Garden Report Sept 25th.

Okay, just cause Aunt Sue asked for it.....

Garden Report for Sept. 25th.
If there is any kind of society for the prevention of cruelty to tomatoes I'm probably going to get picketed after this post.

The sun gold tomatoes....don't they look super healthy and vibrant and awesome?
I'm going to blame the super cold weather we've been having on how pathetic this plant looks....

The green zebra's look not much better...tomato plants are supposed to turn grey-brown right? And why the green zebras are yellow??? Heck if I know...

We've already eaten several tomatoes from this plant....we haven't been overwhelmed by the flavor..

The pineapple tomatoes are doing just as splendid as the others as you can plainly see....yikes... The few ripe ones we've eaten do taste better than the not-green zebras though...
Doesn't that plant look healthy?

The basil-pepper pot is going the best. We are constantly clipping basil and adding it to pasta...Out of two different pepper plants I only got 2 peppers....guess I better pick them soon and eat them before they get over ripe....but they just look so pretty on the plant.

The neighbor on one side has yellow cherry tomatoes that are growing up over the 6' fence! She regularly gives us bags of tomatoes! Please her heart....

Here's the other neighbors tomatoes planted in the exact same pots as mine...yet hers are growing taller than the garage they are planted next to!

Here's another neighbors garden as viewed from our stairway window....shes got tomatoes and sunflowers and well, tons of stuff!

So, to sum up the garden report, my tomatoes are sad and pathetic, and everybody elses are doing great..... Yes, I've got a brown thumb it seems....

The End.

Garden Report July 18th-We have Tomatoes!

So, another super exciting Garden Report...cause I wanna be just like Casa Decrepit!

This is a pure case of garden jealously. My neighbor, who has tomatoes planted in the exact same kind of pot, has cherry tomatoes that are like 7' tall! In this pic you can see them right at the edge of the garage. This is the view I see from our front porch...her tomatoes, taunting me!!!

The neighbor is super cool and told me her secret.....worm castings! Which I think is just a fancy term for worm poop? Anywho, she took pity on me and my pathetic tomatoes and left some on my doorstep.

I was afraid to open the bag but it just sorta smelt like steer manure to me.

I split the castings evenly between my four pots and worked them into the soil. The castings left a yellowish stain on my hands that washed off with soap. Here's what the Sun Sugar looks like now. Maybe 3' tall at most....and my plants get WAY more sun than the neighbors...

The Zebra is doing well with several tomatoes growing.

The Pineapple still looks the sickliest...but its finally got a bunch of flowers so hopefully we'll have a decent amount of em.

The basil-pepper pot looks pretty good. If you look closely you can see that we have two jalapeno peppers already.

The tomatoes are starting to grow through the deck railings...I probably shoulda put cages on em as its a lot harder to train these things than I thought... they're not super bendy are they...

Here's our cat Squirty checking out the pineapple.

And of course, what ever Squirty does Henrietta has to do...such a little sister.

We got our first 'harvest' from the sun sugars....they tasted pretty good but where not as juicy as I expected? I think I'm watering the plants really well but maybe I'm doing that incorrectly?

One thing Tasha and I do every evening is 'inspect the tomatoes' I bring her out there when I turn the watering on and we look at each plant. When I say, its time to inspect the tomatoes she runs to the back door and slaps it and says, 'Na-do's'. On one of our inspection rounds I gave her a little piece of basil to chew on. Now she demands some every time. She also likes the cherry tomatoes. Here Irene was teaching her about the amazing combo of fresh tomato and basil.

And here's just a cute shot of everybody on the porch, just for the heck of it. The cats are indoor only cats so when we let them out (or when they sneak out) on the balcony its a big deal...

Garden Report June 19th

Okay here's a post that should not cause any controversy....unless there's a National Association of Heirloom Tomato Growers' that are going to object to my lack of gardening skill...
All the tomatoes are doing well and getting bigger with lots of flowers on them. The sunsugar even produced a ripe tomato already! I felt that the tomatoes are big enough to take them off of their stands and I even tied a couple of pieces of string to start training them to use the deck rail as a trellis. Its been super-crazy windy here the last couple of days and I was a little bit scared that a couple of the bigger plants would get blown over.

Here's the Green Zebra. This was the smallest most sickliest plant of the bunch when I first bought them. Now look at her! Shes' the biggest and healthiest with a good amount of flowers. Are they called blossoms also?

Here's the Pineapple. Its the 'rangy-ist' with several long uh shoots I guess? This is one of the plants I tied to the fence for support.

Here's a shot of the sunsugar Cherry tomato plant. Its the bushy-ist and has by far the most flowers. I'm hoping to train it to grow all over that little enclosed nook its in.

Just for the heck of it here's a shot of the first ripe tomato of the season. This tomato is an over achiever as there aren't even any other tomatoes on the other plants.

The Basil and Pepper pot. So, I guess I screwed up here and didn't pinch off the basil. Instead of having big bushy plants I got tall scraggly ones with a ton of flowers...

The Basil-Pepper pot after I did my pinching. Hopefully I can turn the basil back into a bushy form with a lot of leaves. But look how great the peppers are doing. They look totally healthy with lots of flowers.

I can not wait to make salsa with these tomatoes and those peppers..yum, yum. And of course there's the basil-tom-fresh mozzarella with balsamic vinegar salad that we love.

Hurry up and get ripe dang it!

Okay now back to our regularly scheduled inflammatory rhetoric...

Garden Report May 20th

Actually this is mostly pictures that Irene took when she set up the initial watering system...that I didn't know she took and then that I got a little in trouble for not posting on the original drip watering post....something about efforts being glossed over.......ahem....

Here is Irene's super fab drip watering supplies kit all ready to go!

Irene added these flavor crystals to the soil to help retain moisture.

She set up the drip watering rings around the plants.

Hooked the different rings together with a manifold of her own making.

She ran the tubing inconspicuously....see, no trip hazards!

Here are the new adjustable shower head fountains I bought at the despot for a whopping $.97 each.

I yanked off the soaker hose (which was surprisingly hard!) and installed the adjustable shower heads.

There was some fiddling back and forth to get them to all deliver the same amount of water. But look here it is! That's not a bad looking tomato is it?

Nother sexy tomato shot with watering action. This Zebra is looking pretty good no?

and the pineapple tomatoes with the little basil that couldn't.....this plant looks a little funky still.

I left the soaker hose on this last planter cause it was doing a fine job before...though I don't know if it is still cause its kinda hard to tell how much water is being emitted.

So after all that work and getting the water tuned perfectly its been raining off and on for the last several days and I haven't really needed it....of course.

Watering System for the Tomatoes

So, I know I said that i'd do a watering system for the tomato plants on the deck last weekend...butttt... I had my hands full of other stuff.
Unbeknownest to me while I was performing a hyper-critical daddy job (napping with the baby to get her to stay asleep for a healthy amount of time) Irene went out and piped up the tomatoes for drip watering....

All that was left for me to do was figure out how to get the water to the drip piping. Since the remodel we don't have any outside spigots anywhere in the back half of the house!?!? It didn't make sense to me to run a line from one far corner of the house to the other so I went looking for another solution.

Luckily our house has several abandoned water lines in random places in the house. I found one with a newish looking 1/2" plug that I thought I could remove and figure something out.

Yay for lots of plumbing-fire fittings and widgets. I didn't need to buy anything to make it work. The drip tubing is 1/4" and with the sleeves will work nicely with these compression fittings. So, here's all the fittings that were required. The fitting on the right is the adaptor to go into the 1/2" fitting.

Here's the abandoned cold water line....Look at that ollllld galv water line and all that corrosion...the chances of being able to unscrew that plug without loosening ancient old pipes sealed by corrosion and creating new leaks is very low...
This fricken plug was put in by the foundation contractor to remove some plumbing that was in the way...they didn't use any tape to seal it they just cranked the life outta it! I had to use my 18" pipe wrenches to loosen it!?!? What are the chances that the top part of that pipe aren't going to leak?

Here's a wonky picture of the adaptor installed and the black drip tubing leading up through an existing hole in the wall.

Ya I know that this isn't fine home building..its just a temporary solution so I don't kill the tomatoes.

The tubing goes up to this super wonky zip-tied valve on the baluster near the back door.

Now I just have to open the back door and turn the valve and the tomatoes get watered....it's not wifi enabled and I can't turn it on from a web interface but I think Noel is working on that one?

Here's a picture of a great trip hazard I created with the bad route job I did...That first step is a doozy!

Here is the drip watering in action. I have to admit I don't understand this set-up. The black ring is a 'soaker hose' I think but to me it seems way bigger than it needs to be. Like is the water even going to get to the tomato plant? Also, as far as it being a soaker hose it shoots these teeny-tiny jets of water in completely random direction along its circumfrence? Some of that water is shooting on the plant. Isn't that bad? Like won't it sunburn the plant? I partially burried the soaker hose so there are no more jets of water shooting everywhere.

Now I just have to remember to turn it on and then figure out how long I need to turn it on for at a time to water the plants correctly...sounds like an experiment to me! Science!

Well I double checked for leaks and I got very lucky nothing is leaking!! Hurray! Maybe there is a chance of getting this multicolored tomato plant thing going. Man, I can't wait to make salsa with all of these tomatoes and with the peppers we're growing...I actually don't know when they are supposed to produce fruit...maybe we'll have some by the July 4th BBQ?

Garden Report May 7th

Yes another garden report! Why not!
Because I steal all my best ideas from the casa.
The tomatoes are not doing spectacularly....mostly because it was really hot and I can't seem to remember to water them like I should...

The SunSugars are bigger but there are a lot of black spots and yellow leaves down low? There are several flowers on this plant already.

This is why I liked having a water garden. You never have to water it!!!

The zebra look the best. Its grown a lot and theres no ugly yellow or black spots.

The pineapple tomato has definitely grown the most...but it also looks the worst....the lower leaves are yellowing-dying....but the top half looks great...I hope it makes it...

The basil and peppers pot is looking kinda sad. The peppers don't seem to of grown at all and I think I totally killed the basil...

Doesn't that basil look sad?

But never fear intrepid reader. I've got a basil backup plan. Our local Trader Joe's has these pretty giant basil plants on sale for $2.99. I already forgot to water this one so its a little droopy.....but I have high hopes for its survival.

Just to add insult to injury I think. Our local Safeway has an amazing assortment of heirloom tomato plants for sale in the veggie dept. How weird is that? What really bugs me is that they look great and they all have lots of flowers already. The big one on the right end is a pineapple tomato just like mine! Look how great its doing inside where its not warm and only has fluorescent lighting....its taunting me...

I think this post proves that I need to do a watering system for the pots on the deck if they are to have any hope of actually living and producing fruit. That's one of this weekends tasks-to cobble together some sort of drip watering system.