Long Time

It can be hard to find inspiration to write during the hot, dry Texas summers. This summer has been particularly hot and dry, and I find that the 140-character Twitter allowance fits my needs pretty nicely.

In the garden, some things (like the strawberries and potatoes) are long since done for the season. Some things are just dead because I couldn't manage to water them enough. I killed a lantana. I thought lantanas were invincible!

My tomatoes are hanging on for dear life in all this heat. The time to be planting more tomatoes for a fall crop is coming upon us soon, but the current plants haven't given up the ghost yet.

To summarize the essay and a half that I posted in MSS' comments this weekend about growing tomatoes in the heat of summer, we planted many plants in a fairly small space this year, a variety of full-sized, cherry, and plum type tomatoes. I'm a big believer in planting a variety of tomatoes. Early Girl is the first variety to set fruit and ripen in the spring for me by far, but when it finishes, the heat-resistant ones are just getting started. We've had a fairly modest crop this year, hampered, certainly, by the early onset of awful hot weather and drought. Our vegetable garden is shaded by trees off our property, so while production might not be what it would be in a bright, sunny patch, it's sheltered a bit from the crazy heat we've been experiencing this summer.

We've got plenty of space, and Scott was hoping to make sauce and salsa from our tomato overflow this year, so we planted lots of tomato plants - at least 7 or 8. From those, we've gotten an average of perhaps 5 full-sized tomatoes per week, plus a number of cherry tomatoes. We had a bumper crop last year, with our record rains, and we watered with seaweed emulsion about once a week. We haven't been as diligent this year, which probably plays a role in our smaller production. Needless to say, Scott hasn't been able to make sauce or salsa yet; our tomato production has been eaten and given away to a few friends during the Great Tomato Salmonella Crisis of 2008(tm).

Despite the heat, our plants are still producing in small quantities. Our biggest trouble has been those pesky stinkbugs, who like to suck the juice out of my tomatoes! It's about time to prune the vines back substantially and try to get them going again for a long fall.

In the side yard, we've dug up all our potatoes (and what yummy potatoes those were, too!) and are experimenting with using buckwheat as green manure/cover crop. Scott sowed the buckwheat this past weekend, and as of today (about four days later), it's germinated and growing.

We've gotten sporadic rain in the last few weeks, which has been psychologically healing, if nothing else, after a long dry autumn, winter, and spring. Our grass has perked up a bit, but I'm starting to notice big unhealthy-looking yellow patches throughout. Those will be my next beds, I suppose!

Lee17 tagged me with a pyramid-scheme-like meme in order to inspire an entry. I'll fulfill the meme next entry, but here's the entry that's been brewing for a little while! (It only took me four days to write from start to finish.)

Stay cool, Austin garden webloggers, and drink lots of lemonade.