A little foggy only when driving on Gardener Road, but once in the gardens, the fog lifted. I started at sunup at my new Learning Plot, which I’m going to use for trialing tomatoes and tomatillos. The old one will also have a cover crop and be ready for a new gardener. I’ve realized I enjoy taking over the abandoned plots I oversee and getting them back into shape. I guess you can call me the garden flipper.
This plot gets a little more shade than the Learning Plot, and it’s that shade that’s the draw. The Mid‑South has been under this heat dome for days with very little rain. Tomatoes do not do well in high heat and were planted mid‑July. By now they should be loaded with fruit, yet I’m only seeing a few plants with one or two tomatoes. The tomatoes still have time to set fruit by the end of September and reach ripening or near‑ripening by first frost, which is around November first. So the 2027 trial is to see if they can get some shade in the morning, and maybe that will be just enough cool time to set fruit.
You might say, why don’t you buy shade cloth. It is a great idea, but it involves money and construction. I made some shade coverings from old landscape fabric that shaded them during this heat. They helped, but not in the same way real shade cloth does, with its specific thickness for different sunlight intensities.
There was a catch with mine: the shade was southwest, not overhead. Without overhead shade, they weren’t getting good airflow, and that leads to disease pressure. That’s why I’m hoping the morning shade trial will give them a better chance.
Today I was getting the plot ready as it was abandoned, which was mowed by the county mowing crew, but the weeds were still high.
The easiest way to chop them down is with my weed whacker. Then rake and repeat. After a few rounds of that, it should be ready by Monday to till and plant with a cover crop for the winter. While the cover crop is in, I can plan where plants and small walkways will be.
Weed whacking only took about 30 minutes, and I was back at my plots. And guess what I had to fix? Yes, my leader hose again. I busted a hole because I didn’t turn it off when I was done using it for a little while. Pretty soon I will be out of leader hose and will need to investigate how to take that crimping off where it connects to the retractable. You can say I’m becoming a pro at splicing hoses, and with it fixed for now I was able to start watering some of the areas and giving Bocking 14 to the Pickle Patch.
After this I worked on removing the landscape‑fabric walkway so I can make a larger garden bed. I’ve developed a system, because trying to pull the fabric up with the many layers of mulch and embedded weeds was not working. My new routine is using a hatchet to break up the weeds into clods and then using my small hand planter to get underneath the clod. It’s still tedious, but definitely easier. Learning how to do this now will make the rest of the Pickle Patch removal easier when I start it in October. A major overhaul to get my gardens more ECO.
Working on the landscape removal was tiring, especially in this heat dome. I know it’s hot when I almost finish my 64 ounces of hydration drink. I spent a little more time today harvesting, as the veggies need to go tomorrow to the church for Tuesday’s pantry drive‑thru, and my husband won’t be helping on Tuesdays until he can drive again after hip surgery. I left before 11 a.m. and decided to stop at Walmart to see if they had clearance on any gardening fertilizers. Well, they already have Christmas up, and I must have missed the clearance because I didn’t find anything they had on the shelves two weeks ago. That’s alright — I still have plenty left from last year’s clearance.
Weed whacking, hose fixing, cover crops, landscape fabric, and Bocking 14 — that’s real gardening in real time.