I got some sweetpotatoes in the mail on Monday....very wilted and dry. Sure would like to receive mine on Thursday or Friday,huh? Mine are still in water to help them out. I raised most of my starts. They didn't know they were set out. I raise mine shorter with good roots.

Memorial Day Check in,

cool crops fizzing out, getting rid of lettuce, spinach, radish,

mid season crops doing well, carrots, onion, cabbage, potatoes

tomatoes/peppers/okra in

beans seeded,

once the cool crops are gone, replacing with squash and melons.

garlic will get pulled up any day now.

Update:
The sweet peas were Very productive, VgQn picked 9 large colendars full (3 pickin's) which shelling was the tedious part. Next I will plant some late corn in the same pea rows.

Strawberries, spinach, lettuces, brocolli*, & asparagus are all gone for now.
*This year when I planted the store bought broccoli plants I also planted broccoli seed in the garden as an experiment (late March). We just harvested what appears to be the last of the transplant's side shoots and right now the direct seeded broccoli is forming tiny heads deep within the huge foliage. This will be a nice boost to get a second generation of spring broccoli, we'll see how long these last once the 90's set in. Judging from their appearance these new heads look to be 2-3x the size of the earlier transplants heads.

Peach trees are doing well (due to a late freeze this'll be my only fruit from trees this season).

Tomatoes have marble-golf ball size fruits now.
Peppers are blooming
Summer squashes are blooming.
Cukes are blooming.
Bush beans are blooming.
Butter Beans are climbing.
Watermelons & Loaupes are vining.
Late Melons/loaupes are popping up.
Early corn is thigh high.
Med Corn is shin high.
3rd corn goes in this week.
Grape vines are expanding.
Roses are Blooming.
Onions are bulbing up.
...I think that's it?

nope, that's not it-
Forgot the new sweet potatoes. From a package of 20 (4 each of 5 varieties) I got 25 plants. All but one variety was 4 or more whereas with 1 only 3 plants survived. Not a bad deal though, all looking good now, survived the transplanting and heat. Now are starting to lay over a bit to begin spreading out.

#4 corn is up. The first corn is about 30 inches tall.
I planted #3 green beans yesterday.
Onions finally took off better.
Potatoes are growing nicely, but many beetles this year.
Tomatoes are setting on some plants.
Sweetpotatoes are growing very nicely. My home grown slips are so much better than the ordered ones. The home grown are shorter with much better rooting when I set them out.
Carrots are taking off.

Watermelons are doing well. The ones set out on May 8th and 10th are especially nice.
Cantaloupes have had about 4 female blooms that I hand pollinated.
Zukes have bloomed only female blooms so far.

Picking snaps, squash, & cukes now, all exploded this week.
Early corn is tasseling now.
Lots of green tomatoes and tiny peppers.
Composted remaining lettuces, broccoli, and pea plants.
Late melons are all up.
Early melons setting fruits.
Sweet potatoes looking good, spreading out.
2nd Corn knee high now.
3rd Corn ("Sweet Ice" - new to me) is up.
Got one good looking pumpkin from a volenteer plant, if it doesn't crowd out the nearby cantaloupes I'll leave it be, otherwise will trim to control.
Late direct-seeded broccoli is heading up good, picked 2 now.
Peaches swelling up, looking good so far. Seeing the drought down south it looks like high peach prices this year.
Pea sized Figs now forming on 2 trees.
Just need to fix a groudhog problem - a new freeloader on the property....

Well here we are in July now and things are popping.

Both watermelons and cantloaupes are very close to ripening, one Raspa thumps just right but it fooled me last year and I'm leaving it be until I pick the first louape.

Picking the early Bodacious corn now.
Picked 6 tomatoes so far and the others are primed.
Peppers are ready and have been.
Tilled under the old peas and planted some late Ambrosia corn.
Snaps have been pulled and composted to make more room for expanding melons.
Late broccoli is now gone.
Cukes are spitting out 12/day now - pickling time.
Blueberries all picked but a few.
Sweet potatoes covering up their plot.
Butter beans plumping up now.
Onions are drying.
Squash still producing despite losing 4 plants to SVBs.
Late cukes and late squash are up.
The one lone volenteer pumpkin is doing great! It's a hummer.
Peaches are turning yellow now.
Grapes being devored by JBs (as usual).
Late melons spreading out and blooming now.
I'm sure I missed something but all looking good with Hot spell dead ahead, so expecting sweet melons!

...almost forgot, my 6 apples (Freedom Tree) are doing good but the JBs love that tree too.

Hi vgkg and all! Haven't been posting in the veg. forum very much, thought I'd wander over here to conversations and was pleasantly surprised to find some old friends.

I have 8 Opalka and 2 Sungold tomato plants going, only blossoms now. Assorted peppers and chiles, none of them look too good. We haven't had a lot of hot weather yet. Eggplant looks fine but no blossoms yet.

Picked first baby zuchinnis this week. Cukes just blossoming. Killed a SVB moth!

Potatoes blossoming and will pick some babies for supper tonight.

Bush beans just forming beans, they went in late due to our cold spring.

Of course lots of lettuce for salads, spinach too. On 2nd sowing of both. Planted kale for first time and hope to keep harvesting til fall. I am surprised the cabbage worms are not all over it like they are on my broccoli and every time I've tried growing cabbage.

For very first time was successful with broccoli, Pacman seed. Started indoors, transplanted early as I could outside. The difference this year was that we didn't have a lot of hot weather right away that makes broccoli bolt. Harvested 3 big heads and all plants producing nice side shoots now.

No strawberries this year as I replaced bed with new everbearing plants. Peach tree did not produce many fruits this year and what there is are dropping. Late freeze? Heavy rain this week? Don't know cause but will miss juicy peach pies.

Keep us posted through the summer!

I am harvesting the first planting of Ambrosia corn now. Raccoons checked it out a few nights ago and I put out a radio and the neighbor's dog nailed one raccoon that night.

Green beans are very heavy bearing. Zukes are bearing and slowly sucumbing. Cukes are loaded. Tomatoes have begun ripening a few. Sugar Snaps have really put out. Onions are finishing up as are potatoes. About a dozen watermelons are starting to ripen. I wait a few days after the tendril browns. Red raspberries have been good. The Robins and Cedar Wax Wing got most of the black raspberries. I let them have the purple ones. This is the first year I have used a net.

Need rain.

Wayne

Hi Veilchen & Wayne!
We need some rain here too and 2 Big storms just barely missed us over the last 2 days. It was a mixed blessing though because the melons are primed to ripen and the tomatoes are ready to hit the flood gates. We picked and ate our firsr Yellow Doll WM yesterday and it was sooooooo sweet & juicy. Picked the first Raspa too and that's in the fridge as well as the first M&S. But yet all the cantloupes are still big and green!? I won't go thru the whole list again but we're picking peaches now, butter beans soon, all onions drying out, and my volenteer pumpkin looks great! Our Bodacious corn is a sweet memory but the Ambrosia should be ready by middle of next week. JBs are horrible as usual, they could be our daily main course of protein if....but not!

Summer crops still doing ok despite the drought here, if it weren't for my new deep well that garden would be toast. Upper 90s expected all week with no rain in sight. What's going on now?
Watermelons - The old patch still has some life in it with another 10 late melons out there. The Later planted patch is looking real good with another 20 or so, 4-5 Raspas are huge and estimating 40# for 2-3 of them.

Early Loupes are done, late patch ones are plump and green.
Late cukes just starting to produce.
Late Squash too.
Tomatoes are doing well but showing age, have lost 3 plants of 35 so far.
Peppers are Hot!
Butter beans are doing well also but got a mocking bird nest in the crossbeam and they give VgQn hell when picking.
3rd corn planting (Sweet ice) will be ready this week.
4th corn (Ambrosia again) is silking out now.
Got 1 nice pumpkin from the volenteer plant.
Sweet potatoes have filled in their plot, all looking good despite the JB attack.
Hazel nuts are still hanging on.
Grapes are spotty but ripe.

That's about all that's out there now.

Once the early melons are kaput (in 2 weeks?) then I'll rip them out and prepare those plots for the fall crops. Hope the weather cools off by then....and it rains again too.

It's been very dry here for most of the summer. I have watered so the garden is fine. Speaking of dry...it just rained a good inch a while ago.

Just finished up # 3 sweet corn....Burpee's Breeder's Choice yellow..very good. The first two plantings were Ambrosia...very good too. #4 is Ambrosia and then Incredible yellow, then Ambrosia, and Incredible....all doing swell.

Tomatoes are a vintage year and I even have a late crop coming on.

Green beans have done so well this year as has squash. Sweetpotatoes are looking nice.

Cantaloupes have done fair. Have got some nice crenshaws...but not so many as 3 plants died early. Both Lilly and Burpee Earl Crenshaw are outstanding in taste.I have had some foliar disease. Sugar Queens are nice and Classic pretty good.

Watermelons have done ok, but not as good as hoped for....no 40 pounders here. Raspa...didm't plant enough of these. Sangria has done fair. Gold Strike is near awesome. Sweet Dakota Rose was a pleasant surprize. Orangeglos have not gotten so large this year. True, I have old melon soil and without plowing up the front yard it is hard to find new enough spaces for complete disease freedom. One very healthy grower again is Summer Flavor #420 from Twilley's Seed. This one starts growing and keeps growing. It set on two very early melons and then raised a second family already. It set on 5 the second time and I did't get them pruned down to 2 and 4 has kept the size down to about 20 pounds...the very lower limit for full sized melon quality.

All in all it has been an excellent year with only melons being less than tops.

I have had hundreds of gladious blooms and a couple hummers seem to hang out there.

Wayne

Hi Wayne, got questions fer ya on the watermelons.
We all know the old picking tips but something I haven't mentioned is that on most of my melons there are 2 tendrils at the contact point. One tendril is short and straight and the other is the longer curly one. The short/straight one dries up first whereas the longer curly one takes a much longer time to dry up. I depend mostly upon thumping but have to wonder which tendril to use as an indicator? This year I'm waiting for the longer curly one to be at least half dry before picking. Not all melons have both tendrils but most appear too. Besides the tendril I also depend upon the adjoining leaf to appear "aged".

Another item : Once a melon is picked it's too late to do anything about it being ripe but maybe you have noticed too that a good ripe melon will almost always bleed red liquid from the stem almost immediately after it's been picked. Have you noticed that also? Yesterday I found one of my Orangeglo's vine was wilted so I picked the large melon since the vine was a goner. I was hoping to see the orange liquid bleed from this one but it was dry as a bone. I will refridge it and cut it open eventually to see what's going on inside but not for a while yet. Whenever I see the "bleed" I feel pretty good about it. Even the Yellow Dolls bleed a little yellow for me.

BTW, so you like Gold Strike? I have yet to try that one (Willhite?)

Funny, I only have watched one tendril,.......long one and then I wait several days after browning to harvest the melon....sometimes 10 days. I have not noticed stem bleeding....ha! maybe it is drier there when I pick them.

Yes, I do like a good Gold Strike from Willhite. That is strange about Orangeglo dying. Usually they are one of the healthiest growers. Funny again, I haven't gotten any really big ones this year. Two kinds of crenshaw were awesome...Burpee's Early and Johnny's Lilly.

Happy meloning, Wayne

Thanks Wayne, well I cut open the suspect OrangeGlo yesterday and it was 95% ripe. It was good and sweet but there was a hint of under ripe tartness present, not enough to make a difference as it was a good melon. Can't wait to open the OG that I'm sure is 100% ripe (it bled).

Wayne, do you have a preference of Gold Strike over OrangeGlo?

Also, how's your experience with volenteer melons? Last year I grew a separate batch of Raspa and Blacktail Mtns together. This past spring I got a volenteer from that same patch and I allowed it to grow. It has produced 2 nice melons (20# each) that share both parents "looks". the resulting melons are large & oblong like Raspa but have the BTM dark green color with darker green stripes (that are barely seen). It'll be interesting to open these up.

I do prefer Gold Strike a bit over Orangeglo.
My experience with volunteers is not good. Either they are very small or like the melon that was yellow with pink blushes...just not worth it.

I cut a very nice Sangria today and reconfirmed why it is second only to Raspa.

Well yesterday we cut open the 1st volenteer melon and were pleasently surprised. It was deep red and very sweet, the texture was more like a Blacktail mtn and it was quite seedy (smallish seeds) but indeed edible.

Another question Wayne (thanks for the OG vs GS comparison), do you separate your melon varieties or mix them up in a single large patch? I mix all mine up in 1-2 patches as it would take a lot of space to segregate them.

I have several small patches of melons. I mix the varieties in a patch to better prune off excess melon set ons. The mix helps me to keep track of a given variety in the mini jungle of vines to better control the fruit set.

I noticed this year that on the earliest melons to bloom, and where I had hand pollinated them, that the plant nicely stopped with usually two fruits which is what I want....two very good fruits. One fruit equals a superb melon. Two neans two good ones, and three likely means 3 or 4 or more poor quality melons.

Either I am a slow learn or learning melon growing essentials is a hard learn. I have been burned so terribly badly down through the years by wilt in melons and probably have over-reacted to that by blaming all failures to SOIL fungi [except cuke beetle caused bacterial wilt]. Some of my mature vine declines are likely foliar fungi. I started using the organic Seranade Solutions belatedly with some success. Course the commercial growers use poisons repeatedly I suppose. I will use something strong to kill beetles as they can move in from the fields it seems in swarms sometimes.

I'm lucky here Wayne with few melon pests. Apparently the squash draws them like a magnet away from the lesser favored melon vines. The Loupes and cukes catch the excess cuke beetles whist the squash reign in the squash bugs as well as cuke beetles. Thankfully no farm nearby to supply more. I will get a sudden death melon vine yearly but the cause evades me. The gap is quicky filled in of course. My only disappointments this season were the expensive "Honey Pot" yellow seedless melon seed I got from Jungs which produced nothing but vines (I coulda had more Raspas, ugh). The other disappointment was the Chartanias, sp, loupes - too small and hard fleshed for my taste. I admit that they are very aeromatic, but the smell I can do without ;o)

I have a few sudden deaths when the melons first start setting on. If a vine is covered with dirt [maybe 6 inches] that vine will continue to live....so I don't know what causes it.
I noticed that my neighbor wasn't troubled with cuke and corn rootworm beetles...strange!

I think that I can do without the charentais and such...too fussy and smelly. I suggest you try Lilly crenshaw and Burpee Early crenshaw [while you still have fairly disease free soil]. I don't think you will look back. Also a good Sangria is superb.

Wayne

Thanks for the crenshaw tips Wayne, will have to try them next time as I always like to try something new each year. Did Sangria last year and agree it was very good but ran out of seed for this season.
One more item to scratch off my list is "Sweet Ice" corn. It's supposed to be a hybrid of se/sh2 but I swear it was closer to field corn than anything I've grown in years. In fact I left about 1/2 of it on the stalks as it wasn't even worth freezing for stews or soups. My 4th planting (Ambrosia corn) is coming in now and that's what corn is all about to me.

My sixth planting [Ambrosia] has caught up with the fifth [Incredible yellow]. Must be maturing in 60 days or perhaps less!

Tomatoes are so super this year.

Summer Flavor 420 watermelon is one healthy grower and this last one was Sangria quality. If the seeds were just a bit smaller, you could eat them...very small.

After a prolonged hot drought we finally got relief last night. 8 hours of training thunderstorms that dropped 4.75" of rain. Fortunately 90% of the melons and 60% of the late loupes have been harvested. Was still kinda dark this morning so the damage accessment will have to wait until this evening. 3 hours of sleep overnite ain't helping much at work today....

vgkg, Sure don't want that kind of storm, but would take a couple inches of rain.

Wayne, you might get your rain wish as it looks like the remains of Erin is slowly heading your way? We got more storms and 1.4" again last night, more expected this week. This is normally the time I plant the fall crops. Over the weekend I ripped out all the old melons and loupes and got those plots prepared for broc, cabb, carrots, collards, beets, turnips, & kohlrabi. Hope to get these all planted this week if the soil remains workable and not too wet. So far it has sucked up the recent rains like a sponge and it looks like the recent drought has been busted. Got some orange but still hard later planted loupes out there, checked them this morning but no sign of them "letting go" just yet. Hopefully these won't split open before I get home from work. The 5 varieties of sweet potatoes are a jungle now and again I hope that these intense rains won't cause them to crack or rot. I don't expect to harvest these until early Oct.

vgkg, Yeah, I have gotten 2.6 inches today. The earth really soaked it up.....,no wind.

Hope more extra rains didn't swamp you Wayne? I got 1/2 of the fall crops in on Tuesday before another 0.8" tucked them in. Gonna hit 100F here tomorrow so hoping that's the last heat wave of this season before planting the 2nd half of the fall crops. The late planted melons and loupe vines are looking weary already so keeping fingers crossed that the flavors are intact.

I just cut a Rojo Grande today from my later set melons...very sweet.
I have gotten 4 inches of rain this week with not a drop wasted or such...no wind either...excellent here.

Broccoli and cauliflower are being harvested now.......also some sweetpotatoes.

Golden Delicious apples are a very heavy crop this year and very good.

I cut an AU Sweet Scarlet watermelon today....sweet as sugar. This is one of two second setters on that vine. I had to pull off several others to get two nice ones to size up. This one was 21½ pounds.

It's been a while, here's the latest from Virginie...

All the summer crops are now defunct except for about 6-7 tomato plants out of 35, and the peppers are still holding on too.
Harvested the 5 different kinds of sweet potatoes which are now curing in their labeled boxes, we will soon try each variety for dinners and whittle them down to the top 2 for flavor, texture, and production. A couple of the Red Jewels are as big as my head, too big for normal baking so will go into casserols if not too stringy.

Sept was very close to being the driest on record here, not but 1.5" in my gauge. All the melon/cuke plots have been transformed into Fall gardens. Extra fridge is loaded down with various melons which will take a few weeks to consume.

Fall Crops :
6 varieties of carrots
2 kholrabi
2 cabbage
2 broccoli
2 beets
1 collards
1 cauliflower
1 turnip
All doing very nicely thanks to the deep well I had dug 2 years ago. No frost here yet (avg date 10/15) and nothing but warm temps in sight with little hope for meaningful rain. Presently I have 6 large compost piles waiting in the wings for next Spring's plantings. If the autumn temps remain mild I will be harvesting broccoli up till Xmas like last season. Carrots thru Jan too.
This year I waited a month longer to plant spinach (over the weekend) for an early Spring harvest.

Also, my new filbert nut trees - 1 tree produced quite a load of nuts. The first ones to fall were empty, weird I thought? But now the later ones are nut worthy and looks like a quart size bowl full. Need to roast before eating.
Got some pretty good figs too, all now canned up as winter preserves. Not much else going on but I need to get on the ball and clean up the strawberry patch and replace some old plants with the new runners.
All is well......Well Water that is ;o)

Ever since May 1st it has been about 3 weeks dry and then some rain and then 3 weeks dry and then some rain.......Still, things are nice as I watered. The field corn is doing surprisingly well too...no drown outs and rain just in time. There was big eared corn right down through the lowest pond....haven't seen that often.

I have at least one more nice melon to harvest any day now. This is a really nice sized one...a volunteer. I think that it is the only decent volunteer watermelon I have ever had. This one came up in a fence row where it likely has never ever been farmed and is very good tilth.

I hope we can go to the end of the month with this nice warm weather.

Hi Wayne, long range forecast here is no 30s in sight thru Halloween. Typical first frost occurs around the 15th here, not this year but the plus side is that I may not need to fire up the furnace till Nov? really weird. Dry as usual though with 70s just about daily now that the heatwave has eased up. Similar situation here too about the 3 weeks dry with an in-between a crop saving rain all season.

Last nite we ate the first of the sweet potatoes. We shared a Boregard and a Vardemann (sps?). The Vardemann won hands down. The Boregard was good, both had excellent texture, flavor, and color but the Vardemann was really Sweet compared to the Boregard. I usually like to butter up my SPs but Vardemann didn't need it...but I buttered both up anyways after the plain taste test (a habit ya know, ;o). Tests to continue....

Last night we shared & compared Ga Jet and Centennial sweet potatoes. Both had equal sweetness but still below Vardemann's sweetness. The Ga Jet was custard-like and good, but it was so moist that the Al foil was hard to get off. The Centennial seemed much drier (no foil sticking) and thick bodied, kinda stiff in texure and not nearly as creamy as the Ga Jet.
Of these 4 the Vardemann seems to be on top. Red Jewel is next on the list to be taste tested. Will probably cook with Vardemann for comparison.

Ok again, we tested out the last sweet potato variety (Red Jewel) and got a surprise. It was Yellow inside. At first I thought that this must be a fluke so again last nite we cooked another "Red Jewel" to compare to another Vardeman. Again the Red Jewel was Yellow fleshed. So apparently Jung (not Miller as previously credited) did not send me Red Jewel slips? After doing some searching the only (or best) candidate for this yellow one is Nancy Hall variety, but the pics I brought up were a more pale yellow for NH and the ones we have are Very yellow-yellow, not pale at all. Kinda reminded me of a Yellow Doll melon without the seeds, ha. It's not a bad yellow sweet potato and better than Centennial IMHO. Hopefully the other 4 varieties are named correctly as the "Vardemans" are TOPs for Sweetness and #1 of all 5. At any rate, if it's a real Vardeman or not I'm saving some for slips next season. These do not need any butter as I forgot to add butter last nite and happily ate it without thinking about butter.

Overall :
#1 = Vardeman
#2 = Ga Jet
#3 = Boregard (tied with the yellow below)
#3 = "Yellow" JewelBoregard
#5 = Centennial

But Vardeman is way ahead of all the others for Sweetness!

Anyone have opinions of these or other SP varieties that they have tried? So many of them out there...

I tried O'Henry [yellow] last night. It is very smooth and pretty good. Possibilities for yellow include Gold Nugget. I personally don't crave the mushier red ones.

I am finihing off the last large watermelon picked about 10 days ago......good.

Tomatoes this year have been vintage. I just read a farm report saying the same thing for field tomatoes. The dryer weather kept down disease.

Thanks for the extra Yellow possibilties Wayne. If you like sweet and don't mind orange then Vardeman is Superb!

This morning I picked some really nice big Broccoli heads. Already picked about a dozen carrots too and both are way ahead of their usual schedule, due to the warm autumn weather no doubt. I haven't had to turn on the furnace yet which is really weird by this time, but no complaints on the heating bill ;o). Looks like a good rain finally heading this way too, hope so. All these fall veggies are the result of warmth & pure well water. Turnips & beets too so far, collards also. Still waiting on the cabbages but not much longer. My later planted spinach seed (for a spring harvest) is getting too big already!

We got 3.5" of rain from that last blow, the parched ground soaked it up like a sponge over 3 days, an excellent soaker. The cauliflowers (4) are finally starting to show plum sized heads way down in there. Each of these robust plants are 3'x3'x3' in size so expecting some goodly sized heads in ~2 weeks or so. 2 nice cabbages are ready to pick too. Something is munching on one other cabbage, a little missing each morning so suspect a rabbit. No other veggie damage other than this one poor cabbage. Temps dipped to 37F over the last 2 nites and had frost on the cars, but no tomato plant damage yet, very close though. Brought all the sweet taters inside from the detatched garage but VgQn made me wash them off first, ha. All's well in central Virginie....

Mid Nov Update:
Cauliflower - 2 of the 4 are ready for harvest now.
Brocolli - only 3 main heads left, side shoots of the remaining 20 plants are slow going.
Collards - Big, plenty out there whenever needed.
Kohlrabi - plumping up nicely waiting to be "souped".
Beets - doing well but may have to cover them soon.
Carrots - are plentiful.
Cabbages - picked 2 already with 10 more shaping up.
Turnips - are big, not sure what to do with them all.

Even my twice blooming Irises are still blooming now, weird seeing those out there.
We just canned ~ 15 pints of chow-chow from the leftover green tomatoes. First attempt at doing that, will never buy relish again.
Lowest nite temp has been 28F so far, may match that tonite.

Dec 1st Tomorrow -
Picked all 4 cauliflowers this week, very nice, huge and 3 were a bit bigger than my head (no jokes now).
Broccoli is still giving side shoots, freezer loaded.
Collards are like kudsu.
Half cabbages picked, in fridge, other half still growing.
Carrots Galore - neighbors getting Xmas carrots early.
Kohlrabi big - have 2 varieties, Kossack- is the hugest, bigger than softballs. Giganta- not so much.
Beets, biggest picked and in fridge.
Turnips, what can one do?

And believe it or not the irises are still blooming though one stem head bent to the ground during the upper 20s last week. Crazy! Did Pick them twice to bring in but those that haven't opened do bloom after a freeze, so far. In Dec? Weird...

Winter is arriving here now. We have had several rains lately and each time afterwards it is colder.
A few broccoli side shoots are all that remain besides lettuce and choy.

Hi Wayne,
I may have to give lettuce a shot next fall, never have tried it then. I just got back from our Xmas party here at work. Brought in a Huge pile of carrots and one of those caulflowers, plus some diced turnips with dip. All went fast, esp the carrots which got raves and disappointments that they ran out so soon.

Odd, but there are many trees around town that are still 100% green leafed, most are either all bare or in mid/late colors but some look like they do in July. Not sure what's up with that but in a typical year all the trees are bare to the bone by now, whereas about 1/2 are still hanging on. This is throwing a monkey wrench into the local leaf sweeper trucks and may cause gutter/sewage problems this winter.

I finished up leaves 2 days ago...good thing as we got 3 inches of snow. I had been waiting for the large red oak tree to drop most of its leaves. Now, it is dropping them on the snow.

My fall garden took it on the chin back in mid-october, we had one night down in the teens which pretty much wiped out the huge bed of chard I had been babying. Surprisingly, the beet greens survived. Now, we're having rain instead of snow, so 7,000 feet in Colorado in December, and we have flash flood watches out.

Hi David! Over the weekend I cleaned up the leftovers of the mostly defunct brocolli and cabbages. Saved the remaining broc plants that have tiny sideshoots showing. The next 3-4 days are going to be around 70F here so will turn some compost piles whist it's warm so they can more easily reheat and be ready by Spring. It's peak time right now to go around the hood and pick up bagged leaves for next year's compost ingredients.

Collards, carrots, beets, turnips, rohlrabi, and 3 more cabbages left out there with no hard freeze in sight according to the 15 day forecast.

Picked Broccoli on Xmas, that's a first. Each time I picked off the remaining side shoots I thought that was it, but the mild winter has so far extended the Broc harvest into new territory - Xmas. Usually the brocs are frozen nubbs by now but got about another pound of side shoots yesterday.

There's still 2 cabbages sitting out there as well as a ton of carrots. Collards are still collarding. That's about it but by now all I usually have left in the garden are the carrots. Temps in the teens haven't hit here so far and we've had a couple of nice rains lately, like right now.

Picked the last of the brocs (again) yesterday before this deep freeze set in last nite. Picked all the collards I could too and the 2 remaining cabbages. Only the carrots are left out there now and though the tops will no doubt suffer the roots are still good to go, at least for a while yet. Time to start sizing up the fruit trees for pruning.

Just a post note on the 5 sweet potato varieties. Although Vangard was tops for sweetness right after harvest, all 5 have been in storage for over 3 months now and all have sweetened up considerably. I really cannot tell them apart other then the 1 yellow fleshed variety which is now just as sweet as the others. Too bad corn doesn't get sweeter like this ;o)

Seed time here...and planning. I am planning on some cereal/legume plantings for soil enrichment in selected areas.

vgkg, It is time for you to start the new Garden Updates thread for 2008.

Dang Wayne, how time flies, You are Right!