Our Garden

May 2, was the “ultimo” day to plant okra in our area of our fine state. Everything else; broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, jalapenos, dill, 1015 onions, garlic, cucumbers, black eye and purple hull peas has been planted and are growing well! My "green thumb" is showing! This year, for a change, our spring rains have been well timed and abundant!

On May 1, Layla and I sampled a spinach leaf and they will be ready to eat and “put up”, this week. The broccoli is almost ready to harvest and when both are harvested, I’ll replace them with yellow squash and green beans.

Our peach trees are loaded with fruit and will be ready to “pick” around June 1. The picture is of peaches on our Flordaking tree, Prunus persica ‘Flordaking’. It bloomed early, we didn’t have a freeze or damaging frost and, barring something else, we’ll have a good harvest of peaches.

May 2 was a planting day and it also turned out to be a blooming day! Two of our tomato plants bloomed and the picture shows one of them.

Our 1015 onions, Acacia sp., are doing well. These onions were developed by Texas A&M and are closely related to the Vidalia and Bermuda varieties. You can wash them off and eat ‘em like an apple! Yum!

In our area we have a real problem with Deer eating and destroying our gardens! Deer won’t eat garlic or onions, so they are unprotected, but my jalapenos and tomatoes have wire cages around them and the rest of my above ground vegetables are protected by wire trellises. By running drip hoses along the bottom of the trellises and using snap in connections, watering the garden is almost “automated”.

The garden is a lot of fun and a lot of work, and with the food prices rising, it becomes more important!