After 5 days of heat indexes over 100 degrees, peaking at 122 on Tuesday and still at 114 on Wednesday I awoke this morning to silence in my home which took me a moment to realize was because the AC was not running.
All day I sat in my office at work, pining after the beautiful weather outside and wishing I was out in my gardens. It was not until 6 pm that I was able to leave, and the drive home took an hour. No dinner, just changed into shorts and T shirt and started weeding.
Things mostly look good. The Peppadew pepper from South Africa I limped through the winter in a pot at a north facing window has set close to 100 peppers so far this year, all still green, but nice to see it turning into basically a pepper tree.
The beets and beans I planted on Sunday morning in that terrible heat have already all sprouted. Nice to see. Getting a second crop from the same space is something I am looking forward to.
The Dark Autumn Delight popcorn I got from my friend Dan is as tall as me now, and still not tasseling. Suppose it will while we are gone which is ok. I am more worried about the ears forming and not being here to keep the squirrels and raccoons away from it. I may let the dog in that part of the garden at night just to keep the masked bandits out of there.
There are only a few things I grow that are not for eating. Cone Flowers are one of those things. I even have a volunteer one in the corn you can see above. Should dig it out and give it to someone else, but for now it is pretty in the garden. I have a whole slew of them next to the pond, all blooming and looking beautiful.
Just across from them I have the one Regular Leaf Terhune, which is in mostly shade, and came through the heat in far better shape than my main planting of Terhune tomatoes. It is growing well now and starting to flower. I should get a few tomatoes off of it and I can try sharing and growing more of them next year if they taste anything like the Potato Leaf ones.
I am enjoying the topsetting onions. Besides being cool to just see, they were the first fresh green onions we ate out of the garden. When the topsets dry off I will plant them for green onions next spring.
There are tomatoes I have that didn’t hesitate at all in the heat, and even set more tomatoes. Cherokee Purple was one of those. Kind of regretting not planting more of them. Just have three plants. Two in pots and one in the ground. Oh well. If I had a cold summer I would have wished I had planted more Nyagous which are struggling this summer.
We have finally been eating fresh tomatoes. The first cluster of Sasha’s Altai have ripened and were consumed without photos. There is a second cluster ripening now and I got a picture before the kids start eating them tomorrow. They turn quickly from a blush to a nice deep pink.
I worked out there, tearing out weeds and hauling them to the compost, until it was getting too dark to differentiate between weeds and food. I was not soaking wet or lightheaded.
A nice change.
