Garden Update for August 2011

Our garden is coming along nicely. Over the last few weeks, we've tilled another area (by hand) in preparation for next year. Since it is slightly inclined, I'm thinking about leveling it a bit. But I've seen plenty of fields that aren't perfectly flat, so I'll try planting it the way it is and see how it works out. I tried planting some quickly maturing tomato and eggplant seeds that are a few years old in the new garden area, as well as some pickling cucumber plants I picked up at a local farmers market. Unfortunately, a deer came, removed the netting, which was held down by rocks, and ate an entire cucumber plant the next night. So I went and got some tent stakes and haven't had any more problems...yet.

I'm impressed with the kale plants. The plants that were eaten by an animal a while back have regrown and are almost ready for harvesting again. We should have plenty of kale in another month or so. Our cabbage is just about ready to harvest, too. The temperature is consistently in the 80s during the day now and in the low 50s at night. I've recently learned that cabbage plants like a steady soil temperature. I should have used mulch to help with that. When the temperature fluctuates so much, the cabbage growth bursts and the heads will split. Mine haven't split too much, but I see that some of the leaves have cracked. I'll keep that in mind for next year. The way the grass grows around here, it shouldn't be hard to make mulch, once we get a gas powered lawn mower instead of the reel mower we've been using.


Cabbage is almost ready and notice how pretty the kale is.
The largest kale plants are the ones that were completely
eaten before.

And finally our cherry tomatoes are producing nicely. I'm sure once we amend the soil properly we'll get an even higher yield. One or two of them have a tinge of yellow on them, so I'm getting excited! Super Sweet 100 is probably my favorite variety of grape tomato so far as taste goes. I'm very happy with what we're seeing for having put so little work into it. We've weeded three times now.



Super Sweet 100. My mouth waters just
thinking about them.