Finally!

Tomatoes!! I didn't rip out the plants, although they still aren't as healthy as the TomatoBerry!
I really just grow the large ones because my Mom in law wants me to, I don't care what size my tomatoes are, but she really likes them, so I think I should be bringing her some, today!! It looks like they cross-pollinated with my TomatoBerry tomatoes!

Can you see the pointy ends?? So cute!

Here's another one! I will pick them today and run them to her. She'll be so surprised.
Until she reads my blog, that is! I think she's my biggest fan...! I was not blessed with a loving mother, so God saw to it that Cherie came to my life!
We have spent 20 years in the kitchen, on the computer, shopping and enjoying what each other contributes. She did not have a daughter and I did not have a mom. How perfect!
The other day she suggested to me that I print and frame some of my pics. I don't think I'd ever taken one I would consider framing, really.
But, I love Love lOve this one!!!
I don't know what it is about this, but when I finished running the editor, I loved it. I love the color green, so maybe that is the reason I am so thrilled, but the glorious pepper plants, how different from the finicky tomatoes!

Healthy foliage, abundant peppers, what a rewarding thing, growing peppers is!!
Peppers and cherry tomatoes for me, friends!!

I will finish the Deer Resistant bed, today. I really must. The plants are not doing well, sitting near my deck. They want to be in the ground!!
So much has happened, I would like to get a few hours to sort it all out and get a plan together, maybe after church tonite?
Right now, I am going to spend time with my son, who is home from college for a few days.

He looks ready to get up and dig holes, doesn't he!!??

Trading Hornworms for Chip and Dale

One of the plagues I deal with in the garden is the hornworm. Yuck! Nasty yucky things! They devour the tomatoes and the plant, leaving you nothing but the stem.
By this time in the growing season, I normally would've had two rounds of them. I am diligent about looking for them, I know the signs and can spot them right away. Every once in a while, I find a tomato with a bite taken out, or the first few leaves missing on a branch, but I can never find the hornworms!

But these two are always near my plants! Can it be that these two are helping me control these hornworms?? I don't even know what kind of birds these are...do you??

Today, I discovered a new plague. Chipmunks.
Really?? Another plague? I can't stand it!

I have started the winter job, I design and produce t-shirts and sweatshirts for spirit wear for local schools and clubs. I stand on a concrete floor for 7-8 hours a day and it is killing me! I guess I am getting older and I cannot take it as easily as I used to. By the end of the day, my legs are really painful. I did tell my boss about my pains and she bought fatigue mats, and I guess it helped a little today. I have a 2x2 spot that I walk from machine to machine, but I really have to force myself to walk around more. I spent years waiting tables and tending bar, but this standing is different. Much harder than walking around and socializing.
To come home and find the holes in the yard and the little devil so brazen, standing in the middle of the yard, I just want to give up. Throw in the trowel. And the pitchfork. 
My legs hurt and my back hurts and now I have chipmunks. Perhaps gardening is not for me? Maybe I should take up knitting? Um, those that know me are rolling around, laughing at this point. My nature is not knitting.

I am going to take some Advil and contemplate this whole mess in bed with my magazines and my dog.
Tomorrow is another day, right? It might hold some pleasant garden surprises!
Here's to hoping!

Tomatoes and science fiction

The tags on the plant in your garden center read like a Ray Bradbury novel.
Science Fiction.
Little on these tags is true, very little can be counted on as reliable information. One garden center I went thru this year, had the same tag for every daylily.
"21" tall, beautiful in the garden with Phlox and perennial geranium"
WoW
Couldn't that describe half the plants in my border??
The same is true with the plant catalogs, in my opinion. Here's the description:
Bush Champion II VFFA Hybrid #2768 (30 seeds) $3.70 
This special variety was developed to honor the occasion of Ball Seed Company's 100th year anniversary. While the compact plants grow only 24 inches tall, they yield plenty of big, meaty tomatoes that weigh in at 8 to 12 ounces. Their flavor is excellent, and the plants thrive in almost any type of climate. Determinate. 70 days.


Hey, that sounds like a tremendous tomato! I want that one! 
Here it is, folks:

I don't know if you can tell, but the plant is half dead, from the bottom, up. Those tomatoes you see in this photo are NOT from the described plant. Those are from a cherry tomato volunteer. Volunteers have fruit before the larger tomatoes do, in my garden. There are about ten volunteers that i have finally let take over, because this Bush Champion is not going to give me any tomatoes. So, let him try to fight it out, but he's not even as tall as the tomato cage. Good luck, slacker.

Here's another variety I have grown:

Tomato Tomatoberry is a new variety that has unique strawberry shape fruit that have a super sweet taste and aroma. The plant produces high yields of shiny, deep red, one-bite fruit that are each about 1" long. It is disease tolerant to Fusarium Wilt Race 1, Nematodes, and Tobacco Mosaic Virus. A fantastic tomato that is a must try! Indeterminate 80 days
Here it is:

This plant is over 5' tall and has 100s of tomatoes on it. It has taken down the commercial tomato cage every night. The fruit is incredible, looks almost fake:

We all know what the Bush Champion looks like:

I do have Early Girl, out there, (somebody please tell her it's August!!??) and there are fruits on that one, but I have been eating and LOVING the cherry tomatoes for almost one month now. I don't think I will grow the bigger tomatoes at all, next year!
The next photos are for May. She emailed me and asked for pics of the stuffed peppers Cass and I made last week!

Wrapped and ready

400* for 20 minutes

We were going to pick raspberries at the U-pick this morning, but a rain had come thru overnight and it's muddy. We can wait till next week, I guess. 

I hope everyone of you has a wonderful weekend, spending it just the way you want to!

Like and a dislike

photoshopped Cosmos

tomatoes. not photoshopped. 

disgusting, I am about to swear off big tomatoes forever.

Harvest

 Bee on Bee Balm, Raspberry Wine

k

                  Butterfly on Nanho Blue

Butterfly on Black Knight

Harvested over 50 TomatoBerry tomatoes from 2 plants, last night. Along with 4 Cubanelle peppers. 

So, we made dinner! Stuffed the peppers with shredded mozzarella cheese and sour cream and wrapped them in bacon. Roasted at 400 for 20 mins. Tossed tomatoes with sea salt and basil. Oven baked pork chops, recipe courtesy America's Test Kitchen and it is an awesome recipe!

Today, I am sad. Something is wrong with my good lens on my camera. It is broken, for sure, but how broken, I don't know. I am sick over it, I love this camera so much. There are many more expensive lenses out there, and this one is a couple hundred bucks. So sad!!!

The new black. No thanks.

One of the new things you will notice in your garden center this spring is the black flower. It is every where.

http://www.ballhort.com

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, it is pretty dark, I think it shows more purple in this photo, but in the sunlight in a hanging basket, Black Velvet petunia is black.
Ball seed, the folks who developed the Wave Petunia, the Simply Beautiful brand and the Dragon Wing Begonia, developed this one. What do you think? Is there a place in your gardens for this one?
Not mine. No thanks. 
I want to like all plants. But.....SERIOUSLY??? This guy is not for me.
Look at this photo from the Ballhort website. It looks like a pot full of lettuce that is past its prime. I'm trying to be kind, but I am sure there is a market for this.



Vegetables have not been immune from the laboratory... The latest trick being implimented is a method of fusing two plants together, called grafting. We see this in fruit trees and roses all the time. One plant is selected for its roots (rootstock) and the other plant has the desired stem, flowers, leaves, or fruit, (scion). Bringing the best of the two together is grafting.
The newest craze is grafting vegetables. One example is the Mighty 'Mato. Developed by Supernaturals, it is grown on "wild tomato stock", producing some pretty wild variations and a plant that is advertised as producing 5-7 POUND tomatoes.To see these monsters for yourself, click here:  Mighty 'Mato 
To order the world's most expensive tomato: $25.00 tomato
I don't think I will be growing the grafted tomatoes. I can see the benefits, the large fruit on a small plant, they are reported to be highly disease resistant.... But I like small tomatoes! A lot!
Every year, my dear mother-in-law asks me about my tomatoes. Every year, I tell her, I have TONS of tiny ones!! She says she'll wait for the regular ones. It's always a long wait....

But the reliable weed like cherry tomatoes are ready by the end of June! They are so cute and plentiful, I get happy just looking at the plants! Can't you just smell them?? Hundreds of them, every day! Cherry tomato plants sure work hard...

Spring's Black Friday

A friend of mine loves Thanksgiving more than any other holiday. But she rushes thru the meal of the holiday, minimizing the dishes she serves and will not serve regular coffee after the turkey allowing only decaf with the traditional pumpkin pie. Why?
Because she loves the Black Friday shopping. It's the day after the turkey day that she loves so much. She cleans up the kitchen and puts on her robe, a signal to the family that she will be going to bed at 7pm, to be up at 1:00am. To stand in line.
I am not so much into that shopping. I won't visit the mall on a regular weekend, much less the shopping day from hell. Merchants rely on this day to boost profits, using what are known as "loss leaders", or huge discounted products, to get you in the store, hoping you will pick up other things while you are there.
The same happens with grocery stores. The store near me has sales like 10 items for $10.00. Not exactly comparable to a $47 HDTV, but it gets them in the door.
Garden centers have Black Friday, too. For the garden centers where I work, the big one is the Friday before Mother's Day. Smaller garden centers don't have the luxury of discounting so deeply, so we rely on quality hanging baskets that put on a show.

Or huge patio pots with unusual combinations to make an impact.

Begonias are a big seller for Spring Black Friday.

I encourage my friends to support their local garden center. There was a hiccup in the industry last year, mostly a result of inconsistent weather. The current thinking for the garden center industry for the growing year 2011 is positive.
A few trends in gardening are pointing for an up year. The "grow your own" movement is catching on with folks who realize a small investment in a tomato plant will return large juicy dividends for burgers and salads all summer!
Another positive is the eat local trend. Clipping your own herbs and fresh veggies in your own backyard or patio pot saves a lot of diesel being burned, pounds of packaging from being dumped in landfill and it offers much more satisfaction than simply buying veggies at the supermarket.

One of the ways my grower is trying to meet the demands of our customers is to offer larger plants. Last year, I sold out of tomato plants in 1 gallon pots with cages on them. These were large and mature plants, most with ripening fruit on them. One customer bought as many as we could cram into her Prius.
Another customer said that if he spent that much on a tomato plant, he would need to stay with it, day and night. "If I happened to pay that much for a tomato plant,"  he explained, "I would guard it with my life!"

 This year, I would highly recommend grabbing up a 'Tomatoberry', should you happen to come across one. I grew this variety last year, (seeds from Johnny's) and I was so pleasantly surprised at how wonderful this tomato was. Be sure to allow the strawberry shaped tomatoes to ripen fully before you pick, otherwise I found the skins to be too tough. The blurb on the tag: This plant produces unique strawberry-shaped fruits that have a super-sweet taste and aroma. Each one-bite fruit is shiny deep red, and about 1 inch long. Tomatoberry plants are tolerant of Fusarium Wilt Race 1, nematodes and Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Best when staked, this tomato is high-yielding and takes about 80 days to mature to harvest.

A friend of mine purchased enough of these plants and kept a restaurant in western Illinois stocked with a steady supply of these beautiful tomatoes. The chef from the restaurant was shopping at his garden center and commented on the unusual shape and my friend struck up a deal. He showed up to the restaurant every morning with hundreds of these cute shiny 'maters! The chef was thrilled, the customers happy and my friend made some extra cash! How smart!

For the sake of record keeping, I picked my first tomatoes July 16, 2007. The way it looks right now, I will have a steady wave of them for a long time to come!
I planted several sizes, all of them red varieties, but the first tomato wasn't Early Girl, it was Sweet 100...I don't think the skins are too tough, the the reviews generally say this is a tough skinned tomato. The first tomato of the year is always so Sweet!!