Yesterday I got up at my usual time — let’s just say it was still dark out. Of course I looked at the weather report. Both my phone’s weather app and the weather TV app I watch reported a lot of rain with a total of 2 inches. Since it was supposed to start around 7 a.m., I made an executive decision to stay home, as my gardens are 10 miles away and I just don’t want to waste my time, gas, or put miles on my truck to turn around and come back home.
In hindsight I should have gone, as not one drop of rain was in the rain gauge. I ended up changing my chores to fertilizing and watering since there was no rain.
Thursday was partly cloudy or hazy with a slight breeze from the north‑northwest, and the low was 72 and the high 92. I did a quick walk of the garden, and everything seemed to be doing fine.
I can’t get over the tomatoes that were planted mid‑July. Just so you know, July is a better time to plant in the mid‑south than mid‑June. The reason being, when we got all those 100‑degree days, it was right when the June tomatoes were blossoming. The July tomatoes had their shade cloths and are now starting to blossom, and will be producing at the end of September — just perfect.
The August tomatoes might produce, but the suckers were just a training experiment. If they do produce, we’ll be picking green tomatoes, as our first frost is around Halloween, give or take a few days.
I gathered 15 buckets to put my fertilizer tomato amendment called Nancy’s Special — a simple recipe of 1/2 cup Black Kow, 1/2 cup my homemade compost, 1 teaspoon Earth’s Best Fast Acting Gypsum, 1 teaspoon kelp meal, and two handfuls of chopped Bocking 14 (sterile comfrey). What you see in the photo is everything except the Bocking 14.
I freshly cut and chop the Bocking 14 into my wheelbarrow. I did two batches, or 30 tomato plants. My routine was to place the buckets at each plant, then push the wheelbarrow to each one, first working the amendment lightly in with my hand claw and then topping with two handfuls of Bocking 14. As the Bocking dries, it releases N‑P‑K, and of course the soil amendment gives a good boost too!
Once done, I gave all the peppers and eggplants half‑strength Miracle‑Gro and followed up by giving all the tomatoes and squash a drink of water. But during this time I had an issue with my retractable hose. The retractable itself is working fine, but the pigtail that connects to the spigot — or in my case, my long hose connected to the spigot — sprung a leak in the middle. The leak was really starting to soak my fall bed too much, so I decided to go to the Learning Plot and get my 100‑foot Fitt HiFlo hose.
The fitt hilo is a really nice hose — lightweight — but when it turns off, the hose is hard for me to wind up in a neat pile. The main thing is it’s lightweight, and I can still move around like it’s my retractable. I popped off the case and discovered that the piece where it connects to the retractable is not a standard coupling. The best thing I can do is splice and mend the hose. Friday, I plan to buy the mending kit.
Since I had to go to the Learning Plot, I decided to take the boxes I needed over there for the cucumbers and watermelon, as they were spreading where I didn’t put boxes. Tomorrow I’ll come back and put the straw down. While there, I watered the tomatoes, as the others were watered on Tuesday.
I went back to my gardens and finished up with watering RRR and the fall bed. I took off some of the cardboard and have a few things coming up like mustard, kale, and radishes. I left the boxes on only the spinach and carrots. I don’t think the spinach will germinate, but it was worth a try, as I mistakenly put them in damp paper towels for planting last Sunday. If nothing comes up, I’ll replant.
After watering, I harvested okra, Armenian cucumbers, and white spine cucumbers. I still haven’t gotten around to using the first two I picked. They say you can treat them just like regular cucumbers, but I’m not sure about that, as the last one is the size of a large zucchini.
Nothing very exciting happened today, but you never know — I could surprise you tomorrow. That is all for today — keeping it real…