PNW gardener progress?

[Barnowl]

The last few weeks of sun has been great but I think yesterday was the first day it reached the higher 20s Celsius (over 80F) here on Vancouver Island. I started late this year with starts from a nursery and picked my first black cherries yesterday... The early girls started to ripen last week and I am hopeful the bull's heart will be next.

[Jeannine Anne]

We got huge zuchinni that I had missed yesterday and we emptied tubs that had potatoes in, it was a very poor yeild but the ones in the ground are still OK and we are leaving them a while yet.

Sungolds are doing OK but I have noticed something.

Usually I prune indeteminates to a central cordon which is very much the English way but this year as I was growing mostly dwarfs that don't need it I also left the three Sungolds and three Juliets alone too. My yeild is down on these 6 plants and the fruit is smaller??? It is not the weather as they are in the greenhouse. Puzzled about this as I had read here therte is no need to prune them ??

XX Jeannine

[pdxwindjammer]

I have had ONE ripe tomato from one plant out of the 25 I planted. Peppers have fruit and yellow wax are at the ready to eat stage. Cabbage is doing great and ready to be picked. I have more yellow squash and bush zucchini that I can give away and eat myself so I am ready to doa "knock, drop and run" at a neighboring house. Beans and peas are producing an abundance and lettuce has also provided a great harvest so far. Eggplants have a couple of fruit each.

I am sad to report that my early butternut has not produced any fruit at all. I think I will pull that up because the fruit won't have time to ripen. I am also ready to pull my summer squash due to issues with powdery mildew.

I pruned my tomato plants of all but a few blossoms because they won't develope fruit in time to ripen and hopefully the plant energy will focus on ripening the fruit that is already there.

I planted beets a couple of weeks ago and they have all popped up. I also planted some kale, chard and mustard starts and will transplant those into the ground soon.

I harvested my garlic a couple of weeks ago and have been eating that.

Has anyone else had problems with cabbage aphids this year? They are attacking my kale and cabbage with gusto. I spray them with water to get them off and they keep coming back. I have read that Dr Bronner's peppermint soap mixed with water and sprayed on the plants may help?

I have also had terrible powdery mildew problems.

[hill60]

I woke up to the predicted rain. I'm sure hoping this isn't a signal that we are done with summer. I have some monster tomatoes that really need some more heat to ripen.

Around where I live cabbage aphids are a perennial problem. Usually we just spray aphids with water.

My zucchini, squash and cucumber production is way down. Most years my friends will reach their limit of how much they will take. This year I'm still sharing but not as much.

[Jeannine Anne]

the rain is only supposed to be for 1 day here ..oh I hope they are right.
]
XX Jeannine

[Tania]

Originally Posted by Jeannine Anne

the rain is only supposed to be for 1 day here ..oh I hope they are right.
]
XX Jeannine

It has been pouring here. I am sure we already got more than 30 mm here in Anmore - I will check my measuring bucket later, when the rail stops.

[dice]

re: Sungold, smaller fruit happens when plants get less water (relative
to plants of the same cultivar with larger fruits). That can be because
less water is supplied, smaller root systems, root disease (nematodes,
for example), stem disease that interferes with water flow, etc.

[Jeannine Anne]

My Sungold are in exactly the same double bucket system as all my other tomatoes and I have some huge ones growing .This is the only time I haven;t pruned them and the only time they have grown this way and I have grown them since they were relaesed..it is odd.

XX Jeannine

[dice]

Pruned plants often have larger fruit than unpruned plants, simply
because there are more fruit on the unpruned plants. Harvested fruit
weight per plant can be larger on the unpruned plants even if average
fruit size is smaller.

[Barnowl]

A sure indication that this summer has been much cooler in our region is the lateness of the blackberry harvest... Typically, we are out there picking in the first week of August. This year the peak period is still ahead and will probably extend to the start of September... It really shows that our tomatoes have received a much smaller total of "heat units" this year than others... I have topped all of my tomatoes in the hopes of ripening those still on the vines...

[JoeP]

The tomatoes are starting to trickle in. I've had Gregori's Alti, Flamee, Stupice, Big Beef, Sungold, Black Cherry, Galinas, Isis Candy, and Paul Robeson. Today I had my first Northern Lights and it was great. The nice sweet, fruity flavor of Pineapple (tomato) but earlier. Won't know how much earlier until the Pineapple fruit ripen.

I am surprised at how long it is taking some cherries to ripen. I expected Galinas to be early and it isn't and Camp Joy is covered with tomatoes that won't ripen - even with the heat that we have had recently.

Paul Robeson was good, Stupice is pleasantly sweet, Flamee is great, and Sungold is fantastic. But I am very happy with Northern Lights. This was the first fruit of this plant and I picked it a few days before to let finish on the couter. Even so it was very nice. I'll grow it again.

[Tania]

Northern Lights is a great tomato for PNW climate, I totally agree!

I will finish pulling my garlic tomorrow, it is all ready.

Rouge Vif D'Etamples squash is coloring up, I am surprised to get a mature fruit so early in such a bad year! Some fruits are really huge, I will need my husband's help to get them out of the garden. Buttercup is also maturing some fruit, but continues to set.

Last week I started to pick radishes from the 2nd sowing (July 27).

Cucumbers continue to come strong, a bucket every day.

Tomatoes... well... whatever I got left of my tomato garden is ripening fruit. All at once actually. The dwarfs are a bit behind, only 2 fruits picked from Summertime Green so far, but I am sure Wild Fred will be there soon.

Some peppers started to color up - Melrose is the first, as usual. Great pepper for our climate. Tequila Sunrise is as early, but less productive than Melrose.

[JoeP]

Tania,

I credit you with recommending Northern Lights.

Joe

[dice]

First Vorlon blushed today. I would say first large fruit, but
Kosovo was ahead of it by a week to 10 days.

I have been getting a steady trickle of Sasha's Altai and what looks
and tastes like an Early Rouge cross. (Early Rouge fruit last time
I grew it were baseball sized and roughly baseball shaped; these are
as big around but a more flattened, oblate shape. These have a
stronger flavor, too, maybe a cross with the Odessa plant that was
beside the Early Rouge plants that the seeds were saved from. There
were other plants in that bed that year, but Odessa was the only one
of them that had noticeably more intense flavor than Early Rouge.)

Otherwise, Moravsky Div, Cowberian, Kotlas, Kimberly, and Stupice
have all blushed a handful of fruit. First fruits from Victoria and
Defiant F1 have blushed and are ripening on the counter. Siberian
is dragging its feet on blushing fruit by a week or so compared to
the other "very early" cultivars.

edit:
Morden's Yellow has a blushed a couple of fruit, too.

[JoeP]

Dice,

I hope you will post an end of season results summary. I'd like to know how Guido, Indiana Red, and Kosovo did for you as well as all of your early/very early varieties. After another poor weather spring/summer I will force myself to try as many early season varities as I can in 2012.

Also, after trying several cherries last year and this year, I think I will grow only Sungold (maybe 2 plants) and forget the rest. Sungold is so good that every other cherry is a disappointment.