2008 Spring Garden Diary

[BVGardener]

Hey Everyone,

I decided to start a thread, like I did this past fall, where I will post data, comments and photos of the current season's garden results.

So far....Polish Dwarf, Nyagous, Champion, Druzba and Pouce de Picardie have all set fruit.

I'll get some details up soon but for now, a few photos.








Yes, I've got a lot of weeding to do.

[BVGardener]

After work today, I watered all of the plants and added another level of string support to all rows of tomatoes. No pictures tonight - I took nothing but photos of the dwarf project varieties and will post them tomorrow.

What a difference a couple of weeks can make. Going from a very uncertain gardening outlook to complete recovery on most plants to now what I can only describe as the growth rate having kicked into overdrive. Temperatures were in the lower 90's today.

Fruit set is beyond expectations. In addition to the varieties I mentioned previously, I observed fruit on the following varieties this afternoon:

• Amish Potato Leaf
• Marianna's Peace
• Mortgage Lifter
• Tennessee Britches
• Pink Berkeley Tie Dye
• Schellenberg's Favorite (I was reminded today why this is one of my favorite varieties....5 fruit already on the vine)
• Cherokee Purple (5 fruit)
• Indian Stripe
• Bruno (7 fruit)
• Nepal
• Russian Black
• Husky Red (6 fruit)
• OTV Brandywine
• Red Brandywine
• German Red Strawberry x Cherokee Purple
• Lemon Boy
• Golden Queen
• Tabletalk
• New Big Dwarf
• Orange Strawberry

The "nematode row" plants are keeping pace with the other plants thus far. I'll pull a plant at the 30 day mark to examine the roots for signs and will continue to pull plants from that row at 15 or 30 day intervals....have not decided on how frequent yet.

[TomatoDon]

You havea great looking set up there BV. Your own paradise on earth!

Don

[BVGardener]

I've updated the list of varieties that have set fruit. I edited the first post to include the latest varieties and they are listed in red.

Below are a few photos. From left to right, Bruno, Cherokee Purple and Indian Stripe.

Jay

[BVGardener]

A few photos below showing the latest going on in the garden. The nematodes are showing up now. I pulled a plant in the "nematode row" area and it had tiny galls starting to form on the roots. However, I think I have the total solution for getting rid of nematodes in that row and the other two that are infested with them.....more on that later this season. I need to prove out my theory first.

From left to right the photos below are: Husky Red Dwarf, Polish Dwarf, a photo showing the foliage of my German Red Strawberry x Cherokee Purple cross, a photo showing a developing fruit from GRS x CP and then a photo of Neves Azorean Red.

More photos coming.

[BVGardener]

Here are a few random photos of the tomato plants. I'll be back with more later....have an appointment with the doctor to go to.

Jay

[BVGardener]

Early Friday morning I spent quite a while confirming which varieties have set fruit so far. I'll get an updated list posted here soon. After the nice 1" rain we received Thursday night coupled with lots of sunshine, the plant growth has resumed. Many approaching 3' tall but of particular interest is the growth being put forth in the width of many of the plants. I can't get over the dense foliage developing....not all of them but definately the majority.

Jay

[nctomatoman]

Nice updates, Jay - thanks.

I hope to get all of my tomatoes, peppers, eggplant in their pots over the next 2 weeks. The weather has calmed down, and the seedlings are ready to get into their final resting places. I am going to be squeezing dwarfs into any space I can find!

[BVGardener]

Thanks Craig. Looks like you might have received some rain over the weekend. I must tell you, when my wife and I watch the Weather Channel, I no longer say,"look at the rain they are getting in North Carolina" or "what a downpour on the coast near Corpus Christi". The conversation now goes: "I see Craig is getting some rain" and "Duane near the Texas coast is in the middle of a downpour". It seems the names of states,towns, and cities have been replaced with names of fellow gardeners.


Another update:
Last Friday morning I counted 186 fruit on the vines and I've got a few more varieties to add to the list of the ones that have started producing fruit. Shockingly, Brandywine has already set fruit but I bet it still makes me wait the full 80+ days before I get a ripe one.

An interesting turn of events with the nematodes and I probably should make this topic in it's own thread but I pulled another plant at the 32 day mark in a row that had root knot nematodes built up to a level last fall that produced galls on the roots the size of marbles and larger. It was a discouraging site. Anyway, the plant I pulled up yesterday had little to no signs of RKN. In fact I had a hard time confirming the possibility of very tiny galls on the roots. I did observed what I would call a swollen root but no galls really. The swollen root is nothing out of the ordinary and I probably should not call it swollen. Probably more accurate to describe it as being a large root. Now I did confirm very small galls on another plant that I had pulled earlier in the season so I do know they are active but so far, I'm causiously optimistic that I could control the nematodes by heavily amending the rows with humus and composted cow manure, not growing in the same row twice in one year and not allowing weeds to grow in those beds at any time during the year...growing season or not. But even with all of that said, I do have a test project that I'm going to begin in a couple of months that should virtually eliminate the RKN. It's completely chemical free but labor intensive and would only be practical for the home gardener. I'll create a separate thread for that project later.

Here are a few photos below of individual plants.

Jay

[BVGardener]

I should have some new photos to post tomorrow. I had many more I wanted to post from this past weekend but I would rather post the latest.

If you would like to view my garden stats throughout the season, please visit here.

I started out with plans to grow over 300 plants. Then I decided that with my current work schedule, I better cut back and not grow the 2 plants per variety that I had originally planned. And then I lost close to 30 varieties during the transplant shock ordeal. So I'm currently at almost 100 plants. Still, I've got a great representation of color and lots of interesting stuff on the plate.

Stay tuned!

Jay

[rnewste]

Jay,

Are the tomatoes on your stat sheet all still alive, or did you loose any of them, specifically, the Ed's Millennium since March 22?

Ray

[BVGardener]

Ray,

Yes, everything listed on the stat sheet is good to go. Ed's Millenium is doing fine.

Jay

[BVGardener]

Yesterday I confirmed that all plants have set fruit except:

Golden Ponderosa
Yellow Brandywine (V.S.)
Ed's Millenium
Yellow Brandywine (Platfoot)
Livingston's Globe
And none of the dwarf project tomato plants

So things are looking real good and now it's a matter of waiting it out until the harvesting kicks in. I might add that even though I came way down on the number of tomatoes I'm growing, I did plant watermelons, cantelopes, 2 types of beans, 2 types of peas, peppers, carrots and eggplants with a few more things yet to be planted.

Below are a few photos taken yesterday. From right to left they are....Lemon Boy, Druzba, Black Giant, Lucky Cross, Russian Black and then on the second row, left to right, Kosovo, Dr. Wyche's Yellow, Watermelon Beefsteak and Bruno.

[feldon30]

Right now I have 93 non-cherry tomatoes on 34 non-cherry tomato plants. That's 2.73 tomatoes per plant.

[dice]

That's 2.73 tomatoes per plant.

Humidity?

If not, it sounds like they are a little deficient in something
needed for fruit set. (Could be an overabundance of something
else that is blocking uptake of something vital.)

You could try a test: spray feed one of them with MG or
similar and see if flowers suddenly start setting fruit.