they seem to be not quite as large as years past. We got our first ears of corn this week, and the ears are slightly stunted, some of them didn't get complete pollination either. It's still very good, albeit a little disappointing. First tomatoes came in today, and they are quite a bit smaller than the the ones (same variety) we got in the past. My guess is the very dry weather we had contributed to all this. Despite my watering efforts I can't water as well as Mother Nature. Just seems to be another "aw shucks" in a year that has had very little go right. Anyone else seeing smaller veggies?

I just planted a few tomatoes in pots and experienced the same results.  My brother grows the plants from seeds he finds at garden shows.  None of them are hybrids.  I think the shortage of bees is a problem too.  I let the clover grow for them and I wonder if that takes away from the tomato pollination.

We use recovered water from the gutters for our plants.  As long as we get regular rainfall our supply last 10-12 days. I have five 55 gallon drums currently.

 

Plants do much better verses using city water.

I got my tomatoes in late this year.   I have some cherry tomatoes coming on but the Better Boys are still green.   We have had many days above 90F for the last month and little rain.   But they are all mulched with straw and in several inches of compost compliments of the horse farm down the road that boards, breeds, and trains 90+ trotters.

 

No shortage of bees.   I have 2 hives, the neighbor about 200 yds away has 5, and another neighbor within a quarter mile has 4.  Might be more that i don't know of or feral colonies in the woods.  When I put out the stuff from my honey extraction for them to clean up, they were on it in about 15 seconds.

We got our tomato plants in late also.

Did them in some planter boxes we found "Curb Shopping." 

Best crop we've had in years. 

39 minutes ago, Larry Buskirk said:

We got our tomato plants in late also.

Did them in some planter boxes we found "Curb Shopping." 

Best crop we've had in years. 

Digging them up from neighbors garden in middle of the night is not "curb shopping".  I'm just saying.

2 minutes ago, Gunny said:

Digging them up from neighbors garden in middle of the night is not "curb shopping".  I'm just saying.

......

I continue to be surprised by the impact of Coved on every aspect of life. on every aspect of life. As I went to set up to can some tomatoes yesterday I went to buy some extra rings/lids for the canning jars. Walmart's canning section was completely empty...nada; anything! Didn't give it too much though, went to the other 2 stores in town that might have some, nothing. Still unconcerned I tried ordering from Amazon, nothing there either except for scammers trying to get $25 a box (they are normally in the $5-$7 range). BTW, e bay had some at $40/box. Started searching, it seems with Covid everyone decided to have a garden and preserve some food.We've been canning veggies since the mid 80s, so we have a stash of stuff and I did have enough on rings/lids on hand to do our tomatoes, but once this calms down I'll have to stock up on them. It's just amazing to see the changes this pandemic has brought on. I told Marie we could probably get a couple of thousand dollars if we tried to sell our stash of jars, the pressure canners, and other stuff we've collected over the years.

Have you checked the price of lumber/sheet goods lately?  Around here, the $7-8 sheets of OSB were $22 yesterday at the BORG, plywood sheathing in the mid $30s.  And 2x4x8 were north of $6.  I feel bad for contractors who have bid jobs.  Hope they built in a provision for price fluctuations.

I suspect some of those contractors (most of them probably) had long term pricing agreements to give them a little cover, but yeah...I have seen the price of construction materials go up, for the same reason as the canning stuff did. More people at home doing things they haven't done in a while.

I refer to the increases as Covid prices. 

Things that used to be listed cheap on eBay are roughly 4 times what they were before.

3 hours ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

I continue to be surprised by the impact of Coved on every aspect of life. on every aspect of life. As I went to set up to can some tomatoes yesterday I went to buy some extra rings/lids for the canning jars. Walmart's canning section was completely empty...nada; anything! Didn't give it too much though, went to the other 2 stores in town that might have some, nothing. Still unconcerned I tried ordering from Amazon, nothing there either except for scammers trying to get $25 a box (they are normally in the $5-$7 range). BTW, e bay had some at $40/box. Started searching, it seems with Covid everyone decided to have a garden and preserve some food.We've been canning veggies since the mid 80s, so we have a stash of stuff and I did have enough on rings/lids on hand to do our tomatoes, but once this calms down I'll have to stock up on them. It's just amazing to see the changes this pandemic has brought on. I told Marie we could probably get a couple of thousand dollars if we tried to sell our stash of jars, the pressure canners, and other stuff we've collected over the years.

Yes, there is a shortage here.  A couple of months ago, it was no problem.  There were pallets of various sizes at Rural King.

 

We canned tomatoes years ago (and I grew up with the family canning about every vegetable we ate).   When I can buy a #10 can of tomato sauce about 3 times a year for less than $3 each, it does not want to make me heat up a kitchen all day and clean up the resulting messes.  But I did get about another 1.5 gal of honey in yesterday.

Edited September 2, 20205 yr by kmealy

4 minutes ago, kmealy said:

 

 

Edited September 2, 20205 yr by kmealy

9 minutes ago, kmealy said:

Yes, there is a shortage here.  A couple of months ago, it was no problem.  There were pallets of various sizes at Rural King.

 

We canned tomatoes years ago (and I grew up with the family canning about every vegetable we ate).   When I can buy a #10 can of tomato sauce about 3 times a year for less than $3 each, it does not want to make me heat up a kitchen all day and clean up the resulting messes.  But I did get about another 1.5 gal of honey in yesterday.

Well, for sure canning started as a way to save money. But anyone who does it today that thinks they are saving probably doesn't value their time at all. Even if you did by the time you buy all the stuff needed and grow the tomatoes it still costs more. But to me at least, it tastes so much better....especially in the winter when you can't buy anything that tastes like a home grown tomato.

15 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

Well, for sure canning started as a way to save money. But anyone who does it today that thinks they are saving probably doesn't value their time at all. Even if you did by the time you buy all the stuff needed and grow the tomatoes it still costs more. But to me at least, it tastes so much better....especially in the winter when you can't buy anything that tastes like a home grown tomato.

...Got more time than$$$.

But you're right nothing store bought tastes near as good. 

My wife does her canning outside on a Coleman stove ran off of propane.

Forgot to mention found 3 full or almost full 20 lb. propane tanks "Curb Shopping". 

Edited September 2, 20205 yr by Larry Buskirk

Yeah as a "child of a child of the Great Depression,"  multi-generational farmers, and part Scot, we did a lot of that.  Summer vacations were usually spent in the garden.   Planting, weeding (hoe-hoe-hoe), harvesting, and canning were lots of work May-Oct.   Fruit, we did not grow, but pick-your-own orchards and then canning.   Root cellar in the basement.  We also had two dairy cows to provide milk and butter.  Which meant twice a day milking and feeding, making hay, and no overnight trips away from home.  Saturday mornings was barn cleaning and manure spreading when they were not in pasture.  (I still wonder of the economy of this when milk was 60 cents a gallon).  I made my money as a kid selling sweet corn and pumpkins at the road.   Grandfather, who lived next door, had several hundred chickens.  More manure and occasional chicken harvest.  I can still smell the odor of wet chicken feathers in hot water as we plucked the feathers during butchering.  The phrase, "Like a chicken with its head cut off," is definitely true when one would wrest itself loose from the catalpa tree.   For many years, we supplemented the coal furnace with wood.   Then when gas came to town, a supplemental woodburner tied into the duct work.  But, darn, those pies and other desserts were sure good.

I only eat homegrown tomatoes and sweet corn.   Everything else tastes like cardboard.

Edited September 2, 20205 yr by kmealy

43 minutes ago, kmealy said:

I only eat homegrown tomatoes and sweet corn.   Everything else tastes like cardboard.

When it comes to store bought, I think I've had better tasting cardboard. 

Edited September 2, 20205 yr by Larry Buskirk