I just got tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and spaghetti squash set out last week. It had been pretty hot and dry for 2 weeks. Great hay making weather, not so much for setting out garden plants. I've been watering the cabbage plants every 3rd evening just to keep them going. They don't look too bad considering.
We did get 1" of rain over a 16 hour period. Came down slow, and the soil soaked up every drop. Cooler temps are helping with stress for plants. More rain predicted for later today and tomorrow. Another 1" - 1-1/2" expected through Wed. night.
I'm pretty convinced spraying plants with peppermint extract mixed with water ( 2 TBS. per gallon of water) is keeping Deer from eating plants. I noticed Deer had eaten the tender tops off of the peas, and right beside it left the beet tops alone. Last time I planted beets, deer ate them clear to the ground, and they never recovered. Looks like deer pulled one tomato plant clear out of the ground, so mixed up 2 gallons of peppermint spray, and sprayed practically everything out there, including 4' inside the area of the Rye mulch, and pinto bean cover crop. The marigolds I set out are slowly growing and saw some blooms starting Sunday morning. Some sunflowers have been growing too in this dry weather, not sure where they got enough moisture to germinate, let alone grow. Some of the very first I planted to set the planter are over a foot tall, while later planted ones haven't come up yet.
Sunday morning I planted more than several different types of pollinator flowers including several types of smaller sunflowers. Should make a nice looking border along the road, and hopefully also act as a deterrent for deer.
Got the Rye mulch rolled last week and seems to be staying down probably due to fracturing the stem base and being so dry. Soil was extremely dry in that mulch as the Rye sapped all of the moisture out. Drove those T-posts with a light hand driver from TSC. It's become a habit to count how many licks it takes to drive a post. In other years in normal soil it takes 8-10 licks to drive a post. Minimum was 18 on these, and 42 was the most. I keep telling myself, I'll bet people pay good money for a cardio workout like this...
