how to not hurricane proof your garden
Turns out, the internet is not very helpful. Despite googling "hurricane proof garden", I'm getting a lot of advice about sandbags and what trees to plant. Nothing that really helps me with 3 days notice and in an area where I can't plant trees. So my strategy is really going to be to prune up the plants, pick any fruit that is within a week or so of being ripe, and hope for the best.
But to be real, I'm eating like a lot of tomatoes. All the time. I probably have at least one tomato a day? I'm not sure what the difference is this year but I'm having a harder time giving them away. I think since the prime tomato season is about two weeks later than in 2016, most of my seasonal neighbors have left so I'm left with all my tomato inventory. More sauce for the winter?
With regards to the rest of the garden... Last weekend (or so), I pulled out all the snap peas since they were past their prime and in doing so found two surprise tomato plants! I have no idea what they are growing from so that'll be a good surprise. Based on their location, they could be the yellow from last summer or the red lightening from this year. Or well anything I guess because I tilled all the soil in this garden and moved it all around.
Otherwise, the garden is growing like a normal person's garden. Largely things are productive and not out of control. Last year the tomato plants were insanely productive and required weekly trimmings to keep the growth under control. In a slightly fortunate way, the early season disease issue helped to stave off the insane growth because I had to prune so aggressively.
tomatoes // some real varied updates here. Red Lightening? Good. Orange Juice? Just ripened this week. These suckers are huge! Black Truffle? Lots of fruit on this plant. Black Cherry? My ultimate favorite this season. Mystery plant? Still a mystery.
Kale // really shot up. This week I put "preserve kale" on my to-do list. I hope I do a better job this year than last. I took all the kale into the giant bathtub to wash it off, then I chopped it all up ... and then I found a bug. So I tossed it all out. What a waste. I can do better this year.
Carrots // beyond crushing it. They are going to be fine in the ground for like another month (if not longer), so I can focus on the tomatoes and kale for now. But, if you need carrots? I'm your girl.
Radishes // Again, I need to be better about eating these. They are overgrown at this point.
Mexican Gherkin // More little yellow buds showed up in the last week. I didn't do anything different so maybe the weather was just right for them - or the slow death of the zucchini means more life for the mexican gherkin.
Onions // Ready to come out of the ground and be dried!
Peppers // So some new flowers popped up this week on the yellow and red pepper plants. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but this would be pretty great. I have literally gotten 1 normal pepper this year. A few jalapeños did show up too!
Eggplant // no new flower babies - but I'm not sure that I'll grow this again. I haven't actually been motivated to try the eggplant that I so lovingly selected and grew. So far this season I've got 2 baby eggplants from this one bush.
Zucchini // A few new flowers showed up last weekend. I almost thought about picking one of them and frying that sucker right up... and then I continued to just only eat tomatoes.
Flower 2017: bitty blooms are coming [7/11], ranunculus are here [6/18], attempting to grow flowers again [4/22]
Veggie 2017: garden update [9/9], green tomato party [7/27] garden update [7/10], garden decisions, what I planted
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