The demo garden received two-and-a-half inches of much needed rain this week.
Despite the rain the ground was dry enough that we were able to do some weeding between the rows of okra and cantaloupe. We did some harvesting too. We harvested tomatoes to donate to The Caring Place and a few Cow Horn okra. The okra is just beginning to produce so we only harvested a handful of edible pods. We also had several that were way too large to be edible. They ended up cut into pieces in the compost bin. We checked the corn and a watermelon variety called “Sherbet” to see if they were ready for harvest. The watermelon, which is a small variety with yellow flesh, is just about ready. We sampled one and, although it was sweet and tasty, we decided that most of them need another week before we pick them. The corn hasn’t fared as well. The stalks grew well and there are quite a few ears, but most of them haven’t filled out very much. It looks as though something may have eaten some of the silk, each strand of which connects to a kernel on the cob.
There isn’t a lot to harvest in the raised beds right now. We did pick several kinds of eggplant: Snow White, Green Goddess, Prospero, Fairy Tale and Pingtung Long. We also picked some lemon cucumbers, white patty pan and yellow crookneck squash, yellow bell peppers, TAM jalapenos and Royal Burgundy bush beans, although the yield on all of them was small.
Since there isn’t a lot of harvesting to do right now, we have started maintenance work on the raised beds. The four by eight bed had some 2 x 8s coming loose at the bottom so we dug out the dirt along the sides and repaired them by screwing one corner to a piece of 4 x 4 and putting a metal nailing plate on the other. In the process of removing the dirt we ran across a snake that was hiding under the mulch. We’ve all been kind of on the lookout for snakes ever since a three or four-foot rattler showed up at the garden fair. Fortunately this one was just a plain old garden snake about 15 inches long or so. We let him slink away because we know he will be eating insects and varmints that might harm our garden crops.
We weeded several of the raised beds this week and loosened the soil around the fig trees. We also cleaned up the artichokes, removing dead stems and leaves and pulling weeds from the beds. The irrigation lines running to the artichokes had come loose from the supply line and one of the emitters was missing, so we repaired the lines and installed two emitters on short mounting stakes to ensure that the artichokes get watered properly.
The asparagus beans were done producing so we pulled them out and put them in the compost bin.
The penneyroyal is starting to come back in the fragrant herb bed. That’s good to see because 95 percent of it had been destroyed before we realized that there were caterpillars in it. In the process of weeding that bed we discovered a large fire ant hill but we weren’t able to treat it because we are out of Anti-Fuego. We need to pick some up this week.
All in all it was a productive day in the garden.
The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.
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