Rain!

Central Florida has been in a drought for 3 years now. It makes it hard to grow anything when it's so dry outside. The yard has turned to dust and weeds (not that I care, I really hate grass lawns), and I've carved out a little plot of heaven in the back yard to grow my vegetables.

Today the skies let loose a nice strong band of thunderstorms like the ones we used to get when I was a kid. Lots of wind, some tornadoes, and most importantly - RAIN! It started falling in huge fat drops at first, and now it's a slow steady rain that easily soaks into the ground. My plants are LOVING it. I can almost see them growing. This is the first day I haven't had to hand water my garden since I planted it. How sad is that?

I harvested my first handful of snow peas last night. Made a pork stirfry with pineapple and brown rice to go with it. Turned out pretty good, and the snowpeas were excellent. I'm actually surprised they made it to dinner, I almost snacked on them as I was picking them. My garden is organic, so there's no worries of fertilizers or chemicals to poison me, I can eat right off the vine.

My cucumber vines are loving life, though they're having to be tied to the trellis. I can't get it to climb properly. Silly plant. Some cut up pieces of old panty hose did the trick, though, and I manually wrapped some of the vining tendrils around the trellis. Hopefully they'll figure out how I want them to behave now. My bush beans are growing well, starting to see little beans in and amongst the flowers. They have big showy green leaves too, and so far the locusts haven't touched them or the cucumbers.

Wish I could say the same for the sunflowers. They are growing alright, but many of the leaves have big holes from the little locusts that I'm infested with right now. I have locust stomping parties when the kids are over, and I stomp every single one I find. Sometimes I find them in groups of hundreds in the yard. They disgust me. I'm looking for an organic deterrent for these awful creatures. I swear there's a biblical plague of them in my yard! I do think the nasturtiums and marigolds are doing their jobs, though, because I haven't seen a lot of locusts on that side of the garden. Perhaps I should plant some marigolds near the sunflowers to keep these critters at bay.

My corn is coming up nicely, too, though I only have 10 stalks right now. I figured I'd stagger the plantings so that I don't have a huge amount all at once.

I'm having trouble with my peppers, tomatoes, squash and cantaloupe. They're there, they're just not flourishing. I will figure out why hopefully soon. Probably needs more nutrients, like fish meal or something. When it stops raining (which I hope is next week!!! We so need the rain...) I'll test the soil. I have a feeling, being the limestone formation that Florida is, that the soil is too basic. Some pine needle mulch might be just enough, actually. Now I'll just have to find some.