I Found Out Why the Cook Brought Home

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Bob Bauer
August 15, 2017 (Last Updated: ) | Reading Time: 2 minutes

August 15, 2017

I found out why the cook brought home so many tomato and pepper plants for me to grow last spring. She has a friend who will bring salsa in exchange for getting tomatoes, peppers, garlic and onions. What a deal. It's just as easy to grow five tomato plants as it is to grow one if you just plant them next to each other. But wait. It gets better. The friend now brings her own buckets and bags and gleans the garden without us having to pick anything..

Talk about a win win situation. She brought jars of pickled beets, zucchini bread and she even brought us a bag of tortilla chips to go with the salsa. A good friend to have. I'm going to ask her if she wants me to grow cilantro next year. Hint, hint..

August 16, 2017

There's still time to plant your broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts from the little six packs that your local garden center was kind enough to start for you back in July when you were out boating, hiking, camping, fishing and swimming. Make sure they get sun acclimated before you put them out in this August heat. Some plants never recover from sunburn. Also take the time to loosen the root ball so the roots have easy access to the soil. A sharp object like the tip of a scissors works well..

Gently pull the roots away from the bottom of the root ball until you can see the seed starting mixture in the center. You can still direct seed lettuce, spinach, carrots and beets. I've got enough corn seeds for one more planting, and I'll put in one more row of beets, but that about wraps up this planting season..

August 17, 2017

The best thing to do for your garden this time of year is to cover the soil. The ground does not like to see sunlight because the ultraviolet radiation kills it's bacterial colonies on the surface, and the temperature kills them below. Anything you put down is better than nothing. Rocks are even preferable to nothing. Scrape off the top of your compost pile and use the rich black gold beneath. Don't horde it until winter, the garden needs it now..

There are still some small pockets of oak leaves but the madrone leaves are plentiful. Make sure there isn't any poison oak growing where you're raking. I found some cardboard already broken down for the recycler and am going to try using it on one of my pathways that has bermuda grass growing in it. Digging out bermuda grass takes way too much effort in this heat..

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