Well it’s fish or cut bait time in the garden. As of August 28, no sale pending on Barbara’s house. She says she has a prospect but …………. I’ve put off actually planting seeds until now and been working hard on preparing the garden – weeding and turning the soil. That’s been a tough job in this exceptional heat and has taken a couple of weeks to finish – but it is. My body will be grateful. This time of year I usually plant my “60 day” crop. That’s the fast growing heat tolerant veggies where you are picking veggies 60-70 days after planting seed. We can nominally get in a crop before the first freeze, forecast for Dec 20. This includes squash, cucumbers and green beans. I planted seeds for 4 different squash varieties, pole beans, bush beans and burpless cucumbers. Even put in a couple of 8’ rows of turnips and carrots. In a couple weeks, assuming these have germinated, I’ll plant another round of beans to come in a little later. At this point, my thinking is that even if a buyer surfaces now, it would take until Dec 20 to actually close a deal and move. By then we will have picked enough to justify the activity.
The other gardening that I’ll start this week is more delicate summer plants with longer time from plant to harvest. Those I start in potting soil on the back porch and transplant to the garden if and when they look ready. That includes tomatoes, peppers and cabbage. I have lots of different tomato varieties but you never know which is going to thrive and which craters in the garden. The weather is a large variable as is the creepy critters that eat the plants. Assuming these all germinate properly, they would be ready to transplant to the garden about the first of Oct. If the house sells by then, I’ll transplant these to containers instead of into the garden. In any event, we should be eating our own veggies this year.
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