Scorchers and soakers

Well it’s been one week and so far the lettuce doesn’t look any different. I don’t know what kind of change I expected to occur in just seven days but I was hoping for a little bit of progress. Still, I’m going to leave the containers next to the garage and see if the plants perk up. Hopefully we won’t get too many more of those scorchers that fried them all in the first place. A quick internet search told me that they will still be edible, but possibly bitter. -Insert heavy sigh here.-

And because apparently gardening does not stop once you’re done with planting, my cucumbers look like they’re starting to split up the stem a little bit. A quick google search said that it could be caused by cold damage, rapid growth because of temperature fluctuations or overwatering, or wind. Using the process of elimination I’m guessing it was rapid growth from the heat and not due to overwatering because, let’s face it, the drainage in these containers is top tier and we already know the lettuce is struggling because of the heat.

I am definitely going to have to take steps to protect my babies from the sun next year. I will admit that I never check the weather. One glance out my bedroom window before I get dressed in the morning and I’m good to go. Now do I constantly find myself not appropriately dressed for conditions because of this? Absolutely, and I accept that. It’s a flawed system, but it’s mine. Unfortunately for my plants my lack of weather preparedness is coming back to literally burn us all.

Now about my cucumbers. It looks like they’ll still be okay if I make sure they’re properly supported which I did with the leftover stakes that Brian gave me from propping up Rupert, his looming tomato plant. Rupert appears to have some sort of fungus, by the way. My tomato plants are looking gorgeous but that’s neither here nor there. Sorry, Rupert.

Anyway, I used Brian’s stakes to give the cucumbers a little support. On the web it says that they could be vulnerable to disease because of the split, so I’ll have to keep an eye on them. Not that I know what I’d do if they did become diseased, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Oh, and my cucumbers are flowering! This is one step closer to producing an actual cucumber. Now I’ll sit back and wait for the bees and the hummingbirds to do the rest. Speaking of flowering, my radishes also have flowers. Now this is not the same good news as the cucumbers. While cucumbers need to flower to produce fruit, radishes flower when they’re changing from root production to seed production. This is called bolting, which I clearly did not know ahead of time or I never would have let it happen. I want their roots, not their seeds.

So I harvested all but one of my radish plants. Why all but one, you ask? That’s because after a radish has bolted apparently you can harvest the seeds and replant them. I am so excited about this because now I can continue replanting radishes until they quit on me, which could be any day now because they’re a cool season crop. Still, I have the containers and I’ll have the seeds, so why not? My lone radish bolt needs to continue to grow and die off and dry before I can replant the seeds, so I’ll do what I do best and keep watering it until it passes peacefully into the afterlife on its own.

I pulled the radishes that we grew and I washed and cut 10 lovely little vegetables. I left them on the kitchen countertop for my guinea pigs -I mean co-workers- to enjoy. I am not a radish enthusiast, so I did not sample one and even if I had I couldn’t tell you if it tasted overgrown or not. But none of my colleagues reported any adverse reactions so I’m guessing they tasted alright.

Since harvesting the radishes I now have six empty containers and that just won’t do. I do not have peas in my repertoire yet and since some varieties grow pretty quickly I feel (kinda) confident that I can get something harvested before it’s time to try to replant the radishes. The only issue is that peas, like radishes, prefer springtime weather, but when I checked the projections for the next couple of months we probably won’t have too many days that will get over 80 degrees so it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Yup, I checked the weather all by myself. No big deal.

So I went to Ace Hardware and did a little shopping. For $3.49 I picked up shelling peas which will grow in just 58 days. The package said that the seeds will germinate faster if soaked in water for 12 to 24 hours, so that’s what I did. They wanted to be planted one inch deep and two inches apart. Just in case, I migrated those containers next to the lettuce over by the garage. I don’t want to take any chances.

I also thinned out the bachelor button blue boys and zinnias out front of the Star News because there were a few bunches packed tightly together and they’ll suffocate each other if I don’t. But to be honest, it just feels wrong plucking them from the earth after I spent so much time tending to them.

My beautiful weed torch arrived on Monday and I spent about 20 minutes on Tuesday morning taking care of business. Never have I experienced something so satisfying as watching the weeds that have been torturing me catch fire and disintegrate in between the pavers.

Gardening is so relaxing.