In OTHER good news (Jenny, pay attention), we have had the most beautiful, long, earth soaking rains of late. My garden, my lawn and all of the local weeds are literally finding a reason to live again. It has given me a renewed optimism for the prospects of a fall garden. I went out to take advantage of the cloudy skies and softened soil to plant some fall lettuce when I discovered the job had already been done for me! We allowed our spring lettuce to go to seed, and boy did it ever! I have thousands of little lettuce plants coming up in the shadow of the dried-up trunks of the spring lettuce forest.
This has really made me rethink the whole volunteer phenomenon. I pulled up hundreds of volunteer tomatoes this year and in their place I planted my carefully selected and tended tomato plants. Now that the summer is almost over, my hand grown tomato plants have produced a stellar crop of mostly worthless, blossom-end rotted tomatoes, (except for the sun golds of course, which are always amazing) while the one volunteer tomato plant I allowed to run its course has almost single handedly produced my entire lot of canning tomatoes this year. Likewise, the mystery squash enveloping my whole compost pile has been unaffected by any type of squash destroying insect and wasn't watered a single time during the weeks of dry weather. Hmmm…am I maybe barking up the wrong gardening tree?? Don't get me wrong, I'll always have my hand picked plants (they're so much fun to grow), but next year I think I might let a few more of those volunteers strut their stuff.
I'll leave you with a garden snapshot. I wish I could say this was from my own garden, but it's actually the latest harvest from my boss' garden - the one I get paid to tend. Funny how it always seems to get more attention than my own...
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