So I went out to the garden to check on just how much of a disaster it is (and it is), and discovered a double handful of ripe Black Plum tomatoes.
I'd expected the tomatoes to be struggling, as I still haven't cleared the tall weeds that are near them. But they seem to be thriving on the neglect. Two of the cages appear to have leaf spot, but also have healthy new growth. So now that I've sprayed for the fungus they should recover nicely.
Although the plants got in the ground late, this is about normal for first pickings for me. In a week or two I may be wondering why I planted so many. I will probably dry some and see if I ever make use of them. And put up some plain sauce -- I normally do a seasoned pasta sauce with meat, but have lots on the shelves.
I also want to experiment with some small batches of ketchup. I bought a bottle months ago and it is so sweet that I can't use it.
Nothing yet for the beans or cucumbers, except for returning rogue vines to the appropriate cages. Lots of cucumber blossoms, though. And a couple finger-sized fruit. (Probably more hiding, but I didn't look long.)
Some how it seems that tomatoes all want to start getting ripe about the same time for me
I start some seeds for about 4 plants almost a month eairly than the others. When I transplant them all abot the same time, it seems that they all start putting out ripe tomatoes within a few days of each other.
This year it was 2 early girls and 2 celeberties. They may have put out some sooner, but a skunk got the ones on the bottom. I think it was a skunk as that is what I caught in my trap I put out after the tomaotes started getting gone and all the leaves were eaten off my couple of cucumber plants. First one of those I have seen around here.
Same for me, but the blame is likely my own. These (only 6 plants for once) are all traditional sauce varieties. You want those to gang up (usually). More for the large pot.
If only I could learn how to get the relish cucumbers to do the same.
Ahh, Celebrity was my gateway tomato. We spent about 15-20 happy years together. I may plant again next year. Made good sandwiches.
Then I wanted big batches of slow-cooked pasta sauce. Because cooking down the sauce for a single lasagne took way too long. So may as well cook sauce for 20 lasagnes and pressure-can the lot.
This year, I have experimental "grape" tomatoes and "currant" tomatoes planted in an attempt to be subversive. Outside my pasta sauce, I am the only one in the family who will eat tomatoes.
I'm hoping that if I plant the nasty sweet kind, I can lure in the grandkids. "You like grapes, why not try cherries . . . and then plums."
For a good number of years my grandson starting about age 4 loved the small cherrie type tomatoes. He would eat them like candy maybe 6 to10 at a time. I planted the Reponsal ( misspelled it) type. Those things produced like mad and the vines grew out the top of a 6 foot cage and to the side about 3 or 4 feet.
it's been such a strange year this season that i'm glad to see anything on the tomato plants at all. it will be two weeks or longer yet before we start seeing ripening. disease pressure here also is starting off. i won't spray or pull leaves off or mulch, i've tried all those approaches and it makes no sense for me to bother. the plants all end up looking bad by the end of the season but they've got fruits and we get results enough and that is fine for me. i don't want to use fungicides in general because all you are really doing is selecting for fungi that can survive being poisoned and that's not a good thing. the best soil community creatures for dealing with fungi are worms as they are bacteria factories and the bacteria and fungi have been in competition for millions of years. i vastly prefer to let them keep sorting it out. :)
i hope for resistant plants enough instead and in past years we've had some that have done better than other years. the past two years the plants weren't as resistant as the plants we previously (all are beefsteak varieties).
we had flowers pretty quickly after the plants went in the ground but i removed the first flowers as those tomatoes are usually very hard to pick off the plants as they are so wedged in the branches and the tomato cages. this is the first time in many years i did that just to see if it makes that much of a difference. the plants are putting on some fruits now so the bees have been doing their thing. i see some of the native bees working those flowers, but also some good rains will ding the flowers enough to get them to set fruits. and in a pinch if it is hot and dry i'll give the plants a good watering as we have to keep some water on the clay soil here or it will start cracking and it puts too much stress on the plants (which leads to BER later).
it's raining now so it's all working out ok so far.
cucumbers here were always productive and ended up having more than we could eat or give away. we decided to not grow any this year at all as we needed the space for other things.
beans i need to pick and cook some up, but i'm not picking in the rain. Monday it is.
the chipmunks got most of my pea seed harvest. they hadn't bothered these peas at all when i planted them last year so i wasn't thinking i had to keep that close an eye on them and i had a nice crop of seeds drying down on the plants. had i known i could have picked the pods a few weeks ago and dried them inside where it is safer... :( ah, well, learned that lesson...
i was really disappointed the other day when i went to pick some fresh pods for eating and saw all the damage of the little boogers eating all the seeds out of the pods and leaving all those pods behind. i salvaged what i could and got enough seeds to dry down all the way and so i can replant for next year but i was really looking forwards to having enough seeds to share with other people. i really like these peas -- so do the critters. now that the pea pods and seeds are gone to tempt them i hope they don't switch over to the beans, but i'll have to keep an eye on things and have the air rifle handy. i've kept the population down to a reasonable size this year so this caught me by surprise. always sumpthin'... :) we've had moles running all over this year under the mulch and gravel and it's hard to trap those when you don't really have any open garden spaces nearby that they've gone into.
My trouble with cucumbers is that I don't get a lot at one time. The primary goal is relish, so I need enough for a batch while they are still young and firm. Since I haven't managed that, I get watery relish.
I'm hoping I have enough planted this year.
Ten years ago it was rare for me to see a chipmunk. Now there are at least two burrows I know of in our yard, and I see them all over the neigborhood. As yet they haven't caused me troubles, so I still think they are cute.
And they give the cats something to watch through the windows.
two years ago we had 15 cucumber plants. i put up about 100 quarts of dill pickles and gave away many hundreds of pounds of cucumbers, i also did make some sweet pickles because Mom uses those in a few recipes of hers. last year we had 4 cucumber plants and that was even too many so this year we just decided to give them a pass and use the space for other things instead.
we have semi-feral or neighbor's cats that come through for hunting. i rarely see them leaving without something in their mouth.
some years ago it was way too busy around here with chipmunks running all over the place so we set up traps for them which really worked. within a few weeks i'd trapped over 50 of them. they will always be around but i don't want that many - i'd never get a strawberry if i had that many raiding the patch.
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