Growing Pains

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about our garden. Unfortunately, it is because there is not much good to report.

Our tomatoes look puny. In the past when I’ve planted tomatoes, they grow out of control even if you ignore them! Ours are still small, with thin leaves. The tomatoes are small too. All three plants have fruit on them. The Brandywine (in the topsy turvy) has a whopping three whole tomatoes on it, amazing considering the amount of flowers it had. The largest of the three is starting to turn color, and it is barely the size of a cherry tomato you’d find in the supermarket. There are a good number of tomatoes on the Burbank slicing plant, but they are also small. The largest is also starting to ripen, and it is about the size of an apricot. The orange cherry tomato also has many fruits on it, none ripening yet, and non with a diameter larger than a nickel.

The cucumber is worse off. I was so excited to see little baby cucumbers on it, but each one shriveled up. I did some research and learned this is because they aren’t really baby cucumbers yet, it’s the female flower of the cucumber plant. They have to be pollenated by a male flower in order to grow into cucumbers. Armed with this information, I watched the plant intending to pollenate any new flowers with a small paintbrush. Every time a female flower bloomed, though, there wasn’t a single male flower in sight to pollenate it with, so they continued to shrivel. I doubt we will get a single cucumber off that plant.

The strawberry plants look fine, but we haven’t seen any new berries since the critters ate the first batch that ripened.

The only thing that seems to be doing well is the existing nectarine tree. The fruit is ripening, and I’m sure there are some just waiting to be picked. Maybe there will be enough nice ripe nectarines that we can pick a bunch and share with our parents this weekend.

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