Well, this has not been my favorite year gardening! It seems like every pattern of weather was messed up, and the consequences were and are enough to make me wonder why I work so hard to “make it work.”
Of course, my expectations belong to me, and what you see is what you see, not the picture in my mind of what I carefully envisioned and planned.
I’m reminded of that so often when I’m working in the Healing Garden at Sanford, and a patient or visitor comments of how beautiful the garden is, and those comments put the whole effort back into a proper perspective.
So, the extremely dry weather has curtailed the invasion of slugs up until now and that’s good news. And I saw a couple of Japanese beetles on a hydrangea three weeks ago, and their numbers have remained really low, so that’s another plus.
Tomatoes love hot weather. My plants are really big and really loaded with fruit, and that’s what I’m happy to see.
And then my pole beans finally got the hang of how to climb the poles I put up for them so the rabbits can’t reach the growing tips of the vines, plus they are blooming and I’m picking lots of beans from the bush varieties.
And the electric fence has kept the deer out of my big garden, provided I remember to plug it in after I leave the garden. … Don’t know who tells them when I forget, but they figure it out, and they figure out when I remember, too!
The rows of onions are so happy to get a drink and are filling out beautifully.
The new variety of cauliflower called Goodman was the best cauliflower I’ve ever grown, so I’ll hang on to that name.
I just transplanted all the cabbage seedlings for a fall crop and planted seeds of Romaine lettuce that should be luscious, as the picture shows, in late September. The second week of August I will plant seed for a fall crop of radishes.
So what I am saying is that even though some crops really struggle because of the drought, I (we) are blessed to have water available to help our food crops survive. And to plan is a good thing, but be flexible in your expectations and appreciate the good.
And yes, there are and always will be bugs and diseases happy to short-circuit your efforts, but thankfully there are ways to prevent and stop those attacks … even using electric fence for the deer .. too bad their memory is better than mine!