Updates

Yeah yeah, I know, I really need to post pictures...sigh.

Anyhow, as I'm sure everyone's been reading on all the other Austin garden blogs, the hot weather has hit. We've had multiple days in a row with 100+ temps...which isn't good for the garden.

That hot of temperatures tends to make everything slightly crispy.

The heirloom tomato plants started showing some crispy fried leaves so I've upped my watering from 2x a week to more like every day...though I do have to be careful because I noticed some blossom end rot problems on the Romas. Silly temperamental tomato plants.

The Brandywine tomato plant does not look well. I can't really figure out the problem--the leaves turn yellow, then will get some crispy spots, but they never drop off. I think it's a water problem at this point, but it even had problems back in the day that I don't think were related to water...unless it was getting too much water. Sadly, I don't think the plant will make it to the fall (I probably should take Bonnie's suggestion and prune it to see if that would help). Also, there is one lone tomato on the plant (it set during our last vacation--which was the last time we had temps that were below 75 for more than 2 hours...it just happened that that time frame was during some hellacious storm, or so I've gathered from the Austin Garden Blogs).

I've pulled another Viva Italia tomato (and there's another ripening), as well as 4 more Krims--I've started pulling them off the vine when they look pink and then let them ripen to the purple color inside the house. I gave 2 of the Krims to one of my coworkers (in exchange for some squash from his garden). I also learned that Shawn doesn't like them much --not because they're tomatoes, but because when you cut them open, the goo around the seeds is dark green/black and he thinks it looks like the tomato is rotten...so I have to make sure to scrape out all the seeds first and then add them to our sauces.

The Delicata and Butternut plants took off while we were on vacation, and other than getting a little wilty during the heat of the day, they're doing fine--and are about to bloom.

I noticed some tiny Thai Chili Peppers on the pepper plant out front, so it looks like we'll be able to have our spicy breakfast potatoes again, yummy!

I'm still pulling some worms off of the tomato plants...they look to be Yellowstriped Armyworms, but the damage is pretty minimal--enough to be noticeable, but not enough to do anything other than pick them off the plants and throw them in the neighbor's yard.

Tomatoes

Sorry for the lack of blogging--I've been out of town for the last week. While I was gone, my neighbor took care of the garden and the cats...though I don't know how much she really had to take care of the garden--most of the time the garden does fine with a good soaking on the weekend and a good soaking once in the middle of the week and it rained 1.5" on Thursday night I guess it was (I was still gone, so I'm going off of what my coworkers told me).

Anyhow, right before leaving, we had a Roma tomato ripen up and it looked like 3 of the Black Krims would be ripe within a few days, so I told the neighbor to take them and enjoy them. I think she took two of the Krims, and the Roma, but the third Krim ended up rotting on the vine (I pulled it off when we got back on Saturday).

When I had a chance to check the garden on Saturday morning, I noticed that something started eating holes in the eggplant (like the actual fruit, well, the leaves too, but it's a healthy plant, so it was the fruit I was concerned about) so I pulled the worm off (dark gray with light gray running stripes). I also pulled 5 ripe Viva Italia tomatoes off the plant, with 3 more close to being ripe). I pulled all the worm eaten green tomatoes off the plants (mosly on the BHN for some reason), and was surprised at how well the winter squash did with minimal watering (or maybe the neighbor watered more frequently than I told her to).

I have noticed that the Krims are starting to have splitting problems (Annie had warned me of such), so I'm trying to water the other plants and let the Krim plant stay dry, but I don't know how well that's going...guess I'll find out when the other two close to being ripe tomatoes ripen.