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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Report From the Aftermath by Heirloom Fan


I am still doing some garden cleanup and the "wait and see" regarding which plants will make it and which may not.

I was surprised to see that some of my tomatoes began immediately leafing out again, some I am still waiting to see any signs of life. A few were shattered badly and had the foliage stripped so they will most likely not survive. But some of the more vigrous ones such as my heirloom pear tomato
have already leafed out. My two Japanese eggplant, which were stripped down to the stem both have new leaves going. I did some pruning the day after and then waited a few more days to reinspect to see if any more of the foliage or stems looked dried out and beyond help.

My vining crops like the cucumbers, squash and pumpkins were also hit hard. I did find two small Wee Be Little and Boo Be Little pumpkins still hanging in there, so transplanted them to the raised beds. I had a large stand of volunteer sunflowers which sprung up under the birdfeeder. All were wiped out but I was amazed this morning to see another crop starting, along with a few small corn plants.

I did put most of the plants that seem to be surviving under walls of water.
With this recent cool and rainy weather, they say that more wind and hail could be in store.

One thing, it will be interesting to see which plants seem to have the ability to withstand a dramatic assault like this and still try to keep on going. I don't know if I can get any tomatoes this year unless we get a later frost than normal, but not much has been "normal" this year!