August Garden Update
Heat Wave Edition
Hear from Rob, our Shelter Coordinator who tends to all of our plants (both inside and out) about our summer garden. You can read Rob’s spring garden entry here.
Hi everyone! We're hitting the peak of summer, and as I write this the thermometer is crawling above 100 degrees. Not the kind of weather most gardens appreciate. But we made it through the June heat-wave more or less intact, so we'll just water the plants in & hunker down! Aside from the high temps, August is prime time for our veggie garden.
The tomatoes are in full swing. We learned from last year that two cherry tomato plants just weren't enough, so this summer we planted five of them! Especially popular are the Sun Sugars which are a sweeter variety of the famous Sungolds. We give a couple kids an empty bucket or two, a quick tutorial on what to pick (I've learned kids enjoy picking green tomatoes as much as ripe ones), and they do the harvesting for us! As I always say, they're natural gardeners.
Our stalwart zucchini plant has offered up a lot of zukes for roasting, cucumbers have added zest to salads prepared by Shelter Coordinators and guests alike, and the basil has finally started to plump after a slow start. Chili peppers are doing their thing, our herb bed (thyme, sage, oregano, marjoram) is soaking up the sun, and we should have a few eggplants ready by September. We planted some midsummer lettuce greens last month, they're in a very hot & sunny spot but are hanging in there so far. Several varieties of sunflowers and lavender are blooming, to be both enjoyed in the garden and picked for indoors.
After harvesting our spring crops earlier this summer, in some of the empty raised beds we planted moss rose (Portulaca grandiflora, not an actual rose) which is one of my go-to’s for hot low maintenance spaces. It's a semi-succulent low-growing plant with tons of bright flowers that requires almost no care and loves the heat. Win-win! They're filling out nicely and adding some vibrant color.
Volunteer help has been invaluable. Our real game-changer is the in-ground bed installed by volunteers from Mosaic Ecology, which gives us much more flexibility in regulating moisture and temperature than the above-ground troughs. Plus a lot more room. We also had several volunteer crews in to help weed that corner of the property. Premiere Property Group came out for a volunteer session that enabled us to plant the sunflower patch in a spot that had been overgrown, and since then other volunteers have done amazing work with the upkeep. Huge thanks to everyone that has contributed, we really could not have done it without you!
That's it for now! Time to go water (it's always time to water something these days). We'll check back in September about the harvest and what we're planning for the rest of the year.
