Huerto Urbano Tijuanense 2016

[jillian]

WOW Gerardo what an awesome thread!!! Thanks for sharing all of the beautiful pics and info.
Miserable weather here today, freezing rain expected til dark. Sitting here looking at my seedling babies (kale, mustard, peas and various herbs) and reading this thread has cheered me up and inspired me! Started my peppers and eggplants Fri, looking forward to starting tomatoes in a week or so.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Gerardo

Those guys have a lot of name recognition already.

I do what I can, on other fronts. There's a fair amount of poor people who take care of a lot of dogs, and whenever I hear of an interesting case I usually donate food.

I've found a good vet who'll take most of the egregious cases you find on the street, and he goes the rehab-adoption route most of the time.

I have some meds left over from putting one of my dogs down, so I keep them in my other car (the one I don't cross borders in) and it's ready to go if I see a dog in need while on the road.

Over the years, not stopping has haunted me the most, and I can still remember every detail of the doggies I did not help.

I also store a few cans of dog food in all of our cars to toss it to whomever needs it. Save all my bones and leftovers too and if I see a pooch in need I figure that might help him get through the day. It's no more than a feel good band-aid...

Very tricky down here, the love for dogs and everything American has been integrated. Animal sheltering and cruelty laws exist, the will to enforce them is a different story.

Do you know about Vet Ranch based in TX?

They take animals from shelters that are on the euthanasia list and fix them up with compassion and skill and then get them adopted out when and if possible.

I can spend hours at this site b/c to the right when viewing one video there are others to chose from and I do, with sometimes tears just streaming down my face.

All is done by donations to Vet Ranch, try it, I think you'll really like it. The two vets I like best are Dr.Jeff and Dr. Carrie.

Often kids and mom's etc, send in letters and I really cracked up at one recent one where the mom said her son wanted to neuter his younger brother after watching the many neuters they do b'c in their area of TX there are so many homeless dogs and cats that are living wild.

https://www.youtube.com/user/VetRanch

Carolyn, who thinks the one playing now is the kitten that was shot in the eye with a BB gun, they got the BB out, seen on Xray but BB, they called him, lost that eye but wait until you see how he turned out.

[Deborah]

Gerardo, gracias con todo mi corazon.

[NarnianGarden]

Gerardo: Do you ever grow any of your tomatoes as truly indeterminates, i.e., allowing them to grow as large as they like, all year round? That climate would be the ideal for them to stay alive infinitely, is it not? Isn't that how the original native Solanum species in Mexico are? Or, unless the diseases get them killed at some point..

Of course, one would soon need a very tall ladder for the huge tomato tree ...!

[Gerardo]

Jillian: good to hear you liked it.
deb: done with lots of love for the pooches
carolyn: now that's a vet. Outstanding works.

NarnianG: Yes I have, and they just keep on going. I kept a JapBkTrifele going for 2+ years in a container. As the vine grows, the fruit keeps getting progressively smaller, that's why I start over. You can prune them back all the way and they will produce decent fruit again, although it never seems to approach the size+ fruit set of those original first clusters.

By using successive plantings I've been able to get those first clusters over and over and over throughout the long season, it just means I'm handling seedlings pretty much year round.

If the temperature is adequate and you feed them, even some that are classified as determinates decide they don't want to quit and put out new growth and flowers.

Outside it feels like mid 80s right now, good for my plants, and apparently good for the Kenyan marathoners in LA too.

This whole winter tolerance test I had envisioned has gone out the window completely.

[NarnianGarden]

Aaaahh, I'm really envious now of those of you who can grow them all year round...! Over here, those plants that have not died of the various leaf diseases, reach their fullest potential sometime in October and seem to go on and on with clusters and fruits ... and then it is already the time for our first frost.

I would love to have a longer season... the plants that survive the bacterial and viral infections, almost begin their second growth spurt just before the cold, and it is such a pity to cut them down. (well, I still have some of my dead tomatoes outside on the balcony... but I don't expect them to come back to life in May!)

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by NarnianGarden

Gerardo: Do you ever grow any of your tomatoes as truly indeterminates, i.e., allowing them to grow as large as they like, all year round? That climate would be the ideal for them to stay alive infinitely, is it not? Isn't that how the original native Solanum species in Mexico are? Or, unless the diseases get them killed at some point..

Of course, one would soon need a very tall ladder for the huge tomato tree ...!

There are no native species in Mexico, the native species being from Central and Southern S America, but they made their way to Mexico and never settled by birds or humans.

Then the Spanish took them from MExico, some of them, but let's leave the trail there and get back to the species.

Here's a Wiki link that has a section on the wild species, but there are two more now recognized

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Wild_species

And here's the general Google search

https://www.google.com/search?q=Sola..._AUIBigA&dpr=1

I found out a lot about native species when I asked someone to bring me back S cheesmanii from the Galapagos Islands, but what she brought back was red, not the yellow that cheesmanii should be.

So I called the TGRC Center and talked to a Dr, Chatelet and they have accessions from all the islands in the Galpagos islands and since I knew which island it came from he was able to tell me that it was probably a stable interspecies cross and that's where the variety Sara's Galapagos came from, Sara's b/c that was the name of Amy Goldman Fowler's daughter and she named it. She had sent me the actual fruits I grew it out and then sent the seeds from those fruits to her.

Carolyn

[Gerardo]

Originally Posted by NarnianGarden

Aaaahh, I'm really envious now of those of you who can grow them all year round...! Over here, those plants that have not died of the various leaf diseases, reach their fullest potential sometime in October and seem to go on and on with clusters and fruits ... and then it is already the time for our first frost.

I would love to have a longer season... the plants that survive the bacterial and viral infections, almost begin their second growth spurt just before the cold, and it is such a pity to cut them down. (well, I still have some of my dead tomatoes outside on the balcony... but I don't expect them to come back to life in May!)

That 2nd growth spurt after the initial fruits are harvested can be quite productive too. PBTD and Dester had a very productive second half in Oct-Nov.

Maybe those balcony tomatoes will surprise you and be tardigrade types.

[Gerardo]

stairwell children.jpg

more recruits.jpg

PS. Acquired a pH kit and at the highest fertigation concentrations I'm around 6 to 6.5, so should be ok.

[Deborah]

That staircase garden looks nice-tidy and attractive.

[Gerardo]

Originally Posted by Deborah

That staircase garden looks nice-tidy and attractive.

Thanks Deb.

During my morning inspection I rotated Purple Reign and found a surprise.

purple reign.jpg


Volunteer shall be allowed to get a little stronger and then he gets to live. Seems the mulch is doing the job.

volunteer shall live.jpg

[Deborah]

How cute is that?! What a little trooper!

[Deborah]

I'm assuming that Purple Reign is named in honor of Jimi?

[Deborah]

Oh. Not Jimi, Prince. UGH!

[Gerardo]

Originally Posted by Deborah

Oh. Not Jimi, Prince. UGH!

purple reign/haze, close enough.