Garden Update

I learned something this year:

When you are trying to get a good garden going, it may not be a good idea to go on an 11 day vacation at the end of May.

By the end of May, the garden was planted. Most of the plants had settled in and were starting to get growing with their bad selves.

Then I left for 11 days - 11 days when the deities of weather decided not to grace my backyard with any rain. Not one drop.

The good news: When I got home, nothing was dead. But nothing had grown. And in that time period, at that time of year, I expect plants to double in size.

My little town is also still under water restrictions - I'm allowed 3 days a week, with each day having only a 2 hour window opportunity to water my garden. If I watered that much, it would be too much. But my problem is simply forgetting to water during the appropriate time.




Nevertheless, I got my first two tomatoes in the past week. The Bestest Friend and I enjoyed the first one sliced with kosher salt and ground pepper. I like to call it Heaven In Red. I have many green tomatoes out there, that make me hopeful for some homemade salsa in my near future.



The squash plants have been producing flowers like crazy - but they were all male. Squash, like humans, need two sexes to procreate. This past weekend I found 3 female flowers - and it looks like two of them have been polinated. But the zucchini hasn't grown as much, or produced quite as many flowers.



Then, I spied what I think may be my first female zucchini flower. Grow, ye little green things, Grow!



The pepper plants have about 10 flowers and one actual 2 inch pepper - although the plants are no where big enough to sustain that many actual fruit. Still, one pepper per plant (they're red bell peppers) is enough to offset the cost of planting it. So one more pepper and I'll break even.



The cucumbers have been the real heartbreaker. They took the two weeks of no water harder than anything. They never actually died - they're still green - but they haven't grown AT ALL.


That is, until the past three days. In that time, one (and only one) of my cucumber plants has more than doubled in size.


So I'm more than happy with my gardening efforts. I don't consider myself a gardener - I really just kind of play with dirt and green things for many days. Even if I get the bare minimum from my efforts, I like gardening. For one thing, it's relaxing to dig in the dirt. For another, it gets The Bestest Friend over here, and she hauls bags of dirt for me while I sip Pina Coladas.

And that's just clean fun, that is.

Heavn In Red

In the past week, I've gotten two tomatoes off my plants. It's obviously just the beginning of the season, but I decided to enjoy the first fruit of my labor very simply.

I sliced the tomato, sprinkled some kosher salt over it and then ground some peppercorns over it. The Bestest Friend enjoyed hers with a wee bit of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Heaven In Red

Ok, so I'm not a master gardener. Or even a good novice.

I had a lovely crop of Roma tomatoes and yellow squash this year. Both of them went absolutely nuts, which made feel a little bit less like "you have no business gardening, you lazy slug" and a little bit more like Martha Stewart. I thought I made more tomato sauce and salsa this summer than we could ever eat. But there's none left.

For a couple of weeks, I've been meaning to go out and pull up the dead plants, put some compost down and clean everything up for its long winter nap. Which isn't so long here in the Deep South, but a nap is a nap - There's no such thing as a bad one. And now I'm putting myself to sleep.

Well, I looked out at my supposedly dead tomato plants - they just couldn't take the massive heat wave, and gave up all attempts around the TWELFTH straight day of 100+ degree heat we had in August - anyway, I look out and my tomato plants have flowers and tomatoes all over them! I have an entire new crop of tomatoes growing!

So I raced outside with my gardening soul singing songs of joy and dreaming dreams of more red sauce. And maybe this time I would practice some self-control and freeze some for the winter. But first I really figred I should get rid of all the dead stuff. The squash vines were dead, so I pulled them up. And then I started working on the dead leaves and vines in the middle of the tomato plants. And I reached in and came face to face with a caterpillar. A very green caterpillar. Which kind of worried me, because now I knew why the leaves were half eaten on that little section. And then as I reached to grab a dead leaf, I saw this on the back of another one:

From What's In My ...

I didn't know what it was, but I was pretty sure that when unidentified caterpillars - that have been eating my plants - take up their long winter nap on the back of my leaves, it's only because of the proximity to the food source. And the last thing I want is a breeding mass of these critters.

So I frantically ran inside, looked up the information and discovered I have tomato hornworms. Or at least that's what think I have. And to prove that a Freddy Kreuger nightmare was in the making in my little plot of dirt, I found out that they may or may not have laid their eggs in the dirt around the plants. So I have to get rid of my tomato plants, and my dreams of chunky, garlicy, yummy red sauce have now disappeared. But I DID harvest the green tomatoes that were there. Now I just have to figure out what to do with them. (That's me begging for ideas, y'all).

On a happier note, the bell pepper plants that produced the bountiful harvest of ONE RED PEPPER this summer have now decided to go crazy as well. I have about 5 peppers growing; three of them are about 5 inches long. Now I just have to be patient and let them turn red before I rip them off the plants and devour them.

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