Week Ending 08/07/12

We are back to typical hot, dry central Texas summer weather this week.  Apparently that hasn’t deterred the row garden thieves.  Someone, or perhaps it was something this time, ran off with a large white pumpkin.  Nothing else seemed to be missing.

We spent some time weeding the row garden this week.  This is an ongoing chore that has to be done nearly every week.  The wild morning glories are especially bad this year.  They have been intertwining with the tomatoes and peas and are difficult to pull out. 

The fall tomatoes that we planted in the row garden last week seem to be doing well.  We’ve had to visit the garden several times this week to hand-water them in order to make sure that they get enough water until their roots spread out far enough to reach the moisture from the drip lines.  That’s OK, though because the okra is growing so fast that we had to pick it three times this week.  We also picked Southern peas, watermelon and squash and delivered fifty-three pounds of produce to The Caring Place.

The raised bed harvest has slowed down a good bit.  We were able to harvest quite a few Sun Gold cherry tomatoes though.  We also got a few pole beans, a handful of okra, a few peppers and several varieties of cucumber and eggplant.  As always we did some bed maintenance.  We weeded the pizza garden, which has become infested with nut grass, and trimmed back many of the herbs in both the culinary and fragrant herb beds.  We also pulled out some spent squash plants, fed and watered the fall tomatoes and drenched a couple of fire ant mounds in the beds.

The last couple of weeks we have been working with the fig trees, which don’t seem to be growing and producing the way that we think they should.  Last week we loosened the soil around them, working in some amendments to feed them.  This week we reworked the irrigation system branch that waters the fig trees in an effort to give them a little more water.

This week we will have our fall planting planning meeting.  We will decide what to plant in each bed and also try to determine what preparation each bed requires so that we can have that done before we begin to plant in September and October.

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.