Keeping an eye out on my patio farm

It’s been a tough year on the patio farm.

Every morning I’m up at sunrise and watering the plants on the patio. They’ve required a lot of water lately.

As usual, I went way overboard this spring at the Kiwanis flower sale. It never looks like that many plants when I buy them, but once I get them home I always turn the garage and shed inside out looking for containers to plant them in.

Most of the plants I put out were in containers. The two little flowerbeds I planted had it the worst. One got uprooted by dogs and the other has mostly succumbed to neglect because it’s not near the patio and the sprinkler system went down for a time without my noticing it.

The petunias, which are normally my specialty, started out like gang busters and quickly fizzled. It got hot and they got stressed. There are blooms but not that many and the foliage is pretty scraggly.

I had an old wheelbarrow that I put drainage holes in several years ago that had been serving as a front yard flower planter. The cheap undercarriage finally gave out so I had to repurpose it. I wired it up onto an old chair swing frame and then planted too many squash and cucumber plants in the thing.

The yellow squash got started first but were soon overtaken by a rogue zucchini. Right now I have just enough small yellow squash to make a pot of my grandmother’s cheesy squash recipe and I have three huge zucchini that will make six or eight loaves of bread. We’ve had all the squash my wife and I have wanted this year.

I’ve eaten one cucumber and have another ready to pick. Not much of a harvest.

Tomatoes have been equally frustrating. The goofy things have bloomed all summer long but hadn’t set a single piece of fruit until just recently. Several times I didn’t think I would have any plant left by late August. The heat stressed them greatly and when the heat would let up the tomato worms would get busy.

Right now the tomato plants look pretty good and they all have green tomatoes, one with a single tomato and the other with a half dozen or so. I’m crossing my fingers and feeding those vines religiously. Vine-ripened tomatoes can’t be beat.

I tried some mint and lemon grass and my wife’s coaxing to try and ward off mosquitoes. One mint plant may be dead and the other is on life support. The lemon grass was doing well until recently and it seems to have lost its color.

I tried three different succulents. One of them ran bloom spikes out nearly two feet long but the flower never was too showy. The spikes broke and now the whole plant is looking pathetic. It’s not as pathetic as the one sitting next to it, which is quite dead. The third succulent, the one I thought I crowded too much in the pot is thriving.

I can’t eat the thing but I can move it inside once winter hits and watch it through the winter months.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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