This summer has been absolutely relentless and brutal. You know in Mario Brother's where the sun is chasing you and trying to kill you? That was our Texas summer. We had 50+ days of 100 degree weather and it just about killed everything.
I basically gave up and threw in the towel. I did occasionally deep water about once a week in an inert attempt to hold on to poor babies while they sat and baked to a crisp like bacon. To my luck, a few things did survive and a few even thrived. I lost virtually all of my herbs. There was one stellar knock our herb that said call me Louis XIV, that was basil! Full sun and it absolutely was living its best life. Watermelon also invaded and took off way better than I expected.
The tomatoes barely hung on and I did lose 3, almost 4. Tomatoes start struggling when it gets over 95. They quit flowering. The flowers are what make the fruit. A lot of people pull them and start over in the fall. So for months I had nothing. HOWEVER, they are growing new flowers and even starting to produce so some fruit. I'm glad I left them in instead of starting over. My peppers struggled too. Even though they are a heat tolerant plant that does not mean they can tolerate months of 100 temps. Buuuut, they are also rebounding and full of flowers and big and bushy. I'm expected a bumper crop of peppers this fall!
Okra, I'm not even going to get into that. I found out I'm allergic or something. That's a whole other blog post I'll share with you.
I cleaned everything out on our first cool day, ran to Springtown Garden Center and picked up what they had. More Swiss Chard(I forgot to mention that one survived the heat surprisingly well too), cabbage, mustard greens, kale and more herbs. I think I picked up more rosemary, cilantro and thyme!
I have my garden laid our really well with walking paths and when I initially planted it I dug about 2 feet down to get weeds out so it stays pretty weed free. This made cleaning everything out really easy. I think I did all of this within about 3 hours.
I am going to attempt to sow carrots this fall. Garlic will go in October and I'll plant a lot of lettuce varieties. I'm sure I'll try a lot more I just can't think of everything right now.
This is what has been going on in the garden end of the homestead. There's a lot more I have planned I can't wait to share with you including a new garden plot and planned rain catch system. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
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