Great Weather for Gardening (in my bed)

Great Weather for Gardening (in my bed)

Reading garden books, ordering seeds for the greenhouse, planning next spring’s perfect garden and searching for new plants and varieties are all great gardening activities for a cold rainy weekend. For the last two years I have planted Burpee’s Porterhouse Beefsteak tomatoes. They are early, huge and prolific. Unfortunately they don’t have much flavor. This year I ordered an heirloom tomato called “Bloody Butcher”. They have a very short maturity time and produce tomatoes that are about 2” in diameter. That is a little bigger than grape or patio tomatoes; but smaller than a Marglobe. Marglobes and some seed from last years best volunteers will provide regular tomatoes for canning and salads. Better Boys will be for sandwiches.

I did get to play in the yard all day on Thursday (Thanksgiving). I managed to break almost all of my toys. Neither lawn more, nor by leaf blower would start. I burned up the motor on my electric chain saw. I did get a lot done though. The leaf blower is fixed and the lawn mowers are in the shop. I got a new electric chain saw. The garden grew by about 200 square feet. The grapes, asparagus and strawberries have weedless beds and a nice top-dressing of about 2” of compost. If the rain stops today I will lay off the rows, test the soil and mulch the nice wet ground.

It is amazing how much the grapevines and figs have grown this year. They have gone dormant and should be pruned pretty soon. The grapevines will be cut back pretty severely since this is their first year. The figs, of course, will go back to the same height as last year. That is about eye level. They will be a lot wider than last year however.




David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/.