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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 6, 2022 19:16:28 GMT -6
What kind of rain chances are you having up there, amyinowasso? I looked at the drought map for Oklahoma after you mentioned the exceptional drought. It would be great if some rain moved in. It’s not looking very likely in our area, but small chances are better than no chances. I wish I could share with you varieties that have done well in this drought, but I don’t have a lot. My Heidis have had blossom end rot, too, as do a couple of other varieties I planted this year—Marzano Fire and Orange Caprese. I think with so much heat and drought stress, there isn’t too much that can be done, and these varieties must be more prone to it. Even my cherry tomatoes haven’t excelled in production, and they’re usually non-stop producers for me. I did have early success with a variety from Artisan Seeds called “Taste Patio.” It’s a small egg-shaped tomato on a small plant, but they produce in about 55 days, so I was able to get some good tomatoes before the really high heat came in. It was still a drought during that time. Once the high heat came and stayed, though, my plants didn’t produce. The one I still have has some tomatoes on it now that it has cooled down again. My amaranth also did produce. It was a variety I got that was sold by Baker Creek as “Chinese Multicolor Spinach.” It bolted earlier than I had hoped, but it did germinate and grow in the high heat and drought, and that was pretty impressive. My luffa plants haven’t produced abundantly, but they have produced a bit. It’s possible that if I were picking the fruits at a small size to eat, it might encourage them to produce even more, but I’ve been growing them for sponges. I did get some cucumbers of a variety called Jibai Shimoshirazu. It wasn’t wonderful production, but it was something. In the past I’ve had great success with a hybrid called Southern Delight, but I didn’t have seeds for it this year, so I don’t know how it would have fared in this exceptional summer. It has done well in other droughty summers down here, though. In last year’s rainier summer, I had so many cucumbers that I gave them away regularly.
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Post by amyinowasso on Oct 7, 2022 9:33:09 GMT -6
The local weatherman posted chances 9 out of next 10 days. BUT when I go to National Weather Service, it's 20% Monday 30% Tuesday and 20% Wednesday. What a let down. Every time I see the precipitation forecast map the heavier "chances" are further away.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 7, 2022 19:22:29 GMT -6
That is disappointing. I was hoping you were going to have some drought-busting precipitation. We regularly pray for rain for our area and for other areas that need it. Oklahoma got a mention by name in our prayer this afternoon. As I was chopping vegetables for our dinner tonight, I was thinking of this thread, and realizing that everything that went into our vegetable sautée for dinner had come from my garden (with the exception or olive oil, salt, and garam masala). I had my green Seminole pumpkin, Shishito peppers, onions, and cherry tomatoes. (I also had a couple of tiny eggplants, but I ended up picking out the pieces before I served the dish because they were too bitter. I was glad I taste tested one. It’s not the best photo, but I thought I’d post it because all these vegetables did grow during drought (with lots of regular supplemental watering).
My ten year old daughter made biscuit dough and wrapped it around sausage and cheese. It has nothing to do with this thread, but it went with our dinner, and I hope it’s okay if I post a picture of her cooking, too, because I’m proud of her.
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Post by woodeye on Oct 7, 2022 20:04:28 GMT -6
I missed it, I did not hear the dinner bell, chrysanthemum.
The vegetable sauté looks scrumptious, as does your daughter's sausage & cheese biscuits. You have every right to be proud of that girl, she is a very talented young lady...
The key word in my week's weather forecast is "Slight". As in slight chance of showers. My sister told me today that it sprinkled in Del City, I missed the sprinkles too...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 7, 2022 22:12:37 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum,
The garden vegetable medley was beautiful. It's more than okay to post your Daughter's cooking here. That is wonderful news to hear of a young person wanting to learn a skill like that. She takes after her Mom in the talent department.
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Post by rdback on Oct 8, 2022 8:06:37 GMT -6
...sausage & cheese biscuits for the WIN!
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Post by rdback on Oct 8, 2022 8:08:13 GMT -6
...in other news, the first FREEZE warning issued for tonight. Ain't that swell? Gotta run. I'll be picking peppers all day lol.
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Post by amyinowasso on Oct 8, 2022 9:52:01 GMT -6
I remember one of the memorial day floods we only had a 20% chance of rain, but, you know, mother nature wanted to ruin memorial day. Nothing special to ruin until Halloween and that is traditionally when it gets cold. Will keep my fingers crossed, though we've harvested everything. Husband pulled up the okra trees yesterday, and peppers. Harvested the few sweet potatoes we got. I don't think they were watered enough. Smiling worms, hilarious.
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Post by macmex on Oct 8, 2022 11:10:46 GMT -6
I'll mention here that I planted some loufah at home and some at work. The stuff at home was in the yard, away from the garden and in surrounded by a tomato cage. I kept forgetting about it and it never got taller than a foot, eventually dying. The loufah at work, however, gets nearly daily visits (I walk out there on break just to admire it). It gets soaked once or twice a week too. That loufah produced like gang busters! I'm sure when I tear into it at the end of the season that I'm going to find dozens and dozens of fruit. It's AMAZING. I conclude from my experience and what I've read here on the forum, that loufah is a fabulous crop for hot climates BUT it does require plenty of water.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 8, 2022 14:36:43 GMT -6
We do actually own a dinner bell, and we did ring it last night. It’s quite loud, but it probably doesn’t make it out of Texas. I’m sorry you missed it, but it’s probably for the best since we still have some cold virus germs floating around the house. macmex, I do water my luffa plants almost every day. I have them in a cinderblock bed that gets southwestern afternoon sun and heat reflected off our house, and I have herbs planted in the holes of the cinderblock. The herbs need regular watering, so the luffa benefits from getting watered at the same time. We decided to cut down a bunch of plants today. I had three eggplant plants, but I removed them since the last eggplants I harvested were tiny and already too bitter to enjoy. I also took out the tomatoes that have been suffering the most from blossom end rot and others that just weren’t going to be productive enough to be worth the water. My cucumbers weren’t looking good either, so I cut them out. I also chopped the Sunn Hemp just to add to the pile before my husband shredded it for the compost. The pump that I’ve been using to fill ollas and surface water the beds wouldn’t start at all yesterday. It worked fine earlier this week and hasn’t had any mishaps or events that would cause it to fail as far as I know. My husband replaced the brushes and the impeller with a spare set this morning, but it still doesn’t run. I can still water with the hose for the ollas and watering cans for surface stuff, but it takes so long it’s hard to give the plants enough water. That definitely helped our decision not to try to coax the plants to produce just one more fruit or something. There are still a bunch of plants in the garden, though, and they’ll need to keep getting watered. I just posted in the Weather Lore thread a link to an article that says it’s the driest year on record so far in San Antonio. No wonder it’s been so hard. www.ksat.com/weather/2022/09/30/2022-is-in-the-lead-for-the-driest-year-san-antonio-has-experienced-so-far/
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Post by woodeye on Oct 8, 2022 16:02:14 GMT -6
We do actually own a dinner bell, and we did ring it last night. It’s quite loud, but it probably doesn’t make it out of Texas. I’m sorry you missed it, but it’s probably for the best since we still have some cold virus germs floating around the house. I'm sure it was for the best, it was just not meant to be. Bad combination; The sound of your dinner bell probably doesn't make it out of Texas, and my hearing a dinner bell clang won't happen if the bell is over 50 feet from me. I do hope the cold virus germs leave your home soon...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 8, 2022 16:09:00 GMT -6
I thought maybe I should add that I was talking to my mother last night about a volunteer tomato plant that I have. It didn’t produce for most of the very hot summer, but now that the weather has cooled, it has set a lot of clusters of fruit. It’s just a little cherry tomato, and I don’t know what type it might be since it grew from compost. It doesn’t match any open pollinated cherry tomato I grew last year, so it’s possibly a seed from a hybrid I grew (or even one my neighbors grew since I occasionally got tomatoes from their garden, too). It’s small and red but tastes nice. I just collected a bunch of ripening ones today, and there are more out there. I’ll try to save seeds, but I’m not too experienced in tomato seed saving. The plant was not growing where I wanted tomatoes this year, but it started growing in the winter in my onion bed. It once survived a 28 degree night under frost cloth, and after that I felt that I just couldn’t pull it out. The tomatoes that came from the volunteer plant are the ones separated in to the little colander in the picture below. The others I harvested either because they were blushing or because we were going to remove the plants, so I’ll see if they’ll ripen inside. The reason I’m posting this on the drought thread is that my mother and I were speculating that the volunteer tomato may be producing more than my other plants not just because of its genetics (though it’s possible due to that) but because I let it sprawl on the ground. Normally I trellis or cage my tomatoes, but since I hadn’t planned on this one, I didn’t have an extra cage at the time, and it grew away from the trellis rather than toward it. It’s sort of twined all through my pepper plants at this point. Because it’s sprawling, it has rooted in more than one place along the stem. I try to be very careful not to uproot it when I move branches out of my way. In general I would not recommend sprawling tomato plants, and I’m not planning it as a regular practice, but it might be something to consider doing with some plants in case of a very dry year. I have watered the plant as I have the rest of the garden, but it stands to reason that if its roots are in multiple places in the garden bed, it’s able to pull in more water. Does that sound logical to anyone else?
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Post by macmex on Oct 8, 2022 18:44:21 GMT -6
I concur. I've heard that tomatoes left to sprawl are more drought tolerant. You can squeeze a couple of them out into a little cup, accumulating enough liquid that it not dry out in a couple of days. Let the liquid containing the seeds set until you see a good thick layer of mold on top. Then, remove the mold and pour the liquid through a strainer, rinsing and agitating. The remaining seed can be spread on wax paper (or any other paper) and dried.
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Post by woodeye on Oct 9, 2022 7:00:16 GMT -6
Sounds logical to me. Since the single volunteer plant rooted in several places, it's similar to a colony of tomato plants, but it wouldn't get spindly like planting several tomato plants close together would...
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Post by amyinowasso on Oct 9, 2022 10:55:14 GMT -6
A sprawling tomato plant would not be exposed to as much wind either, and shade it's own roots. I like to use living mulch, like lettuce under tomatoes. It never occurred to me to use tomatoes that way. Obviously they grew that way when wild so maybe they like it.
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