That was 2021 and there were three more crates not pictured. I put up enough tomato products to skip a year or two of large scale growing. 2019 and 2020 were also bumper-crop years.
This year, the eight plants are mostly for fresh eating. It’s nice having more floor space in the kitchen!
I was lucky in that last year, I only spotted a handful of Japanese beetles in and around my garden. It may have been that the excessive heat and drought didn’t help them either. I’ve heard that Japanese beetles can sometimes come in cycles (i.e., light a year or two, and then heavy one year) but no idea if there is truth to that. I gave milky spores a try last fall and spread it as instructed through my entire back yard. To be determined if this is truly effective. This week, I spotted 3 dead ones floating in my rain collectors (thankfully they seem stupid). Fingers crossed the milky spores do the trick and they don’t come back in droves.
I don’t remember seeing them in southwestern Ontario until the last 7 or 8 years.
I sometimes sprinkle baby powder or cayenne on leaves to repel them and other bugs.
Cayenne powder, bought cheaply at the dollar stores, is my go-to for buggies I don’t want on my leafies. It works on annoying tree squirrels, that is until it rains. I am very careful not to apply it on a windy day, too. I make a home-made scotch bonnet pepper spray for tree squirrels and the deer friends. Tree squirrels dismantle my prayer flag strings, those crazy varmints!
I understand a dish detergent -based spray will also work.
Note to self;
Yep, I’ve got the Ivory liquid solution in my arsenal!
Beautiful!
Today’s pick. This was our last day of cherry picking this year. There were more, but we ate a lot before I could take the picture.
We planted these cherry trees – Lapins and Rainier – in 2020, making them 4-5 years old now. This was our first year with a real cherry harvest. We didn’t know what to expect, but learned they come on in a blitz! Our sour cherries, which are 1-2 years older still, produced their first real harvest also, and over the course of about 6 days. These sweet cherries lasted about one week longer. It was fun and exciting to go out and harvest every day. I baked two cherry cakes, two pies, made a small batch of jam, one batch of frozen cherry yogurt, and froze a couple of quarts of pitted cherries (all kinds).
With an idea of what to expect, we’ll be a little more organized and better prepared next year.
While I was in Chicago and temps here reached 107 f, I had an irrigation snafu, and lost several plants, including my 5 year old Scotch Bonnet “Jean”. 
Still hoping some will bounce back. 
Oh that is sad about Jean.
I see signs of life today, so fingers crossed!.
I am adding potatoes to hard neck garlic on my “no-grow” list. This is the entire yield from 4 10 gallon (I think) grow bags. The plants looked great until I just couldn’t keep them watered any more.
I guess Magic Myrna did relatively well. The others are fingerlings.
No diseas though, and I did end up with lots to compost.
Aside from Magic Myrna, it looks like it may be too hot for good potato yields there. Ideally, the root zone of potatoes should be much cooler than the air, especially at night. With hot days and warm nights, the roots and tubers expend too much energy via their metabolisms to store sufficient starches. Even moisture is required while tubers are forming.
Most potatoes have day length or number of days for their life cycles, but a few grow continuously. The earliest maturing potato I’ve grown has been Caribe. If you can find the earliest-maturing potato varieties you can, it may be possible to get better yields. If you have no frost date, it may be possible to pick an early variety, say 85 days to maturity, and count backwards from a targeted harvest date, before it gets really hot and dry.
I bet the limited harvest will still taste delicious!
Thank you! Maybe I have a similar problem with the hard neck garlic. I did look for earliest maturing potatoes this year, but I primarily wanted to grow fingerling potatoes, and most of them seem to be late or confusing! I chose Magic Myrna only because it was early. The weird thing is, we had the coolest spring I can remember!
FWIW, even when it is 100+ f during the day here (maybe June, July, August) , it’s still usually under 60 at night.
I was at about 90 days when I stopped watering them, but I was also looking for flowers. I did get some flowers, but not like in pictures I have seen.
Oh well. Fingerling potatoes are getting easier to buy, and I don’t eat many potatoes anyway. Or at least I don’t aspire to eat many potatoes.
Hmmm…I just noticed those don’t look like the " aNagic Myrna’s currently in the catalog I got the seed potatoes from.
How hot is it where you garden? We were up around 107 last week, 91-103 highs over the next five days, low sixties at night, which is unusually warm for nights here.
@ewsflash , I think you are in the US South West. I hope it’s not Arizona! It’s wicked hot there!
Here, in central Virginia, spring is typically 70s-80s day, 50s at night. By July, we’re upper 80s-upper 90s day, low 60s at night. The humidity is crazy high. Early mornings always look like it rained; everything is wet from dew. Heat indices are often triple digits, as sweat does not evaporate. Currently, it’s like being in a tropical jungle.
The high yesterday was 111. It’s been around 110 for weeks, it seems.
Last Monday it clouded up and looked stormish around 5pm while I was on the way to PT. It was raining big drops when I walked from my car, and a couple of minutes later it was hailing to beat the band. The driveway was solid hail and oak leaves that got knocked out of the trees. Then it rained really hard, a couple of microbursts around town, apparently, there were trees and power poles down all over the place. We got over an inch of rain, and everything in my back yard with big leaves now has holes in it.
Good times. But it hasn’t rained since, we need more. Not necessarily that intensely, though
