Much news in the garden this AM, not the least of which being that it survived last Thursday afternoon’s 103 degree afternoon. Having lived on the Peninsula for 17 year now, I have to say, this Al Gore guy is on to something. Not only do temperatures rarely go over the high 70s in Menlo Park, a one-day, 100-degree spike is unheard of.
The tomato plants are beginning to be full of clusters of smalll tomatoes. The plants are small and there’s lots of fruit, which I usually regard as a good situation – some years we have big plants, but not much production. The fruit may not get large, but we’ll see. Usually, it’s me vs. the squirrels: we both like ripe tomatoes, and they are as good as me at judging when a tomato has arrived at that true, only-from-the-garden ripe taste.
The pole beans have their first, tiny fruit, and the lemon cucumber has a couple of small fruit as well. The lettuce, particularly the red leaf, which I thought had been clobbered Thursday afternoon (my garden space is hot in the afternoon anyway, often getting to 90 degrees on 70-defree days) has bounced back surprisingly well (I did lose a couple of the less robust plants), and the green leaf lettuce is all but untouched (and has made for some very fresh-tasting salads the last few evenings). We had our coffee in the garden this morning: very pleasant… tomorrow we’ll try to get a little mulching done…
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