I am not going to deny this is undoubtedly the poorest Summer garden season I have seen in a very long time. The variance of the conditions all have one thing in common. Poor. Especially for Tomatoes it seems. The temperature has not been kind for pollination or ripening it seems at all. Some of my other plants appear to be doing OK like especially cucumbers and peppers now, my beans and corn seem alright but nothing is doing really well this year.I hope Winter doesn't swing in the opposite direction as bad as Summer seems to have. Or it will be way too cold I am afraid.
Economically isn't any better. A lot of conflicting information as usual. I did hear a warning for an up coming "mansion Tax" for housing over a million dollars in value for most all of the Democrat lead metro areas like LA, Chicago etc. Many are declaring an end to the housing costs issue after an announcement that value went up by like point 1 or something. It figures they are going to need to start fleecing even the usual Democrat favorites soon. I also stumbled onto an opinion that Russia now contains more arms and armaments than all of NATO combined. Not sure how true it is but a lot of opinions seems to be changing quick these days and if the US has to supply all this lack of weapons soon looks for some real taxation to come.
All this and we haven't gotten into the new deadline for Student loans (which we will never see) or repayments for housing loses yet. Let the dollar drop more and things can get ugly this Winter. I still kinda think the rest of the world has been waiting for this type of scenario, even the ones who won't admit it openly.
I got a feeling we are not going to know how bad this thing really has gotten until January or February of next year at this point. Bad news seems to be all was can count on right now, When the PTB admit to anything at all.
Horde some long shelf life food is what comes to mu mind with all the uncertainty I keep seeing!!
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
Funny, the garden turnout is just the opposite a couple states north. Last year my spuds rotted (even whole seed taters not scabbed) and onions didn't do anything, tomatoes were OK because I use earthboxes for growing them.
ReplyDeleteThis year the tomatoes are at least double production, the onion sets from last year are growing with 4 bolting and I'll get seed, potatoes going like gangbusters, and no weeding with a half-dozen pumpkin plants taking over the 8x32 raised garden.
Vines are going everywhere and flowers and nascent pumpkins are so thick, I'm going for broke and watering them twice a day. I figure I'll either be slapping together a stand on the roadside or feeding half-formed rotted pumpkins to the goats and deer.
Hit 96° with 51% humidity before the thunderstorm yesterday, capping off 3 days of 90°+ up in the tamarack bogs and open swamps of northeastern Somalifornia Norte. Decent weather for Cajuns, not Finns.
It's been a real mixed bag here in the West.
ReplyDeleteI'm having similar luck with the tomatoes. It's hot this summer, but then again, it's ALWAYS hot in summer here. I'm just not getting much from the plants.
My zukes and cukes failed as well. I'm usually inundated by cukes and zukes right about now. The cuke vines are there, but I'm not getting anything from them. Something's eating out the roots of the zukes and killing the plants. It's not gophers. It's either a bug or a fungus. I did a reset on those in Earth Boxes to see what happens. Meanwhile, my neighbor's garden, 100ft away from mine, is doing great. He's feeding cukes and zukes to the chickens, he has so many. I thought of dressing up like a chicken and taking advantage of this, but ended up just asking him for some.
The corn did well. The watermelons and cantaloupes are also going strong. I have a fig tree that is FULL of figs, but none of them will ripen. I haven't a clue as to why. I'm usually neck-deep in figs around now as well. The rest of my fruit trees are kicking serious butt though.
The only thing I can think of that would cause this kind of a production wobble is that we had a really cool spring that dropped into a really hot summer almost overnight. There was no ramp-up.
As I've said before, I guess it's better we figure this kind of thing out before the other shoe drops...