My garden is not doing as well this year. I lost a row cabbage and a row of broccoli because of the very cold weather, the onions were damage and many are bolting. I am also feeding them less this year so I expect they will be smaller (they were too large last year). I also have watered very little this year. I hope to install install my irrigation tubes within a couple of weeks. I still have a lot of family medical issues so the garden has to take a back seat to everything else.

If I were to grade my crop I would say that Kale gets an A, Spinach B, Garlic get a D, Beets B, onions c+, cabbage c-, Artichokes C+, Broccoli C-, Peppers B, Tomatoes B, Winter Squash B, all the flowers get an A, The Caretaker gets a D.

Larry

P.S. the weather has been crazy, so I will have to go lite on the Caretaker.

My onions are a bust again. Some bolting, all too small. Potatoes got nipped by frost two weeks ago. Some of them are starting to bloom, but the plants look puny this year. We ate the first head of broccoli tonight from a purchased Packman plant. I have 3 of those to go. The broccoli I started is smaller than normal. Tomatoes are doing good. But the night after I put them into the ground, something laid on 4 of them and broke the stems. I suspect it was the cat who followed me down the row that day. Cutworms got all three of my home-raised Sweet Italian Relleno Peppers so that's a bust for this year. I finally got it and killed it. Now the good news. We got 1.7 inches of rain yesterday so everything should grow now.

So far, the broccoli rabe has been the only total bust....went to flower before I had a chance to harvest it. The mustard greens are going totally nuts, spinach did well, kale is doing okay, although not nearly as well as the mustard greens. I suspect that the Kohlrabi and beets will be ready soon.

My shallots did try to flower (I pulled the flower stalk and left the plants in the ground), so that might not be a good sign (it's my first time for shallots and I think I let them get too wet this winter). We have been eating garlic scapes this week and the garlic plants look pretty healthy.

I have 24 tomato plants in the ground. I pulled one black cherry plant today after its top leaves all either turned black and wilted or developed black spots. I have a sole green zebra plant that looks great, but that hasn't flowered yet, so I will yank that one soon if it doesn't flower. It is my first year with that variety, so I don't know if they typically bloom late. The other tomatoes are looking good, blooming, and producing some fruit.

It's also my first year for potatoes and so I don't know how they are supposed to look, but about half of them are blooming, and most of them are full and healthy looking, so we will see.

Hot peppers have been in the ground for a week and are staring to look like they are establishing. Contender bush beans are just getting going.

New today: zuchetta and seminole pumpkin are sprouting, spaghetti squash and the first round of rattlesnake beans went in the ground yesterday.

I've had to water more than I like, but I'm still hopeful for rain.....

Here is a picture from a few days ago, taken to show off the fence my dh built.

I'm looking forward to stunted tomatoes. I only have one cabbage and one cauliflower and it's LOLz every time I see them. These are real troopers for continuing to grow.

The cool down and moisture caused more buckwheat seed to sprout. At least I got that.

It has been a crazy weather year, but my garden is crazy good in spite of all the weather-related, or climate-related, ups and downs. It is doing better than I expected considering how little rain has fallen, how much hard wind has blown and how erratic temperatures have been.

The cool-season plants all have (finally) made it to a decent size. For a while I had doubts about the broccoli, cabbage and sugar snap peas because they all stalled for a long time when we had temperatures in the 80s and 90s too many times in their young lives. It didn't help that rain was scarce. Now that the temperatures have stabilized a bit and a little rain has fallen, including another 0.10" overnight, the cool-season crops look great.

The broccoli hasn't produced yet, but the plants are big, healthy and happy so I expect they'll produce well. The cabbage is forming heads, the sugar snap peas are only about half as tall as usual, which I blame on the erratic weather and their long growth stall, but are covered in peas and blossoms and we are harvesting a lot from those plants. The lettuce and other greens are perfectly happy and we're harvesting them often, and the radishes did great. The cilantro is bolting, but the other cool-season herbs remain beautiful and productive. The onions are doing really well, especially considering the lack of rainfall. We won't get huge onions because I haven't watered enough to make them huge, but we'll get nice medium-sized ones and lots of them. Some have bolted, and by some I mean maybe 15 or so, and all but three of those were onions I expected to bolt as they were far too large when planted. I planted those large ones at the end of the onion bed, spacing them an inch apart so we could just harvest them and use them as green onions or as regular but small bolted onions. The garlic has been insanely happy all year, mostly because we got about a foot of rain last autumn which made the garlic get big fast and early, but it tolerated repeated cold temperatures down to the single digits and showed little damage. It's been a great lettuce year and none of it has bolted or even turned bitter yet, which is pretty amazing considering we've already hit 98 degrees here. Usually those highs in the 90s put an end to the lettuce season pretty abruptly.

The potato plants are gorgeous and in full bloom, and no Colorado Potato Beetles have popped up yet so they still look great. Since I said that, I'll probably have CPBs all over the plants the very next time I go out to the garden. The asparagus and strawberry plants are in wonderful shape and have been highly productive.

The cool-season flowers likely are at their peak right now. The garden smells delicious at night with the mingled aroma of the scents of the sweet alyssum, snapdragons and petunias. The poppies are in glorious full bloom, but the larkspurs aren't having a good year, having been slow to sprout and slow to grow. I probably need to scatter more larkspur seed in that area next fall.

The warm-season crops are off to a pretty good start, although the hot peppers have been a little slow to take off. The Mucho Nacho jalapenos (from purchased transplants) are about to bloom, but all the ones I raised myself from seed are much smaller because I started them really late. The sweet pepper plants, which were started on time and transplanted into the garden around mid-April, are doing really well.

The tomato plants are having a great year so far.

The initial planting of tomato plants that went into the ground in March, and then had to endure many cold nights/mornings underneath the frost blankets, are mostly about 5-6' tall, loaded with fruit and continuing to blossom and set more fruit. We've harvested about 18 or 20 regular tomatoes, and a few handfuls of cherry type tomatoes, from those early plants---mostly from Better Bush, Early Girl, Park's Whopper and Black Cherry.

I always raise my own black cherry tomato plants (and did so this year) but I purchased two Bonnie Plants black cherry tomato plants when I bought the early plants in March. I wanted to see for myself the size, shape and color of the fruit they produced because we've had a lot of people post photos from BP plants on GW and say "is this black cherry?" so I wanted to see for myself. Sure enough, the purchased BP black cherry tomato plants are not true to type, which I long suspected based on all those photos of fruit that weren't the right shape and color. The fruit I've gotten from them are more of a grape than a cherry shape, and the coloration is not the same color as the real black cherry---it looks more like the color of black plum. The flavor also isn't the same as the real Black Cherry. There's nothing special about these BP black cherry plants, including their flavor, and I'll yank them out and stick something else in their spot as soon as my real black cherry plants start producing fruit.

The tomato plants that went into the ground at various points in April are roughly half the size of the first bed that was planted in March, and they haven't produced any ripe tomatoes yet, but they are growing well, and most already have set fruit or currently are in bloom and should set fruit this week.

The first squash plant is about to bloom, so maybe we'll get some summer squash before the SVBs show up.

I still have a lot of warm-season and hot-season veggies and flowers to plant. I haven't put anything in the back garden yet because not enough rain has fallen and the ground is rock-hard, but I'm working on that now. I might get some seeds sown in it within the next couple of days. I have been dragging my feet about planting back there because rain just hasn't been falling and I don't want to have to irrigate that as heavily this year as I did last year.

All in all, the garden is doing great considering the weather. Is it as far along as the 2012 garden was by mid-May? No, of course not. That year we had our last freeze in early March and we had more abundant rainfall. Still, it is doing really well. Of course, for it to continue doing well, some more rain must fall.

Dawn

Well, im sure enjoying the wonderful spring weather, and planting everything. Id say my garden is doing pretty well, although this is only my second year so I dont have much to compare it to. My lettuces have bolted, so ive pulled most of it and the spinach I overwintered is flowering too which I hope to save seed from. The spinach from this year is going strong along with the kale, chard, dill and parsley. All my cilantro is already flowering sadly.
I only planted 5 cabbage plants for space reasons, only two remain and just yesterday I caught a caterpillar chomping his way through the tiny head forming! Im pretty unhappy about that, but what can you do? The sugar snap peas are really producing now, thanks to everyone here talking me down from giving up on them (thanks!) Which are the best thing i've ever eaten! My carrots are looking good, as are the beets! My first try on both of those so I look forward to the harvest.
I have about 50 tomato plants and for the most part they are all blooming and setting fruit, although the 10 in containers aren't looking so hot. I stressed them out with a Neem application two weeks ago. Now they all are exhibiting leaf curl/twisted new growth. Oh well.
My peppers dont seem to be doing much in a hurry, I dont think they are enjoying these chilly nights, but im not complaining because I love it! My eggplants, and squash dont seem to be doing much either but im assuming thats also thanks to the low temps.
Ive also planted a ton of flowers this year that I started from seed which has been interesting, but rewarding. Overall im really happy with the way my garden looks and how everything is doing thus far. More rain would be helpful of course. Here are a couple pictures for fun:

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This post was edited by amunk01 on Thu, May 15, 14 at 2:46

Are those black radishes? I planted a pure white one this year that I really like but I think I threw away the package so don't know the name. It is very good. Tender, crispy, sweet with a delayed bite. Hope I can remember where I got it. I know I ordered it and I don't order from many places.

That tomato looks wonderful. My earliest is on an Early Girl plant I bought and it's not that far along.

Alexis,

Your garden looks terrific.

Enjoy the cool weather while it lasts, because it isn't going to last much longer. There's some hot days in next week's forecast.

Cilantro is one of the first things to bolt in my garden. It just doesn't like heat. I succession sow more of it every month, and often it is able to grow and get large enough to harvest and use before that round bolts, which is okay because by then I've sowed more seed and have another bunch coming along. It works until we start staying hot day and night. It also won't bolt as quickly when grown in morning sun and afternoon shade. If you just leave the flowers there, they'll form seeds you can gather and use as coriander. Or, if you don't gather them, they'll fall to the ground and eventually will sprout (though sometimes not until the next year) and give you more cilantro plants.

You also can grow culantro as a hot-weather replacement for cilantro.

What can you do about the caterpillars? They are relatively easy to control. The caterpillars that plague broccoli and cabbage can be controlled by hand-picking and crushing them or by dropping them into a bowl of soapy weather to drown. If the thought of hand-picking them seems too gross, just wear some of those disposable latex or nitrile medical gloves so your skin isn't making contact with the caterpillers. If you scout your plants for them from day one and catch them early in their life cycle, you can avoid much of the damage they do. You also can spray the cole family plants with an organic pesticide with the active ingredient Bt 'kurstaki'. It will kill all the caterpillars that munch on plant material sprayed with it, so I am careful to spray it only on my broccoli, cabbage and kale and don't spray it on flowering plants that the butterflies and desirable moths like.

Neem oil normally does not damage tomato foliage, though I have heard of some cases in which in did. You are less likely to have neem oil damage if you use cold-pressed neem oil, and there are some specific brands that only use the cold-pressed oil in their products. Dyna-Gro only contains cold-pressed oil and I don't believe there's any additives in its formulation either. Sometimes it isn't the active ingredient that might damage foliage, but rather some of the additives that various manufacturers add to their products. If you use soap, for example, as a sticker-spreader addition to neem oil, the soap might cause the foliar burn. Or, if you spray when the temperatures are too hot you can see foliar damage. Also, spraying too much of a neem product can damage foliage. You don't want to spray it so heavily that the stuff is running off or dripping off of the plants. I hope that your tomato plants bounce back from the neem damage. And, I hope that new foliage that is emerging now but that wasn't there at the time you sprayed is not showing damage because that would make me lean more towards thinking it wasn't the neem at all, but rather pesticide drift.

More rain would be helpful for all of us (except Busyone---I think he's had enough for the week), but I don't know how likely we are to get it in any significant amount.

Dawn

Yes, those are Nero black radishes. When i harvested them and walked them past my DH, he turned to me with mock horror and said, "You didnt plant those next to the Christian radishes, did you!?!" Haha i just about died from laughing so hard!
As for taste, they aren't as sweet as french breakfast (my only garden comparison) . I'd say bitter almost and much spicier. Id say these are for the hardcore radish connoisseur, but then again i only like radishes, i dont love them. Oh! And the skin just peels off which is nice because its pretty tough. They do make a statement on the table though.
Mulberryknob- i planted a round white one last week but ill have to check the name of it. Let me know if you ever figure out what yours was called :)
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The tomato is a hybrid called Tomande. Im interested to taste it since its flavor reviews have been mixed. Dawn said it wasn't her favorite so we shall see ;)

Thanks for the insight Dawn. Ive been handpicking and "finger-squashing" the loopers and such i guess i just missed one. Their color is so perfectly matched its quite remarkable, really.

I haven't invested in any sprays this year so i only have Neem. Nastria is the brand i believe, so ill check about the cold compressed variable. I sprayed them all heavily then pushed/pulled/dragged them all indoors for a cold spell in early April so in addition to neem they also received low light for three days, and the temperature change may have stressed them (outside to inside then back out permanently). They were properly hardened off but im guessing going in for days then abruptly back out didnt help them. I think im going to battle a plague of spider mites this year because im already seeing little colonies of them on damn near everything! Anyway, im sure i got over-zealous trying to cull the the little heathens numbers so now all the toms are in revolt. They are putting on new growth but it doesn't look normal yet. Im sure they will bounce back, but the question is will it be in time to produce before the heat shuts them down? I have way way too many containers this year so keeping everything alive all summer is going to be rough, especially if the weather forecast for continued drought is correct.
Alexis

Maybe the white round radish y'all are thinking of is the variety called Hailstone. (If ever there was an appropriate name for a radish in our state, Hailstone would be it.) And, just to show that whoever names varieties has a sense of humor, there's a long, pointy white radish named Icicle too.

Alexis, Those poor tomato plants! Maybe it was all those changes over a few days that stressed them more so than the neem. When hardened-off plants go back indoors after already being outside for some time, they can lose some of their hardening-off. I know I had that happen with some pepper, flower and herb seedlings while they were hardening off. I think I already had most all the tomato plants in the ground by then.

I battle spider mites every year. They are everywhere here in our rural area, and the hotter and drier it is, the worse they are. I started seeing them on some plants back in March. March! It used to be that they wouldn't reach high enough population levels for me to worry about them until July....and gradually it became May....and now that I am resigned to seeing them in May, they arrived in March.

Here in this state, you never know with tomatoes. Sometimes we get periodic "cold fronts", which bring us slightly cooler weather, even in the middle of summer and we can get fruit set at that time. If a cold front is coming that will put temperatures back into the right range for fruit set, I'll buy some Super Bloom or another brand of a bloom-booster fertilizer and feed it to the plants about 5-7 days before the expected arrival of the cold front to ensure they are in bloom when the cold front arrives. When I have done that in some previous years, I got great fruitset even if that cold front only brought us temperatures in the right range for a couple of days.

I saw something interesting at the Ardmore Wal-Mart a couple of days ago. The way retail usually works is that tomato plants in six-packs are common in March here, but as we move into April, the tomato plants are in increasingly larger containers, as people buying them later want larger plants to make up for the fact they are planting later, right? Right now, I am seeing half-grown tomato plants with almost full-sized fruit in roughly 3 gallon containers in stores....for about $20-25 per plant. A couple of days ago, though, the Ardmore Wal-mart had six-packs of tomato plants with plants that are maybe 4-5" tall. Irrationally, I wanted to buy some. Being rational most of the time, I didn't do it.

I cannot imagine that anyone buying tomato plants that small and putting them in the ground now would get any fruit from them until fall.....and that would be strongly dependent on daytime and nighttime air temperatures at the time they finally got large enough to blossom. This is sort of an awkward time to plant tiny tomato plants---too late to consider them part of the spring planting but too early to plant them for fall. Still, I bet lots of people will buy them, especially if their spring-planted tomatoes have major issues.

Some years I don't aim for keeping plants alive all summer. Some years I just keep them going as long as I can, and then I cry "uncle" and surrender to the summer and stop watering. You'd be amazed what might survive even after you cut off the water. In 2011, Piricicaba broccoli at the shady west end of the garden survived at least 6 weeks in July-August with no irrigation and probably no rainfall. I didn't even realize it was still alive until maybe October or November, and there it was producing! I had been gone to wildfires day and night and night and day all summer, and after I stopped watering in July, I really didn't step foot in the garden. When I went back into it after the wildfire activity dropped after rain returned in September, I found I had broccoli to harvest. It was just bizarre. Despite it seeming all wrong, we harvested broccoli from that Piricicaba until the plant froze in December. So, sometimes gardens just surprise us, and in the oddest of ways.

I hope the forecasts of the return of El Nino come true. I almost always have a great garden in El Nino years because we get plentiful rainfall those years.

Dawn

I will have to come back to read this thread later. Today I am covering because patchy frost is forecast for Friday morning here. Those black radishes look interesting.

I was glad to get a good rain - before that I was not hopeful. I am not expecting a hard frost but I have to prepare.

Helen, That is terrible. I hope you can get everything covered and protected so nothing is damaged. Hooray for the rain!

I agree it pays to prepare for frost. I believe at least one OK Mesonet station recorded 32 degrees or lower a couple of nights ago over in the OK panhandle.

At one point they had our forecast low for one early morning this week at 44 degrees, which made me nervous because 44 in the forecast usually means 38-40 for me, and sometimes patchy frost at 38. They raised it to 46 though and then we only went to 47. I hope you have the same kind of luck overnight tonight/tomorrow morning that we had earlier this week.

Dawn

Yes!! Hailstone is the white radish I planted. I really love love love French Breakfast, but Hailstone is good too. Tender and sweet with a delayed bite, but not a bitter or harsh bite, just peppery. I will be growing it again....if I can remember where I got it.

Dorothy, The last time I bought Hailstone, which was several years ago, it was either from VIctory Seed or Baker Creek. They both had it that year, and Burpee usually has it too, but they've priced themselves right out of my price range for anything they carry except stuff that is exclusive to them. Willhite Seed doesn't carry white hailstone, unless my memory fails me, but they carry white icicle, a white daikon and at least one other white radish.

Dawn

I must have got it from Baker's Creek. I didn't order from Victory. My memory isn't anywhere as good as yours and I don't keep good records either.