Planting out tomatoes and other veggies thread 2017

[Drew51]

@subdood_ky_z6b

We have a bunch of tomatoes on our plants

Mine too are showing fruit, and even better no disease yet, so I should get a great crop.

@subdood_ky_z6b

Half of the Silver Queen is up,

That’s good corn! I grew Silver Choice, good stuff too! This year after talking to a guy who has been growing corn forever suggested I try the sh2 Illini Xtra Sweet Hybrid.
So in my little 4x12 raised bed I planted some. Very impressive growth, also I have had corn stalks blow over from the wind. This hybrid faced 50 mph winds and didn’t move. The stalks are almost as thick as my arm already. So far so good!

I started a new bed for Spartan blueberry. The soil is pine bark and peat. I have found onions really like acidic soil, and so do strawberries, so both are in the bed with the blueberry. @Bradybb hey there’s Spartan (back, center) you sent me from a rooted cutting. That onion should be showing itself any second, it’s going to be softball sized!

My onions are doing well this year. This is one bed, I have them in many others all over the place.

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Oh, some of mine are already showing some disease, and they haven’t been in the ground more than a month. I just prune off the bad branches, and hope they’ll outgrow it, like @JustAnne4 says. Some are looking a bit pale, so I’ll be hitting them with some liquid fert soon, especially with fruit in them. Those Indian Stripe plants are doing very well- very vigorous, bushy plants. I think they have some fruit on them already.

We were going to replant the sparse SQ plot with some new seed today, but we’ve had about a half inch of rain today, so the ground is a bit mushy. My guess is all the rain weve had didn’t help with the original seed with germination.

I like your raised bed corn patch, don’t think I’ve ever seen corn grown like that. You certainly have it packed in there.

[Drew51]

Speaking of blueberries, I killed a Toro, the sweetest blueberry I grow, very soft though. Still I like it, it’s sweet even when the berries are green. I replaced it last year with another. It’s doing great. I guess I’m getting better at growing them!?
So here is my 2nd leaf Toro,hard to see due to all the strawberry plants growing with it.

@subdood_ky_z6b

Oh, some of mine are already showing some disease,

Usually the case with me too, but even though over crowded in containers, they look great. No rain is why, it stayed south of me, and you got it

My currants are exploding this year. I have a few gallons. Here is some I’m freezing before cleaning/prepping.

[Drew51]

@subdood_ky_z6b

You certainly have it packed in there.

Yes, 6 inches on some. You need a lot for good pollination. Suburbia gardening!

Here is a photo from my 2nd story bathroom window of my backyard. Corn is in the upper right area.

[mrsg47]

Drew you do so well with your perfect southern exposure! It seems perfect for whatever you grow!!!

[Drew51]

Yes, a perfect storm. Also some luck, research, experience, and learning from your failures. Much comes from people like you, not just in growing, but in using the fruit too.
Your cook book gave me so many ideas. Part of my success is having the time too. Besides being here today, I spent the whole day in the garden working, harvesting.
The last two years my garlic has been small, not super small, but compared to 3 years ago, it’s small, so trying to figure out what the problem is? I noticed the compost I used tended to clump, and I think this caused the roots to have a hard time. I’m switching brands I use. It looks great, large plants, but the bulbs are just not sizing up! Maybe too much fertilizer too? Hard to say, I doubt it, the soil needs to be better, more aeration. Seems ripe very early this year too. The bulbs are not super small, but I know they can be bigger, and will experiment till I get it right.
Drying on the porch in the shade. hard neck on the left, soft on the right.

[mrsg47]

Thanks Drew!

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Well, I guess I won’t be sampling that big Siberian Pink 'mater anytime soon. Yep, it was pilfered by some f%#%$@ deer it looks like overnight. There were about 8 plants that were either chomped or had some fruit taken. Thankfully they left the rest of the plants alone. I was so furious, I told my wife I feel like sitting on top of the barn, and picking them off one by one.

My remedy was to clean the perimeter up of weeds, and I strung up a second fence around the first one. If that doesn’t help, then I don’t know what else to do.

Me and the wife were out there until dark pulling weeds and mowing in that humidity. Talk about needing a well deserved shower afterwards. I hadn’t planned on doing anything outside today, but there ya go…

[Drew51]

You could fertilize them with Milorganite. Approved for gardens now. It is said that the deer hate it, smells like humans pooping. It’s super cheap for fertilizer. My grass never looked better! I have used it in the garden too.
Or you could try plant skyd, which is said to be one of the better deer repellents.

[subdood_ky_z6b]

With all the issues we’ve had in our gardens, I am happy to say we had our first banana pepper, and some radishes fresh from the garden today. The radish greens are tall. We also have some Buttercrunch lettuce that’s just about ready to harvest, in small amounts. All this is more than we got from the gardens last year. It looks like liming, and fertilizing our plots has really helped.

Lots of small green 'mater’s on just about all the plants, except nothing on my Watermelon Beefsteak, and regular Beefsteak. Of course, we’ll see how many we can get before the deer pilfer any more of them.

The half-runners and Rattlesnake beans are doing very well, and our Honey Select corn is almost 3ft tall now.

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Here’s some new pics from the corn/bean and tomato patches

Close up of beans, couple row of half runners, white and striped

Close up of corn, Silver Queen in foreground, and Honey Select in back

Another view of beans, really need to be trellised!

Overall view of patch

Wide angle view of tom’s and peppers, pardon all the weeds, they look worse than they are:

View from inside the tomato forest

De Barao plant, at least 5ft tall now!

Cream Sausage, a whitish Roma type

Pink Honey

Cream Sausage, I believe

Jaune Flamme

Russian Queen

Pink Honey

De Barao

Indian Stripe

Example of the deer carnage on a Jetsetter tom, pretty much decapitated it, but it’s trying to recover

[subdood_ky_z6b]

OK, I said I was going to hit the peppers with some liquid fert soon, and I did this evening. All 41 peppers got a good drenching of my Hasta Gro liquid goodness. I put an ounce of the stuff in one gallon of water. I took two five gallon buckets of the solution down to the patch, and not only got all the peppers, but also 10 of the tomatoes. So, I could probably get the rest of the tom’s tomorrow, which is 33 plants. That would be about 5 gallons of the solution.

The stuff worked very well for my plants when in drinking cups, so I’m very curious to see how they react to it while in the ground.

The pepper plants look good for the most part, with good size and deep green leaves, but they aren’t producing very many peppers. Most just have small buds, but a few have some decent sized fruits. There was one Bulgarian Carrot hot pepper that was about three inches long and still green, and I wanted to try it, but can wait. The fert is a 6-12-6 formula, so maybe the double amount of P will help kick start the fruit production.

The tomatoes are producing well, and the fruits are getting a decent size to them, although all are still green. I tried to see which of them are showing better disease resistance, and I would say that Striped Roman, Cream Sausage, Jaune Flamme, Indian Stripe, De Barao and Russian Queen have the least amount of disease showing now. Can’t say for sure which ones are the worst, but I’ll try to report that tomorrow.

A far as productivity, the more prolific varieties right now seem to be Jaune Flamme, Pink Honey, Russian Queen, Cream Sausage, and Abe Lincoln. The shy bearers seem to be Watermelon, Striped Roman, Pineapple and Orange KY Beefsteak. This could be the result of the deer damage some of these plants suffered.

They have been untouched the last three nights, so I hold my breath every time I go out for my daily inspection. I saw 3 deer in the adjacent pasture last evening, but for whatever reason they’ve left the gardens alone. Could it be because it’s been so hot as of late? I don’t know, and I’m not complaining!

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Went out this morn to inspect stuff in the tom/pepper patch, and things look OK. That is, no new deer damage, but now I’m dealing with hornworms. Those nasty fat, long, grubby green worms that love tom leaves, and the tomatoes themselves. I plucked a couple off last night, and two more today. They can strip a branch of leaves in no time, and I noticed today that some of the fruit on my Indian Stripe were ruined by them. Still, I’d rather deal with worm damage than deer.

Weeds are really getting a foothold in the patch, so I spent a good half hour pulling those, but still have about half the patch to go. I was wringing wet afterwards, and had to come in and change shirts. About 92 here and a bit humid.

[subdood_ky_z6b]

Finished giving the liquid fert solution to the rest of the tomatoes, and went ahead and gave all the cucumber plants some as well. There are a bunch of small cukes on some of the plants, and the bees are really getting after the blooms, so hopefully we’ll get more cukes.

While I was down in the barn, I managed to get the bush hog hooked up to the 3 point on the tractor, and was surprisingly able to get the mower shaft hooked up to the PTO. The shaft is in two pieces and has a tendency to bind up even tho I keep it greased.

I came in to cool off, change shirts, and get some lunch. I’m going to try to do some bush hogging later this afternoon. It’s warm out there, about 90 and sticky. We could use some rain on the gardens actually.

[Derby42]

Here is Omar’s Lebanese, sungold cherry tomatoes, balloon peppers, long chocolate habanero, scorpion butch t, and yellow cayenne.

[JustAnne4]

Nice.
Some onions, cilantro and cumin and you got a salsa goin’ on.

[ltilton]

Time to clear out the remains of the spring garden and plant for fall. Got the seedlings out for hardening off now

First I have to pull the onions

[mrsg47]

Is that a tomato or another pumpkin?

[Drew51]

@mrsg47

Is that a tomato or another pumpkin?

Yeah Omar’s an impressive tomato! Podpiper gave me some seed and suggested it.
Reminds me I have enough jalapenos to pickle, need to do that like right now.

[JustAnne4]

What seedlings are you putting out?
Pulled the last of my onions couple weeks ago and just covered the bed over until fall. Too hot here to put anything out - or to even work out there. Was out between 6-7AM today and had to quit. Heat index 112 today.
I started some seeds which I’ll grow on in flats until there is room…and conditions are less brutal, LOL.