Today in the Garden - Mon 8/31

Only tomatoes today.  I picked the big one I was nervous about.  It weighed just shy of one pound.  A couple of the Romas I picked might not have been ready, but they were sitting on the ground and I didn't want some bug to get to them before I did.

There weren't any beans tonight.  I saw a couple of blossoms, but not many.  I think it's just too cold.  They're not happy, so they're not reproducing.

My peppers are really unhappy.  I just don't seem to do too well with peppers.  Right now I've got 5 pepper plants and 3 peppers, and it looks like that's all I'm going to have.  That's just not right.  Although it does square with my experience with peppers.  The two years prior to this that I planted peppers I got one fruit per plant. 

Next year I'm going to set aside a little pepper bed and coddle the danged things, and see if I can get them to set more than one fruit per plant.  If I can't, that will be the end of peppers in my garden and I'll use the space for something else.  This isn't that big a loss, really.  None of us would really miss them if we didn't have them.  If we got a bumper crop of them we'd end up giving them away, which, while a nice thing to do, doesn't fill up the freezer for the winter.  And that is my goal - to grow enough veg to feed the family year-round. 



FT

Yesterday in the Garden - Saturday, 8/29/09

It's sunny out today, but windy and a bit chilly.  It's 11AM and not yet 60 degrees out.  I didn't spend too long out there weeding this morning.  Bucky the cat came along, as he usually does.  He likes to patrol the garden.  There was a hummingbird in there that wasn't too happy to be sharing the space with us, but he moved on.

I did get some nice stuff out.  Here's today's load.

The cucumbers are really taking off.  There has been a lot of rain recently, I imagined that helped.  I really like the seedless, burpless, soft-skinned nature of these cucumbers.  I don't remember what variety they are - I'm sure the nursery tag is around here somewhere.  They don't have a whole lot of flavor, though.  They're almost too mild.  They miss a bit on the nice, fresh cucumber-y aroma, too.  I think that next year I'll plant some of these and some regular cucumbers, too, and see which I prefer.

The beans are Kentucky Wonder pole beans.  They're slowing down a lot recently.  I think that the cool weather isn't encouraging them to keep setting flowers.  I let the vines get a little too tall.  I'm going to have to get a stool out there to pick the beans or cut off the tops or I'll have some of them getting too mature up there.

Only a couple of tomatoes today, but I got a bunch yesterday.

 I think that I have enough Romas to make some sauce.  And enough cherry tomatoes to make the family happy at Sunday dinner.

I have one big Celebrity tomato that's just about ripe -

He's got to be getting close to a pound.  I  just have to make sure that I get to him before the bugs do. 

From now on, I'm going to start my tomatoes myself instead of buying plants.  This year I started some, but I was inconsistent with the grow lights and they got to be kind of spindly.  I didn't think that they were going to do very well, so I bought some plants, too.  The plants that I started are doing better than those I bought.  Big, fat healthy stems, and they're setting lots of fruit.  Next spring I'll start all my own plants, but I'm going to have a timer on the lights so my seedlings should do better.

FT