Seedlings - Slow growth

[OmahaJB]

fourtgn,

I can understand why you and your neighbor were upset about the theft. I've heard at 'some' (not all) community gardens they have a little trouble with other gardeners sampling from other gardener's plots. Not cool!

And BTW, my boss has been bringing in tomatoes (a hybrid I'm sure as I tasted one today - bland but juicy), and zucchini. And me, I'm still waiting for even a Black Cherry to fully ripen! I did plant out late, so I have to remind myself of that - constantly.

Lori,

You started your potatoes a full two months before I did, so no wonder your's did so well already! I'll have to remember that trick. Maybe I'll start mine indoors in early-mid April or something along those lines next year.

And I agree about the drip irrigation. My method this year isn't working. I typically get to the garden about twice a week and water if necessary. Most of the time it is. But I've already lost 4 tomatoes to BER, including my large 1884.

This week I do expect to see at least a few Big Beef & Better Boy toms ripening, along with many of the Black Cherry tomatoes. The ones I have sitting on the counter still have a ways to go to fully ripen. But one is pretty close!

[OmahaJB]

August 13th:

Finally had my first Black Cherry tomatoes yesterday. They weren't fully ripe but close. They tasted different than I had imagined, but were still pretty good. They weren't much different than I'd expect from a good red tomato. Guess I was expecting a 'chocolatey' or 'smokey' taste in the mix, but got something that was a little tart & acidic with a strong but good aftertaste. No hint of sweetness to my tastebuds. After having one, I wanted the other 3 I had on the counter!

Also yesterday, I pulled 2 or 3 tomatoes with BER off Better Boy & Big Beef. I do think a drip irrigation system is something I'll have to look into next spring.

[OmahaJB]

August 14th:

Picked a couple more Black Cherry tomatoes this afternoon. They actually had an even better taste than the others I had a couple days ago. The ones today had a more assertive flavor. The last one even reminded me of a grape! Interesting flavor to say the least. Very good! I'd say an 8.5...

[OmahaJB]

Nothing to really report. I visited the garden yesterday but no significant changes.

The reason for this post is because today I checked out the scapes I cut from the garlic about a month or two ago, and to my surprise found that the heads at the end of the scapes had absolutely exploded with garlic seed. I honestly thought when I cut the scapes off that the heads would not produce seed. Originally I was going to place the scapes along the ground by the tomato plants to help keep 'creatures' away, but never did. So the scapes stayed in the plastic bag until today. They of course were brown and dead, but the scape heads did well.

I did some reading about planting that type of seed versus garlic cloves, and found out that it's best to start that seed inside a few weeks before planting out in the spring. The website I stumbled upon said it can take 2-3 years to get bulbs of decent size when using seed from scape heads(bulbis I believe is the term). It's possible some of the seed is immature as it's totally white and smaller compared to some that is purple and larger. They came off of two different varieties though so it might be because of that.

I plan on trying to germinate them next winter. There must be well over 100 seeds, maybe even 200.

My mother used some of the garlic finally and loved it compared to store bought, which I believe is all she's ever used. However, like me, she's not a big garlic user. But it's fun to grow! I liked planting the garlic cloves in the fall knowing in the spring I'd see the tops growing through some of the mulch - although my sister raked up the mulch (leaves) in the fall. I wasn't aware of that though until spring when the snow melted. She misunderstood where my mother told her not to rake the leaves from! Kind of funny to think I spent time building up a few inches of leaves over the garlic only to have her rake it up. The garlic seemed to do okay without it. Not as many bulbs grew as I had expected so that could be why.

So next winter I'll have a little project - growing garlic from scape bulbis seed.

[OmahaJB]

August 23rd update:

Picked my first 2 Big Beef tomatoes today, along with another 5 Black Cherry tomatoes during this past week.
The Big Beef's probably need a couple days to finish ripening. So far that Black Cherry plant has produced about 40 tomatoes, most of which are either not ripe yet or just barely starting out. I've picked 13. Due to the late plant out it's only about 40" tall.

Today I picked another two Big Beef tomatoes with BER to throw out. They aren't far enough along to even use the good part for fried green tomatoes. It's frustrating.

Both 1884 plants have tomatoes going ok and not affected with BER. The one plant has at least 3 tomatoes, the other 1.

Better Boys are still taking their time - no hint of ripening yet.

Since I've been so curious as to whether there are any potatoes growing in my grow bags, and if so how big they are, I decided to harvest one of the bags. It was the only one with all the top vegetation dead. I knew they would only be salad size and they were. Ended up with 26. A few were only pebble size, and the biggest was between 1.5 to just under 2 ounces. I have an old postal scale that only measures by the half ounce. The average size was between .5 and 1 ounce - again hard to be specific with that scale.

Probably this evening or tomorrow I will boil a couple for tasting. Unfortunately, the rain got into the coin zips that I put the ID tags in, so I'm not positive of the variety. I was thinking it was the fingerling (La Ratte), but after harvesting I think they are either the German Butterball or Carola.

My main goal today was to find out how productive these were in grow bags. I'll be happy with 26 per bag if that's what I end up with! The rest wont be harvested for about a month. I want to give them as much time as possible to grow.

The 'stumps' are not going to produce. There is still 1 flower open on Mammoth German Gold, but I'm not holding my breath. The other flower did not pollinate.
Czech's Bush just never took off in regards to vegetative growth, and never had flowers. Will give both a couple of weeks to DO SOMETHING before tossing in the trash.

Report on potato taste later. After a little boiling then served with a little butter.

Jeff

[OmahaJB]

August 24th:

This morning I tasted my first homegrown tomato (Big Beef) this year, and my first ever homegrown potatoes. The potatoes, as I indicated yesterday were salad size. I boiled 5 of them and used a little butter. They were as you can imagine very 'delicate' and 'pleasant' tasting. Not a strong flavor but that may be due to the smaller size.

The Big Beef tomato tasted better than I had expected. My supervisor has been bringing in a hybrid (not sure which) to work that has absolutely no taste to it, so I was kind of expecting the same from mine. The Big Beef tomato I had today had a nice initial taste, but nothing that hits you extra after that initial flavor. With Black Cherry I am getting a 2nd burst of flavor that is as nice as the initial flavor. That's ok though, since I expected grocery store blandness with Big Beef, I'm getting better than expected flavor.

The tomato I really want to try now is 1884. I have one that is of decent size so far without getting BER, so I'm hopeful. The bottom of it looks pretty rugged in shape, but no signs of rotting at all.

Nice to finally be able to taste a few of those taters!

Jeff

[OmahaJB]

August 30th:

Not alot to report today. Quite a few of the Black Cherry tomatoes were in varying stages of ripeness. Great to see that! What a beautiful sight.

I've honestly had enough of the Big Beef & Better Boy tomatoes. I've eaten a couple of each, but will let my mother have the rest when they ripen up. She's gotten a couple off of them as well so far. The taste isn't anything great. I could take them or leave them, literally. Nothing special.

Still hoping an 1884 matures without getting BER. Hasn't happened yet, but there are 3 or 4 on the plants so I still have a chance. All are still small at this point. So far I've thrown probably 3 away with BER. They wait until they are of decent size, then wammo, they get BER. Very sensitive buggers!

That's all for today...besides the fact I'm trying to keep the 'taters watered every couple of days. It'll be hot again for the next few days.

Enjoy Labor Day weekend! And good luck to the folks on the Gulf Coast with the hurricane.

[OmahaJB]

September 9th update:

After a couple weeks of fairly warm weather it's beginning to cool down finally. High 70's daytime, upper 40's low 50's night temps. The tomato plants didn't like the hot weather last week, but are still alive.

Good news with one of the 'twigs' or 'stumps'. I have a Mammoth German Gold tomato about the size of a quarter growing. It wont get very large since the plant it still around 10-12" tall, but with a little luck it'll still have time to grow and ripen. If not, I'll use it for a fried green tomato. Real happy to see that last weekend when I stopped by the garden.

There were a couple large green Better Boy tomatoes that I wanted to use for fried green tomatoes, but they are already starting to ripen and I don't have any milk or flour at home so will wait for other tomatoes to grow to size.

Happy that my 1884's are growing without getting BER at the moment. There are 3 on 1 plant and 4 on the other. All of the early 1884's ended up with BER, so will be watching these close.

Black Cherry has quite a few tomatoes on it but I only see one starting to ripen. I guess I should let them fully ripen, as the ones I've had so far I know I ate well before they achieved full ripeness. Just couldn't resist! They are very good.

Potatoes - I've gone through two more of my 10-gallon grow bags to harvest the potatoes. Both bags were La Ratte (a fingerling). They were all small, salad size and some too small to even eat. A few were pebble size. Most though were probably between .5 and 2.5 ounces. Even using containers it's alot of work, adding soil as the plants grow, then looking through the soil for every little potato. Not that it's not worth it, it's just time consuming.

I'm guessing the reasons for such small potatoes are because: 1) I started late (3rd week of May I think); 2) I did not fertilize the initial soil I put in the containers (since the roots of the seed potatoes grow down, some folks fertilize the soil right below where they place them); 3) I planted 2 or 3 or in a couple of cases 4 seed potatoes in each 10-gallon container. Because of the late start date I don't think it affected potato size, but I can definitely see how putting more than 2 seed potatoes in a container could crowd them. The biggest factors were probably late start date and possibly not being watered enough during the hotter weather.

I did get good yield in terms of numbers for La Ratte however: 53 in one of the grow bags and 75 in the other. The first grow bag I harvested was either Carola or German Butterball, and it did not have as many, I believe it was in the 30's.

There are still 8 more bags to go through. Will wait until the weekend to harvest another one. Just wish the taters were a little larger.

Jeff

[OmahaJB]

September 20th:

Starting to have problems. Found a green worm destroying one of my tomatoes. He was still sitting right on the skin getting ready to enlarge the hole he had already made. He was mangled in a terrible 'accident' shortly after I noticed him. I did not see any others but I'm sure they appear more than one at a time.

Two of my plants have been yellowing with some type of disease. It's not a watering issue as this has been going on since before the rains came last weekend. Big Beef is the worst off, now Black Cherry is getting it. Big Beef happens to have the most green tomatoes on it besides the Black Cherry. Although Big Beef tomatoes are not the size I had imagined they'd be. More like tennis ball sized than softball.

Terrible terrible cracking problems on the Better Boy tomatoes. I had to throw one of them away and only could use part of the second ripe tomato I picked a couple days ago. The other tomatoes on the Better Boys are showing signs of cracking also. My guess is the rains from last weekend caused the worst of the cracking. They do get about twice the size of Big Beef so I'll try to pull some off for fried green tomatoes, rather than let them rot because of cracking.

Now for the good news:

The Mammoth German Gold is doing very well. Not sure how to explain the size of the sole tomato - it's probably 3 inches wide and 2 inches tall. I'm anxious after the rains last weekend to see what ends up with BER and what doesn't.

Both 1884 plants are looking healthy despite one of them being next to the diseased Big Beef plant. One 1884 has 4 tomatoes of decent size and the other has 3. No signs of BER on any of them yet.

Have harvested a total of 4 of my grow bags of potatoes so far. The one I went through mid-week had potatoes a little larger than the others I had gotten previously. Probably because of variety more than anything as I think it was Carola. Still the largest couldn't have been more than 3 ounces or so. That should leave 7 grow bags to search through. Hah, it is a little work going through all that soil to find 50-75 potatoes, some very tiny. Although I think Carola had closer to 30-35. Not sure if I'll do this again. But if I do I'll start much much sooner, possibly inside starting in early April. It'll depend on what else I have going on. I may have to narrow my focus since there are some new things I want to try in '09. Possibly eggplant or squash, and leeks. I believe leeks are sowed outdoors in fall. At least I saw that on a garden show. Something else to read up on!

But will definitely have ALOT more OP tomatoes growing. This year was disappointing losing seedlings like I did - MOST of them.

Well, time to get ready to go over and harvest another bag or two of taters. Interesting to see the little critters that have taken residence in the soil. Not many but I did see 1 slug, 2 of something I have no idea of what they were (brown almost centipede looking but not quite, and very fast), and 1 ugly spider. Oh and two earthworms. If I only had time for fishing that day...

Enjoy your gardens, harvests, families, and Cleveland Browns football as they go for their FIRST win of the season.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I transplanted a few seedlings for indoor growing. 5 Wishful F3's from the dwarf project, 2 Sprite, 1 Black Cherry, and 2 Black Sea Man. Considering most of my seedlings died last winter, I'm not giving these good odds to succeed.

[OmahaJB]

September 27th:

All the rain we received a couple of weeks ago has resulted in alot of cracking and splitting of my tomatoes. Even the Black Cherry toms are affected. Sadly, I noticed today my Mammoth German Gold tomato is splitting from top to bottom. It's of decent size, but not going to be any good I'm thinking.

Still have about 30 Black Cherry tomatoes on the plant. One of the 1884 plants has a couple of nice sized tomatoes with no cracking or BER. They may start ripening before our first frost. Once they start I'll be pulling them off.

The Mammoth German Gold 'stump' is now about 2.5 feet wide, while remaining no taller than 10-12".

The Big Beef plant has split in two at the stem, thanks to the wind left over from Ike. I've propped the plant up weaving the branches into the trellis. It has several tomatoes unaffected by splitting or cracking. And a few that are. By far it is the most productive of all the non-cherry tomatoes. A shame they don't taste better and aren't bigger.

Better Boy has larger toms than Big Beef but has lots of ugly nasty cracking and less production. And taste about as, well, tasteless!

Even though the vegetation died off about a month ago, the potatoes I'm finding now are a little larger than what I dug out 2 weeks ago. I wont even count the bag I dug potatoes out of last weekend, as they were few in number and disappointing in size. That was one of the grow bags with the most soil, so I hoped the taters would do better. Still have 6 bags to go through.

The transplanted seedlings are doing very well so far.

Already planning for next year's garden!

[OmahaJB]

October 18th update:

Wrapping things up with my garden this year. The forecast is for a low of 33 tonight, with a danger of frost. So today I picked the rest of the green tomatoes. I never did get a vine ripened 1884, however it does appear a couple are close to starting the process. I have a few of those, along with the Mammoth German Gold, about 30 Black Cherry tomatoes, and quite a few of the hybrids. I have a couple of bananas in the bags to help with ripening. I'll use a few tomatoes for fried green tomatoes. Possibly tonight.

I do have a 3" Big Bertha pepper growing. I left it on the plant. Even if it doesn't freeze tonight I doubt it'll grow much more.

Over the past 3 weeks since my last post I've gone through the rest of my grow bags of potatoes. The results were VERY disappointing. Plus it was labor intensive going through the soil to find potatoes 2" long or smaller. It was not worth it this year all things considered.

If I ever grow potatoes again I'll find an early variety and start indoors around the beginning of April. Next year I'll probably concentrate mostly on tomatoes & peppers. Along with the garlic, a couple melons, cucumbers, and possibly leeks. And rhubarb. I failed on that front this year. I also have some seed garlic from 'bulbis' that I want to try.

Next weekend I'll be cleaning up the garden as far as getting rid of the plants and putting the trellises away for the winter. And the garlic will go in the ground then as well. Not looking forward to that because I'm putting it in a different area that needs to be dug up & weeded first.

My indoor plants are doing great. The 300-watt PS-bulbs do wonders compared to the shoplights. The Black Cherry will be a bit of a challenge indoors due to size (eventually). But it's fun to try.

Still looking forward to the day I have room to start tree seeds for bonsai. There's something I find special about trees - they're good for the soul the way I see it. And I know I'm not the only one. I do want to start them from seed rather than buying seedlings. One of these days....

Enjoy your harvests everyone. Next year I hope to do much much better!!!

Jeff

[OmahaJB]

Weighed a couple of the tomatoes. The largest 1884 was at least 8 ounces. My old postal scale weighs by the 1/2 ounce. I had larger 1884's earlier in the season but they had BER.

The 'stump' Mammoth German Gold had one tomato that weighed at least 4.5 ounces. For those who haven't read my entire thread, the 'stumps' were seedlings I had to cut all the branches/leaves off due to disease. They were planted very late and I did not expect to get tomatoes on them. MGG was the only one that produced one.

They are ripening on my shelf. I have about 70 tomatoes ripening including 27 Black Cherry toms. So I'm not through eating them yet!

Had some fried green tomatoes the other night. Good stuff.

[OmahaJB]

October 30th taste test results:

1884 - Actually pretty good. Mild but with an interesting taste. Acidic, nothing sweet about it to my taste buds. Would grow again. Was actually productive, I just lost ALOT of them to BER. Have to get that straightened out.

Mammoth German Gold - Disappointed in the taste. There wasn't any to speak of. Was very meaty with a nice golden color inside with the very center being dark orange. I'd like to believe it was the growing conditions but it was picked the same day as the 1884's. I wont grow this again.

Planted the garlic last weekend, btw. I planted about 50% more than I did last fall. Last year squirrels actually dug up at least a couple of cloves, and some just did not grow for whatever reason. I made sure I planted both hardneck & softneck. I made a huge mistake however in not labeling where I planted each variety last year so they got mixed up, although they were separated by hard & soft (necks). I do enjoy seeing these grow in the spring & summer.

Should be the last post for updates. Any comments about how boring this was are welcome.

Enjoy the 'off-season'!!!

Jeff