It’s Sunday night and here are some tasks for your gardens, if you dare go outside!
This week is perfect for more deadheading of things like daisies, coneflowers, zinnias, and Black-eyed Susan to keep them blooming into the late season. The daylilies could use more deadheading and removal of the spent flowers (aka mush mummies). Take a look at any bushes and see if they need a very light pruning to give them a bit of shaping.
In the vegetable garden, it’s always time to tuck/train/trim on the tomatoes until the end of the season. Go lightly on the pruning this week with the high heat and humidity, but definitely get them tucked into your supports and tied onto it if that’s what it takes. Keep an eye on the moisture in your soil. You can take a trowel and dig several inches to see if there’s a need for water.
Here’s a tip for those of you with containers of flowers. To help keep them from drying out so quickly, get a bag of your favorite mulch and add two inches of mulch to the top of the planter. It will make a huge difference in keeping the water from evaporating and the upper soil will stay a little cooler, too.
You should have a good amount of tomatoes on your plants by now, and probably peppers maturing, too. If you don’t, it’s time to evaluate the health of the plants and determine what they need to set fruits. You can send me pictures and ask for input!
We’ve established that this week looks like high heat and humidity every day, with a chance of rain at any moment. What does that mean for the gardens and farmstand here? It means that every day, I will walk through and pick whatever is ready and unable to stay in the garden without spoiling. It also means that the farmstand on Wednesday (this was going to be our first of the season) will not be happening. Wednesday’s forecast shows a heat index above 100 degrees for most of the day. Here’s where the “Requests” part of this post come into play.
Please let me know if there is anything that you want this week when it’s ready. There will be beans, carrots, small tomatoes, *maybe some slicers later after some heat*, a little broccoli, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, a few bell & Carmen peppers, probably zucchini and yellow squash, flowers, and some fresh jams are getting made. Today was a batch of raspberry jalapeno, and tomorrow is strawberry rhubarb. I know that a few of you missed the orange rhubarb bread Saturday, so if there’s enough interest, more can be made Wednesday late morning.
Just use the “Contact Me” button in the lower right part of your screen to get in touch and I’ll start a list. Be careful this week if you need to go out. Keep yourself hydrated – even if you don’t feel like you need it. My retired doctor used to say “If you’re sweating, you need to hydrate” and I was sweating just walking out to the garden today. I’m off to walk through the gardens one last time for the day. Enjoy your week, no matter what you choose to do!