tomatoes – The Beehive

July 31, 2009August 10, 2009

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.

ripening-nectarine

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.

June 20, 2009June 20, 2009

Mulch it Over

It’s been a few weeks since we put our two tomato seedlings and cucumber in the ground, and they seem to be doing pretty well.

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I’ve noticed a few weeds in the bed, though, and I think it’s time to add a little mulch to the top of the soil. Here’s the after picture.

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Although I turned in some rich potting soil when I planted these babies, it seems to have blended in with the hard-as-rock dirt indigenous to our backyard. The mulch certainly makes the top look a bit healthier and uniform. Hopefully it will help the soil to retain moisture longer, and maybe even keep the weeds at bay a little bit by blocking the sunlight.

While I’m at it, I always take a look at the topsy turvy. Still no actual fruit on it, just the blooms, but I wouldn’t have expected anything just yet anyway.

The strawberry pot looks good as well, but alas, some critter has eaten the fruit off of it. I did get to taste one first.

strawberry3

June 13, 2009August 10, 2009

One Tomato Two

We neglected our two tomatoes and burpless cucumber a little bit too long. Although they get regular water, they were getting too big for their little plastic containers, so we found a spot for them and put them in the ground.

Those seedlings are getting a little too big for those plastic pots!

There just happened to be a little patch of earth next to our lower deck that had nothing but weeds in it. I cleared ’em out. I turned the dirt over and mixed in some rich potting soil and in went the seedlings. Looks pretty good, no?

: After

Hopefully this will turn out to be a good spot and they will thrive.

Of course I always check on the topsy-turvy when I’m outside.

topsyturvy3 topsyturvy4

I’m pretty surprised that the main stem is twisting up, rather than growing down as it seems to be in all the example pictures. There are a number of blossoms on it, though. Hopefully we will get lots of tomatoes.

The strawberries are ripening too!

redstrawberry

June 10, 2009June 10, 2009

Summer Days

topsyturvy1

topsyturvy2 I think it’s so strange to arrive home at, say 7:30 and still have plenty of daylight, but it’s a great opportunity to get out in the yard (and weed, what else?), something that would normally have to wait for the weekend. I like keeping an eye on plants as they grow. In this case it’s pretty much limited to the few veggies Mrs. B gave us, since virtually everything else was here when we moved in, and not of our choosing. So I tend the topsy turvey, the tomato seedlings, cucumber, and strawberry pot when I get home.

It’s hard to see when you look at them every day, but when I look back at the pictures I took when I first planted, there has definitely been some growth. There are actually tiny green strawberries on the strawberry plants!

porchplants greenstrawberry1

May 7, 2009June 10, 2009

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Steve’s mom, “Mrs. B,” is a pretty avid gardener. She has raised beds in the backyard with all kinds of different vegetables, –multiple varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, squash, fennel, I don’t even know what else. She starts them all from seed, and actually ends up giving quite a few away to friends and family, as well as donating some to a local charity to sell. I usually get a few different tomatoes and a cucumber, which I’ve grown in my parents’ garden the past few years. This year, Steve and I have our own yard to plant them in!

The catch: the former owner had some interesting landscaping ideas. Both the front and back yard are filled with rose bushes (with a few other types of flowers scattered here and there), and what is not occupied by roses is covered with decorative gravel. In other words, there is nowhere to plant anything without tearing something else out. Which we fully intend to do . . . when we have some free time. For now, though, one of the tomatoes, an heirloom brandywine, was in pretty serious need of repotting, so we grabbed a “Topsy-Turvey” on impulse at Fry’s and hung the brandywine upside down from the trellis in the backyard.

I’m really curious to see how this thing works. The last time I tried a novel gardening gimmick was a complete disaster. It was a raised bed with a special soil mix. Because you start with weed-free soil mix, you were supposed to have no weed problems. Further, the mix was “friable,” so if you over watered it was supposed to flow right through and not hurt your plants. It was supposed to be idiot-proof, but everything died within a couple of weeks. Notably, the items I planted straight into the hard clay soil next to the raised bed flourished.

We still have to figure out what to do with the additional plants Mrs. B gave us, a Burbank slicing tomato, and orange cherry tomato, and a burpless cucumber. They don’t look like they are outgrowing their pots just yet, so we have a little time. She also gave us some strawberries in a strawberry pot, which of course won’t need to be transplanted. I hope we do well with the plants this summer; it would be fun to have some super fresh fruits and veggies straight from our garden.

Two tomato seedlings, a cucumber plant, and a strawberry pot.