The Ancient Art of Moon Gardening
As handed down by
R.John Harris ~ Head Gardener
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Photo Album
These are some pictures of my gardens in mid-July, 2008. This year has been the coldest winter/spring ever and currently we are -5 inches below our normal moisture accumulation for the year. Consequently, everything in the garden is a month behind normal, and everything is smaller than usual. My hollyhocks are usually well into bloom and 6-7 feet tall by now, but as you can see they are very small, only about 3-4 feet tall. The gardens may look messy to some, but what you see is the only method by which I can quickly cover everything with plastic tarps in the event of hail storms, which we get a lot of in a normal year...some hail stones the size of lemons. There are rolled-up plastic tarps everywhere because when those storms roll in they arrive very quickly and since we are the lightning capitol of the USA, second only to Florida, one does not want to be caught out in it, even for the love of tomatoes.
The Eggplants are grown under floating row cover all summer, mostly to protect them from the onslaught of marauding grasshoppers who can destroy a crop overnight if its not protected. They have laid waste to some of my Scotch Prize marigolds and since they've moved on to the deep-trench vegetable garden I've loosed the hens on them...and happy I am to report that those stunning chickens have caused a great decline in the grasshoppers' numbers.
The photograph of John Harris in the Tresillian greenhouse full of perfect tomatoes, all bearing lots of fruits, is wonderful and at the same time disheartening...one may try to compete with the Master of a Brilliant Mind, but the outcome of such a competition is already shown in the fruits of his labors. He wins, hands down. Although, I might say, I do think my Italain Ice tomatoes are bigger and bearing more fruit than those raised by the Head Gardener...but time and photographic proof will tell, later on in the summer.
The Eggplants are grown under floating row cover all summer, mostly to protect them from the onslaught of marauding grasshoppers who can destroy a crop overnight if its not protected. They have laid waste to some of my Scotch Prize marigolds and since they've moved on to the deep-trench vegetable garden I've loosed the hens on them...and happy I am to report that those stunning chickens have caused a great decline in the grasshoppers' numbers.
The photograph of John Harris in the Tresillian greenhouse full of perfect tomatoes, all bearing lots of fruits, is wonderful and at the same time disheartening...one may try to compete with the Master of a Brilliant Mind, but the outcome of such a competition is already shown in the fruits of his labors. He wins, hands down. Although, I might say, I do think my Italain Ice tomatoes are bigger and bearing more fruit than those raised by the Head Gardener...but time and photographic proof will tell, later on in the summer.
