Garden pics 2019 Tomatoes plus

[GrowingCoastal]

I take pictures all year long but don't find time to get them ready for posting. Lots of time now with rainy weather hitting us in earnest this time of year.
I enjoy seeing the images of other gardeners' efforts and hope you like these.

This year I grew 20 tomato plants in containers.
I kept six dwarfs. This was Apr 12th in a south facing protected area under a tarp.


Two new to me varieties shared by members of T'vl. They did well and were off to a good start July5th




Brad's Atomic Grape was fun and tasty (if you like all sweet). Sometimes strange looking depending on the light.


This is the first time I have grown a multiflora tomato. Interesting and made me think of fractals in the almost never ending continuation of the same patterns. A bit late but the last ones that I hung for a while ripened nicely and made a nice dark addition to the last sauces.



While waiting for tomatoes to grow and ripen there is time to observe who is in the garden. Bees like all the alliums I have ever grown.


Hummingbirds, as well as bees love the elephant garlic blossoms.


The fragrant parsley blooms are a hit.


I once had occasion to google the usefulness of flies and learned that they are the number 2 pollinator, after bees!






July 12th, lots of fruit set nicely on the dwarfs


WooHoo! I see colour! I put a fruit bag around the tomatoes as a rat deterrent. There were none this year but I took no chances with the low hanging fruit after last year.


Someone's watching me.

[GrowingCoastal]

That went well. Will continue.

Hummingbirds have a choice of spots to sit in my yard where they can relax ad catch a little shuteye. Apparently they sleep a few seconds a a time. When awake they are hyper alert, always scanning their environment. This one is preening. Amazing how they manage to do that with such long beaks. It calls for some awkward postures.


Same bird with his head turned toward the light. Those are figs behind him.



I love the way some bees are almost translucent in the light.


Big and tasty!


July 29th






Dwarf


I am posting doubles of some varieties, early and when ripe, here.


There are a lot of tomatoes on these dwarfs.
July 24th




Another variety that is loaded with tomatoes, Stump of the World. As delicious as everyone says. This one needed steady water not to get BER, for me.


My one Isis Candy turned out to be all red with the 1st fruit of every truss a double. Tasty, balanced.




On guard next to the wispy tip of a Brad's Atomic Grape.


On member Black Bear's recommendation I got some seeds from Tatania and it is indeed a wonderful tomato.


They looked so good I just couldn't stop taking pictures of them. Rosella Purple Dwarf is in there too and produced super well in a larger pot this year.


Pretty sure this is Boronia. A delicious tomato.


Isn't this one a cutie? Tasty, too. Small enough to fit inside my hand but not as small as salad size. It made this star pattern rather than split. The star was not particularly tough.


Can't decide which one to grow next year.




Big enough for me!


There's always one that really likes tomato flowers.


Garlic chives bloom a little later.




July 29th

[GrowingCoastal]

Sept 6th, still going strong






By leaving some elephant garlic to bloom and self seed outside I have had an endless supply.


Abelia is one of my favourite shrubs. Lightly scented, blooming until the hardest frost hits, providing food for insects and hummingbirds. It can be pruned into a compact form or allowed to grow, as I do mine, free form with branches arching and mingling with the rest of the hedge.


An ordinary chive glowing in the evening light.


So hard to take good pictures in a small yard sometimes.






September 10th






With tomatoes over, salvias can be protected from rains for a while and be available for hummingbirds and bees, too.
Even now, mid November, salvias and cupheas are still providing for any bees still out there. Hummingbirds use them until the end. I will leave them until they die back enough to bring them in or until a heavy frost warning.


The Spires type salvia on the left is still out there in its pot, next to a Japanese maple.


The red pepper on the right had sunscald. I left it just to see. It ripened perfectly, with no hint of rot, until a slug moved in and I got rid of them.


Hotlips goes on until frost as well.

[KarenO]

Great photos!
From one islander to another
KarenO

[Whwoz]

Some beautiful photos, fruit and Birds. Love those Hummers, we have nothing to match them down here.

[bower]

What a feast for the eyes this morning! Fantastic garden, and all the visitors clearly agree!

[matereater]

Great pics, great garden !

[Barb_FL]

Beautiful pictures and lovely tomatoes.

I think in your first grouping of pictures, I don't think that is a fly but rather an orchid / mason / green (or blue) metallic bees. They are smaller than a honey bee, don't sting people, and make about 1000 hits per day. I had many this fall (summer temperatures) pollinating my tomato plants where the night time low temperatures were way too hot for normal pollination.

https://www.growveg.com/beneficial-i...ada/mason-bee/

[Worth1]

Beautiful, thanks for taking the time to post pictures.

[Salsacharley]

What a fabulous season you had! Thanks for sharing!
Love all the pollinators! Beautiful pictures.

[GrowingCoastal]

Thanks for compliments. Happy to share with other gardeners.

Barb, I too thought perhaps some type of bee but, no, these are flies. Our mason bees/blue bees are done very early in the season, end of May or so. I once caught one on a store window sill to release it and a man asked to see it as he was a fly tier and had never seen a live one. He had a look and we let the bee go. Google confirmed that they were flies.




From previous years.
My scarlet runners are hummingbird pollinated.




Rufous and resident Anna's sitting in the pruned apple branch I put out for them. They like to watch an area closely but if they are in the bushes I can't take pics. An added branch here or there does the trick.


Liking the teeny tiny Heuchera flowers.


This one with the schizostylis has quite a few missing feathers as he is molting.


One summer the veggy garden definitely took on a blue hue with the kale gone to seed and the toad flax that the finches liked the seeds of.

[Barb_FL]

Wonderful pictures. Thanks for the lesson on the fly (lol).

You did great with your dwarf tomatoes. Did you grow them in a container? If so, what size and what did you feed them? I think I did best with the dwarfs the first year I grew them. I'm trying again now with some of the ones I had best luck with.

[PNW_D]

Just beautiful - we are so lucky to live in the PNW

I've been noticing HotLips a lot of late - amazing plant that looks good for a long time - also my fav of your photos with the hummer

are the long peppers Witch Stick? I plan to grow these next year - how do you use them?

and finally - did you have a favourite of the tomatoes shown above?

Cheers

[GrowingCoastal]

Yes, Hot Lips is a good one. It starts off with very red flowers that turn more white during summer, then more red again in fall. People are divided as to whether that is due to temps or fertilizer. I also have a pink and a Cranberry coming along.
Those long red peppers are Thunder Mountain. I dry them after de-seeding until they are all done then roast them a little before grinding them into a powder. This pepper smelled the best to me while roasting out of a few varieties I grew one year. Not extremely hot but hot enough for me. A very beautiful looking plant with its red long peppers, too.

Favourite tomato is harder to answer. I did not post any I did not like a lot. Boronia was a fave last year and again this year but gotta say that all of these were very good. Going to choose Boronia over Rosella Purple for next year.
Black Bear and Stump of the World, both indeterminate, had excellent flavour.
Black Yum Yum had great taste in a smaller tomato.
Spudatula and Wild Spudleaf Dwarf were very close in taste. Space will determine which I choose to grow next year.
Wherokowhai Dwarf is a tasty tomato.
Ulu Ochre and Adelaide Festival are two dwarfs that did well and tasted great, both balanced with a little tartness.
Brad's Atomic Grape was a unique tasting tomato. Has lots of body to the fruit and the skin is tough but I loved the all sweet, savoury taste. A person who likes tart tomatoes would not like it. One visitor was polite not to spit it out! She hated them while I and the rest of my family love them. Only got about 9.75 lbs from it but will grow it again for taste and looks.
Esterina does indeed compare well with Sungold. Everybody really liked that one. (Except the lady who prefers sours.)

[GrowingCoastal]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Wonderful pictures. Thanks for the lesson on the fly (lol).

You did great with your dwarf tomatoes. Did you grow them in a container? If so, what size and what did you feed them? I think I did best with the dwarfs the first year I grew them. I'm trying again now with some of the ones I had best luck with.

Hi Barb. It is so hard to know all the little fliers and google helps me a lot!

I have been doing better with my tomatoes as each year I read more of what people write here at T'vl. This year I got 300 lbs out of my 20 plants with seven of those being cherries, all being grown in containers between 5 - 8 gallons. We had a year that was not too hot and fruit quality was better than in a really hot year.
The soil mix starts with Promix with mycorrhiza and mushroom manure and clean old soil mix, 1/3 each. I add a local mix (Reindeer's) of organic fertilizer 4-6-8? or close to that. Then, watching plants closely I water with liquid fish or other organic liquid fertilizer, sometimes adding magnesium sulfate when plants show a need.
This year I had one Stump of the World in a taller 5 gal pot that got BER constantly until I tossed it into a spot in a hedge where the pot was shaded and I watered it almost every time I walked by plus giving it some calcium nitrate, my only non-organic ingredient.
It's a balancing act for as the summer goes on the soil ph goes up too high and plants show deficiencies so I also use acidified water to keep the ph down. City water has a higher ph.

I am now glad of a rest. I don't know if I could do two seasons per year as you do where you are!