Toe-may-toe-, Toe-ma-toe

Ah, tomatoes. The most popular garden endeavor. I am not immune, and I am expecting...

 

These are Sungold on a plant still hanging on to life from last fall. Yes, this orange color means they are ripe :) Very sweet and tangy itty bitty fruits.

 

The Mexico Midget should be the first of my 2011 tomatoes to ripen... I am anxiously awaiting these red cherry tomatoes. (and crossing my fingers they really are as prolific as reported)

This why little naked guy is a Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red, Tomatofest says it will be "robust not for sissies bold, tomatoey flavors, with a firm, juicy flesh"

Amy's Sugar Gem looks like she's gonna be a good producer already! From Tomatofest: "sweet flavor and the tiny light gold sparkles in the red skin"

And finally miss Brandywine. Yet to set any fruit, but this is only the first flower cluster - I have high hopes for this summer. Although it may be too cold at night for them to set yet. It was very frustrating to coddle a rooted sucker off a Brandywine last fall all through winter checking daily for new fruit - only to learn they have a much higher temperature minimum to set fruit than cherry tomatoes :Z

Oh my! I forgot about my Purple Calabash! I am a bad green mother :'( I know she's flowering... I can't say for sure off the top of my head if she is setting fruit....

Next time... worms :)

LOTB Community Container Garden Update 1

I have been wanting to post about my green children participating in the LOTB Community Container Garden project. Fern came up with the idea of selecting a small variety of plants that can be grown in containers in many climates for her readers to give a try. She figured it'd be cool for many people to be able to give input on the same plants to help each other. She also set up a forum for participants to have one central place to post about it.

So out of the five varieties chosen I am growing 3 because I already had seeds for two and I was excited to hear about the other. I already had my tomatoes and cucs picked out for the year.

Here's how my green babies were doing on April 12, about a month after sowing:

 sunflower Sunspot

This was doing so well I had already potted it in a plastic 12" pot I found somewhere

 basil Purple Petra

 garlic chives

On April 22 I planted another of the Sunspots in one of my tompots from last year with some lettuce Marvel of Four Seasons for contrast. I also tucked in a cambridge blue lobelia that had volunteered in another pot.

On April 29 I stopped by home for lunch and to my horror...

 I have no idea what happened

My best guess is it just got so hot that day it cooked :;(

At least it's two sisters have been flourishing. Here's the tompot one on May 2:

Incidentally, somehow during the month of April I managed to grow a very nice set of nails despite all my mucking about without garden gloves... They've since been broken, cracked, snagged, ragged, clipped & etc.

May 8th I was finally able to transplant the garlic chives into the Utility Rack Planter and I put a basil in with my tomato Mexico Midget.

 

Clint Eastwood is bending to greet them hehehe...

 btw, that 13" pot was $6.99 at Ikea..*hinthint*

 the tompotted sunflower and it's lettuce entourage seem happy

the fudog to the bottom right was a Goodwill find :)

  

it spends its days taunting me with the promise of flowers to come...

There is another sunflower I've left in a 1 gal pot because I can't decide another spot to put it right now. I will also probably grow some more the rest of spring through fall.

Oh, and instead of thinning the basil seedlings I managed to carefully separate them so I now have 5 more transplants. I am going to pot a couple of them and if anyone in the LA area would like the others lemme know...

So as of today the sunflowers have still not yet bloomed :( The anticipation is making me antsy :/ I'm hoping by this weekend the chives will be doing well enough I can snip some to put in a meal. I don't think I'll glean anything off the basil for a few more weeks.

And that's it, we're all caught up on my Community Container Garden :) Good luck to everyone else participating too!

Possible Tomato Comparison Experiment

I read in Territorial's catalog recently that they are trying a technique new to North America of grafted tomatos plants, like you would graft trees. A delicious tomato variety is grafted onto the roof of a different vigorous and disease-resistant tomato rootstock. One of the coolest things about it is you can purchase a plant with a single graft (one variety) and they also have double grafted with two varieties on one plant! Now that's a space maximizer.

I got a reminder about it in an email update yesterday and I'm serioulsy considering order one or two to try it out. Of course it begs the question - Will one of these really grow better than a normal one I grow from seed? So of course now I need to start some Brandywines from seed so they'll be transplant ready by the time a grafted Brandywine arrives and can be planted near each other to get the same growing conditions and....

Uh oh. I think I'm gonna go a little mad scientist this year...

Cloning Your Tomato Plant

Inspired by the Urban Organic Gardener, and continuing in the mad gardenist vein, I'm cloning a tomato plant! MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I'd forgotten you can root tomato suckers, preferably the strong ones that you've missed pruning for a few weeks. This is also a way to get a FREE tomato plant and extend your harvest :) Here I'm rooting a Yellow Pear sucker... I think.... I'm pretty sure... I should've labelled the darn thing :/

To root suckers: pick a good one :9 One that looks fairly thick and strong, growing good looking leaves. Cut it from the parent plant as long as possible, removed the lower 2 or 3 leaf branches (NOT all of them, it will still need to photosynthesize). If it's already got flower/fruit clusters on it, snip them off so they don't divert energy from growing a root system. Place the sucker in water as deep as you can, without getting any leaves underwater. The stem will begin sprouting roots within a few days, it's cool to look at. make sure to keep the water as fresh as you can, change it every couple of days at least so it doesn't stagnate. After it's grown several new roots a couple inches long it can be transplanted. Put it as deep as you can into it's new soil, removing more leaf branches if they're going to be below the soil level. Any extra stem that is buried will also grow roots and create a stronger root system. Keep the soil moist of course, be prepared to baby the plant a few days until it's acclimated to its new home.

I've been told you can also dip suckers in rooting serum which is a hormone to super-stimulate new root growth and often used for woody cuttings like herbs, it will give the plant an extra boost to sprout roots more quickly. Never tried it myself, tomato suckers root well enough on their own that I don't feel like spending the $$ on it.

Mutant Tomato Plant?

I have discovered a second mutant in my garden. The first was a sunflower that was all leaves. Seriously, the stem terminated with a weird orangey smooth spot and no flower bud ever formed while it's sibling next to it was covered in blooms. o.O I removed that one last weekend.

So the other day I was tending to green children when I noticed a few very long suckers on my Yellow Pear tomatos and was very confused. I check them all for suckers regularly and couldn't believe I'd missed them for so long when I realized...these were no ordinary suckers.

These freakazoids were growing from the end of a flower/fruit branch instead of in the joint of a leaf branch and the main stem! O.O?! I was actually a bit dumbfounded for a few minutes while I looked them over closely. Yes, they were suckers, growing more stem with new flower and leaf branches and a growing tip. Some of the new flower branches (like the one I'm holding in the pic) were starting to set fruit. Whoa.

After considering a while I finally nipped the growing tips of 2 of these suckers. I'm allowing the third to continue growing - I just have to see what the it does. I've checked  few forums and articles on this variety of tomato and haven't found any mention of this happening. So have I a true mutant here? That would actually be pretty cool...

Tomato Wilt - Year 2!

Last year each of my tomato plants eventually got some form of wilt or blight. And despite using sparkling new soil from the nursery and disinfecting each pot - it's baaaaaaack!

So far it's positively in my first three tomato plants - two Jelly Beans and a Brandywine. I've suspected it for weeks but didn't want to admit it, but the Brandywine got so bad it was time to put it down :( And not a single tomato did it produce.... The Jelly Beans however have tons of tomatos on them, they seem to be stronger at fighting the wilt though I know they probly only have another couple of months. It is very likely my stupid fault because I added extra to raise the soil level in the pots a couple weeks after planting...and I think I just re-used some soil from another pot I was re-planting. *doh* No disinfecting at all....

I also suspect my Yellow Pear tomatos in their humungo pot are catching some sort of wilt but I don't know how as I am 100% sure they got sparkling new soil and did NOT get re-used soil.... I must watch them carefully....

Anyway, I had to very carefully remove the fallen tomato plant to not disturb it's mates in there...

mmmm.. Carrot Scarlet Nantes and Basil Purple Petra....

At least a couple of carrots were ready as well (and stunted from tomato roots of course).

And there's the new squash baby. It's a mini-scalloped type... I can't recall the exact variety at the moment. Anyway, it should do fine in a container this size. I've another one in a similar sized container as well. Hope I get many yummy squashes!

This Morning

This morning in my world...

The Sweet Peas are a-bloomin'

The Mums are quite confused as to the season o.O

Alaska Nasturtium #1 is putting on foliage and getting decked out :)

Despite never going into proper container the Quinoa will soon be ready for harvest!

(currently growing in soymilk and ice cream cartons)

Allowing some Broccoli and Radishes to go to bolt and go to seed has proven highly effective at attracting pollinators, it looks as if most (if not all) the tomato blossoms have been pollinated!

This Brandywine's tomatos should contrast nicely with its yellow cage :)

(aluminum cage painted with Rust-o-leum's Painter's Touch hint hint)

And this corral/orange cage should look nice with the Yellow Pear tomatos as well <3

...that's it for today!

Tomato Tubs Update

The other day I wandered into Pier 1 to look at their clearance items and immediatelly noticed this:

They come in coral red or green (pinkish color in the pic is from bad lighting) and are going for $69.95. Whoa. That's a lot of dough to spend for a cool container - though to be fair I think it's meant to be used as a cold drink tub and stand for entertaining. Still a lot of dough and honestly about $50 of that is just for the metal stand part.

It made me very proud that I was able to make my own very pretty pair of metal tub containers for under $20. Here's an update on how those are growing in:

The above pic is the first of the pots I planted. It has Bradywine tomato, purple basil and Scarlet Nantes carrots. Sadly three of the carrots I transplanted into it died the first week (weather got too hot with the metal tub) but I sowed new seeds in their place and you can see some of seedling coming up. The grass mulch was added after the first carrots died.

This one was the second tub I planted about a week later. It's got a Jelly Bean tomato plant, two cinnamon basils, and I sowed carrots around them all. I think the grass mulch I spread is blocking the seedlings from coming up though...

Soon I'm going to put together a post on all the awesome finds I've gotten from the thrift shops....

Tomato Pot #1

I found a couple big metal tubs at Goodwill a couple months back that I knew would make great containers. They were originally from Target, the type for filling w/ice and beer bottles, and had a funky Christmas green hammered metal finish. Not so nice. I had taken a "before" pic but lost it along with my camera before I could download it. Anyway I was pretty sure they weren't galvanized so I primed it with Rustoleum, picked up a spray can of a lovely aqua blue color, and added white accents with some enamel leftover from another project. Turned out rather nice.

Oh, I put three drainage holes in the bottom before I started painted them so that rust won't work it's way in from them (at least not so quickly).

Anyway, the new containers are almost 2 feet wide so each can hold a small variety of plants unlike the ones I used for tomatoes last year. I've been looking up info about companion planting and decided on basil (Purple Petra) and carrots (Scarlet Nantes) to go with my Brandywine tomato plant. Carrots are supposed to help loosen and aerate the soil for the tomato roots, and basil is supposed to somehow help invigorate tomato. I don't mind if the carrots come out funny shaped from the tomato, it's an experiment anyway since I tried starting them in peat pots to see if they still come out crooked from transplanting. I may also tuck in some purple alyssum once those have grown in well, it attracts hoverflies whose larvae eat aphids. I put the tomato in the back so it wouldn't block the basil from getting sun and I figure once it starts getting height it can be guided toward the center of the cage.

Not bad. For the other container I might try it with marigolds, chives and parsnips. I hope I get to that this  coming weekend. Any other good tomato companion recommendations?