Enjoying the Harvest

Garden Fresh

I just finished a tasty little salad earlier; with fresh tomatoes, peppers, radishes, parsley and mint from my garden.  The cucumbers, feta cheese and olives were courtesy of Dillons.  But since most of the ingredients were from my garden, it was a great feeling to sit down to a meal of fresh stuff I'd grown, and had just picked minutes before.

I'm hoping to have even more variety coming in soon.  The green beans, cucumbers and cantaloupe vines are all blooming, and the sweet corn is growing fast.

Gardening in a Heat Wave

Moss rose thrives in hot summers

The high temperature here today was 107. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 106.  The forecast for the next week shows highs of 100 or above every day.  Well, that's summer in Kansas -- thank God for air conditioning!

Heat like this, especially over an extended period, is really hard on the garden (as well as people, animals, utilities budgets, etc.)  There are a few things a gardener can do to help their plants make it through this kind of weather.

Fertilizing

I'm waiting inside, doing some computer work, until it cools down a bit so that I can get out in the garden again.  I spent about 3 hours this morning before church time, getting some weeding and clean-up done, plus feeding my plants.  The last several years, I've used a range of fertilizers: primarily compost, supplemented with organic fertilizers.  Some you dig in as you plant; some you add to the watering can, and this morning I was using foliar feeding--fertilizer sprayed onto the leaves of the plants.