Tomato Megablooms

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Megablooms happen on my, and lots of other tomato growers, plants almost every year. This year one has shown up on my Brandywine Pink, which is a first for me since I've never had one show on that variety before.



Megablooms aren't anything to panic over. Though the resulting fruit will be deformed and look rather ugly, it could end up weighing over 5 pounds and have a terrific flavor.

There is some argument about whether it strains the plant to produce such a mutant and that it might be better for the plant to just snip off the bloom and divert more of the plants energy to making more of the normal fruit, but ultimately, the choice is yours. No one knows exactly why these blooms form (some say from cold weather, but I don't buy that theory as my weather is usually 80's to 90's F by day and 60's to 70's F at night when they form) but they won't really hurt the plant.

Fortunately, I grow enough plants that I can afford to let a few mutants grow to maturity just out of curiosity. usually, it's my Rutgers or Ace55's that give me the megablooms, so I'm quite curious to find out what will eventually come of the Brandywine.

Happy (mutant) Growing!
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Late Blight Detected Already!

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Grrrrr! Here we go again!

University of Maryland: Late Blight of Tomato

"Unfortunately late blight was detected in a greenhouse in St. Mary's County on May 7, 2010. The grower has taken measures to eradicate the disease. We don't know at this time whether it will spread, or if the grower will be able to contain the outbreak. We also do not know if this outbreak is related to the 2009 outbreak. We are monitoring the situation."

And from Louisiana: Tomato Blight Threatening South Louisiana Gardens

"Scientists at the LSU AgCenter recently confirmed the presence of late blight on tomatoes in home gardens in Terrebonne, Lafayette, Livingston and Tangipahoa parishes. Symptoms include black lesions on stems and petioles, blackening of the fruit, and dark, dead areas on the foliage.

“The disease is probably being introduced on infected transplants, so be sure to check tomato plants for symptoms before you buy them,” said LSU AgCenter plant pathologist Don Ferrin."

Arghhhhh!!!

Keep an eye on your plants, people, especially if you've purchased (or plan on it) and didn't grow from seed. That's not to say you won't get it if you grew from seed, or that you shouldn't be vigilant, you should. One gust of wind and . . .

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Grow Tomatoes for Just $1285.10!

What a deal, eh?
I think I'm nauseous. Nope, I know I am.

From Matt Mattus at Growing With Plants: (seriously, you have to go read it)
"Grand total for proper supplies to grow disease resistant tomatoes is
$1285.10. $5.14 per tomato."

Ummmm...

Seriously, what is there to say to that except, "Man, I wish I had that kind of money to blow on growing a vegetable!"

Does he really think that's what it takes to grow a disease resistant tomato?
God, I hope not or us poor people, who actually grow gardens to SAVE money (or not eat all winter) are doomed to starve!

OK, let's see - here's my price list from last summer (or at least close).

Tom seeds (I think we had 10 varieties not counting the weirdo volunteers we also grew out and harvested from): 10 cents per pack = $1.00.
And no, they weren't any special expensive, disease resistant variety, but they were still damn healthy and tasted good!

Soil for 20 plants, 2 of each variety (I mixed my own from peat, turkey grit and the cheapest potting soil I could find - which most of went for WSing and plants I grew for others) = approx $3 - and that's estimated on the high side.

Containers, recycled = free.

Transplanted outside to one year old hay bales = free.

Stakes = free.

Fert, homemade = free

Organic preventative spray, homemade = Although I know it's much less, ingredients, we'll say, a whole $1.00

So, that adds up to a whopping five bucks.
If I go by his figures of 15 toms per plant, times my 20 plants, it equals 300 tomatoes.

Drum roll....

0.016666666 cents per (disease free) tomato.

I think I win! Oh, yeah, and bonus - I get to eat this winter and still not lose the house.

It blows my mind what people are willing to spend growing a few veg. If people would really like to throw their money away, they can just hand it to me and I'll put it to good use, like paying for some freaking heating fuel.
Ack! I need to go play with some seedlings before my brain explodes from thinking about it.

Happy (and cheap) growing!

Mid July Update

Wow, what a difference two whole days of heat, sun and no rain can make. The ground actually looks dry - I'd forgotten what dry soil looks like!

For those of you in the upper eastern states - hang in there, it's on its way. I'm outside blowing the good weather in your direction. Man, my lips are tired! :(

An update on how well the tomato bale experiment is doing: Fantastic!



Thank God I haven't seen hide nor hair of the blight. ~fingers crossed~ Pays a bit to start your own seed in this instance. I think I only have one close neighbor that gardens and he grows his own also.
:)
Bonnie Plants first said they accepted that they were to blame, now this:

Dennis Thomas, Bonnie Plants general manager, insists there never was any evidence of blight at any of the company's 61 growing stations nationwide and that his company did not ship out any infected plants. "None whatsoever," he said. "The last inspections we've had in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in West Virginia today, showed negative."

One of those things that makes you go, hmmmm...

On to happier stuff.

I only got one plant from the strawberry petunia seed (stupid weather!) but what a bloom it is!


Things that are finally taking off:

Popcorn


Potato (don't mind the weeds. potato is a DH thing, not a me thing, so unless he weeds them...)


Peppers (looking better!)


Onions are looking good.


Carrots have gone bonkers!


Yellow and green bush beans are finally flowering. Interesting how you can easily tell which row are which.


We had the first cabbage salad of the year yesterday. Yum! Was fabulous. I honestly should have let it go a few more days, but well, you know...
The cauliflower is almost ready and huge.
Half a gallon of peas in the freezer so far.

I guess that's it for the veg, so on to what few flowers I have that the freaking slugs didn't eat.

The view from my living room last week.


The honey bees are swarming the borage now that the sun has returned.


The bee balm is finally open for the hummers. They've been cleaning out the feeders in a day!





I lurve gloriosa daisies.


The lavender is looking beautiful.


Lilies are so fab they almost glow.


and last but not least, the coolest visitors of all to my flower beds-


Hope everyone's gardens are growing like gangbusters!
Happy gardening.
:)

(wow, I actually titled the post as June instead of July - talk about a Freudian slip - I'm still subconsciously waiting on some nice june weather! lol)

Much Better Weather

The sun finally came out and things are looking better.
More flower beds are going in.

The shed is built. Yay! We've needed one desperately for the last 25 years.
DH came across some used wood someone was getting rid of and, hurrah, it was enough to do the whole thing! Plus a leftover piece for a sorta-deck for the sliding glass doors. The kids, boyfriends/girlfriends and friend showed up to help get it finished. (They thought DH and I were a little to slow on the progress I guess. lol, it was just the two of us, what did they expect?) The friend just hung out and supervised. The kids brought a whole BBQ meal too boot! (I have some great kids, eh?)
:)
In progress.


Finished. Well, except for some paint.



With a little sun and heat, the peppers are looking much, much better! Please ignore all those weeds - it has been way too wet to even walk in there.


The peas are covered with blooms and pods.


The toms have blossoms! Woohoo!



Even the azaleas I grew from seed are looking pretty darn good.




Lynchnis - major color. This poor thing is sooo in the wrong spot for it.


The peach leaf bellflowers are at their best right now.


As are the delphs.
The rose campion is so bright it glows neon.


Anthony waterer spirea is going gangbusters.
The Halward's silver blooms a few weeks before the Anthony, and I neglected to take pics.


The sweet william and stella are doing well. Not sure I like this combo, but it's staying this way for a while.


The slugs have gotten completely out of control with this weather(think hundreds within a few square feet). The beans are half eaten away, the marigolds, zinnias and dahlias are nothing but tiny stumps having had their leaves totally eaten away. I've resorted to starting watermelon and zukes inside to get enough growth on them to survive - the slugs have cleaned out 3 plantings of seed so far. Even the cosmos are fair game. Ugh!
The population seems to have depleted a bit with the sun and being a little drier. Or, maybe because of the salt shaker.
Yes, at this point salting the little bastards is very satisfying.
I take comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one in NY to be suffering through 'the year of the slug' - they seem to have taken over the entire state and parts of Pennsylvania to boot.

Hope all is going well in the garden for everyone!

So Much Going On

Wow - long time no post.
Been very, very busy.

And my daughter found me a camera! I have a freaking camera!
Wooooohoooo! This is such a big deal for me. A really big deal.
I haven't figured out how to take the best pics with it yet, but I'm learning. Slow, but learning.
Why do they have to put a thousand bells and whistles on the damn things? I just want to point and shoot for pete sake.
Now I'll be posting tons of pics, the one thing I dislike about most blogs. Ack! lol.
:)

There is so much to update that I don't know where to start.

We had a freeze/frost last night. A frost on June 1. Urg!
We ran around covering and dragging pots inside last night. (Yes, I've completely, purposely forgotten about the post where I gave advice about not planting anything around here before June1. Shhh!) Hopefully, we are now home free as far as the weather goes. The record last freeze/frost date was June 7, 1889, so I think we're good.

Toms and peppers don't look so hot, but that's what I get for trying to push the growing season. Serves me right. They'll catch up and be fine, they always are.

We're a month or so into the hay bale planting. Here are a couple not-so-great pics. (hey, I said I was still learning.) Sorry about the monster size - I wish I could figure out how to resize and make them smaller. Something to mess with when I have more time.





I know you can't see the toms, but they're in there. I'll try to get some better pics later.

And here are some of my WS jugs. Yes, I know they should be in the ground already, but we've had really crappy cold and rainy weather so I haven't gotten all the flower beds where they need to be weeded yet. ~sigh~



I'll get there when the weather starts cooperating.

Our hummers are here feeding/chasing like crazy. I had a black swallow tail butterfly on my Lupines. Poor thing, it's so cold! And of course I took pics. This could turn into a real problem.

Hope everyone's gardens are sprouting like gangbusters!

Flipped Off

I guess even the veg get a bit disgusted with the neglect they begin to suffer around this time of year. How not cool is it for them to flip you the bird?

Of course, my oldest daughter just couldn't resist messing with it :)
I think that even our pond residents are a little disgusted that our daily conversations have become a lot shorter these days. Then again, maybe they're as depressed as I am that fall is here - which means winter can only be closer than we'd like it to be.

The tomato sauce is cooking.

:)

I'll end up being able to freeze about eight gallons. Not bad! I was finally able to get ahold of some vinegar, so I'll be able to put up a few quarts of pickles tomorrow. Yay! The only things left to get into the freezer are the brussel sprouts and we're still waiting on the corn from having to wait on the weather and getting the seed in the ground late. Zucchini are still coming in at the rate of a couple a day.

Oh, and the popcorn is still to come!

The flowers are trucking along as if it'll be 80 F forever. Now that it's fall, we've finally arrived at summer. Stupid weather! We ended up only getting three very small Moon and Stars watermelons. It was just too cold for them to grow worth a crap. On the bright side - for some reason, my son's hot peppers produced great! Go figure. My green peppers didn't do crap.

I'm at that early fall 'don't give a crap' point. It'll pass. It always does.