I know some of you are growing your own food.

We've been in harvest and preserve mode for a while now.

It's been a drought year, though, so if we don't water an hour every night, everything stops producing.

How are the rest of you doing?

Same here, except we don't have a garden yet plan one for next year at our new house... we`ll have room for as many raised garden beds as we can dream, and there's already a nice fence posted area... just gotta add the fence

The drought is BAD. If I don't water the lawn or the plants they start dieing quick... I feel bad watering things around my house for "LOOKS" and can't wait to move and only water what needs to be watered to grow and produce for us I saw the new house had some grapes growing still and no one has lived there in a year, crazy different than where I am now..

-Todd

This is the first year I was "serious" about gardening, meaning that I read up and tried to do it "right".

I prepped a 2'x 8' area along the SE wall of the garage. I started four tomato plants and four pepper plants indoors. They didn't get enough light so they were scrawny. I left the tomato plants out too long when I started hardening them off and they got sunburn so I had to buy some to plant. I stepped on one pepper plant and a cutworm got another so I was down to two stunted pepper plants. They are just starting to produce peppers now.

The tomato plants are doing well and I'm harvesting about one very large ripe tomato per day or so.

Meanwhile I seeded a few zucchini plants at each end of the garden and they've been doing so well I'm sick of them by now and they are starting to go bad in the fridge before we eat them. I also planted carrots and lettuce but the zucchini grew so huge so fast they were completley overtaken.

I have a quart jar of dry black-eye peas from a 4x4 plot. Okra has been coming in at a quart a week for the last 5-6 week. Wild mustang grapes are ripe. The june bugs are pretty much gone but more and more crickets are appearing.

-Blast

"...Okra..."

Oh yuk! My ex liked to try to stuff that down my throat...

Nothing wrong with okra if done up right

Maybe I have never had it properly prepared, the ex never was all that great a cook...

The best is okra is soaked in buttermilk, battered, and deep fried. I can feel my arteries harden just thinking about it.

Is it supposed to be slimy???

There used to be a New Orleans cook on PBS (his name escapes me now) that always said you had to "deslime" okra before you cooked it. Not into any food that has to be "deslimed".