It’s been hot AF and very dry here.
The fruit season went very well - the peach trees were loaded, and the blueberry and strawberry crops were both quite good. Most of the flowers aren’t doing well at all, though. The only really pretty thing I’ve got currently is a couple coleus that I bought from the farm store a couple miles away. Those are huge and gorgeous.
When they start to wane, you can snip a few cuttings to root in water over the dormant season, and then have more ready to go when the weather improves. Coleus roots stoopit-easy.
We live across the street from a school, and get lots of walkers, so we put spare squash out on the street, and it is gone in half an hour usually. My wife makes a sauce of zucchini and tomatoes, and freezes it.
We grew okra when we lived in Louisiana, and it was great. Won’t grow up here.
We redid some of the garden and I now have the planter beds in a more shady place.
We planted habanero , jalapeños , cayenne, poblano, and a Fresno pepper, with some thyme, rosemary, basil and coriander between them .
Other than some caterpillars and heafty winds they were doing really well. We were doing well keeping up eating them but there are only so many habs one can eat so yesterday with 2 lb of habs, 1.5 lb of red jalapeño, and 12lb of sugar I made habernero jam, jalapeño jam and a hab and Jal jelly.
I Also dried and ground habs and cayenne peppers.
Alas the fresno picked up some sort of leaf fungus with the leaves dropping and getting all sorts of brown spots over them , I pruned it back, but it got to the poblano next to it , so I took them both out. The cayenne is looking like it got it as well , but hopefully it will hold out.
Still lots of jalapeñs and habaneros growing , it cooled off a bit here in Houston so they are still fruiting, so I’ll be eating drying freezing and jamming more peppers before the seasons is done.
Woo Hoo! Got 3 new Locust tree sprouts!
We have coleus cuts rooting in water on the tables on our patio and porch, where we sometimes dine. When the cuts root they get potted and new cuts are started.
You are officially slimed !
We fry it mostly. So the slime kinda melts away.
I’d love to eat loads of it. Just bring it in the house and I start itching.
I’ll eat a bite or two and my tongue and eyeballs itch. More than that and I get a rash around my mouth.
So it’s not for me.
Recently bought half a dozen milkweed plants. Have planted a couple in our yard, and the rest in semi-wild spaces. Hope to attract monarch butterflies on their travels.
My tomatoes were done a month ago (I’m maybe 300 miles south of you, on the coast) but I procrastinated on tearing them out. Hurricane Beryl flattened my Cherokee purple - wire cage and all - so I did the deed this week 
It was a lousy tomato season for me. Between battling hornworms and stink bugs, I had just a few tomatoes left to feed the birds and raccoons. Now the coons are devouring my eggplant.
I’m very impressed with the “Queeny Lime/Red Lime” zinnia mixes. I sowed seed indoors in late winter and didn’t expect much from the seedlings, which experienced etiolation and wilting before I could get them outdoors to acclimate to sun. But they’ve grown up into sturdy 3 1/2 foot tall plants, with lots of flowers good for cutting, in shades of burgundy, peach, reddish-pink and other colors with lime accents.
Neat plants.
Welp, today I am really pissed off because something destroyed one of my sunflower plants!
Looks like deer damage to me, but these are in pots on our deck - it would have had to come up on the deck to reach the plant. Ironically, the netting on the pot is deer netting to keep the squirrels from digging in the pots …
None of the other plants appear to have been touched. Very weird.
So our trimming our Myrtle in February really paid off this year.
Hopefully next year the Myrtle planted last November will bloom close to this.
Just used two cups of cherry tomatoes for dinner tonight - with chicken. Plus zucchini as a side. We harvested the first volunteer spaghetti squash, and some volunteer butternut squash is coming.
My wife did an experiment, putting onions she didn’t use from the onion sets in the refrigerator. She planted some a few days ago in the harvested onion patch. They seem to be coming up nicely.
First frost of fall due by early tomorrow morning here in central Kentucky, incredibly late for this area. Snow showers this morning.
Harvested a ton of sweet ant hot peppers and eggplant yesterday, last of a bountiful harvest. We’ve got more than enough frozen eggplant to see us through to next summer.
I’m jealous! This year was horrible for eggplant for me (OK, not just eggplant). Critters got way more than their share from me this year. They regularly ripped apart my ‘bird’ netting to get to the goodies. I’m guessing that was raccoons because possums are too stupid to do that, but they all shared in the plunder. Eggplant is one thing that thrives in the summer heat, but when I ripped out the spring tomatoes in July I trashed the eggplant at the same time.
The Fall tomatoes are doing well so far, though. Maybe the possums and coons forgot about my yard
October was too warm and dry again this year so my winter veggies got a late start, but they are looking great now. Unless we get a freeze this year (SE Texas) I’ll have plenty of snap peas, pea pods, bok choy, and beets before Christmas.
Bulb planting time here. Ipheion, crocus, and allium. I decided to start a bulb lawn; we’ll see how that goes.
We harvested our last eggplants two weeks ago, and still have onions. Plus a volunteer tomato plant which is pluckily growing among them. It even has blossoms. I don’t have the heart to pull it.
The downside of a very late first autumn frost is the temptation to bring indoors tender plants that you’d previously decided to give up on.
I have a massive night jessamine (Cestrum nocturnum) in a tub which I wasn’t going to save from frost. But the durn thing is still in good shape after multiple nights dipping into the mid to upper 30s. So the plan is to trim it back today and try to haul it up a few steps to overwinter on the enclosed back porch. Hopefully my back will tolerate the move.
The small white flowers are unimpressive, but the nighttime fragrance of C. nocturnum in full bloom is amazing.
My gf’s thumb is incredibly green. We have a huge ficus that I relocate in spring and fall, as well as a pony tail palm. I use a refrigerator dolly.
Maybe I should’ve put the tub on wheels and had a ramp to get it past the steps.
We will see.