Saturday, July 31, 2010

TOMATO SUMMER!

this summer is terrific for tomatoes, if not for people. i only planted one variety, brandywine, after being burned by late blight last year. ok, that was a mistake. however, all my friends are trying to give tomatoes away, so other varieties are not hard to come by. here's how the potager looks today:the sunflowers had a tough start and are just beginning to bloom...
i've got a severe vine borer issue this summer and have tossed all the plants save this one, which has a nice sugar pumpkin. i've had to remove the borers from it's stem... i hope the plant can hang on for the rest of the summer.
passiflora today, with lantana in the background...
this year's bounty includes cucumbers, rainbow chard and string beans, in addition to tomatoes.
and so far the corn experiment looks promising!

5 comments:

Sophie Munns said...

Hi Em,
looks very frutiful in your garden...
rushing by today...just a quick hello and greeting for good gardening this week...do you get out there at all before the sun goes down in summer after work?
cheerio,
Sophie

Anonymous said...

No tomatoes for me yet, but I see orange out there, so it won't be long now. It was a cool summer last year, and our tomatoes struggled, so this year I started Oregon Spring from seed indoors because they scoff at cool weather. Guess what? Hottest summer ever! I can't win. Sure hope they taste good.

Susan Buret said...

This is the antidote to my southern hemisphere winter garden. I spent yesterday moving soil and compost to build up my garden in the hope of getting beautiful tomatoes like these.

miss m said...

Hope your corn does well. I grew an early variety in containers - was a total flop.

No vine borers here, thankfully. (Well, so far anyway *knock on wood*). I sure hope that little pumpkin hangs on !

The potager's been treating you good this year, em. Nice toms !

Susan Buret said...

Hi Em,
This seems the place to answer the compost question! I add the straw and droppings from the hen house and occasionally blood and bone or chicken manure pellets. I also have a metal compost 'stirrer' which I use to stir up the mix almost every day. If I do this and make sure I chop up larger waste I get good results.
Susan