HOLY ROMOKRA!!!

There's a lot of pasta sauce and gumbo to be made!!!

I finally made it home after a couple more weeks on the McCain campaign trail. Mrs. Harlan did a fantastic job keeping the garden held together. But she said it needed some TLC from the farmer. So once I got my suitcase and camera out of the van, I went to work. First I picked all that I could find ripened on the branches and vines. And I found a lot. Today alone, I picked nine Cajun Delight okra, four Clemson Spineless okra, SIXTEEN Roma tomatoes (varying in size), 3 Marglobe tomatoes, and a Big Boy tomato.

And then I pulled out the Wusthof shears and went to work:
1) Trimmed all the dead leaves and branches from the Roma and Marglobe plants
2) Trimmed the dying leaves off both cucumber plants and the two okra plants
3)Snipped the numerous buds and small leaves from the basil plant branches
4)Cut a branch of rosemary for some red potato wedges at dinner
5)Cut a couple sage leaves off for dinner also.
6) Tied down the wire cone on the Patio tomato bush to a couple stones. The bush is so full of big, ripening tomatoes that the cone could no longer support the plant's weight and I had to get the cone upright again.
7)Pulled weeds between the pots.
8)Rotated the cantaloupe so the wet soil doesn't rot one side of the fruit.
9)Watered all the plants to cool them down in this oppressive heat. The leaves are wilting in the hot afternoons.

Getting rid of the dead leaves and branches should help reduce the amount of water the plants need each day.

I still have a lot to do tomorrow morning. Odds are there will be a couple more okra and tomatoes to be plucked. But the most important thing will be to feed the plants. It will be two weeks tomorrow since their last feeding. And with the plants getting so big, I'll need to decrease the time between feedings. It's getting really hot and humid now that August is just around the corner. Lots of water and maintenance will be key to keeping the garden from falling apart.

One more thing....the bell pepper plant is loaded with large peppers. Hopefully in the next week or so we'll start seeing the green peppers ripen to a rich red. Man, those will be sweet.

The Garden: July 20, 2008