Tomatoes

wood mulch

I have cried uncle.  The weeds are overwhelming. It is time to put in landscaping fabric.  Yes, I know.  It is a lot easier to put the new plants in to holes in the fabric, but I'm doing it backwards.  I make holes in the fabric and pull it over the tomatoes.  The landscaping fabric is black plastic with the advantage of being water permeable.  It is the only way I can figure out to get control over the grass.  I'm putting wood chips in the walkways and between the cuts of fabric.  So far the wood chips haven't become aerial in the high winds.

Earlier I had talked about the weeds that grow in the cracks in the cement.  We have been in drought conditions until last night (Thank God!).  Now if I weren't watering and babying my veggies, they would have wilted and blown away in the wind long ago.  But the weeds in the cement have gotten mid thigh high.  Yes they are huge in no soil, drought conditions...we need to mow the cement.  Uuuuggghhh!

I have a veggie village in the back of the garden.  Pole beans are reaching for the back fence (assuming the evil bunny doesn't continue to eat the tops of the plants....Mr. McGergor may have Peter Rabbit for dinner if he keeps it up).  The feathery asparagus was planted this year and is doing well at getting established.  The tomatoes fill in the spaces with a little lettuce on the edge.

Veggies are like teenage girls.  They have cliques and some veggies just don't play well with others.  There is the tomato clique, the potato clique, the cabbage clique, etc.  I thought it was interesting that tomatoes like basil in the kitchen and in the garden.  I suppose they are BFFs (Best Friends Forever-for those without teenagers).  I planted the basil in the middle of two rows of tomatoes.  The baby basil has peeked out of the soil and the Italian hubby is dancing (when he's not snatching scapes from the garlic).

A Week of Life

This week life absconded with my garden time.  Our old house has to be painted.  This means scraping to loosen all the old paint before applying the  primer.  Scrapper in hand, up the ladder I went.  Dodging wasps, beating the biting flies, and hoping the jumping spiders don't jump all made me question the wisdom of living in Iowa.

The scraping is mostly done and it is back to gardening.  The vampires (weeds) have been vigorously propagating while I was sweating buckets on the ladder.  It was time for war. Most mulches are gone with the wind in this land, but I think newspapers with sawdust on top will stay on terra firma.  I  did a test spot that squelched the vampires and stayed put in gusts up to 50mph.  Now all I have to do is fill in the rest of the garden paths.  

My teenage daughter not only helped with the scraping, but jumped in on helping with weeding as well.  She unfortunately does not share my passion for gardening, so weeding is a display of love for her mother.  With her lack of passion is an accompanying ignorance, but she was able to distinguish grass from tomato plants...I think.

While I was busy  working my shoulders out, my peas where flowering and making pods.  The pumpkin on the home page (in the wall of water) is starting to creep under the fence.  The tomatoes are flowering and thriving, also.

Today as I was dancing in the garden, I discovered the latest emerging vermin.  No-see-ums are now biting along with the flies.  This casual relaxed watering time that turned into dancing caused me to reflect on clothing. A hundred years ago most people lived on farms and spent a great deal of time out of doors.  They also worn more modest clothing.  My admiration of that societies morality has been thrown into question.  Where the long pants and skirts worn simply to survive no-see-ums and deer flies?  Perhaps they were just practical instead of having moral cape and tights in their closets.