Pull the "Trigger"

Great article about when to harvest peppers here. I am sometimes still amazed at how easy it is to get this information and so useful!

I am going to go through and calculate the "projected" harvest date of each item that was planted so I can figure out targeted harvest schedules. This should be a good indicator of when I should be taking down a score from the peppers plants :) If I had my druthers, I would be out there tomorrow taking off half of the bell and jalapeno peppers.

One thing I found particularly from the article: if you forgo some of the sweetness in bell peppers by taking them off the plant before they fully ripen, the the plant is more likely to fruit a second or third time. I know this makes sense, but a plant can only carry so much "fruit load" before it will stop producing flowers. Cool.

8 + 7 + 37 + 20 = Lots

Craziness out in the garden. The tomato plants are just out of control. The weather has continued to be quite most and cool, and as a result I have the largest mess of tomato plants. I use mess very specifically because thats what the Juliets are....a mess. I have been unable to capture just how bad its gotten, but I am going to attempt with more overhead sunlight to get a better picture that does it justice. For now, its just time to document all of the beautiful tomatoes coming out of the garden (and a few small non-chewed strawberries) Above photo taken on 7/21.


Picked these on 7.23.09


Picked these on 7.26.09


Picked these on 7.27.09.

I would bet that I get 100 more tomatoes off the three juliet plants on the east end of the tomatoes by the weeks end. They have all gotten too heavy for their support and started collapse. As a result, they are all going to ripen at the same time. Frozen tomato sauce here we come!!!(thanks Jackie)

I will endeavor to get some good picks of the collapsed plants before I pick more tomatoes Wed.

I also need to do some reading on how to pick bell and jalapeno peppers as I have a bunch of those that must be getting close to ready.

More Proof That Gardening Isnt Hard

If I can grow all of this, then anyone can : ) I am up to a total of 35 stawberries, and 20 something tomatoes to day. This puts my relative cost per fruit somewhere around $8.50/harvested item. I am hoping it will get substantially better as the 1000+ tomatoes we have growing start to ripen.

The strawberries seem to just keep coming too, its fantastic! They also taste incredibly good.


Here are the first green bell pepper, and Juliet tomato.


The next day's harvest. I was having a bit of a hard time deciding when I should be "harvesting" the bell peppers, but I basically just decided it was big enough, so I plucked it.

The Whole Shibang

Here is a current shot of the whole garden. I really just wanted to get the perspective from here to show just how out of control the tomatoes are at this point. You can't even see the peppers!! They are there I promise.


Close up of two of the Jalapeño plants. As you can see, they are doing really well, and there are LOTS of them.


I just really like the stem of this bell pepper. If you click on the picture and get the full sized shot, you will see the nice striping on the stem.


Since you couldn't see the bell pepper plants in the full sized shot of the garden. These plants have really filled out as the warmer weather has come on. Some of the peppers are quite large already.


This is a shot of the heirloom tomatoes that are ripening. We have gotten 8 or 10 of these fully ripe already, and let me say, they taste fantastic. Those Czech's really know their tomatoes ; )

12

That's how many "fruits" I harvested when I walked into the garden after being out of town for 3.5 days. Its pretty great to walk over to the sea of green and see some reds in there. Furthermore, LOOK AT ALL THE STRAWBERRIES!! The fruit nets are working their magic. I found one strawberry outside the net that had a bit out of it, but other then that, none of them are being touched. If I wasn't worried jinxing it, I would be making some disparaging remarks about the ingenuity of squirrels right now : )

I spent my time in the garden last night trying to clean up the property in general, so no pictures last night, but I am going to get out there today assuming we have no rain.....

The Different Tomatoes

I am growing 4 different kinds of tomatoes in the garden this summer, and its interesting to watch the four different types of plants grow, flower, and start to develop fruit. I know it seems logical, but most of the plants look the same (even when they are different heights) until they start to develop fruit. So, without further ado, here they are.....


This is the Roma. You can see it has a very distinct shape to the tomato. As they are getting bigger they look more the shape of pears then anything else. They seem to push the flower they are sprouting from to the side as they grow, instead of growing out of the middle of the flower.



These are the Juliets. These plants are HUGE. They also seem to be very aggressive both out and up as they are creeping out of their space and into the strawberries and peppers that border them. The seem to grow directly out of the flower as with the Burpee and Heirloom, but they are almost consistently growing 8 tomatoes together at one time. I am seemingly going to have 100lbs of these tomatoes.


These are the big boys, the Burpees. They are just starting to fruit now. These tomatoes are going to be HUGE. Once again I have no reference point to give to you but the tomato on the right which is maybe halfway to being ripe, is larger then any tomato I have gotten rip. I fully expect to get some 2lb tomatoes off of this type of plant.


Some Bell Peppers here. I believe these will eventually be orange.....


The Jalapeños are getting big. This was taken last Wed, and these two peppers are prolly 25% bigger then this.

I am going to get out there and take some pictures tonite for updates, things are getting really interesting.

First Taste of Tomato

That's it. The first harvest of tomato all diced up and ready to be eaten. This was Friday, and the tomato tasted quite good. This is the Czech Heirloom I have been talking about that has a vast amount of tomatoes on it already. I just pulled another one off last night, and I would guess I will have another 5-7 in the coming week. They are not particularly large tomatoes, but they are very juicy, and have a definitive taste to them.

I will update more later this week as the Burpee and Juliet plants are starting to devolop quickly. In the case of the Burpee, you can see how big the fruit is going to be. For the Juliet, its volume, we are going to have a ton of tomatoes!!