Happy Saturday!

Can you believe it? It’s the end of June already. Where has the month gone?

It’s been such a busy month that I can barely recall what I’ve done.

It’s been an exceptional dry month. Much of the state is currently burning from wild fires, making the air smell like smoke. I had a coughing fit a few nights ago while I was watering the garden, that was how bad the air was.

Rain has been next to non-existent. All 4 of my rain barrels are currently nearly empty. The only rain I’ve seen was a few drops that landed anywhere but the rain barrels a few nights ago. Yesterday, the air was so dry that for a few hours, as the wind was whipping at 30 miles/hour, the humidity dropped to a non-existent 5%. Of course, with the AC on, the humidity wouldn’t drop to that low inside. In my room, the humidity hover at around 20%.

Rain is promised this morning, though, and I hope nature will deliver, as long as the wind will die down. The wind seem to never stop these days. Every time this kind of wind comes, it completely dries out the soil, causing the water in the ollas to drain quicker than it should.

Meanwhile, quite a bit of the garden is not looking well. The strawberry plants are all looking a bit charred. Thankfully, I’m still harvesting strawberries but only a few every few days, nothing like the beginning of the month when I was bringing in a bowl of strawberries every day. I will also need to prop one of the cucumber plants back up after it sank low to the ground when the wind came. Thank goodness the wind didn’t do much damage this time around because I have enough problems with earwigs that I don’t need another.

By the way, are these the most beautiful tomato trusses or what?

The tomatoes are slowly ripening. I have been pruning the tomato plants once a week, removing all the side-shoots and lower leaves. I do this so the trellis I spent so much effort building won’t collapse. So far, the new trellises have held up to the wind but according to the AI calculations, the wind load on the trellises will decrease as the plants get taller. Therefore, I must keep the plants as single leader.

I believe the picture is that of the Suncherry tomatoes – a popular tomato in Japan. This is my third year growing them and they are my favorite aside from Sun Sugar and Super Sweet 100.

I’m also trying the Sungold tomato this year. I keep hearing, reading, and seeing this tomato in social media and I just wanted to know whether it was as good as people say. After harvesting a few, I would this tomato has been over-hyped by the social media. It couldn’t beat the Sun Sugar, which remains my all-time favorite tomato.

Have you ever tried the Sungold tomato? What did you think about it? Do you think it’s been over-hyped by social media?

That’s all for me this week. Thank you to Natalie for hosting Weekend Coffee Share each weekend and I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.