What Once Was.....

This was July 15th. The garden was not quite full, but about as healthy as it was this year. Its an interesting cycle to plant everything, nurture it to bear fruit, and then cut it down and throw it on a pile. Its funny, it seemed like I should have left them there to fully die in the tomato cages.


But alas, everything must come to an end. All of the fruit that was slowly ripening was doing so with something wrong - mold, infestation, etc. So, in order to begin really pushing towards garden2010 I needed to be done with this. Finally, after two different days of work, I got things cut down and cleaned up. Two main observations here: Jalapenos have an incredibly woody and hearty stem and LOTS of tomatoes end up on the ground no matter how hard you try. Also, I am not sure that planting these tomatoes 4ft apart would have gotten it done. The vines were amazingly long, and intertwined with each neighboring plant in all directions. It took a lot of patience to get them out without destroying the cages in the process.

Notice: You can see garden2010 planning in effect in the foreground. I have taken all of the grass off of the part between the yard and the house, and all of the stones out of the walkway all the way to the back gate. Today I cut out the tree (more like and old honeysuckle bush) on the back fence next to the gate and I just have the back part of the yard to take up. Once I have that done I will have my landscaping neighbor haul it away, and I can begin turning all of the soil in the back.

I have been having some good thoughts on ways to set the garden up, and I think this is going to be good. I am going to be spending a lot of time out there, but I think that next year it will be easier to have the whole family out there with Astor being 2. Good times :).


And this was the aftermath. I got an entire wheelbarrow full of tomatoes and leaves that were left over when I was done. I ended up harvesting another 20 green bell peppers, and something like 50-60 Jalapenos that looked quite good. Everything else that was coming out was dying already, and the frost we had on Saturday night effectively killed any additional growth.

I am going to be taking out grass at some point this week. I will update then.

I know, I have been quiet. I have good reasons.

The garden has absolutely been in limbo for the last 6 weeks, easy. The weather has been very mild and damp. As a result, most of the tomatoes have just been chillin, no ripening and mostly just getting rotten.

I have been getting quiet a few bell and jalapeno peppers out of the garden in the interim. I stopped counting, but I want to say that I have taken at least 50 bells, and over 100 jalapenos out in the last few weeks.


Lots of the tomatoes are coming out looking like this. They are just too big, and they are starting to split at the top way before they are ripe. The good news is this doesnt ruin the whole tomato. Just slice off the top and you are good to go. I actually think the cooler weather have made the tomatoes sweeter. Not sure why, just what I was tasting.


Current pic of the garden today. The tomatoes are coming to an end. Pretty much everything left on the vine is not ripening with health. The only healthy tomatoes on the vine are ones that are green. So, I am taking them down. I started this afternoon, but it began to rain so I stopped about here:


This is how it looks right now with roughly half of the plants cut out and thrown away. They have been shedding tomatoes as I have picked them up, and I have found a few that actually look pretty good.

This is the mess left behind. A lot of what is on the left is the grass from the part of the backyard that I am currently ripping out to make room for garden 2010, but most of whats on the right side of the wheelbarrow is from the garden this summer. MESS. I am going to have most of this hauled away this year so I can start next year fully cleared and can compost properly.

I am going to get more up in the coming weeks as I start to get the rototiller out and working on the other part of the lawn. Also, all of that taller foliage in the backround of the photo above will be coming out as well. I am going to try to have everything completely bare by the first snow. Its a TON of work, but I think if I get some done every weekend, it should be enough.

Now lets just hope for no October snow (crossing fingers).

Up and Down

The weather! Its crazy! For all of the great cool wetness we had early in the year that helped my plants blow, the most recent month has been very painful for many reasons. But one main reason is that its been playing tricks on the plants.

As a result of two weeks of cool wet weather (starting 3 weeks ago), most of the tomato plants have reverted to flowering again instead of maturing fruit. SO, I have lots of new flowers on the top of the plants (Burpee's especially) and I have lots of tomatoes getting larger, but nothing ripening. What seems to happen once they do ripen is they are just too plump, and they are cracking. So, I am going to play around with taking them off the vine earlier, and trying to water a bit less (back to every 3rd day) and see if I can ride the coming warm streak (next 10 days) into some more ripening.

It may be a lost cause, but I am going to try anyway.

Cool Weather, Smaller Harvests, and Phase I of garden 2010

Ok, so I have been posting EVERY picture of the produce anymore. It was getting to the point of absurdity. This was the harvest from Wed 8/26. Since then I have been to the garden three more times and gotten similar amounts of produce. I figure since we have moved past 2000 individual pieces of produce, it was time to stop counting and just say that it was worth the money spent to grow my own vegetables.

Also, I am really unsure how many more tomatoes are going to come out of the garden. There is lots of green fruit growth in there, but the maturation process seems to have been stunted by the cool wet weather we have been having. I am actually seeing some new blooms lower on the plant, and I almost wonder if these plants have shifted gears, and are trying for new growth instead of ripening. The maturation is generally associated with warmer weather, and we have been woefully short of that over the past few weeks. It is supposed to warm up as the week goes on, so it will be interesting to see how quickly the ripening picks back up, or if it stagnates. I guess we could either have a large amount more tomatoes, or we could be done. Either way, I will live....


This is funny. The blueberry plant that had five blooms shortly after I planted it really never seemed to fully ripen. Well, it was pretty close to the edge of the Juliets, and as they got out of control, the blueberry plant eventually got swallowed up by the tomato plant. I was out in the garden yesterday working through the messy corner where the Juliets mesh with the one Heirloom and I pulled the plant back to find....One lone blueberry, fully ripe and ready to eat. Who knows how long it was actually in there, but it looked great, and Jen said it tasted good as well.


The great news is the bell peppers are amazing. They are incredibly sweet and firm if left on the plant long enough to ripen. Also, since I have taken down the broccoli, the southern most row of peppers have seemed to really go nuts, the peppers are HUGE. I find it very interesting that if you take these peppers off the vine when they are green, they never really change colors. However, if they are halfway or more to their pre-determined color, they will ripen very quickly once taken off the plant.


Quick shot of the garden without broccoli. Things seem much healthier with all of the peppers since they have stopped obscuring them.


Ok. Here is where it starts. Garden 2010. Its gonna be a whole different attitude. That big blob of brown there is where the cement parking pad used to be until I had it removed about 2 weeks ago. The plan is to remove ALL of the grass in the entire backyard, and turn the whole space into a garden. I think this will essentially be 5 times the size of the current garden. You might ask yourself why? Why Dave? Well, the answer is that this year was my testing ground both for the viability of the soil as well as my accord/discord with gardening. Well, I like gardening, and the soil seems to be :) SO, the goal will be to plant a very diverse (and well spaced) garden next year with many different types of vegetables, and some fruit that actually fruits :)

I started taking the grass off part of the yard over the weekend, and its going to take me most of the fall to get this done. My plan is to take the grass off, rototill everything, have some dirt brought in to fill the low spot where water collects, and to cover the gravel area where the cement was, and then rototill again adding peat etc to the mix.

I will update as things get closer to showing any sort of progress, as of right now, you cant even tell I did anything.

Monsoon Season

The rain just never seems to stop.....EVER. It has been raining off and on (and pretty hard) for close to 48hrs, and frankly I am getting sick of it. The concern is that at this point the Burpee's are going to start splitting because they just cant help themselves from taking big gulps of the rain water. Yikes.

Rain or shine, I am going to have to get out there tonite at some point and get some of the more ripe Burpee's off the vine to keep them from splitting when I might normally let them go.

We'll see how it goes.

Two more big hauls and Peppers Ripening

This is actually only the first of two shots from the harvest today. I am not going to post the second one only because its mainly Juliets, and there have been plenty of pictures of those. In all, there are:

84 Jalepenos
293 LaRoma's
288 Juliet's
59 Big Boys
1 Orange Pepper : )

All in all it took my dad and I the better part of an hour to get these out of the garden. The LaRoma's specifically seem to close down as they grow, and you have to almost reach up the plant inside the cage to get them. Because these are cooking tomatoes, I have been looking to find a use for them. Besides giving them to a friends Italian Dry Cleaner, most of these will be going to the church connected to Nora's new school as a food donation. I am not going to end up doing anything with these, so they might as well be put to good use.


This is from Tuesday night. I picked tomatoes in the rain for about an hour or so, and came up with this haul. This is 315 Juliet's, and 53 Burpees. That includes the beast of a tomato on the bottom left side of the Burpee's. That tomato has to be more then a pound. Its a monstrous piece of fruit. I immediately bagged most of the these and handed them out to friends and family.


Orange Peppers!!! I have to say, its taken an TON of patience to let these peppers mature the way they have. It takes a frickin long time for these peppers to mature to the point they actually start changing colors. Crazy enough, they are all starting to turn now. We are going to have a whole lot of orange and red peppers, and I am really looking forward to it.


And....here is an orange pepper. The only one that really deserved to be taken off. This one is about 90% orangish-yellow. I plan on cutting this up tomorrow to see how sweet it is. I have high hopes as these were pretty darn good as green peppers :).


And then there is the broccoli. My only failure as a gardener to this point. The broccoli just never came out of flowering mode. From what I have read, its seems to be the cool wet weather has fooled this plant into thinking its still spring, and therefore it still flowering. It literally has been flowering for 3.5 months. I am going to be ripping this out tomorrow as its not going to go anywhere, and its starting to encroaching on the row of peppers next to it with late day sun. I figure there is no reason to deprive the peppers in any way for something that isnt going to produce. If you dont get it done, you are out :)

We're Gonna Need A Bigger Table

This picture is from Monday 8/10. I had to head to Seattle, and Nora and I went out to the garden before I left. This was the biggest single harvest to date (until Friday). The tally on this harvest is 315 Juliets, 11 Burpee, 4 Heirloom, 20 La Roma, and 11 Jalapeno's. An absolute massive amount of tomatoes.


This is Friday 8/14. Just a ridiculous volume of tomatoes. I was out of town for almost the whole week, and as a result the garden didnt get any water, and it was quite hot and dry. This clearly kicked the Burpee's into high gear as you can see a lot of them on the right. The tally here is 426 Juliet's, 45 La Roma's, 36 Burpee's, and 22 Jalapenos (not pictured). These barely fit on the table. Several of the Burpee's on the right are near two pounds (just based on holding it).


I just love how some of the tomatoes slowly turn color closer to the top. This is a close-up of the top of one of the Burpees as its turning. If you click on the picture, you can see the color variation pretty well. Most of the tomatoes seem to do this at the top, but this one seemed to be a bit more overt then most.


The other fun thing about picking tomatoes lately has been seen all of the "aberrations" from the normal tomato. As you can see, this tomato happens to have a small growth coming out of the top. This is legitimate tomato and tasted pretty good : ). I have seen some that have growths like this, some that are grown together, and others that are just mis-shaped.

Some of the peppers are finally starting to change color. I am going to get some pictures this week and post them.

Introducing Burpee's, La Roma's, and Hints of Malady

200 plus tomatoes!! The basket that I am using to collect these vegetables each time I go to the garden has started to be full when I am finished. So here we have 9 Green peppers, 215 Juliets, 3 Burpee's, 8 heirlooms, and 3 La Roma's. More on the first Burpees and La Roma's below.


This is the La Roma tomato on the right. The La Roma tomato is known as a "paste tomato." I didnt quite understand what this meant until I pulled the first ripe one off the vine. This tomato is so light. I couldnt believe how light it was. I would venture to guess that if weighed, one of the Juliet's, which are half the size, would weigh as much or more as a La Roma. Essentially, there is little to no juice to the tomato.

Its going to be interesting finding a use for these. I think we may be making some tomato paste.


This is the Big Boy or Burpee tomato. This is a medium sized tomato compared to what I am seeing growing on the plants right now. The quarter doesnt do a very good job of giving you the scale, but I would be this tomato weighs over a pound. I ended up cutting this tomato up on Saturday night for a sandwich, and let me tell you, it was a good tomato. Nice and juicy, and fairly firm. This was the tomato that I was most worried about, as its easy to get dry, or mealy tomatoes from this breed.



I have seen a few spate instances of maladies in some of the tomatoes. This is whats called cracking in tomatoes. Generally this happens when the tomato is left on the vine too long and becomes over-ripe. I am not sure that is the case here, but its very possible that because this tomato was so low on the vine that it cracked due to the breed being very juicy. The heirlooms are pretty much done with the exception of a few, so we will see if the trend continues.


This is a little more disconcerting. It seems that there are a few La Roma's with this problem in the garden. I spent a considerable amount of time on the web researching this, and the best I can come up with is that this is the result of a Tomato Fruitworm. I have not been able to find an exact match for this look (as it seems to look on all of the afflicted fruits) but it seems to fit the general description of "boring" into the fruit. For now I am leaving it be as it seems to be afflicting a scant amount of the fruit. However, if it gets worse, I will have to take action.

I have been seen a bit of Tomato Blossom End Rot in a few of the Burpee's, but this is to be expected with a large volume of tomatoes in such a dense area. There are going to be spots that just dont dry out right as the flowers slowly converts to fruit.

I had a HUGE harvest on Monday with the girls, but am out of town until Friday and cannot post. By then I will have gotten another large one. I will update then.

Bushels O Produce

I decided to look at the Jalapeños Wednesday night after I read about the way to tell if they are ripe or not. Well, it turns out that 36 of them were ripe :) So I put on a pair of rubber gloves to protect myself from the oils which can burn, and clipped those babies off.

I also took only the absolutely ripest tomatoes off the plants as well. I have decided to let them go as long as I can since I am giving a majority of them to friends and neighbors. This way we dont waste any that don't mature quite right off the vine.


This is just a closeup of some of the Jalapeños that I picked. I took a bunch more black and whites of them as well. There is something cool about the sheen and reflection of light off the smooth peppers, but they come out looking really amazing. I will have to do an abstract day on the blog :)


The Big Boy's are starting to mature. As I was assuming, they take their time. This shot was taken Monday, and the tomato on the right is still not fully ripe. I am guessing maybe Sunday/Monday before I will be able to pick this baby. There are a few more coming too, the onslaught is about to commence.


I am still trying to get a good shot of the mess in the northeast corner of the garden where the Heirloom and the Juliet's are enmeshed, but I havent gotten a good one. This is the best shot I have. The only thing you can really tell is there isnt much to be discerned.... i.e. its a mess.

More harvesting today/tomorrow/sunday, I will update over the weekend at some point with numbers, and maybe a new dollar/cost/average.

Jalapeño and Juliet

127!! Thats how many Juliet tomatoe's Nora and I pulled out of the garden yesterday afternoon. Once again, we have a bunch more that are right there and looking to be picked in the coming days. They are ripening very quickly, and I am actually having a bit of trouble keeping up. To date I have really only lost two tomatoes to being over-ripe. I think thats pretty good, and I think its unrealistic to think that will be the max of it.


The first Jalapeño! I was actually contemplating taking 10-15 of the bigger ones off while they are green, as suggesting by several sources. While I was looking at them and decided where I was going to cut off I notice one way down on the bottom that was red. Pretty cool looking if I do say so myself. Generally its not great to leave the Jalapeños on the plant this long as they are only good for a few days, but if you plan on eating them right away, red is the hottest you can get this pepper.

Upcoming is pics of the future garden layout, and the nest of tomatoes.

New Perspective

This is the scene Saturday morning after Nora and I made a trip to the garden. There are 122 vegetables here (actually 121 and a strawberry). Whats crazier, is that I left some on the vine that were marginal, and could easily have been picked yesterday. Crazier then that is that this is off of 8 plants, where there are 16 more plants producing the same volume (taking in size consideration) of tomato.

I will be out there Monday night, and I fully expect to be taking at least 100 more tomatoes off the plants. Most of the above tomatoes are Juliets, with a few Heirlooms mixed in.


Its funny, this is 49 above, and it seems like nothing compared to the 122 up top. A quarter also worked for perspective in all of the photos to this point, but I thought the only way to get a good idea on perspective was to put a quarter AND Nora in the photo.

I havent worked out the numbers on the dollar cost average yet, but I will this week. Its dropping. Fast.

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.....