The hose is MY rain dance

We are getting a nice rain after not having a drop of water fall from the sky in the last couple of weeks. It seems that whenever I turn on the hose to water the gardens, about 2-3 hours later we get rain. I guess the hose is my rain dance.

ENDINGS and BEGINNINGS

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  It appears that tomato season is wrapping up at our house. For 4 weeks (all of July), the tomato harvest averaged about 5-6 lbs per day. But over the last two days, I have only harvested an average 1.3 lbs. Now you might think I am a bit premature in my proclamation that tomato season is coming to an end. But, there is a definite trend in the amount of tomatoes harvested per day, especially when taking into consideration how shabby the plants look. There are still a number of tomatoes still on the plants and provided that the stink bugs don't go sucking on the fruits of the plant, I will manage to continue harvesting tomatoes until the end of August.

When one thing ends, another begins. Today I started the fall garden. Oh yes folks, there is no time wasted here. Time is money. Err...wait, I don't make any money doing this....

Now comes the challenge: balancing yield (or lack there of) and valuable real estate space to determine when the best time is to cut my losses and pull out the dying plants to make room for the next crop. With that in mind, I started seeds (indoors) for the following cold weather vegetables today:

Something happened in the garden...

As I watered the bean plants this morning, I began noticing long strands of light colored pods dropping down from thin stems branching off the twisted vines of the pole beans. WOW! The pole beans have formed and are 9-12 inches long! While I have been waiting for over 2 months for the pole beans to be ready, the formation of the green beans has happened over the last couple of days. 

Is it ready yet??

Sugar Baby Watermelon - is it ready yet?

For at least the past month, I have been watching and waiting in anticipation for the day to come when I could harvest my first Sugar Baby watermelon of the season.  


For the last month, the melons looked deceivingly ready to harvest - dull skin, large and heavy for its size, the rind was hard to "poke" with my fingernail, and the hollow sound that everyone talks about was loud and clear. It is no wonder that last week it crossed my mind (several times) to take a risk and try harvesting one of the watermelons.