Hot & Safety

In this part of Oklahoma, temperatures are in the high 90’s with a heat index, bringing the actual temperature up to 109+ degrees.  In order to do any work out on the property, or in the garden, we find ourselves getting up early in the morning, or waiting until after dinner when the sun starts to go down, to actually do any outside work.

I was up early, weeding my garden, just as the sun was starting to rise.  I finished relatively early, and didn’t run into any snakes, scorpions, or spiders. 

Here’s a picture of the garden when done weeding, it doesn’t look bad.  I did think to myself, “I should have placed brick all around the entire garden instead of just the front and sides”.  Having fencing on the back side isn’t a solid base to prevent the grass from growing into the garden bed.

Before Weeding

After Weeding

As you know from one of my previous posts, I’ve been trying to prevent worms from eating all of my red cabbage.  To do this, I’ve been spraying each plant with a water, alcohol, and dawn soap mixture.  Only 3 cabbage plants survived out of 4 planted.

Here’s a brief look at them, notice several of the leaves have been cut off.  The leaves cut were those eaten by the moth worm, making them look like pieces of Swiss cheese.  Daily, when I go out to my garden, I check the 3 remaining cabbage plants for worms; so far, knock on wood……. they’ve stopped eating my cabbage.

The Third Cabbage Had To Be Pulled Because The Only Thing Left Was A Short Stump,
Here's The Fourth Cabbage.

My cucumber plants have started to grow, and climb the feedlot panel turned vertically to be used as a trellis.

My first harvest of potatoes was of Yukon Gold potatoes; my second planting was with red potatoes.  Notice they’re starting to grow seedlings nicely.  

I’ve sprayed the leaves of the new red potato plants with an alcohol, water, and a dawn soap mixture to help keep the bugs from eating the leaves off of the plant.  Also, since potatoes don’t like extreme heat, I make sure to provide the roots and the leaves with enough water to help keep it cool, and to help it grow.

Here’s a first at our homestead, the growing of Tomatillo’s.  The seeds took off really nice, here are a few plants……notice I have a blossom already formed.  The feedlot trellis was placed here to help keep the birds away from the bed when the plants were small.  I’ll need to remove it before the fruit of the Tomatillo appears.

I planted Dwarf sun flowers along with giant sun flowers.  The Dwarf sun flower is so full and pretty, I thought I would share a picture of the flower with you.

And finally, just some friendly advice; when working in temperatures over 90 degree’s please remember to drink plenty of fluids, wear a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, and take plenty of shaded breaks.