My Artichoke Plants Look Terrible

Thumbnail image of Bob Bauer
Bob Bauer
August 29, 2018 (Last Updated: ) | Reading Time: 1 minutes
thumbnail
thumbnail

August 29, 2018

My artichoke plants look terrible. Yellow wilted leaves and green droopy ones. The soil is moist around them but they have not the will to live. They produced so abundantly this year that they appear to have run out of stamina for a fall harvest. Several of them produced a single choke but then they all decided they were done..

I don't want to cut them back for fear of encouraging new growth but they look so pathetic that I feel like I should do something. Soak your asparagus bed but be judicious around your tomato plants. If they get a large dose of water, after having struggled through the heat, they will suck up too much and split the ripened fruit. The first fall rains always cause split tomatoes..

August 30, 2018

My Kohlrabi circle came up last night. I planted seeds around the perimeter of the hill for a ring of Kohlrabi. Germinating seeds always make me smile, bend over or squat down, and spend some time admiring them. It always feels special when they come up. We know they only need water and warmth to hatch, but it's like planting little eggs, and they cheer us up with their success..

It's like creating life. The complexity of their having been created to replicate the species is a remarkable mystery to me. It speaks of eons of time and a myriad complex of interactions that borders on the miraculous. They are the basis of life on Earth and we owe them more than we can repay..

August 31, 2018

Although walking through the garden using a watering can on all my fall veggies is the funnest thing I do these days, I've found that maintaining a sphere of moisture around their root balls is not optimum treatment. The cauliflower in the greenhouse was not doing as well as the ones in the garden. I put a soaker hose on them for an hour, and within two days noticed a significant improvement. I tend to water the plants and not the pathways, but that goes against nature..

The soil is a reservoir of water and if it's not moving towards your plants roots, it's moving away. The plants roots can not grow out and away if they are trapped in a wet zone. Stunted plants is the result..

More from Efundies