Monday, July 30, 2012

How the Garden Grows

   Let me start this garden update with a bracing moment in reality: it was 105 degrees today..yikes! Garden time is limited and done early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Several plants are giving up to the heat: cucumbers and green beans are fairly done and showing signs of heat stress.
   However, the peppers and okra are kicking into full gear. Today several buckets of peppers and okra came in alongside the tasty cherry and yellow pear tomatoes. As for the tomato starts we clipped last week...
   ...all of the sudden the project is not looking so good. The cutters were looking green and healthy, but suddenly became yellow and sickly. I treated them with a weak fertilizer solution..we'll see if they improve. I am not hopeful. The good thing is, my spring tomato plants are alive..not producing, but alive. My intention is to mulch them well. Today the ones partly shaded had blossoms.
   We snagged a rather large pest from the okra bed: a grasshopper bigger than my farm boy's finger! Right after this picture was snapped, the grasshopper headed out the door..Hadassah chasing it with great leaps and bounds.
   Proudly, she caught it in her mouth..without killing it..and carried around..it's wings rattling around between her teeth. That girl..she's a nut:)





4 comments:

Michelle said...

My tomatoes are doing the same thing. They look great ,but aren't producing much.

HIBISCUS HOUSE said...

We are having some hot weather, but it looks like you have some beautiful produce!

Becky said...

That is quite a haul of peppers. What do you do with all of them? Do you preserve them, and if so, how?

Unknown said...

Thank you, ladies.
Becky, I dry them for later use, pickle them, make pepper relish and pepper butter. Many of these picked today will be shared with a friend who's peppers didn't produce well.