July 24, 2010
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After the storm
A huge storm blew through last night. It was glorious to watch and listen to it roll through. I knew there would be damage but waited until this morning to go and look. Not as bad as I feared…Two Roma tomato plants were blown over but were relatively easy to stand back up on their feet. The wind blew from the west so everything looks a little like the Leaning Tower of Vegetables but I think today’s sun will fix that – at least I hope so. The worst was that a chair blew on top of my petunias on the patio table and smooshed ‘em. They don’t appear to be broken, just kind of soggy and chair-flattened. We’ll see what the light of day can do.
This is a learning garden for me. Maybe every garden is a learning garden. I’ll use tomato cages next year rather than the “cute” but essentially useless bamboo arbors that lift right out of the ground as the tomatoes grow. Lesson learned.The zucchini are looking awful and I fear that they should all come up and I should put in another row of beans and Swiss chard or spinach and call it done. After all, folks will be giving zucchini away for the rest of the summer. The sunflowers that didn’t grow at all last summer are tall and beautiful and none the worse for wear, so they have found their spot.
I am looking forward to square foot gardening next year. I read about Mel Bartholomew’s method years ago and I don’t know why I didn’t implement it when I put this garden in. Silly me. And….AND I am going to price fence because I think that will help keep the dreaded cats out of the garden and satisfy my need for “cute.”
And so it goes.
Comments (3)
A garden is a kind of learning place every year, I think. I have read that the garden is the proving ground for the farm and it’s unfortunate that so few farmers garden, in general.
As to cages on tomatoes, yeah, they can’t be stout enough, can they? I won’t mess with the light wire jobs, we actually put in posts and a piece of fence!
Hadn’t heard about square foot gardeing until you wrote this, so went to look it up. Very interesting concept.
I like the idea of square foot gardening for myself. It also looks like a great urban type of garden for rooftops in cities.
The garden here is a learning garden too. Oy. I have some mushroom identification to do.