Oh man, the farking tree rats have started in and taken all my biggest tomatoes, I probably wont' get any this year. I guess I'm just going to stop growing, too much effort to feed the local wildlife.

My strawberry plant is coming out of my topsy turvy planter holes now

i had to pull most of my tomato plants, they all had blight and tomatoes were turning black too.

formattc said:pecanpie said:i had to pull most of my tomato plants, they all had blight and tomatoes were turning black too.

Aw, that sucks! The little bushy-tailed raiders have pretty much taken all of mine.

no squirrels here, but there was a ground hog in my garden today. have never seen one in my yard before.

handyguy said:pecanpie said:i had to pull most of my tomato plants, they all had blight and tomatoes were turning black too.

You're supposed to put in disease tolerant ones

there was supposedly an "outbreak" of light blight - same disease that caused the potato famine in ireland years back.
stores were selling them w/ the disease already.
(spelling and verbage may not be completely correct.)

ZenNUTS said:raspberry

I freakin' love red raspberries!

I am very prepared for our tomato eaters (notebly the squirrels and rats) this year. We planted 24 of tomato plants so there's bound to be some left over for us. I've noticed, though, that the squirrels has been eyeing our apple tree. I saw one this morning trying to leap against a branch to secure a plump apple, but failed (had grasping issues I think). I'm kinda surprised it hasn't been attacking the cherry tree yet, as it has quite a number of ripen cherries already.

Donut peaches are great (just not much fruit to eat and very expensive in our neck of the woods). Our regular peach tree has been on a fruiting frenzy. There's like a gazillion peaches (on the tree and on the ground) but all are very small and still green. I think we need to do some fancy pruning next year. Our tangerine and lemon tree are (still) pitiful though. Nothing, nada yet.

What I'm really excited this year is that we finally started on some interesting melons. I think the official Chinese name of it is "Ha Mei Gua." They look like cantalopes but not as round (more like oval-ish shaped). But they taste just like honeydew but have a crunchy / firm texture of a cantalope hence I think it's hybrid of both, but not sure techincally. We ended up having 62 seedlings of 3-6in height and are in the processing of transplanting them to another area. We gave about 17 to our neighbor since he's planting watermelons and an avid gardener. Next on our list is Hawaiian Papaya (which is already sprouting). I have second thoughts about this one (not tropical enough here).

handyguy said:Our local farmers market has white raspberries. But also red ones. 3 baskets for $5. Cheaper for me to buy.

I have never seen nor tried white raspberries

bravebiffy said:Does anyone know a natural way to get rid of Japanese beetles? They have been very devestating to my Chinese kale...http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef451.asp