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!!

Fruits of Thy Labor

Here it is, the very first harvest of the new garden. I mistakenly forgot to put something next to this strawberry for scale, but lets just say that if there was a dime on the table next to this strawberry, it would be bigger : ) However, it did not stop us from each taking a little bite out of it to get a small taste of whats to come. Guess what? It tasted like a strawberry.


A little surprise when I went to the garden last night. There was a pretty sizable bell pepper hiding in the middle of this pepper plant. It seems as thought the bell pepper plants have turned the corner in the last two weeks as things have warmed up. Most of the plants in the main garden have doubled in size in that time. Whats more interesting is finding the way the fruit grows out of the flowers. You can see above that the bell pepper seems to somewhat "absorb" the flower that it grows out of. This is contrasted against the tomato where the flower seems to stay at the bottom of the growing fruit until it dies and falls off......


See that, thats a ripening strawberry without a bit out of it!! That's because of the lovely bird netting that I put over the plants to protect the. You can see the netting in the picture above. This netting is designed to be draped over fruit trees to keep birds from getting to apples, oranges, etc. It is working very well for the strawberries so far. I plan to try and pick this strawberry today or tomorrow.


My sister found this tomato the other day. It was hiding under the mass of tomato plant where this Czech heirloom has intertwined with the Juliet that is right next to it. The original spacing requirements on this were 18" apart; I think I could have put them 36" apart and they would still be growing together. There are three or four tomatoes on the bottom of this plant that are ripening quickly, and I anticipate we will be eating this one by the weekend.


This is just a pretty picture. This is the same Czech Heirloom as pictured above, but I was trying to get some of the "viney-ness" of this plant compared to the very tall Juliet and Burpee plants. This plant seems to be spidering out all over the edge of the garden. I am very glad this was in the corner, or I would be in a lot of trouble with it growing into every other plant I have.