Observations

Gotta spray cabbage leaves soon, those little holes bug me (sevin). I put the first batch of tomatoes too close, they look squished and its gonna be hard to stake them and harvest plus they are shading the swiss chard which by the way have leafminer trails that are ruining the leaves. You really can't turn your back on a veggie garden, even for a few days if you want to eat out of it. The original weed-free situation is changing to a weeds-to-be status. Every day I see little weeds-to-be popping up. Rake when dry is my plan, they dry up fast in the sun after raking (get 'em small or it will be a week long job), and the ones close to the plants will have to be hand-pulled. Potatoes need much more soil piled up against the stems (man they grow fast), and it might be time for a re-feeding of everything with Harrell's.

A guy came in yesterday saying that the garden soil that he bought from us produced almost no foliage and that all the plants were dead/dying. I asked him what kind of fertilizer he was using and he said none, and if he mulched his young plants to keep the sun off the soil so the plants wouldn't dry out, and he said none. It occurred to me that it would not be lack of food that would cause plant death, that it had to be water-related. Seems like a very basic awareness to me to think about water/plants, but maybe that's because I do that for a living. Maybe for the average homeowner "you get a few plants, stick 'em in the dirt and go back weeks later to find the garden of Eden overflowing with bountiful harvests."

I have found that if I turn my back on the garden even for a few days I have an entire list of things to do, so maybe gardening and certain kinds of people = mismatch. I've even begun to wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Speaking of chewing, last night's chomping included cucumbers for pre-dinner snacks (no gross grocery store waxy surface or bruises), handfuls of string beans nibbled on whilst burning child's Spanish notebook from last year in the firepit.

Most drought resistant vegetable = okra.