It seems that when we are at home during the summer and there is an adequate amount of rain, natural, or an adequate amount of rain, artificial as in watering from the rain barrels the garden does OK, even when we have to resort to using the "good" City of Houston water containing chlorine and all sorts of other chemical additives to make it "healthy".
But when we are away for extended periods of time, last year one month, this year five weeks, and it doesn't rain, even though someone has been put in charge of the garden and instructed, very specifically, in what to do it doesn't do well. Such was the case last year and this year.
The tomatoes withered for lack of water, the cucumbers shriveled up for the same reason; there were "canyons" in the dirt big enough to drive the biggest Caterpillar Mining Truck into each one, all for lack of water, rain or otherwise. Only one "scrawny" looking cherry tomato plant did its best to put out a few tomatoes. The pepper plants, on the other hand, seem to be thriving as do the onions, both the white and the bunching type, and earlier in the year I did have a good harvest of carrots and garlic bulbs.
Yesterday, I pulled all the tomato plants and cucumber plants, but I left the pepper plants alone.
Among the peppers are Large Red Bell Pepper, Anaheim, Yellow Banana, Habanera's, Jalapeno and Yellow Bell Pepper. I also tilled the soil where possible and planted a fall garden; radishes, broccoli, turnips, red cabbage, carrots, red beets, baby choi cabbage and I am even trying for another batch of cucumbers since we live in growing zone 9 very near the Mexico Gulf coast, where it rarely freezes and we can plant fall crops and early spring crops into October and early November.
Here are a few photos of how the vegetable patch, my "back 40", looked like after the work over of yesterday.
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