Brief Update

Not much to report, but here goes.

I pulled an okra plant that wasn't making pods.  Normally they have an extensive and tough root system that makes them hard to detach from a container.  But what a surprise...no roots, none.  It came out like a stick somebody had poked into the soil. What it did have was galls, so I knew what had happened...the RKN had destroyed the entire root system.  That stands for root knot nematode.

I have fresh onion seed in transit somewhere, hope to get it today. And my older seed finally did germinate in vermiculite, so here I go with lots of onions.  They're totally immune to RKN, so they're going in all the containers that showed signs of root galls.  It's not what I'd like to plant, really.  But as they say on the TV dramas...sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

They won't fail me, onions always do very well in my containers...at least the bunching onions do...they're more subtropical.  Bulb onions can be hit or miss at this latitude...around 26 degrees north.  This year I'm trying a variety that's popular in the Niger valley...called Violet di Galmi.  Bulb onions are Allium cepa, bunching onions are usually Allium fistulosum, though lately the seeds being sold as bunching onions are just varieties of bulb onions, like White Lisbon.

I'm trying four varieties this season....White Lisbon, Ishikura, Violet de Galmi, and White Spear.  The Violet di Galmi is the only one that's new for me, I've grown the others for years.  But this time I'm going to be more careful about my record keeping...for a while I had no idea what variety I was growing in the garden.  Things just got mixed up.  I tend to be that way, hence the record-keeping.

You have to test varieties in your garden, never trust the catalog promises or the gardening books.  White Lisbon is supposed to be good for cool conditions and not bulb in latitudes with shorter days in July and August.  Yet mine have grown through July and set perfectly nice bulbs...so you just never know.   As they used to say on X-Files..."Trust no one".

The Malabar spinach, Basella alba, is going crazy in the 34 cm pots right now.  So I have my greens and lots of hot peppers too...and a little okra and purslane as well.  There's even a mustard plant that made it through some tough times and now has nice leaves on it.  So I've got veggies to eat, which is of course the whole point.