GARDEN REPORT
by Robin


Let's be honest..... the heat is here. The t-storms aren't. We're in a drought. If we don't use the sprinklers, everything dies quickly.

I normally don't water in the daytime but I felt so badly for the garden today that I left the sprinkler on in the daytime for a good 30-40 min. Grass is dying left and right.

I'm also picking iceberg lettuce seeds. Carrots are getting bigger. Cherry toms are producing much less.


Here is something else that heads right to the garden as soon as I go to clean out their pen. They love cherry tomatoes.

So, I have to call out my farmer son. Here he is in the classic farmer pose. Of course, in FL, we farm w/ Hawaiian shirts.

Here he is herding the chicks back to the pen with a rake. (No chickens were harmed in the making of this post.)

Two chicks (i.e. roosters) are leaving this week.

My Flat Leaf Parsley went to bloom and the flowers are teeny tiny and GORGEOUS. I had some macro-lens zoom going on to get this shot.

My yellow onions are finally picking up some speed. Bunching onions are still hanging in there.

I've been mentioning cukes the past couple reports. Well, here is the ugly side of cucumbers. Rot. Not sure what got this one. I lost all my summer squash to powdery mildew.

Here is another cuke problem. Cuke worms. It's not quite the pickleworm, but it's a moth larva that bores and eats out the fruit. I did take some 7-dust to the plants but didn't eradicate everything, I see. I don't want to use that much but felt it was my only choice to keep cultivating some fruit.

My first colored sweet bell pepper. This one is white, I think. It's very light colored green. I also have some chocolate ones that are growing. As for the various other (red, yellow, orange) colors, I'm waiting patiently as can be to see color changes. Patiently, as in a few months.

Here is my first harvest of hot peppers. Slim, (red) cayennes picked before they went red in the fall. The mild Anaheim (like a banana pepper) in the middle. Jalapeno on the right. These are my guinea pigs to see how I'm going to process them when they all are ready. It's going to be a variety of drying some, roasting others and pickling the rest.

If you've had experience jarring veggies, please let me know. I want to try it, but I'm scared.