| To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (3424) | 7/11/2021 9:29:01 AM | | From: robert b furman | | | | Hi Bernie,
That's pretty fast work.
My garden has been a 10 year expansion. This year I added a small orchard of 5 Lappin cherry trees, 4 Honeycrisp apples, one Italian plum tree, one Bartlett pear and one Clapp pear tree.
It has really added to my front yard.
New to my tomato plants this year are two tomatillo plants for my green salsa.
I also have changed my cucumber plants to a hybrid from Jungs, and they are currently twice as tall as my garden dancers which were the most productive last year.
It's always nice to see a new seed become the most productive.
Time to go spray and fertilize my tomatoes, they now have small fruit showing up.
Bob |
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| To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (3426) | 7/11/2021 9:25:57 PM | | From: robert b furman | | | | Amen brother Bernie,
I spent the entire day chain sawing boxelders, fertilizing tomatoes and pine trees, and digging out large rocks so I can use them as borders on our perennial flower mulch beds.
Not to mention mowed 4 acres.
I'm beat!
I also sprayed a fungicide on my tomatoes as they now have fruit starting. I also added some Tomato Maker fertilizer, they are a deep green and growing tall!
It is an exciting time in the garden, and I can not be there enough just observing what is growing.
So far it has been a perfect growing season - may it continue.
I feel some salsa coming my way! LOL
Bob |
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| To: robert b furman who wrote (3427) | 7/11/2021 9:32:37 PM | | From: Cogito Ergo Sum | | | | I am just so happy I got all those grow op pots LOL... I am removing plants and manually separating out the evil goutweed (and thetch which is not as bad) .. Tedious but required... I am discouraged so many mis planted plants.. Like Solomon Seal in full sun !!! and a beautiful Ligularia starting to get fried :( ?? They go first into pots... I will have my own nursery LOL
but the work is good eh ? :) |
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| To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (3430) | 9/15/2021 1:03:28 AM | | From: sense | | | | | I am in my third season, now, of having a rogue patch of tomatoes that is grown by sheer and utter neglect. Given we've had a severe drought since early spring, and weeks of excessive heat with summer temperatures up over 115 F, I'd thought it was a lost cause... but, following the first rains after the drought / heat wave ended, i saw a few sprouts emerge from beneath the litter. They've grown quite literally like weeds... and are now quite large and sprawling plants, and in full flower, covered in more flowers than i've ever seen on a tomato, the flowering now sustained over the last two weeks. The lawn might be mostly dead... the local wildlife population have been decimated... but there might still be a bounty of feral tomatoes before first frost... |
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| To: sense who wrote (3431) | 9/15/2021 7:22:29 AM | | From: Cogito Ergo Sum | | | | | That is so ironic.. my mom's front yard is still a mess. Sewage issues .. cannot get landscaping done (big job) before fall.. so in middle of mess a feral tomato plant growing loaded with cherry roma tomatoes... in a virtual desert :)The old plant from last year was 30 ft away... one seed made it :) Nature is truly awesome... |
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| To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (3432) | 9/15/2021 12:17:02 PM | | From: sense | | | | Last year was amazing... as I had an entire forest of tiny tomato plants that emerged in the spring, right at the edge in a boundary between lawn being mowed (with many more tiny tomatoes not fairing well at all against the machine) and what was once a 2 foot thick berm of woodchips that I've been using in an exposed barren, to retain moisture and build soil. In the lee behind the berm, fallen oak leaves from the prior season tend to gather throughout the fall and winter. I'm happy to allow them to collect there, as the wind supplied organic material supplements the woodchips with organics that the earthworms prefer as a food source. The tomatoes struggle to emerge from beneath the leaves. A very few succeed, and start life with a contorted ground hugging form as they snake out from beneath the litter... but as I push the leaves back against the berm, many more seeds will start to grow from that narrow strip of soil that emerges from beneath the shaded out lawn the leaves create, only once the soil has been exposed. The density of the forest of tiny seedling thins itself out as the weather grows hot... and only the more drought tolerant survive...
None of my store bought tomato plants would survive the neglect to which those survivors are subjected, needing watering almost daily to survive.
What form the fruits will take this year... its too soon to tell... but the prolific flowering and rangey habit I see might indicate that they're trending toward smaller and more cherry like... but the original plants in that spot were mostly heirlooms, along with a few modern hybrids to supply prolific clusters of those long cylindrical salad tomatoes... Last year had a nice mix of yellow and red clusters of salad type tomatoes and heirloom types, with large dark purple fruits... and a few plants making spectacular "heirloom type" salad tomatoes.
I think I have truly excelled in neglecting the tomatoes better this year...
A parallel effort in another corner, focused on naturally selecting a more drought tolerant lettuce... which I started using seed from the waxy (and delicious) Istanbul variety... might have influenced some few of the local wild lettuces (of which I have plenty, and they are drought tolerant enough)... to become a tad more waxy... but nothing remotely close to an edible and self propagating lettuce has emerged from that effort. However, the local yellow finch population greatly appreciates the source of edible seed... in a drought year when almost none of their wild food sources have survived... I've allowed the wild types to carry on with feeding the birds... who gladly moved in and took over that corner... disappearing only recently just as the tomatoes began flowering... apparently having growing quite tired of eating lettuce seed. |
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| To: sense who wrote (3433) | 9/15/2021 3:48:18 PM | | From: Cogito Ergo Sum | | | | as I had an entire forest of tiny tomato plants
I always get lots of garden volunteers and keep the more robust ones... always cool finding out which variety made it where :) My mom's situation was more extreme...
When I was young say 10 to mid teens I fished a lot at the Back River in Montreal .. a 15 minute walk ... we went almost daily ... anyway from 5 I was already a garden nerd courtesy my French (almost no English) grandma ... So I noticed the rock walls perpendicular to the river.. full of old apple and plums trees gone wild... old seigniorial system of everyone gets a piece of the river in ever narrowing strips ... I started noticing as you did hiking through down that there were lots of tomato plants gone wild... my buddies did not realise... then I pointed them out there was a huge snack bounty.. I mean huge LOL We should have been more entrepreneurial LOL |
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