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Thank goodness for the return of “Spring-like” weather for the garden this weekend. The last two weeks were filled with high heat and smack-you-in-your-face humidity. I can take the heat, but the humidity makes sitting out on the back porch uncomfortable for more than 30 minutes at a time and from the looks of the forecast this beautiful weekend weather will leave us as we move through the week.

BUT…..let’s focus on the wonderful weather we are blessed with this weekend—lows in the 60s at night and highs into the mid-80s during the day AND NO HUMIDITY. Many people around the country are having high-school graduation and end-of-school parties. While those are some fantastic things to do this weekend, it is also a perfect time to get out in the garden!

Major to-do’s for me this weekend were feeding the garden, watering, and pruning the tomato bed, which has gone wild this season. In fact, this is one of my highest-yielding seasons for both tomatoes and peppers! Look at it, it just screams “Welcome to the jungle!” But seriously, all that foliage is not necessary for healthy plant growth and can impede much-needed airflow to the plants in the bed. If I left it like this I would have a high likelihood of disease development, especially now that the humidity is increasing. Therefore, a ruthless pruning is in order!!

That second photo is much better. I am also trying to wind that bed down by the end of the month for two reasons: (1) I go on vacation in July and (2) July is hands down the hottest month of the year in Florida. Did you know that a summer garden break in Florida is the same thing as our northern friends taking the winter off? Yeah, I didn’t know that either, but now that I have learned the hard way I will be skipping the heat, humidity, pests, and diseases that come with it.

Unfortunately, I did not take any fun photos of the feeding and watering, but my hose did experience a wardrobe malfunction of sorts, so I found myself needing a new one. The malfunction happened earlier this week. I had just gotten home from work and per the usual routine went for my evening garden walk. As I went outside onto the porch I could hear a strange noise that seemed urgent, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I continued walking towards the garden to find a river of water had formed and was making its way to one of the sump pump drains in our yard, yikes! As I pushed past the corn bed there it was, Niagara Falls in my backyard, and thought, I had not recently installed a water feature in my garden…LOL Needless to say, I easily turned the water off and went with hubby to a big box store to get a new water hose.

Niagara Falls 🙁

New Garden Hose!

There are quite a few plants in that one bed, tomatoes, eggplant, and pepper plants to be exact. In the beginning, there were, (2) San Marzano- determinate, (2-3) Early Girl- determinate, (2-3) Floradade- determinate, (2) Florida Market eggplant, and (2) California Wonder pepper plants. Throughout the Spring season, I removed one of the pepper and eggplants because they drastically wilted and appeared sickly overnight, and most recently, I removed a weaker tomato plant that was coming to the end of its harvest. Honestly, I count myself lucky that the acutely ill plants didn’t have any additional negative impacts on the bed as a whole. 

Back to feeding the plants, because there are so many plants in a small space I decided to use the “per plant” feeding instructions on the packaging. For those curious about what I use, it is the Epsoma Organic Tomato Tone. Now before you come at me, I do not have any particularly deep beliefs about how to grow a garden, so you do you. It just happens to have organic in the title and a great reputation for delivering results.

Single plants: 3 tablespoons around each plant about 3 inches from the stem about every 2 weeks (or twice a month) throughout the growing season.

I have had great success with this method I will be doing a full review of the tomato-tone product in a future post! One last thing, yes I used this on the peppers and eggplants too!

Are you going to garden this summer?

If so, drop a comment below and tell us what growing zone you are from and the plant varieties you chose.

Happy Gardening Everyone!!