Black Gumbo

Its been seven weeks plus a few days and the garden is beginning to produce. The tomatoes have loads of tiny fruits appearing and I'm having to tie up many of the plants higher on the stakes. This morning I spread a few out and have distributed some of the pots between the raised beds. I'm looking forward to a bumper crop of tomatoes, and I am quite pleasantly surprised by how healthy these tomatoes are compared to my two big-box store tomato plants. The two Celebrity plants purchased at Home Depot are doing terribly, barely hanging on.

The beets are impressive plants, rains beat them down and they pop right back up. The Mustard Greens are very tasty, I had some last week from the thinnings. I'm going to have to thin again, they are crowding each other out. My carrots are puny and may test my patience too much, I might plant that whole bed in beans soon, at least they will grow through the heat of summer. I harvested all the radishes, they are yummy!


This past weekend we had a huge thunder storm blow through. Not uncommon for our area, in fact the streets here get flooded several time s a year. The heavy rain really pelted the plants, especially the carrots and beets, but the beets came right back, the carrots needed a little help to get them un-stuck from the soil. The natural deep watering seems should be a great help! Here's a shot of our street during the flooding, we get a kick out of the antics that we see when the water rises.