A week ago yesterday, we pointed our wagon (okay, our humongous SUV) westward and spent the Memorial Day weekend in south-central Oklahoma. Before I left, I watered, weeded, took pictures and left word with Swimmer Girl and Middle Son to please (please, please!) water while we were gone. Temperatures soared, but they faithfully watered and the vegetables responded to the combination of moisture and heat. Unfortunately, the weeds were left unmonitored for those few days and the miscreants took advantage of their freedom to grow and flourish as well.
It has taken me a few days to catch up on other things before I could turn my stern eye back to the weeds. Yesterday I slipped out before it got too hot and tackled the weeding. Middle Son strolled out to see what I was doing; I mentioned running the Mantis tiller to loosen the soil in the paths and re-shape the rows. He took the hint (errr, bait) and the next thing I knew the tiller was running with him behind it. Then he went the extra mile and hand-hoed the edges to get everything looking wonderful as you sand weed-free as you see in this picture:
When he finished, I pointed out that since he doesn’t love tomatoes, he must have been motivated by his love for me. He agreed that was part of it – and the promise of lip-smacking salsa in a few more months. The tomatoes, zucchini and peppers are all blooming with abandon.
And finally the lettuce plants are taking off and growing large enough to make their way into a salad:
I had one tomato go all wilty on me. At first I thought it had been overlooked in the watering schedule, so I watered it a couple times and it didn’t recover. I plucked it out, washed my hands and substituted a health (but small) seedling in its place. No sense in babying a sickly plant or risking letting its virus or fungus spread to the other plants.
My next to-do is to become a mixologist and whip up an egg/pepper concoction to protect the beans from rabbits. And start harvesting a few of radishes.
So how’s your garden doing?
Happy gardening,
Terry
How exciting….I am very jealous of your blooms. My tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants are all growing like crazy but I am still staying tuned for some blooms from them all. Love Gardening !
Thanks for the kind words! As to your blooms, they will pop up when you least expect them to. I had to go away for the weekend before mine put in an appearance!
Looking great! I agree with the others – the purple bloom is exciting!
Glad things are working out. Good to have some help. I didn’t realize that purple flower = purple pepper. Kinda cool.
My garden is going well, but I’m way behind you! Yours looks beautiful. I’ve never seen a purple bloom on a pepper plant.
Thanks – the pepper blooms are decidedly purple on that plant; more like what I expect to see on an ornamental pepper.
If it’s any consolation on the relative progress of our gardens, the family we visited in Oklahoma has a wonderful family garden and I helped pick beans and admired the tomato plants that were at least a couple weeks ahead of mine. I guess we’re all ahead of some and behind others