New State, New Altitude, New Garden

This last year of gardening was a bust. I was finishing graduate school just when I should have been getting my plants in. I was all set to go, but then my husband got a job offer through his company that required a transfer and... five months later, here we are in Colorado!

We actually arrived in July, but were in corporate housing for several months. It's ironic that when I staged the house in California for sale, I potted a bunch of herbs as entryway decor and they bloomed gorgeously. Ironic, of course, because I'm the plant killer and anything I plant with the true intention of helping blossom usually falters, withers and chokes off. Things I neglect tend to be bountiful.

In order to cut down on shipment / moving costs, I gave away our smaller square foot garden beds that my husband built a few years ago and gave our excellent soil from the deeper garden boxes I bought on Craig's List to a neighbor. The saddest part of our move, for me, was saying goodbye to our amazing lemon tree and giving away the house plants I'd picked up a few years ago at a yard sale. Fortunately, they went to a great home - again our neighbor with the green thumb who got our good dirt. I really struggled with the decision to give those plants away. I'd hoped they would survive our trip out here to Denver, but my gardening friend believed they wouldn't and thought it unfair to stress them further.

So, now we are here, just south of Denver in a home on a 12,000 square foot lot. I'm really excited to get gardening ASAP and am planning out our harvest for next year. I'm especially excited that the land is essentially a blank slate - it has a gorgeous lawn, but has been largely unlandscaped as the previous property owner loathed gardening or tending to the land. I don't have to worry about messing things up! I can just get started and see what happens!

The back yard is totally secure from deer and coyotes with over 6 foot wood fencing. The lawn is bordered by a wide swath of rocks that had been laid in for week control and xeriscaping over 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the rocks have shifted and thinned over the years, so they no longer serve their purpose of weed control. The positive side of this is that I have no sense of guilt at the propet of dragging them all out and redistributing them as I want. It also means that there is a perfect border space set around the yard so set in all sorts of plants. One side of the house sits on a slight hill and I'm eager to get pumpkins in there next year. I grew up working on a pumpkin farm every fall for many years and I love the idea of getting my children to grow and sell some sugar pumpkins for a small profit to put into their college funds.

My husband has expressed an interest in getting a greenhouse (this is Denver, after all and it would be GREAT to grow year round!), and I like the idea of chickens... or at least fresh eggs. All that is super down the road, but it's lovely to be in a spot where there's enough land to really think about different projects!

Green Thumb, Black Thumb

I bought these two succulant plants about two years ago from a neighbor's yard sale. I intended them to be house plants, but they've somehow remained outside suffering from my usual drought / flooding routine. This past fall, I bumped into the neighbor, who I didn't really know that well. Without telling her I'd purchased some of her plants, she got around to telling me she was widowed and how her husband, a long time sufferer of Parkinson's, had found working with his plants to be therapeutic. So, essentially I have this fellow's legacy plants.

I noticed one was failing in the backyard and brought it into our bathroom where it gets warm moisture and soft natural light. It has thrived.

Because it's winter and we don't go in the backyard much, I wire forgot about the other poor thing. Today I spotted it, forlornly sitting half dead and drowned in its pot amongst sone other long-since dead, less hearty things. Remembering this dead man's legacy, I brought it in today and set it next to its cousin. I think I will get them some fertilizer and see how the tortured one returns. Fingers crossed.

More Summer Tomato Crop

I gathered a bunch of our smaller tomatoes the other day for a summer pasta dish. The Scatalone plant was the last one I put in this year. I picked up the start from the farmer's market and it took me ages to find this variety.

It is the most amazingly delicious fruit - so far my favorite variety. Sadly, because it went in last, it's not nearly as large and booming as its predecessor was last year. I must remember next spring to order starts ahead of time for this amazing tomato and get at least two plants!

Here's a shot of a variety of our smaller tomatoes - early ssubukis aliana, isis candy, scatalone, black cherry.

Delicious!

Summer Bounty Comes Rolling In

Our waldo peas seem to be finally finishing. I'm not sure why, but the leaves have developed a waxy white covering that may be due to overwatering. I think I'm going to trim them back so they can fall to compost in the garden box soil. In the meantime, I noticed that there are actually new shoots coming up, which is fantastic because my son LOVES to eat these peas!

Today I'm making a roast pork tenderloin in fig sauce for dinner and we needed figs. We are incredibly lucky that there's a bike path a block from our house. There's an incredible array of fruits that grow along the path and on fruit trees that grace the walk to the path.

We headed out to the fig tree on the path this morning only to discover that the most recent blush of ripe figs had been harvested by others. There are plenty more on the way, and we did manage to find the last few edible ones for our sauce.

Likewise, our pear tree is producing beautifully this year. Above is a shot of the (as yet) uneaten parts of today's bounty. We already ate a lot of peas and some pears and figs!

First Tomatoes of the Season!

I lied right there - in the blog post title. These aren't technically the first tomatoes of the season. We've already had a smattering ripen early, but they never even made it into the house for a wash. We just popped them into our mouths too quickly.

Here's the first photograph of the first (ish) tomatoes of the season. 

There are three varieties shown here. At 1 o'clock is the Isis Candy - very sweet. This lives in the back tomato patch. At 4 o'clock is the Early Ssubakus Aliana, also sweet. It's in one of the big planter boxes on our driveway. 6 o'clock features a small Cherokee Purple. There are monstrous ones hanging on the plant right now that dwarf this little one. It was a tasty tomato on my bagel! Finally, and 8 and 10 o'clock are two Black Cherries. This is the blighted plant, but it's producing well so far (I've trimmed off the offending leaves and stems). The plant does look scrawny, with super long stems and not very bushy, but the fruit is delicious so far.

The Plant Killer Strikes Again - Flooding

I am a one-person biblical disaster when it comes to the care and maintenance of plants. Lord help me if I ever have to depend on growing my own food! Due to ignorance, forgetfulness and / or the outcome of having a puce thumb, I seem to provide my poor plants with so many variants of plagues and wrath to have to survive. Only the heartiest plants can handle life in my garden!

Today was no exception. Poor plants. For the second year in a row we're having odd issues with our automatic sprinkler / irrigation system. It seems that my gardening efforts are fated to have mechanical problems! The sprinkler system goes off sporadically. Sometimes it stays on schedule to water every morning for 10 minutes, then suddenly it won't work for two weeks. It's set to go off early in the morning, so I don't always know if it's watered the garden or not. We have it set to drip irrigation, so you have to put your finger in the dirt to be certain it's been watered.

The system hasn't worked all week, and I've been running it manually, but not daily because I wanted to pare back the watering a bit anyway. I ran the water this morning for what I'd planned to be 10 minutes... then promptly forgot about it..... for AN HOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We'll see how my poor plants deal with the flooding. The good news is that the garden is set at the top of a hill, so it's not like the plants have to sit in puddles of standing water. I hope I haven't ruined the crop! The tomatoes were just really starting to boom.

Aack! My Tomatoes are Blighted!

I'm no tomato doctor. If anything, as per the title of my blog, I'm a tomato undertaker. True to form, it's mid-July and after an early blush of plant coddling over the spring and some booming growth... one of my tomato plants is ailing.

Last Year's Fails: 
Blight on the Brandywine?
Last year, my pink brandywine became extremely sickly. It produced one lonely and mealy tomato and, in the end, it looked a bit like a dog hung on its choke-chain. That's not an image I like to promote, but that's what it looked like -- it had lost almost all its leaves in a slow turning from dark green to pale yellow and this one tomato was on one of the highest branches. It wavered there on this thin neck of a branch as the plant became progressively sicklier and scrawnier. The brandywine was the one plant I had really looked forward to, as I'd surmised the tomato's flavor would be most like my husband's childhood tomatoes. So, I strung the poor thing up pretty high to keep it from drooping over onto the driveway.

In retrospect, I think this plant had blight, especially now that I've read up on the condition more.


Another Blight?
I had another plant go pretty badly, as I recall now. The leaves never got too diseased-looking, but the fruits were all leathery and gross and the plant never really thrived. I think it was the Black Plum. The Illinois Fruit and Vegetable News has pretty good descriptions of some ailments for tomatoes. In the blight description, it mentions "leathery" fruit, which this plant definitely had, but it didn't have so much leaf death.

Blossom End Rot
 I had two plants with an obvious condition last year - blossom end rot. Both the Gourmet Yellow Stuffer and the Scatalone lost almost all their fruit to this last year. The Scatalone is a long fruit anyway, and my understanding is that tomato shape can have an effect on the condition.

This Year's Fail: Blight on the Black Cherry?
So, we're just barely getting our fruits in now with lots of beautiful looking green tomatoes on all the plants... but my Black Cherry has suddenly become a withering plant with brown leaves and browning, soft stems. The leaves have some black speckles too.... is it blight? Yikes!!!