foxlinecityfarm

What more can you say these days…….it is HOT!  It seems this weather will be with us for awhile.  So far we are staying on top of it all.  We have many transplants in the greenhouse ready to go out into the garden and we are a bit fearful to transplant with 99 degrees forecasted for the end of the week. Scott and I are figuring out the best plan of action.   Our irrigation is on around the clock somewhere in the garden and we have areas that we must use overhead sprinklers which get turned on after supper and dragged around until bedtime…..We made the decision to pull out all the peas as the yield was so very low and the vines completely stopped flowering in all this heat.  With the extended weather forecast of more extreme heat on the way it seemed pointless to keep watering the vines.  The area has been cleaned up and tilled and this is where the pumpkins and winter squash will be allowed to wander as the vines grow longer.

The tomatoes continue to grow inches each and  every day and the eggplant is looking wonderful.  The first cucumbers are appearing and Maeve eats them as fast as we can pick them from the vine.  We will start picking beans this week and zucchini will actually appear in the boxes this week.  Scott has started pulling the garlic and as soon as this bed is cleared out it will be prepped for sunflowers.  We are thrilled with our broccoli crop this year it is big healthy and delicious.  We have a second crop ready in the greenhouse to be transplanted out and will even attempt a 3rd planting of a variety that is extremely cold tolerant.  As I have mentioned before we have never been very successful with broccoli in the past and this was one of our main goals with this season.  The onions have started to bulb up with change in day length and our huge crop of several varieties look great.  We realized that we needed to get them weeded out a bit this week and have been spending any spare time we have in this area…..As I was weeding away 1 hot hot! afternoon the phrase “work my fingers to the bone” crossed my mind.  The dry coarse soil and close detail work pulling between all the onions was a little rough.  Scott took a picture of me (and my hands) because I looked so pretty when I came in….enjoy!

Pretty Jennifer after weeding a bowling alley length of carrots and a football field length of onions on a pleasant 95+ degree day.