Good morning guys. How is everyone today?
The last couple weeks have been pretty busy for us here on the place.
First we got the new piece of property cleaned up, fenced, mowed and the grass seed planted. It has had two good rains since the seed went in the ground. This was just right in regards to timing. It should do well.
We planted the 8 Parks Whopper tomato plants and the six Big Boys. Again, in this heat I’m kinda curious to see how they do. When summer sets in down here the heat literally scalds the plants, but I did put them in afternoon shade, from about 3 in the afternoon on.
We put these in a part of the raised bed garden, so with my luck if the heat don’t get em, the Fusarium Wilt will. If you remember in our spring garden the Fusarium Wilt just kicked my tomatoes' butts!
It is a disease that gets into the plants and prevents them from picking up water…it plugs up the water vessels in the plants. When you first see it you swear the plants are wilting from lack of water, like from a drought, but it’s not. You can pour the water to them, and it doesn’t help. They just lose most, if not all of their ability to take water up into the plants.
The funny thing though is most of the plants hung on, and produced tomatoes, but they were small and few in number. I got where I was calling them my John Wayne maters…cause they were showing “true Grit!”
We hope these do well. There is a product you can use called Serenade that is supposed to help, and I tried some on them. This may be what helped them stay alive, but I believe I found out about the Serenade too late, and most of the damage had already been done.
Also, this time of year good tomato plants are hard to find, and these were decent plants, but not top quality. They were very tall and scraggly, but I think they’ll do okay…depending on the heat.
In our garden area we’d been putting in cow manure, leaves, grass clippings, hay, and the compost we made from our first compost pile. After we’d let this lay a week or so, we’d till it in very lightly, at a 3” depth setting, so as not to turn the materials in too deeply.
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‘Ridin Out The Recession With Dub and Deb in “Miz Judi’s Kitchen’!
Note to Readers: There are a few things that Dub doesn’t know but one thing he does know is that the word ‘Riding’ (as in Riding Out the Recession) is spelled with a ‘g’ at the end. But Dub not only walks the walk, but speaks like he is: down home, true blue, and plain speakin’ country folk.
Dub and Deb are both native Floridians, live in Central Florida, and run a small business as well. They have five children, and seven grandchildren.
Both love to cook, love to laugh, grow a garden, and generally try to “aggravate” most anyone around them basically…all in good fun, of course!
