Just a few overall progress shots from yesterday after watering. We could really use a good rain.

My home-made blossom bags look like they will work. Since I can’t be at the community garden every day I have friends there who are tapping the flower clusters when they happen to pass.

Your gardens are beautiful and so well tended. Your bags are great and you are so very lucky to have busy bees to help you pollinate your tomatoes.

Who supplies all of the wood chips?

MissS wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 7:53 am
Who supplies all of the wood chips?

It’s a community garden on the UW campus. The grounds department chips up all the brush, downed and trimmed trees, etc, and leaves them for us. The street crew of the adjacent village brings in a huge pile of the curbside pickup leaves we use for mulch and compost. It’s a great arrangement.

Well, the blossom bag results are a mixed bag so far. Some of the first ones I did the third week in June were empty of anything when I checked on them yesterday. Don't know if they didn't get pollinated or succumbed to the heat we had between then and now. On the other hand one other plant had little fruits forming so I took off the bag. Yay! On a couple plants, for some reason, I apparently included some stem in the bag so they were a crowded, congested mess. I carefully removed the bags and rebagged just the inflorescence. I've been just making a list each day of which ones I bag and then yesterday marked the ones that had failed as such on the list. I don't have anything yet to mark the ones that I bagged once the bags are removed so will be scouring the house today to find some string or something. (I did find one spool of string but it is green, of course.) I have plenty of the same white t-shirt material I use to tie up my plants but it'll be harder to distinguish from the actually ties. Also, I need to work on a better system of record-keeping. I'm thinking a simple printed form might suffice recording the day of bagging, the unbagging, and the result/notes.

Used the last of 2021's red onions Friday so pulled the first one of 2022 on Saturday. The beans have taken off like crazy. The peppers and tomatoes are mostly doing well and forming fruits. The squash has reached into the garlic bed which will be ceded to it once we harvest the latter. No pictures. I was under a bit of time pressure so forgot to take any.

Solved the flagging situation by cutting a red plaid garment ito strips.

Monarda fistulosa I started from seed and carted around during the summer we moved twice is really coming into its own two years later.
Peppers are going nuts. In a good way. On a whim I saved seeds last year from those little mixed snack peppers from the grocery store. The red ones are very prolific. It will be interesting to see how they ripen and how close they are to the original. I assume they are hybrids.
Poblanos are coming along. My favorites.
A few baby tomatoes. The last one is Blue Beauty showing a bit of color.
Napa cabbage is starting to head up. I expect it to be on the bitter side given the weather we have been having. I put the plants way too close together but they look pretty!
Should dig the garlic in the next few days. So glad we're having a heat wave. *sigh*
Christmas lima bean! At least I think it's Christmas. Things are a little crowded in the Pole Bean Aleé...

Almost forgot to include the new friend I found in the garden. They have been named, are living on a bouquet of dill in the living room, and are being talked to regularly.

First ripe anything solanaceous 2022, actually from two days ago

Congrats! Let the season begin. My first was a Sungold a couple of days ago.

Just some rando pix from my last visit to the plot a few days ago. Hope to get back there tomorrow and check on the bagged tomato blooms and with any luck bag some more. had to push back the beans that were shading out the scallions. The beans are awesome so far this year after the bean beetles turned the leaves to lace so early on last year.

One of two Brussels sprouts plants. Didn't get many last year so I hope this year is different.
A simple but pretty little ornamental pepper I've been saving seeds from and growing since a friend gave it to me potted ten years ago. Probably a Trader Joe's selection.
This year's butternut squash is a decidedly curved variety. I don't like that as much as the straight ones but I think these seeds may have been freebies.
The gold and red beets I started in trays and then transplanted are doing great up top. Time will tell if the roots develop normally. I hope so. When I direct sow and then thin I always end up with a gappy, inefficient row.
A bagged and then tagged cluster of I-forget-which-one protected from turkeys behind some fencing. I hope.
The black swallowtail butterfly that I brought home as a caterpillar two weeks ago emerged from its crysalis and flew away.

Started some pepper seeds today:
Aji Colorado (hope these ripen faster than the Aji Amarillos did (not))
Ancho Gigantea
Ancho Poblano
Biquinho, red
Black Hungarian
Bridge to Paris
Chile de Arbol
Chinese 5 Color
Fire and Ice
Fish
Hinkelhatz
Jalapeño (Traveler Strain)
Jamaican Bell
Kambuzi
NuMex Big Jim
Peachadew
Serrano

Also started Groovy Tunes and PInocchio Orange tomatoes for the Aerogarden

@DriftlessRoots we’re also in a community garden, but your plot looks enormous compared to ours! How large is it? It’s also interesting to see that you don’t need any kind of fencing vs our Fort Knox situation. We recently had some vandals break in and we now have a taller fence, two locks and improvised DIY chicken wire barbed wire.

And do you happen to recall how your “pre-started” beets did last year? I’m attempting the same thing - last year all of our beets and chard got eaten the second they emerged and we had a total harvest of zero. The critters seem to be less interested in transplants vs young cotyledons so hoping starting them at home does the trick.

Cranraspberry wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 6:51 am @DriftlessRoots we’re also in a community garden, but your plot looks enormous compared to ours! How large is it? It’s also interesting to see that you don’t need any kind of fencing vs our Fort Knox situation.

I think it's about 22-25 foot square-ish. Official garden rules prohibit fences because people don't weed in and around them but we have a lot of turkeys so the rule has been relaxed or ignored. I've got a neighbor on one side whose fence I'm constantly weeding. I hope she doesn't come back this year so I can throw it out. We have some produce theft now and then in the gardens in general but there hasn't been any large scale vandalism.

Cranraspberry wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 6:51 am And do you happen to recall how your “pre-started” beets did last year? I’m attempting the same thing - last year all of our beets and chard got eaten the second they emerged and we had a total harvest of zero. The critters seem to be less interested in transplants vs young cotyledons so hoping starting them at home does the trick.

They did so well that I'm not doing any direct sowing this year. It was great to not have to thin them and they grew just as well as how I've done them in the past. I was surprised, but then I saw a Joe Gardener/Joe Lamp'l (I think) video where he encouraged transplanting them.

I think I've finalized my selection of tomato varieties from my (now extensive!) seed collection to grow this season. If any have 0% germination I'll either grow more of something on this list or rotate in a variety that didn't make the cut this round. I plan to seed my compots Fridayish!

"Normal" varieties for the main garden:

African Queen
Blondkopfchen
Blue Beech
Brandywine Cowlicks
Daniel Burson
Fred's Tie Dye
Iva's Red Berry
Joya de Oaxaca
KBX
Lillian's Yellow
Lithium Sunset (moved to correct section)
Ludmilla's Pink Heart
Mikado Rozovyi
Mortgage Lifter, Estler's
Moruno de San Pablo
Muddy Waters
Pantano Romanesco
Pomodoro Cuore Antico di Acqui Terme
Purple Dog Creek
Rebel Starfighter Prime
Stump of the World
Thorburn's Terracotta
Ukrainian Purple
Wes

Dwarf varieties, two for pots on the deck and the rest in the main garden:

Adelaide Festival
Dwarf Lemon Ice
Dwarf Pink Passion
Dwarf Scarlet Heart
Frau Hager Klein
Sleeping Lady
Uluru Ochre

Micro varieties, all for pots on the deck except GT and PO which are in the Aerogarden:

Bonsai
Florida Petite
Groovy Tunes
Hardin's Miniature
Jochalos
Mohamed
Orange Hat
Pinocchio Orange

@DriftlessRoots Lithium Sunset is a normal indeterminate, not a dwarf

Whwoz wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 12:08 pm @DriftlessRoots Lithium Sunset is a normal indeterminate, not a dwarf

Thanks for that! Back to the drawing board.

With the planting of the 34 varieties of tomatoes I am officially out of room under my lights. I’ll be able to move some of this to a friend’s hoop house in a couple weeks.

Thank goodness for having good friends!

Went to the plot today just to have a look around. Was pleased to see the garlic was up and none of our “equipment” had walked off.