Yes, indeed it does.
This morning, my neighbor came over and said his wife told him that we must be doing a whole lot of fertilizing. I laughed and said nope. With a sly little grin in told him all about the dirt mix I had going on. Some of the dirt is of course dirt we have dug up from around the yard, but the trick is to add several different kinds of dirt to your soil to improve it. Especially if you live in a subdivision like we do.
See when a subdivision is developed, not only do they smooth the landscape to make it easier to divide up the lots and build houses on, but they also cart off all of the lovely and wonderful topsoil that help our sweet and tangy green things grow! For this new house, I used equal parts of bagged manure compost, topsoil, sandy drainage soil and potting soil to fill the raised bed Bill created for me.
Our cucumbers have been growing like wild for quite some time now. Unfortunately, we are reaching the end of our fabulous yellow squash as it has been attacked by an army of vine borers! Luckily though, we are becoming a tad tired of butter fried squash, steamed squash and several other squash-a-licious recipes, so there won't be too many tears shed when this last plant keels over. But, they will be missed.
But our prize and joy, the lovely tomatoes just started to ripen in the past few weeks. Shown in the picture are, Brandywine, Hawaiian Pineapple, Persimmon, and Goliath. Some of these tomatoes we started from seed back in late January. Let me tell you our mater plants are well over 5 foot tall and pushing to 6 feet! I am disappointed in the Bonnie Purple Cherokee that I bought at a local store. So far, it has not performed any where near as well as our maters. There is one mater which should be ready to pick tomorrow or the next day, but the plant as a whole is so dang small! Barely 3 feet. Perhaps it will surprise me by the end of summer:)
