Veggie Garden Check-Up

Stick to your summertime agenda and you’ll be eating happily ever after.

For a vegetable gardener, the livin’ gets a whole lot easier in the summertime. It’s not like the spring, when you’re rushing to get everything in the ground, or later in the fall, when you’re scrambling to harvest all your crops before frost lays them flat.



In fact, right now you’re probably ready to just lie back in your hammock and gaze up at the nice blue sky. Well, don’t get too comfortable! Life may move at a slower pace in August, but there’s still work to be done—and you need to be persistent about doing it. So play it safe: Print this list and keep it handy—that way, you won’t overlook anything when you get an attack of the dog-day lazies:





•Make sure your garden is getting plenty of water. A soaker hose is the most efficient way to deliver water all the way down to your plants’ roots.

•Check for sagging stems and tie them up before they break.

•Keep an eye out for signs of pests or diseases and tackle any problems right away.

•Pick vegetables as soon as they’re ripe. Different varieties of veggies are on different ripening schedules. So be on the lookout for mature color, gloss, and size. And if you don’t trust your eyes, take a bite. Your taste buds will know for sure!

•Serve up frequent drinks of my Compost Tea:

Pour 4 gallons of warm water into a large bucket. Scoop 1 gallon of fresh compost into a square of cotton or burlap, or a panty hose leg, and tie it closed. Put the super-sized “tea bag” in the water, cover the container, and let the mixture steep for seven days. Pour some of the finished tea into a watering can and sprinkle it around the base of your plants. Put the rest in a handheld sprayer bottle and spritz it onto the leaves.

•Inspect the mulch now and then, and add more as needed.

The best thing about growing your own vegetables is that you get to bring in the bounty all summer long. So keep a close eye on your plants and pick whatever you find that’s ripe. Most vegetables taste their best when they’re young and tender, and in the long run, you’ll get a bigger yield. That’s because the way a plant looks at it, once it produces its offspring (in this case, seed-bearing vegetables), its job is done. So if you leave overripe veggies on the vine, the plant will simply close up shop. But if you keep harvesting, the plant will keep producing.