Our Super Fantastic Tomato had a Not So Fantastic Day Yesterday

I went to the community garden to water the back part and pick the peas again, and I was met with a horrible suprise:



We had this tomato bush tied to a one inch square, four foot tall stake and inside a tomato cage with all of its larger branches tied up.  The huge tomatoes just got too heavy on one side and the whole thing tipped over, breaking the stake in the process.  It seems that the main stem of the bush is undamaged, thank goodness.  It didn't even wilt at all, but it was very alarming to see this when I drove up.  I went strait to Lowes and bought some more stakes to prop and tie it back up.  I even tied all of them to the fence.  I checked on it after 24 hours today, and it seems fine.  We are having a minor wind storm and it looks like it will hold.  I also trimmed a bunch of the larger branches back so that it wouldn't get tomatoes too far out on the side to weigh it down even more.  I went ahead and tied up the other tomato bushes, too.  They are all getting pretty big and tall and top heavy.

Peas, Cherry Tomatoes and Early Girls, Oh My! Community Garden Update

The community garden plot has really  changed in the three weeks since I last posted.  I didn't take pictures of everything, but the things that are really different were captured at twilight the a few days ago.  The pictures are either a bit dark or the flash went of, which looks kind of spooky.

My Aunt made us a sign for the garden on her laser etcher:

I love it.  I hope the bees can read, because I mean it, they are very welcome. Actually, they are cordially invited for as much nectar and pollen as they can hold.  As are the lady bugs for all the aphids they can stuff in their own and their children's mouths.

Here is one of the lovely ladies, now.  Suddenly, I remember the scene from A Bug's Life when the male lady bug gets very upset about someone assuming he is a girl just because he is a lady beetle.  Sorry.  I mean handsome man.

The carrots are really growing.  We thinned them out a bit more this weekend and were pleasantly surprised to find some very tasty carrots at the end of the stalks we grabbed onto.

These are some rainbow carrots we pulled up.  Some went directly into my cousin's mouth, so this is not all of them, but you get the idea.  They are colorful and delicious.

Here are some of our plain, boring old orange carrots.  The one with three legs is not really boring.  My aunt was reminded by this carrot to tell me about a contest that happens in some small village in England where locals bring in vegetables that look like naughty bits to a church to be judged.  I can't, for the life of me, think why this carrot reminded her of this story.  Hm.  Anyway.

This is a close up of the rainbow carrot stalks. You can tell which ones are most likely to be purple without actually pulling them up.  The other ones can be orange, yellow or even white.

The cucumbers are looking very nice.  It has been very warm here over the last couple weeks.  There are actually some small cucumbers starting to grow on the largest vines already.  I planted a few more hills of cucumbers to fill in the empty space up front, however only one survived the heavy bird predation. We now have a huge open area in front where the cucumber mounds are empty and the spinach and lettuce are pulled up.  The lettuce was going to seed, so it had to come up as well.

Somehow I missed taking a picture of the potatoes that have come up and started growing very nicely, but the hilling for those will take up some of the empty space.

We have been harvesting cherry tomatoes from the garden for two weeks, almost.  They are very  sweet and delicious.

This is my Aunt's hand with some of the first young cherry tomatoes.  The first ones were the tiniest.

We have been harvesting peas everyday the last few days.  The kids can't stay out  of them, and devour them raw and crunchy before we even get them into the fridge.  This last time I picked more than Molly could eat and this is what we have:

The peppers are Anaheim chilies and there are the first two ripe early girl tomatoes in the bowl as well.  My husband ate two of these chilies and said they weren't that hot right before the tears started coming out of his eyes.  He usually has a pretty high tolerance for spicy hotness, so I didn't eat one. These peppers are off that plant that looks kind of weird and sickly and the peppers are all half black. I wonder if that is why they are so hot.

Here is a picture of the first pea harvest before we went to my aunt and uncles house for barbecue stakes.  We snacked on raw peas and cherry tomatoes that night with dinner.

Here is a small purple bush bean.  I have some bad news about these beans.  I think the community garden went two days without watering last week.  I usually check on it everyday and water if it looks like it hasn't been done, but last week when I got there after skipping a day, it looked really dry and half of the bush beans' leaves had fallen off.  They look really sad now.  I hope they pull out of it.

This is a picture from last week of the scarlet runner beans.  There is now at least one small bean developing on one of these plants.  I remember from last time I grew these that it took a while for the flowers to start setting, but once they did there were beans everywhere.  I hope that happens now.

The early girl tomato is really laden with fruits and they are just starting to turn red.  I picked the first two yesterday.  They were small, but some of these green ones are huge.

This is the super fantastic which is really getting loads of tomatoes on it.  They are not very big yet, but they are getting bigger every day.

It really is a bushy mess inside its cage, but I just haven't trimmed it back yet.

Here are a couple of the Roma tomatoes.  We are going to get a lot of these a bit later.  This plant, if you don't remember, was quite a bit smaller and a little behind the others.

In this picture you can see three small pepper plants.  The front largest one is the new garden salsa pepper I planted a couple of weeks ago the other two are Cheyenne and jalapeno that are finally recovering from being chewed on by my cat, Cooper.  The Jalapeno actually is starting to set fruit.

This is the heirloom tomato I planted at the same time as the new peppers, the Bradley pink tomato.

This tiny pepper plant is a Thai hot pepper.  It already has little peppers on it.  I am a little scared to try these.  The one is back is the jalapeno that was pilfered from earlier in the year with small new fruit showing up every day.

The coordinator of the community garden asked me last week if it was okay if he gave my number to a photographer for our local paper, The Wenatchee World, who had mentioned he might want to get our picture with our garden for a story in the paper.  We haven't heard from anyone yet, but that would be kind of cool.  I don't really like having my picture taken, unless I am wearing a costume, but I am proud of the garden my Aunt and I have been able to grow so far this year.  It looks pretty nice with the custom laser etched plant stakes and sign and the huge tomato plants.  Our tomatoes are, by far, the largest, greenest and most fruitingest tomatoes in the whole community garden, so far.  I am sure some of the other people's will catch up. There are some that look very nice.  I am not putting down any other gardeners gardens at all.  Most of the gardens are very nicely done, but our tomatoes are the best, so far.  One person actually asked me if we were sneaking in fertilizer.  I won't lie and say we never considered the idea, but we haven't added anything but seeds and water to our plot.  It was nicely composted and tilled when we got there this spring.  I think the difference has been that we have been supplimenting the automatic sprinklers with our own almost nightly waterings and keeping the weeds pulled pretty well.  Have a good week, until I have something new to post.

Patio Container Garden Update, Finally

It has been a while since I took pictures of the patio containers.  I finally borrowed my Auntie's camera and took some pictures of everything today.  My patio is getting to be like a jungle.  Okay, I am exaggerating a bit, but it is getting a bit out of control.  I seriously need to trim and tie things up as soon as I find my green plant tying stuff.

This is what my balcony/patio looks like from the lawn. We live on the second story.  I am worried that my nasturtiums that are creeping downwards might annoy the neighbors.  I will have to tell them that I will trim them up if they want.

This is the side view of the nasturtiums in the jalapeno pot.  They are really taking over. Poor pepper.

This is the creepingest nasturtium I have ever seen.  Before you ask, I don't know where you can get some seeds that grow like this because I planted seeds from two packets and one was a mixed variety bag, Alaskan Mix if I am not mistaken.  I don't know which seeds I planted in what pots.  They are all different colors, from yellow to dark orange.

Here is a front view of the poor jalapeno.  You can barely see it peeking out the top.  I did move the flowers aside to take pictures of the peppers.  Scroll down to see those.

Yum, I can't wait till I can pick these along with the tomatoes and make some spicy hot salsa.  My husband loves hot peppers in everything.

You can see how much of a jungle it is in this pot.

This is that little tiny Roma that I found in a pot and rescued earlier in the year.  One of the pots that I planted hops in never came up, so I put that poor tomato plant into it instead.  It desperately needs to be staked up.  I will have to make it to the store to buy a stake for it soon, or it will be drooping out of the pot.  It is already heavy with tomatoes.

This is the cherry tomato plant.  You can see some of the tomatoes are turning orange. These are orange when ripe, and I have been picking ripe ones and eating them for over a week.  There are at least a couple ripe ones out here every day.

Aren't these clusters of tomatoes beautiful.  They ripen from the inside towards the tip.

Here is that super creeping nasturtium from the other side.  The poor Roma tomato that shares it's pot doesn't know what to do. 

This is the other Roma tomato.  You can see the pole beans really climbing the railing from this pot.  Every pot has at least one or two of these beans climbing around.  I have not seen any bean flowers on these yet, so I will not have any beans for a while still.

This pot holds the heirloom tomato.  It has been flowering for a month now, at least.  It finally has two fruit set.  I just noticed them today.  I hope it starts really setting fruit now.  I can't wait to see how the fruit look when they are ripe. They are supposed to be purple and green and delicious.

They are still both really small, but I hope they grow quickly and large.

This is the eggplant which has also been flowering for quite a while without setting any fruit. I have tickled some flowers with a paint brush without any effect.

I take back everything I said about not believing in pinching back basil.  In the past when I pinched off basil blooms they just sent out more blooms and never another leaf, but not this time.  Look at this huge bush of cinnamon basil.  It sent out its first blossoms about two weeks after I transplanted it from the store.  Look at it now.

This pot has one pole bean and two hop plants.  From this far back all you can see is the bean.

Here you can see one of the hops peeking out from under the bean.

I lifted back the big bean leaves and here you can see the climbing stalks of the hops.

The hens and chicks are really filling up their pots and starting to send out little chicks.

I kind of freaked out when my basil started flowering, thinking that I would run out of basil before my tomatoes were ripe, so I planted eight of these small pots with several basil seed each. This is Thia basil.  I will have plenty of basil even after I thin these to a couple per pot.

Here are the seedlings up close.  Cute.

The patio garden has not been all fun and games, however.  I have a couple bad things to tell you about.  Have you ever heard of tomato end rot?  Well, my master gardener mother says it is very common in potted tomatoes.  It happens because the soil is allowed to dry to much between watering's.  It turns out that Roma tomatoes are especially susceptible.  I should have looked this up before I decided to plant three Roma tomatoes in containers on my porch this spring.  Check this out:

I know I am not alone in saying, "Gross!?!"  Well the only thing I can do is water them deeply and frequently and hope it is enough. 

Another problem I am fighting is aphids on my eggplant:

Eggplant flowers are beautiful.  I would grow this plant just for the flowers, but look at all the aphids.

They are covered.

This poor flower is drowning in aphids before it even has a chance to open.

These young shoots and buds are covered, too.

I tried bringing home lady bug eggs and larvae from the community garden.  They ate a lot and grew very fast, but didn't even make a dent.  The adults have flown away and I don't see any eggs left behind.  I also, later, tried soapy water like you read about in all the home garden books.  That seemed to help for a day or two, but now the aphids are back and worse than ever.  I have never had and aphid problem this bad that lasted this long  Usually after a while some kind of natural enemy moves in and starts getting the population explosion under control.

I will give the ladybug thing another try as soon as I find some more lady bug eggs at the garden or at work  Maybe I will find some syrphid fly larvae in the orchard I can bring home to eat the aphids.  

Hopefully, it will not be so long before my next post about the patio garden because things should start getting exciting soon with tomatoes to harvest and jalapeno peppers.  The next post will be about the community garden.