August Gardening Report

August has been a heavy production month for me. Tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupes, casabas, watermelon, corn, and peaches. In terms of weight, August is easily the heaviest production month of the year (those melons add up in a hurry). My melons are about done producing, though I have a few cantaloupes and a few watermelons still on the vine.

A few observations and conclusions:
1. Moving my drip lines away from the base of the melons clearly helped keep the squash bugs down; I had some, but they were never much of a problem.
2. Placing a couple of drops of vegetable oil on the corn silk early in development, clearly keeps the bugs and worms out of the ear of corn.
3. I planted Striped Klondike, Crimson Sweet and Green River watermelons. The Striped Klondike were easily the best flavor, they were so sweet and delicious. Even the small Klondikes were tasty. The Green River melons were a disappointment, though I did plant them late.
4. The Ropac and Columbian tomatoes easily out-produced the Celebrity and Better Boy varieties--and they're still fairly loaded with tomatoes.
5. The casabas were disappointingly small, but good flavor, and we had more than we could eat.
6. In the past, I have not sprayed my fruit, but both previous years nearly all my peaches had worms. So this year I sprayed, only at the first sign of color. I sprayed three times, two weeks apart--and I have no worms this year. I used a vegetable safe Spectracide product.
7. My peaches (elberta) were a couple weeks later this year than last, but we did have a cool spring. But it's a great peach crop for a three year old tree. My OHenry variety ripens later, but they look good too, and I sprayed them also and see no signs of worms.
8. My pecans are also maturing later than last year. Last year in mid-August they were completely filled out, this year on September 1st, they are still not completely filled out. I have a heavy crop, and hope they still fill out large.

I planted spinach today (Sept 1st), planted green beans on August 9th, and fall corn on July 20th.

If you have empty space in your garden (have taken out completed crops), begin tilling in mulch, compost, manure, etc. The ground is a great place to compost, from now until Spring planting.