Labor Day 2008

I spent part of this beautiful day tending to the garden. Five tomato plants were pretty much done, so I pulled them out and planted several rows of snow peas and a row of lettuce. This is the first year I've tried to grow a late season crop, so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully, they'll be ready to harvest before the first frost hits.

Rooting the Runners

8/24 Update - separated 'baby' plants from 'mom'

To my surprise, the hanging strawberry basket I purchased at the Regional Market this spring has produced some of the sweetest strawberries I've ever tasted. Since my plan is to build a raised strawberry bed next spring anyways (just have to figure out where to put it), thought I'd try to root some of the runners. Not being quite sure about the best way to do this, I checked out various articles online and decided to use the advice from this site as a guide: http://www.gardenhive.com/fruit/strawberries/grow/runners/

I potted 20 of the best looking runners this morning and the picnic table (aka: Linda's Garden Bench) now looks like a mini strawberry patch.

In a few weeks, the roots should be pretty well established and I'll be able to snip their lifeline to the mother plant.

Haven't killed it yet!

This is the newest addition to my African Violet collection. It's finally blooming after having sat around idle for a few months. I had to adjust the white balance settings in order to get an accurate representation of the colors and I also placed a clear translucent plastic funnel over the camera flash to soften the light.

More garden pics

These are super chili's that I purchased at the CNY Regional Market. Although the plants are only about 5" tall, they are loaded with peppers. This is my first year growing these and so far, I am quite pleased - can't wait to use them in some recipes! Suggestions welcome!

This is a habanero plant that I picked up at Walmart. It's about a foot tall now and is growing in a container. As you can see, it has one decent size pepper already and there are plenty of others in the works .
Several of the tomatoes are starting to ripen now. I placed my lens cap next to these Jet Stars for scale.

Tomato Tally

After a slow start, the tomatoes are finally beginning to take off. It's been 7 weeks since I planted and here's where we're at:

I counted 25 tomatoes on the Jet Stars and 33 on the Romas, both with lots of flowers in the works. The Big Boys aren't doing quite so well... on a total of 6 plants, I counted 16 tomatoes and there are very few flowers. A few of the BB plants also have yellowing leaves at the bottom. ;(

The plants seem a little 'stunted' compared to previous years which could be partially due to me forgetting to add the slow release fertilizer granules to the soil before planting this spring. I had also pinched off a bunch of sucker leaves early on and maybe got a little carried away.

I've since let the suckers be, and to make up for the lack of fertilizer, I have given them a couple shots of 'worm poop' http://www.terracycle.org/all_purpose_2l.htm/ , a few banana peels and a watered down dose of Miracle Grow. Not all at the same time of course, but not on a regular basis either. Although they're nowhere near the height and bushiness of previous years, it looks like I might end up with a respectable yield after all.

Stay tuned for future updates.