[gardeners] Wednesday in the garden
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 04 Jun 2003 09:14:57 -0500
We had a nice rain yesterday evening and today is overcast, cool, and
breezy. Went off to work at 0630 and got home at 0730 and never had to
run the ac in the truck. Just came in from helping Miz Anne stack the
maters. Did it a little different this year. Since we've never been
happy with the reinforcing wire cages a now deceased neighbor gave us we
took them apart. Drove stakes along the row of tomatoes and then tied
the flattened out cages to them and trained the plants up the "fence."
Think we're going to like this arrangement much better.
Just to make those of you in cooler climes jealous. We're picking green
beans every other day now, the grape tomatoes are getting ripe in
clusters and are tasty. The big tomatoes are getting bigger and some are
taking on a pinkish tinge so it's not long to the first BLT of the year.
Getting cukes every few days too, we either eat them fresh on a daily
basis or I make fresh pickle with cukes, onions, and a 50/50 mix of
vinegar and water. Normally I would just throw a few peppercorns in the
mix to flavor it but have been added whole cumin seeds to see what would
happen, spices them up nicely. I think I'll try something else in the
next batch.
Sweet corn is about 3 feet high so we'll be bagging the ears before too
much longer to try and keep the squirrels out. Either that or we'll have
squirrel and corn soup. I'm really getting irritated at the tree rats,
what they don't take one bite of and drop they dig up looking for acorns
that were never buried there to start with. Easy to find the buried
acorns, they're all now small oak trees in the lawn, flower beds, pots
on the patio, hanging pots, etc. Pesky little critters but protected as
our city is a declared Wildlife Refuge. Luckily Sleepy does a fair job
of keeping them out of things or it would be worse. Counted nine of them
running around in the neigbors yard a week ago. They're also into about
their tenth breeding season this year so there's going to be more of
them. Where are the hawks and owls when you need them?
Still, you have to admit, life is good.
George