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!!!

The Miracle Fruit that is the Loquat

In case you don't know what a loquat is...well.. you haven't lived. I just discovered them last year. They're AMAZING. They are a plum sized orange / yellow fruit that grows on trees.

Flavor
Their flavor varies throughout the season, but the "freshly ripe" ones are slightly tart with (to me) a green grape / apple / apricot type taste and grape-ish texture. The middle ripe ones are sweeter with a balance between the tart and sweet and the past-prime are just super sweet.

Important Note:
Loquats have large seeds inside - the number varies - I've seen one and up to three. They are like apricot seeds or very large apple seeds, but the main point is, like apricot seeds... DON'T EAT them - they're poisonous.


How to Eat:
Also, to eat a loquat properly, you peal the outer skin and nibble around the seed.

Loquat Season is Here!!!

Yay!!!! All last spring, I cajoled my (then) very strong willed 2 yr old into early evening walks with me by enticing her with the prospect of getting some delicious loquats from neighborhood trees (there are three fruiting, quasi-public domain trees on our block alone).

Today, we had our first loquats of the season. Perfection!

My toddler son had his first taste and is hooked and I have a new incentive for my (now) very strong willed 3 yr old to take after dinner strolls with me!

Another Stab at a Brandywine Tomato

At the farmer's market yesterday, I also picked up another tomato plant - a red brandywine. Last year, I had a pink brandywine in a 5 gallon nursery bucket. It did unbelievably poorly - was very sickly, losing what few leaves it developed. Ironically, this was one of the most important plants to me last year, since my husband spoke of how much he missed his favorite tomatoes from Jersey and I was guessing that Brandywines were his variety.

Somehow the pink brandywine managed to squeeze out three mealy tomatoes. In the end, though, it looked a bit like a dog hanging on a choke chain --- I'd slung its one super-long and spindly branch up high, tying it to a bamboo stake to keep the last developing tomato from capsizing the branch and falling ***SPLAT*** onto the driveway.

Needless to say, I'm hoping this year's will fair better. In order to give this one a fighting chance, I put it in a 10 gallon nursery pot with fertilizer-rich soil and some sand at the bottom for better drainage. I couldn't justify putting it in one of the final coveted spots in our northern bed, considering how badly its cousin performed last year.

I've put the brandywine pot next to another 10 gallon pot that has garlic thriving in it from last year (see - that which I've totally neglected thrives -- the garlic was a companion planting for tomatoes last year as a means of keeping aphids away). Both are on the eastern side of the big boxes, so when I hook up the automatic irrigation next weekend, they'll be easy to include.

This year's unsuspecting brandywine experiment... Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!! (front right. Left is garlic)

More Plants in the Garden - Bell Peppers

I decided to plant bell peppers with the tomatoes that are in the big boxes, so I picked up what I could find at the farmer's market yesterday. I ended up with two red bells and one chocolate. I hope to round out the pepper crop this year with a purple and an orange, possibly another chocolate too!

I got the peppers in the boxes today and they seem happy.

Brandywine in front, chocolate bell pepper in back.




Tiny red bell peppers in fore of box on right. Garlic and fava beans in front.