Bumpy Stems (Tomatoes)

I took a picture of this today on my tomatoes and decided that either they had contracted some type of STD, or were being attacked by bugs. After a quick Google Search, I came across this website: VeggieGardener.com. This site informed me (with pictures even!) that what my Ananas Noire tomato is suffering from is called Tomato Stem Primordia. Basically the plant is trying to start some new roots. The causes of this condition are high humidity, predominantly wet weather, or over watering (I think greater than 3" of rain in one night within the last week would constitute as 'over watering', plus this plant is in the newer bed which has more dirt and less organic matter mixed in which means it gets soppy and stays soppy).

The other tomato in the bed (the Purple Cherokee), has been suffering from some leaf rolling recently. Leaf rolling which I confirmed to be of the Environmental variety...also indicating that there is too much water in the bed.

Note to self, more organic matter!

Popcorn

The popcorn is 4'+ tall, it has tassled out (which actually means that the pollination stick at the top of the plant is no longer a stick, but more like a branch), and in some cases, looks like it's ready to be picked (as in if it were sweet corn, I'd be out there checking the ears every day to see if it was in fact time for eating). It has been 12 weeks and 1 day since I planted the seed. Maturation is in 100-105 days (15 weeks).

I decided to check what the seed pack said to do about harvesting. And the answer is "let it dry out on the stalk." um...okay. But wouldn't that require the corn not getting any water for a while? And this stuff is still in a garden bed where I need to water all the other plants. So...uh, yeah. I don't think it's going to be drying "on the stalk" unless I pull out the entire stalk and dry that. Which...just no. That won't happen.

I don't know what I'm going to do to dry out the corn then. Maybe I'll pull the ears and then use some old pantyhose to do the trick...or more likely I'll pull the ears, pull back the husks and tie all the husks together and hang from my "newly minted" dry hook in the kitchen.

Garden 06-05-10

Ivy is in a bunch of my photos because I'm her favorite person and she insists on following me around like a dog when we're outside at the same time. It really isn't intentional that she be in all the photos. She is the cat that had the kidney problems six months ago.

Gardening Gone Wild Photo Contest

A few months ago (heck, it may have been last month), the GGW photo contest theme was "Green," and I was going to enter a photo. I ended up not doing so because the photo I was going to submit wasn't 'perfect' in my mind (for those of you interested in knowing what it was, it was the Artemisia plant photo from April 8, 2010).

And of course no photo ever is perfect (or if it is, it's very rare indeed). Now then, choosing a FAVORITE photo on the other hand is much easier, though still difficult because it depends on what mood I'm in. Some of my favorites in the past have been the anole, spider web, and the double butterfly photos, along with countless flower photos. And those are just the "garden" photos.

As I decided I should finally enter the contest, and it doesn't require me to go out looking for a subject to photograph, I've decided on a flower photo (since the website is Gardening Gone Wild and they do ask that the photo be plant or garden related). I've already posted this picture before, but because it needs to be around 500 pixels on the long edge, it means I had to resize it specifically for the contest.

Science Experiments

Maybe it's the engineer in me, or maybe I just like a good challenge, but I LOVE to do grand science experiments. Okay, they're usually not so grand, and very rarely are they even science experiments, but I stick with what I know.

This year I have done, or will do, a couple:
- The aforementioned Garlic Experiment - Win!

- Make seed start pots out of toilet paper rolls - Fail. I fried all the seeds. I'll have to try this one again in the fall when I'm starting my spring seeds.

- Strawberry Popcorn - In process. So far the corn is about 4' tall and starting to pollinate. I do, however, have a gray aphid problem. Actually I don't know if it's a problem--they seem to be just on the pollen stalks. I did also have a problem with the corn 'laying down' during the rain storm. So I propped them all up and lashed them to bamboo stakes. Fingers crossed that this experiment is successful.

- Paper towel seed starting technique - Win! I successfully managed to start 5-year old basil and black eyed susan seeds using the trick of sprinkling seeds on a wet paper towel, wrapping it up and putting it in a ziplock bag on the counter. I'm now trying two types of milkweed and a french marigold.

- Lemon Balm + Nasturtium to repel Squash Vine Borer - Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Today I found the SVB eggs (8) on my squash plants, in all cases the eggs were in locations that were not close to the lemon balm or the nasturtium plants, so maybe it kinda actually works. Also, keep in mind that this is the first I've found the eggs and other gardeners I know started finding eggs weeks ago. (Jenny at RockRose has been keeping a very good running dialogue on the SVB and has some good pictures of both the eggs and the adults. Eggs can be seen here). I have found that the lemon balm works well as a mosquito repellent when I'm out there -- crush a leaf or two and rub over exposed skin. It probably doesn't have staying power, but it works fine for the amount of time that I'm outside in the evening checking on the plants. Plus it makes me smell all lemony!

- Quinoa - Has not started yet. This will be the fall garden experiment.

- Starting tomatoes/eggplant/pepper from seed - Okay so it's not really a great science experiment because a TON of people are able to do this successfully and have no problems. Not me. This is the first year that I have managed to grow tomatoes, eggplant, and sweet peppers from seed. Of course the experiment is ongoing because while I've successfully grown the plants, I still need to actually get some fruit from them.

The Garlic Experiment

This morning I cleaned my garlic haul for the year. Now I have 4 little paper bags of my minuscule garlics. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that I didn't do anything wrong and it had more to do with the weather as Vertie also had garlic on the small side (and she grew garlic last year, so she at least has something to compare to).

I still have to write the varieties on the paper bags, but I did at least number them, so I just have to search back through my posts to find the one that tells me which number is what variety. (Hey man, I do occasionally try to learn lessons from others so I don't repeat them).

I'm not sure (so I'll have to turn to my good friend, Google), but I think that garlic is kinda like a pineapple--that is, the larger your starter, the larger the end product. That is to say; pineapple, when you start it, can only be as big or smaller than the parent plant, and I think Garlic is kinda the same way--bigger cloves = bigger heads. All this really means is that I'm probably going to end up buying garlic to plant again this year rather than try to get garlic plants out of my puny heads (seriously, there's one that's the size of a quarter...I should take a picture, it's like a wee baby garlic).

Final Thoughts on growing garlic: I found it very easy to grow garlic. I think I compost tea'd the fall garden bed 2 times (ergo the garlic got it as well), but I didn't ever have pest problems. When I did water the garden, it was never because the garlic looked like it needed it (just the other plants). Harvesting the garlic was probably the toughest thing of the whole adventure. The bottom leaves started turning yellow a month or so before I dug up everything. One of my friends pulled up a garlic as soon as the bottom leaf turned yellow, and of course he ended up with a quarter sized head. I at least did dig down to try to figure out how large the garlic head was before I pulled it out. In all cases, I ended up pulling the garlic earlier than I would have liked because the tops were telling me "pull me" but the garlic bulbs were still very small.

Corn-y

Yesterday (before the rains), I came home and went out to look at the garden. My corn had been blown over. And then it rained on said blown-over corn.

Needless to say all the corn looked mighty pitiful this morning when I got up to try and prop it back into place. 3 stakes, and 6 strings of twine later, everything was relatively back into place.

I don't remember this happening in Colorado ever. Has anyone else had problem with corn "laying down"?

In other news I pulled the rest of the bulbing onions and most of the green onions. The largest of the bulbing varieties are the size of a baseball. The husband (who hates onions) was actually pretty impressed with the onion haul. As mentioned previously, the beets and garlic were pulled earlier. We finished off the beets last night with dinner (and right after we finished, the husband stated that he "really, really dislikes beets." Apparently he didn't want to tell me this while we had them for fear that I'd just throw the rest in the compost bin since I don't necessarily LOVE beets). Project 29 for the weekend will be to clean the garlic and bag it.