Hello fellow garden friends,
Gardening can sometimes feel like running a marathon.
Sometimes, you feel like you’re sprinting and beating everyone else. That bountiful crop of carrots. “YES!” All your plants are healthy and looking beautiful and you feel like you’ve got it all figured out! “I’m winning”
Other times, you want to give up but you just keep trudging along…trying to muster the energy to keep going. Dragging behind if you will. When that plant gets diseased and you have to cut it down. Or when your dog eats all of your seedlings and it’s too late to start over. Yep, I’ve been there!
But what if maybe, just maybe, it’s not a race after all…
Happy May to you all!
The weather is warming up quick here in the deep south. Although there has been a nice breeze at times. Most days it is 95% humidity with high temperatures in the 90’s. Can you imagine what summer has in store for us? Ooof.
I thought I’d take a moment to journal what is growing in the garden right now. It is helpful in your own garden to write things down. How varieties are doing, tips that are working, things you may have done that did not work, etc. This blog is, in essence, my gardening journal.
I’d like to think I’m in the sprinting phase of the race. Everything seems to be going great! (which makes me worry about what’s to come). I’m basically running out the back door everyday after work to stroll through the garden to check on everything. It’s so lovely when you notice new tomatoes, or “wow, that plant is so much taller than yesterday!”. I mean these plants are busy busy growing every day. It’s amazing.
The tomato plants we started from seed back in February are now 3 feet tall with dark green leaves. Flowers are forming and some are beginning to have green tomatoes on them. In years past, I have really struggled growing tomatoes. If you’ve been following on the blog, you know this. Usually tomato plants left in my care have spindly stems and diseased leaves, The tomatoes hardly form and if they do it feels as though they never ripen. It was a struggle. So this year to have dark green, healthy looking leaves and thick, healthy stems on these tomato plants is giving me hope that this year…. we will see some tomatoes!
Tomato varieties that are doing the best right now are Super Sweet 100 (cherry tomato) and Park’s Whopper (slicer tomato). Super Sweet 100 seems to be the fastest growing out of the plants I started from seed. Park’s Whopper, which was purchased from the local nursery, is by far the tallest and most vigorous grower at the moment. The plants must be as tall as I am by now. They have a few large green tomatoes starting to form which makes for one happy girl. My husband’s uncle recommended a variety called Park’s “Improved” Whopper, however my local nursery only had Park’s Whopper. I’m sure the improved variety is more disease resistant, but I am very happy with how Park’s Whopper is doing. Shoutout to Uncle Ray for that recommendation. He was also the one who recommended I amend soil before planting with azomite, alfalfa meal, worm castings, compost, and rose soil. I used everything except the rose soil and let me tell you, the plants are THRIVING in this soil composition.
It is almost time to harvest this year’s garlic. I’m anxious to see how large the heads formed this year as I planted a different variety than I normally do. I will cover this in a future blog post so make sure to come back and check out the Bayou Harvest blog in a few weeks to hear how the softneck, Italian garlic grew in our Louisiana climate.
Now not everything is perfect in the garden, because I pulled up some of the carrots to see how big they were, and yes, they are large in diameter, but not in length. The variety I grow is Danver 126, but I’m thinking of trying some new varieties next year. If you have had any luck growing larger carrots in Louisiana, please let me know what varieties have worked for you in the comments.
Since the temperatures are really heating up every day, I plan on pulling out all bolting lettuce, carrots, garlic, pansies, and potatoes this weekend. This should open up room to plant peppers and more summer loving seeds. I am making it a point this year to include beautiful flowers amongst the vegetables to attract pollinators. It also makes for a pretty space to be.
After pondering on this idea of gardening being a race. I’ve come to a conclusion that there is indeed no race at all. There is no finish line. We garden because we enjoy the journey. The ups and the downs. The standstills and the fleeting.
We love it all.
Till next time,
Katie