Vegetable gardens relish the heat even with Houston’s record highs

A discussion of vegetable gardens is timely in several ways. For one, Houston is suffering under record high temperatures and parching drought. Secondly, today marks exactly three months since Kim and Karl’s family vegetable garden in Richmond, TX, was featured. That article was more about gardening together as a family exercise. As you can see from the updated photo, their vegetables are thriving in spite of the heat, and in part because of the heat.

Of course, they wouldn’t be doing so well without water and lots of it. Nonetheless, some tender-loving-care is also involved, and as a result, they are now reaping the rewards of what they have sown. Kim, Karl, Zak, and Grace are hauling in daily veggies for the table, and are even enjoying a hearty enough yield that they were recently able to pass some along to me. Kristin and I had the delight of taking home a cucumber, a yellow tomato, and an eggplant from their garden, all of which were delicious.

If you aren’t familiar with the original article, each family member has their own raised bed with its own unique plantings. As well as those items mentioned above, they also have a wide range of peppers, additional varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, chives, a few bean varieties, carrots, pickling cucumbers, corn and a range of herbs and spices. Since they are providing adequate irrigation and organic fertilizer, the production is actually helped by the inordinately high temperatures, giving them a more than adequate daily yield. Unfortunately, those farmers with significantly larger fields are most likely finding it very difficult to provide adequate water in this drought.

Now, if you are wondering which family member has the top production, landing them an honor as the #1 family gardener, well, things get a little murky around that subject. Kim alleges that Karl was caught stealing her compost tea and then watering the remaining lot down to make it look as if none had been taken. Karl neither denies nor confirms this charge, but will boast of his garden’s success. Kim does confess to having done some damage to Zak’s and Grace’s gardens with an experimental organic fertilizer, but she merely laughs off the inquiry into why she did not try it on her plants first. With several months left to the growing season, we’ll have to just wait and see whose garden fares the best ultimately, and we’ll hope that the newfound competition doesn’t get any more seemingly vicious.

Here’s hoping all of your veggies are making it to the table in great shape too.


FROM: http://www.examiner.com/
Author: Greg Shelley