What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Dirtmechanic]

I need to weed the garden. It has been too hot for too long and the plants do not like it. It was 97f again today. And dry. My ag meter bill was 5x the house water bill last month, and might be more this go round. Hard to believe I only watered twice last year. I have some fall squash coming up but no flowers yet which is sad.

 

[Prairie Rose]

I just had two days off in a row, which is an extreme rarity, but I am so done with summer heat I didn't do a thing. Heat index on the fancy thermometer out back said 110 by noon....the pyrenees and I stayed in the air conditioned house all day.

The weather is supposed to break friday, and I have saturday off. Really looking forward to spending a day out in the yard. Think I have sorted next year's seeds four times in the past month just to do some 'gardening'.

 

[so lucky]

I think the only thing worse than trying to garden when it is extremely hot and dry is trying to garden when it is extremely hot and humid.

 

[flowerbug]

I think the only thing worse than trying to garden when it is extremely hot and dry is trying to garden when it is extremely hot and humid.

yeah, AC has made a wimp out of me. after checking the weather forecast and radar i decided to go out and check some beans to make sure they didn't need to come in. enough of one variety was ready that i ended up picking them all so now i have something to do inside if it rains or not it will give me something to do this afternoon. inside...

 

[Dirtmechanic]

This time of year it can rain a teaser. Its so hot and dry barely any comes down, and what does come flashes into humidity asap, making a hot dry day into a hot humid day. Right now we have thunder, lightning, wind, weather warnings, all the ingredients but no rain.

 

[Prairie Rose]

My mother and I went out with intentions to deadhead the rose bushes for a few minutes in the shady part of the yard, and ended up cleaning the knee high weeds out of the playhouse flowe r bed instead. Only took us about forty minutes and looks so much better. The old rugs we laid out there earlier in the summer for weed control worked wonders, but rotted away when we touched them. A few minutes with a sharp hoe will take care of the smaller weeds.

I bought some potted mums at work, and plunked them out there for some fall color. The iceberg rose is going to bloom one more time before frost, but that garden bed is pretty much done for the year. My compost bin is full too, so a win-win all around!

I also took apart one of the two empty bee hives and laid the boxes in the sun to air. The moles have dug under the hive stands, and it was leaning precariously. One of my vacation projects will be to scrub it out and disinfect it for new bees next spring.

 

[flowerbug]

we took some woodschips and tools to our friend's place and cleaned up their front flowerbed. both of them turned 95 the past few weeks and are not able to do hard things any more. it only took us a few hours to chop out the woody plants and hack the annuals and weeds back to where they could be covered with cardboard and then we put a layer of landscape fabric over it.

unfortunately, Mom never measured the area and we didn't have enough wood chips so we'll be getting another truckload this morning and she'll go back Thursday to finish. we can always use wood chips around here someplace so having extra isn't a problem for us. much cheaper to get them by the truckload too.

some of the edges of that flowerbed are not tall enough so she will be taking some bricks back with her to shore those edges up to keep the wood chips in place. it looks pretty nice with all those weeds out of there...

on the even more excellent side of things, i needed some longer T-Bar posts for the fence to get it held back up in case the deer try to run through it again. the closest supply place was out of the longer ones for the season, but their store near the place we went to fix up the garden bed still had plenty in stock so we could pick them up from there and it was only a few miles out of the way. so now i have 6 10 foot T-Bars (how am i gonna get those pounded in! lol ladder, gonna be fun) and 8 8 foot T-Bars for in between the 10 footers. just not sure when i'll be getting back to fence duty with all these other projects going on...

rains, really slowing down everything.

 

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

Snack time in the garden

 

[ninnymary]

Picked a gallon and a half of blackberries in my berry patch. Mmmmmmm....... so many more to come on, too!

Wow that is a lot of blackberries.

I have only tasted sweet ones once. A lady of a tiny restaurant brought us a few to eat while we waited for our order. They were so sweet! I think she may have bought them from the farmer's market. I've tried them at various farmer's market and they are always too tart for me.

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

picked beans for a while until it started raining again.