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.
4 comments:
Have you not had any more squirrel problems? They are bound to be around there some where. They are wicked little creatures. They have an opposing thumb, they're smarter than monkeys, the appetite of a shrew, and could easily have been substituted for the rats in the movie Willard. If they were the size of dogs the human race would cease to exist.
All humor aside, wait till you see the new rain water collection system. I'm working on it now. It will be 24,000 gallons. Thats right, thousands. I'm almost ready for the rain. Well, you know, if we ever get any. Bob
Even with bird netting one the winged ones have managed to punch holes in some tomatoes, Katina, but we're getting a small steady stream of Early Girls, Juliets, Costoluto Genovese and a few Carmellos. I bring them inside to ripen once they start to blush...our kitchen's usually at least 80 degrees which is closer to ideal ripening range than 101!
Hope I don't jinx things by saying this, but keeping the disappearing fountain and three bird baths available for birds and critters seems to help.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Oddly enough, I haven't had a problem at all since I put up the bird netting, and it doesn't even cover all the plants entirely--it just goes around the plants that have the easily reachable tomatoes.
I've also gotten a total of 9 Viva Italias and 4 Black Krims (plus the 2 that the neighbor-lady took back when she was house sitting). We made spaghetti sauce with 8 of the Italias and 2 of the Krims.
Shawn's decided he doesnt' like the Krims--not because of the taste, but because he thought they looked like they were turning bad because of the purple color to them.
Also. 24000 gallons? Are you insane?
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