Sunday, July 29, 2012
See you next season
Current activities include mulching the garden, turning off the water, and waiting for cooler weather. Taking a break from the garden blog until fall. When it's time to start seedlings we'll start posting again.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Season Ending
We gave the tomato patch two weeks to do what it could in the 108 degree Phoenix weather to ripen the last of the crop. This heat makes the flowers close before they can be pollinated so no new fruit has been setting for several weeks. We picked 61 pounds of tomatoes and then proceeded to run the vines through the chipper machine. There was an area where root knot nematodes were evident - thick roots are an indicator. We'll let the sun heat and dry the soil to get rid of them, and conserve water until it's time to plant in the fall.
The pepper plants are a beautiful green, and we get a few to cook with dinner or eat fresh. The only other producing plant at this point is the strawberry popcorn, which needs a couple of weeks before the cobs will be fully colored and mature. This is the two-inch cob with pointy dark burgundy colored corn people buy for Halloween decorations. Well, it also happens to be a wonderful popcorn!
The onions and garlic are fine, and mostly buried in grass clippings from the lawn to protect them from the heat. Any time we need a fresh one we just dig down and pull it up. If we don't use them all this summer they will grow again in the fall and divide into multiple cloves. If you leave at least one garlic to grow for two years, you can harvest all but one of the divided cloves and leave the last to grow and divide again the next year - never needing to replant. We use garlic from the store, although there are varieties I am itching to try. Buy a bunch from the supermarket, break apart the cloves and plant them about six inches apart somewhere near a watered plant (under a vine, in between roses,...). That's all the effort it takes to have your own fresh garlic year round.
The pepper plants are a beautiful green, and we get a few to cook with dinner or eat fresh. The only other producing plant at this point is the strawberry popcorn, which needs a couple of weeks before the cobs will be fully colored and mature. This is the two-inch cob with pointy dark burgundy colored corn people buy for Halloween decorations. Well, it also happens to be a wonderful popcorn!
The onions and garlic are fine, and mostly buried in grass clippings from the lawn to protect them from the heat. Any time we need a fresh one we just dig down and pull it up. If we don't use them all this summer they will grow again in the fall and divide into multiple cloves. If you leave at least one garlic to grow for two years, you can harvest all but one of the divided cloves and leave the last to grow and divide again the next year - never needing to replant. We use garlic from the store, although there are varieties I am itching to try. Buy a bunch from the supermarket, break apart the cloves and plant them about six inches apart somewhere near a watered plant (under a vine, in between roses,...). That's all the effort it takes to have your own fresh garlic year round.
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