Tomato cage Extensions.

Some of the tomato plants were nine feet tall in eight foot cages, and  we have approximately 3 more months of growing season left. So I added another eight foot cage on top of the original cages. I think potentially the plants might hit 15 feet. I am also hoping that we don't get any wind storms. I just started picking ripe Tomatoes last week. With indeterminate Tomatoes grown under good conditions , I don't know what you can do but keep going up. There is a certain correlation between size of plant and volume of Tomatoes produced. The plants are getting about ten gallons per day per plant. It has been really hot, 103 yesterday, but they keep growing. I'm hoping for it to cool off so they can start setting fruit again.

My Venezuelan corn July 26th.

Some of the corn is doing good, seeing how it has never had rain. I have watered it a little bit several times. Some is shriveling up and dying. This is the worst year to garden since 1956. We have had less than an inch of rain since may.This corn is no till, it is growing in a place where it has been mulched for three seasons with nothing planted. It is pure clay filled with rocks, you can't even dig in it.

Here is a shot of my vertical watermelon and muskmelon trellis.

Here you can see my first Sugar Baby Watermelon of the year. I took some netting and made a sling for it. I have Sugar Baby and Yellow Doll. I have spotted about 7 watermelons growing. The muskmelons are just setting. The melons don't seem to be really good climbers so I tie the runners with string until the tendrils take hold. I haven't grown them vertically before but they are really taking off and it looks like a good idea so far. I haven't watered these plants and it has basically never rained since the day I transplanted them. The drought doesn't seem to phase them.

Trumpet Zucchini Rampicante and trellis

I planted one of these Trumpet Squash/Zucchini and picked my first one just yesterday. I built a trellis that you can see to the left of it out of wire fencing and scrap lumber. It is also starting to spread to the right on top of my cucumber trellis. It has set five fruit so far. It has been really hot 95-100 for a week and it looks like it is shutting down blossoming for a while.

Surviving the heatwave.-My temporary shading for my tomato plants.

All this week it has been in the 90s and the next three days 100 degrees. I don't know if shading helps, but I'm thinking it  should. I don't expect them to set fruit but I am hoping they keep growing. I am watering each tower about 5 gallons of water a day.

Here are my no till Venezuelan Corn plants.

Two years ago this was a steep hillside covered in weeds, and wild onions. I smothered them out with cardboard and have mulched continuously with leaves and straw. The soil was or is rocks and clay, but it finally looked plantable, so I pulled the leaves aside and planted the corn and covered them up again with leaves. I have been watering them a little with manure tea.

Blanching my Blue Solaise Leeks.

I mixed up my Mammoth Pot leeks and Blue Solaise Leeks in the hot bed and I am just now figuring out which is which. I put these 12 inch drainage tiles on to blanch them just this morning. I've never done this before.

Garden update for June 22nd

I have a few peppers coming along.

I have two Moon and Stars Watermelon plants, which as I understand it will become very large plants covering lots of ground.

These are my Florida Speckled Lima Beans. As soon as the soil temperature hit 70 degrees they began to sprout and grow. Next year I will sprout them in the hot bed. I think I could gain a couple of weeks with them. They had some slugs on them this morning so I blasted them with Diatomaceous Earth.

I have about 70 different Cole plants potted up that I plan to transplant in a few days. I realized that taking them directly from the hot bed to the garden was causing a lot of shock. So I put these in little Dixie cups. As soon as they show a little growth in they shall go. I have some Broccoli Romanesco that I am quite interested in.

This picture shows some of my Venezuelan corn in with my Sugar Baby and Yellow Doll Watermelons.

It looks like the tomatoes have hit the 5 foot mark. They are growing an inch and a half per day. I am watering them daily.

The different varieties are all inter-planted so it will be a surprise when they ripen. It looks like the herbicide damage is spreading uphill. I think maybe the root systems are inter twined and some bad stuff is spreading. I hope it stops. The first green tomatoes showed up about June 10th.

I took the Celery collars off this morning and they go back on tomorrow. So they got a little sun today.

Ground Cherry plant. Physalis Pruinosa

I love to eat Ground Cherries. In Colombia they sell them on the street and in the grocery stores. They call them Uchuva. I never knew what they were, but one day I figured them out and am growing them in my garden. I bought the seeds on Ebay, and are an unnamed variety. After they had been planted a few days wood chucks (evil demons) ate them to the ground, three succumbed but eight have survived and are finally making a comeback. I saw the first flower today, and am kind of excited. They taste almost like little oranges. I don't know too much about them, but am watering them daily and have them mulched as well.

I am seed saving with these lettuces.

These lettuces survived the winter so I am letting them cross breed and produce some kind of a hybrid. They were both leaf lettuces and one was red tinged. I am looking forward to planting them this fall and see what I end up with, They are quite slow growing and don't seem to be in any hurry to do their thing.

Seed Saving Swiss Chard

I had one Swiss Chard plant survive the winter, and I have let it go to seed so I can harvest it. I have developed an addiction to this plant. I've already cut this years plants twice and it is almost ready again. It is a great plant to have in the garden, it grows back as long as you just cut the leaves. The insects and heat don't bother it and it will produce into November.

I am growing one plant of Rampicante Zucchini this year.

I am interested in this variety of zucchini because it is supposed to be prolific, resistant to the wilt that kills regular zucchini, can also be used for winter squash, and has very unusual shapes. Note the curly cue tendril. They grow normal until they latch on to something then they twist and put spring like tension on the plant against the wind to hold it in place. The spring like form would give it some give as well. Quite ingeniously devised by our maker.

A tomato progress picture.

It has been really dry and we have basically not had a real rain for 5 weeks. I read somewhere that the man that set the world record for maximum fruit production watered his plants daily. So that is what I have been doing. He said they should grow about 1 to 1.5 inches per day, and I think mine are. They are somewhere between 3 and 3.5 feet tall and filling in the crw cages nicely. His record was some where around 300 lbs per plant. If they continue their growth they should hit eight feet some time in August. If necessary I plan on putting another 5 foot cage on top of the eight footers to keep the plants going. Last year I never watered once and all the plants over grew the eight foot cages. I was picking really nice tomatoes into October. So my experiment is to see what happens with growth and fruit production if they are never stressed or limited with water availability. I have a 3 inch drainage tube with holes buried underneath the plants and in two or three minutes with the hose the watering is done. The varietals this year are Purple Cherokee, Radiator Charlies Mortgage Lifter, Neve's Azorean,Big Zac, Opalka,Gold medal, and Brandywine Sudduth strain.

Last week I put collars on my celery to blanch and force it to grow taller.

The variety I am growing is Verde Pascal. I really have very little experience growing celery, but it seems to be going well. I am using rosin paper that has not been dyed. A week ago I used for the most part 9x9 squares and a string to hold them on. Also the little bamboo sticks help them grow straight. Some plants had a little rabbit setback but seem to be recovering. I am watering them every day and they are mulched as well, they grew three inches this week. Yesterday on the taller ones I placed 12 inch collars on them. When you take them off you can pluck off yellowed leaves and side shoots. On the really hot days I am covering them with old bed sheets for shade. I grew them from seed and the were started in early March.

I harvested my Grey Griselle French Shallots today.

I pulled 67 bunches of these shallots today. Some of them had as many as 20 shallots per bunch. So I guess I have hundreds and hundreds of theses bulbs.  I am going to try to braid them like garlic and then hang them up to dry. This is my second season growing them. I bought about 20 bulbs a few years ago and now i have all of these. I planted them last fall and they were falling down and cooking in the upper 80 degree temps we've been having. It might rain tonight and it seemed like a step backwards for them to get wet and soggy.

I harvested my Red Janice Garlic yesterday.

Last week something happened to my Garlic. I thought an animal had gotten into it and knocked it down to the ground. Really what happened is it was ripe, and when soft neck garlic is ripe it falls over. So  I picked about 80 nice heads. The variety is Red Janice Garlic.  

Chioggia Beets, and Swiss Chard

I planted these out from my hotbed about a month ago. I am by far having my best Beet experience with these transplants, and really think it's the way to go. Its been sunny, warm around 80 degrees and dry, and I think they really like a little shade. The only plants I have direct sown this year are Pole Beans, and Corn.

Seed Saving Bloomsdales Spinach.

I have two or three male plants, and two or three female plants, that I am using to produce seed. The male plants have the flowers, and produce tons of pollen. If you shake the plants a big cloud of pollen dust is produced. The female plants which are the keepers, don't have the flower spikes. Next year I wont be so hasty to pull my plants, because the leaves are still quite edible and good quality, even at this stage, and have no objectionable flavor.

Seed Saving from Purple Top Turnip

I saved a few plants from last falls Turnips to go to seed. They look like they would go on all summer. When I have a good bunch of pods to dry I'm going to pull it out. Seeds can be so expensive, I decided to try to start producing some of my own seed.

This years peppers- Tri Color Mini Belle, Chimayo, Carmen, and Melrose.

I sowed my pepper seeds in my hotbed about march 1st. It was when we had daytime temps in the 30's and 40's. I thought at the time maybe none would sprout. But they did great, and last week I transplanted about 45 plants into their bed. Next year I think I will separate them and transplant them once in the hotbed, prior to planting out. I took a knife and ran it down between the plants a few days before setting them out, but they suffered a little that way. I have transplanted hundreds of plants from the hotbed, and literally have had maybe ten that didn't survive. After the annual  summer rain and wind storm comes, and blows the peppers over sideways I've always thought that the next year I need to stake the plants. But I've never done it until now. I used finger jointed wooden lathe. we'll see what happens. You can also so my homemade shade tunnel with some burlap I had laying around. In time I plan on purchasing a large quantity of 40% shade cloth, as I'm convinced virtually no plant likes temps greater than 80 degrees and don't need to bake in the summer sun.

I also am showing my double digging and burying manure under the beds. The cooking manure raised the bed temps abut 20 degrees which the plants are loving, however it isn't safe to do so, because of the wonderful new herbicide Clopyralid, which apparently is omnipresent in hay, straw, manure, grass clippings, and finished compost. The good news is it is only potent at  3 parts per billion or greater and that it breaks down in 265 days. Please call somebody to get it banned. 

My Tomato Irrigation System

I dug a trench down the middle of the tomato raised bed, down to the beginning of the subsoil level. Then I laid a three inch vinyl tile with holes in it in the trench, and then covered it back up.I figured out how many gallons of water I need to give it 1.5 inches of water per week. Then I filled a five gallon bucket with water and timed how long it took to fill it. So I figured I need to run my hose about ten minutes a week into the tile.I've never watered tomatoes before, ever, so I'm curious to see if they will produce more or larger tomatoes than usual.

Giant Prague Celeriac

I am really intrigued by this vegetable. I tried growing it last year, by direct seeding it. I think I got maybe 3 plants and one ended up big enough to at least taste. I also was gone three months straight. So I've tried to do it properly this year. I sowed it in my hotbed about March 1st, and thinned ad transplanted it about a month ago, then last week I set out about 35 plants. My tomato beds are about 4 feet wide. So I have some spare space down the side to grow them in. It is a very sunny spot, and has a buried drainage pipe under the full length of the bed. I can put the water hose in the pipe and give the bed the equivalent of two inches of water in about 12 minutes. So as I water my tomatoes I'll water the Celeriac. At this stage it is indistinguishable from celery.

Celery Verde Pascal

I got this seed from Bavicci. I started it in my hotbed about March 1st. I transplanted it in the hotbed about a month ago, and then set it out last week. I grew celery once about 30 years ago, and didn't really have any problems with it. I'm not really sure why it has such a reputation for being difficult to grow. If you don't blanch it it is pretty strongly flavored. I will post some more pictures as summer goes. Hopefully animals will leave it alone. I had an early attack of groundhogs where they ate about 50 plants in three days, and something is rooting and rolling around in my garlic at night.

Colombian Potatoes. Papas Sabanera, and Papas Criollas. Solanum Tuberosum SSP. Andigena

I am experimenting with two varieties of potato that are quite common in Colombia. The Papa Criolla (Creole Potato), and the Papa Sabanera. The apparently are a different sub-species that our common potato here in the U.S. I suspect that they are an indeterminate variety, and don't expect them to set fruit and be ready for harvest untill about November 1st. You can see I built a corral to try to contain them somewhat. I am also growing Dakota Pearl.

Mammoth Pot leeks

This is my first attempt at Pot Leeks. I've never seen one or ate one, So I don't really know what i'm doing with them. More to come later, you can see my homemade shades out of bed linens. I bought the seed in Great Britain. Maybe I'll find out why nobody grows them in the U.S. I planted them about a week ago.