes ago:



I could have sworn this puppy wasn't there yesterday!

Fly

GG, from my city girl garden perspective that's not a garden, you have a mini farm! Very impressive crops you got there.

My rose bush sadly has blackspot. I didn't know that that was what it was until I saw a picture on a anti-fungal spray in the garden center. I bought it.

Now I have to figure out why the winter flowering cherry blossom's leaves are turning yellow. I was hoping it was because I just planted it... but I'm worried there is more to it than that...

thanks to complete and utter neglect on our part the rose bush the previous owner left behind in the front of the house (i hesitate to say lawn) has begun to flower quite beautifully.

I think I can get $2 for each of those prickly pears!

That sucker is going to pay for a lot of Coronas!

help, the stress from the heat is starting to devastate my garden, we are losing some tomatoes, the parsley all wilted last week, the chives are starting to look limp, the cucumber has completely stopped blooming. And they are saying we might get another week of this stuff in the lower midwest. The other day, every single reporting station in Oklahoma was over 100 degrees. I know global warming, but this is too much.

My jalapenos have no heat. Zero. Nada. I was very careful when I bought the seedlings to make sure they weren't those pathetic TAM peppers. Is it possible they'll get hotter as the plant matures? I tested the pepper that was very first in the bunch, nicely sized. Granted, I didn't sample the seeds or inner membrane, but the pepper itself should have had some zip. Pooh.

Even if you water regularly, the extreme heat just sucks the life out of tomatoes. By 5pm, the leaves have begun to curl, but they unfold by the following morning with the night's cooling. My peppers and tomatillos, on the other hand, love the heat...

I have seen some people who grow peppers of a certain variety to pull up the plant and hang it upside down, so all the heat runs to the peppers. Probably not jalapeños, though.

I'm no help at all!

after putting out a bunch of fruit right after transplanting my serranos seem to have gone dormant. i thought peppers liked a lot of heat? do i need to water them more?

I always though they liked heat, too. Last year, we had an extended period of high heat with very little rain (and I got lazy about watering). My peppers stopped flowering; the tomatoes went gangbusters and produced massive amounts of delicious fruit. This year, the summer started very cool, grey and rainy, and the peppers started flowering and producing right away, when the plants were still very small. There's a lot of developing fruit on them, but with the intense heat now the flower buds have gone all pinched and unhappy, even though I've tried to keep up the watering. My conclusion is that peppers do not like heat.

Maybe my jalapenos are all wimpy from so much rain?

I only planted these 7-2 and I'm pretty happy. First flower buds were spotted on the runner beans, looking like the cheap lipstick I favor.



Tarahumara Tekomari (Phaseolus coccineus) from a farmer in New Mexico



Tarahumara Tekomari (Phaseolus coccineus) from a farmer in New Mexico



Vacacita (Phaseolus vulgaris, I think) from Mercado Merced in Mexico City

I think the overpowering weed I'm finding is in fact tomatillo plants. That would be great unless they turn out to be deadly nightshade. The flowers are yellow so I think it's tomatillos.

two weekends ago while I was home alone (Mr C was on a business trip) I turned the back flower bed into a "rock garden"....

we have this little stone buddha that was sitting back there with a couple of dwarf japanese maples and a berberis and C kept saying how he'd like a rock garden. So I took a couple of bags of white chipping stone and poured over the soil bed. I'm regretting it now. Its too white, it looks vaguely like snow... I didn't realize that what I probably wanted was a grey hued stone. Do you think I could just mix grey stones in? Or do I have to shovel all that stuff off now and start over?

This should teach my husband not to leave me home alone for the weekend, he's liable to come home and find that I've decided to stencil the walls next.

It's starting to get darker earlier. I hate that.



The first blooms on the teapry beans. I think I've over-watered these drought tolerant/loving plant!


There are tiny little lilac flowers.

Is that your chair where you sit, whittlin'?

I've started putting up those green stakes and running wire between them so the runner and pole beans have something to cling to. It's working well but the big bonus is the hummingbirds like to rest on the wire between trips to the lipstick red flowers of the runner beans. Yesterday I saw three birds taking a break I have a weird thing for hummingbirds so this is really a treat for me. I also fantasize about them pooping on the ground, making the soil more fertile.