Shule's 2023 grow log

[Shule]

Okay, I just planted some seeds. Here's what:

Tomatoes:
• Amana Orange x 1 (saved seeds from 2022)
• Brandywine Pink x 1 (saved seeds from 2022)
• Cal Ace VF x 18 (store seeds)
• Carolina Yellow x 2 (saved seeds from 2022)
• Cherokee Lime x 2 (2 sources from trades/gifts)
• Cherokee Purple x 1 (Baker Creek)
• Cilantrovaya-A x 2 (from the first-harvested fruit)
• Early Cascade x 2 (store seeds)
• Italian Gold x 4 (gift/trade)
• Jubilee x 2 (1 from gifts/trades and 1 from store seeds)
• Marmande x 3 (saved seeds)
• New Yorker V x 1 (saved seeds--the rest of them)
• Orange Jazz x 2 (saved seeds; each from a different fruit)
• Roma VF x 30 (store seeds x 12; saved seeds x 18)
• Snacker-C0 x 2
• Snacker-C x 2
• Sunray x 1 (store seeds)
• Super Marmande x 1 (SHPC)
• Tangerine x 2 (trade/gift x 1; store seeds x 1)
• Tropic x 1 (SHPC)

Note: If you can't tell by my selection of tomatoes, I'm primarily going for Verticillium resistance. Most of those are said to be resistant, but a few might not be. As for Brandywine Pink, I'm growing it as an experiment in acclimatization to it, to see if it gains more resistance; it also didn't get virus symptoms (and we had some viruses circulating). It didn't get a severe case from it last year, though, but it did have symptoms on the lower leaves. The seeds came from an extra-large fruit that set in the heat; so, that's another reason. Carolina Yellow and Amana Orange don't claim resistance, but they did pretty well last year (both against Verticillium and viruses). Orange Jazz doesn't claim resistance, but it's related to Amana Orange. Snacker-C, Snacker-C0 and Cilantrovaya-A might not be resistant, as they had some lower leaf symptoms (one of the Snacker siblings died from it last year, but the parents of these didn't), but I have hope that they'll do well. With regard to Jubilee and Tangerine, I only have a suspicion that they're resistant based on a claim about one of their ancestors or descendants. I've heard Cherokee Chocolate is supposed to be resistant (and since I think Cherokee Lime and Cherokee Chocolate are basically in a long line of sports stemming from Cherokee Purple, I'm hoping all the sports and the original are resistant).

Early Cascade, Sunray, Roma VF, Cal Ace VF, Italian Gold, Marmande, Super Marmande, Tropic, and New Yorker V are all supposed to be Verticillium-resistant.

Sweet peppers:
• Blot x 2 (Baker Creek)
• Cal Wonder Orange x 2 (store seeds)
• Canary Bell x 18 (2 different store sources and also saved seeds from 2022)
• Orange version of Golden California Wonder x 4 (store seeds)
• Purple Beauty x 4 (store seeds; I'm hoping this is a prolific orange off-type again)
• Yolo Wonder x 1 (store seeds)

Other:
• Catalogna chicory x 1
• Lovage x 1
• Zi Su shiso

I'm thinking about direct-seeding some wonderberries, mustard (several kinds), bok choy, daikon radishes, and maybe Job's tears soon. I thought my daikon radishes were spring radishes, but it turns out they're supposed to be fall-sown or something. I plan to try them as spring radishes anyway.

I ran out of the worm casting seed-starting mix that I've been using for some years. This year, I'm using a mixture of Whitney Farms organic indoor/outdoor potting soil, perlite, wood ash, Miracle Gro (24-8-16 All-purpose), and monopotassium phosphate. Some of the containers have diatomaceous earth in (I forgot to put it in the first batch).

Here's the state of my houseplants:

My Rubber fig and umbrella tree are doing much better (more and healthier growth). I think they like to be watered more often with less water at a time.

My grapefruit tree grew a bunch, and hit the ceiling. I had to prune it back for a couple reasons.

My oldest living spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum; a variegated kind) is huge and getting bigger. It has a whole bunch of spiderettes, and keeps growing more. It's multiplying in the ground, too (I didn't know spider plants did that, but they do!) The younger rooted spider plant is finally starting to get bigger leaves.

My Christmas cactuses are proving sensitive to light changes. I mean, if they don't get much sun one day (for example, if I don't keep my curtains open long enough) then they might burn if they get lots of sun the next. One of the plants at a certain angle isn't bothered, though (it has less direct light, I suppose).

My Thanksgiving cactuses are doing well. I rooted a small cutting that had grown four segments at once, so the whole plant would be growing from the four segments. It's growing really fast, and I"m pleased with it. I have another of the same kind and it's doing well. Those are both red-flowering. I have some pink-flowering ones; two of those are quite big. I've been focuing on getting them to grow bigger, rather than focusing on trying to get them to flower. Once they're big enough, then I'll probably focus on flowering.

My golden pothos plants are getting long vines. They're looking good and doing well.

The White Pearl poinsettia we got in 2021 is alive and well. It likes water. It hasn't grown new bracts, but it has grown a couple leaves with a little white on them. Most of the leaves are green.

The spider plants really improve the way I feel, I've noticed. I think what they say about them reducing depression is true. My big one has been getting thirstier. It drank up a half-gallon of water in a few days once recently.

[PlainJane]

I love Orange Jazz for flavor but it really really struggled in my humidity.
You’ve not seen health issues with it?

[Shule]

@PlainJane
I only grew Orange Jazz once, and that was in 2021. I grew it in a spot where I think a tomato (a Brandy Boy cross F2) had a foliar disease with necrosis in 2019 or 2020, and where we had melons there before that. It wasn't full sun, but it had enough light. It had plenty of space to grow.

The plant started getting a condition that I see sometimes in the garden, but I fertilized it diligently and the symptoms went away. The symptoms were leaves that seemed translucent. They had a characteristic look to them (one of my Pearler_ plants had the same condition in 2022). I think it was a disease. The Orange Jazz plant produced a *lot*! We had so many tomatoes from it at the end of the season (that's another reason for me growing it; another is that it's striped, and I want more striped tomatoes in my breeding projects, since they're supposed to have enhanced carotenoids in some ways; another is that it's the same kind of orange as Amana Orange, and I like that orange). The drawback for Orange Jazz was that the stems had deep fibrous veins that sunk into the core (they reminded me a bit of decent-sized fish bones, except they weren't brittle). I liked the taste.

Verticillium can manifest in multiple ways, but I don't think it was Verticillium that it had, and I know it wasn't Verticillium that the Brandy Boy F2 had.

Our climate is pretty arid during the late spring and summer. It didn't seem to mind that. It's possible some of the storage-ripened fruits might have wrinkled a bit (as striped bullet-shaped tomatoes have been known to do to a much greater degree, on the vine, in our garden), but I don't remember.

[Shule]

Yesterday, the first tomatoes sprouted (especially Amana Orange; lots of seeds sprouted in that container). Carolina Yellow and Cherokee Purple also sprouted. I haven't put them outside, yet.

[Shule]

I've been taking the seedlings outside. Lots more sprouted soon after the others. Peppers have been sprouting recently (Canary Yellow). Currently, The two cells of Snacker-C tomato seem to have the best germination.

It turned cold today, and hailed, so I brought the plants in early.

[Shule]

Well, the tomatoes and peppers are doing well. I've concluded that this year they do better if I take them in by 7:30 PM (or before) every night, and put them outside some time after 10 AM, unless it's still cold. Any problems that I thought were damping off were evidently the result of tomatoes that weren't cold-tolerant to temperatures below 50-something. I haven't had any problems there since I made the change.

I have at least one plant of every tomato variety I planted, except for Italian Gold. Only a few sprouted, and apparently, they were among those that weren't very cold-tolerant. None sprouted after I changed the way I did things.

Varieties with lessened cold-tolerance seem to include these:
- Cal Ace (I lost a number of cells of plants; fortunately, I planted lots of them)
- Amana Orange (more than some in this list, though; at least two or three in the overseeded cell survived)
- Early Cascade
- Tangerine
- Orange Jazz
- Snacker-C0 (however, Snacker-C and Cilantrovaya-A are very cold-tolerant)
- Italian Gold

At least most of the others seem cold-tolerant.

The tomatoes that are doing the best with regard to growth, so far, seem to include these:
- Carolina Yellow
- Roma VF
- Snacker-C
- Cilantrovaya-A
- Cherokee Purple

WIth regard to the peppers, they're all doing just fine except for Purple Beauty, which only has one struggling seedling left—and Yolo Wonder which didn't sprout.

The chicory, lovage and shiso have not sprouted.

Yesterday, I prefertilized a lot of the garden soil.

[bower]

Good to know about the cold tolerance issues. I've gotten more inclined to let the plants tough it out in the 40s than I used to.
My plants just went to the greenhouse today to start hardening off, and it's going to be cold tonight, probably low 40's. Hope they don't mind!

[Shule]

I began transplanting tomatoes, today. The largest plants pre-transplant were both of the Cilantrovaya-A plants. Cherokee Purple is getting the historically best spot in the garden (I want to give it a much better chance this year than the last time I grew it). Orange Jazz is going where I had it two years ago (since it produced so well there). Snacker-C and Snacker-C0 are going in the main row that begins with Cherokee Purple, again.

I put Carolina Yellow in two places (one where Horse_A was; the other is I think a couple spots in front of where Nina_A was). Roma VF and Marmande are mixed around in the main plot. I need to make a map and get everything put down. Amana Orange is by the fence, where Gold Medal was last year. Jubilee is where Nina_A was. I think Early Cascade is three spots south of Cherokee Purple.

Anyway, I need to finish transplanting after I eat and stuff.

[Shule]

The peppers are transplanted. There are a *lot* of peppers compared to last year, and they all should have plenty of space.

I need to finish transplanting the tomatoes, and then water everything that needs it.

There are volunteer wonderberries.

I cleaned up garden debris on Wednesday night, or so.

I plan to seed the winter watermelons and the orange honeydew outdoors in foam cups within the next few days.

[Shule]

Everything's transplanted and watered, now (except the stuff I haven't seeded, yet, like the watermelons).

If you're wondering why I plan to start the watermelons in cups outside instead of direct-seeding them, it's because they historically germinate better (in our soil) and grow faster that way. It's not to start them early, of course, since it's not early. It's not to protect them from the weather/cold (the weather's fine).

[Shule]

My neighbor is growing Big Beef, this year.

[Shule]

I forgot to mention that the struggling Purple Beauty plant died.

[Shule]

The transplants are looking great, with about three or four exceptions, or so. I've watered them twice, so far. The exceptions I think were probably from among Roma VF, Cal Ace, and one of the two Orange Jazz plants (but I'm not 100% sure). The peppers all look great. One of the peppers is in soil I didn't prefertilize.

[Shule]

My westernmost Cilantrovaya_ plant set fruit on Friday.

[Shule]

The volunteer wonderberries fruited before anything else, this year (blackcurrants aside; they're pretty early). They started ripening 1 to 3 days ago, and I harvested some today. They were delicious: fruity and sweet (with a little more zing than last year). A number of the wonderberries are about five feet tall, so far (without cages or support). They're quite a big bigger than the biggest tomato plant. This is interesting, since descriptions of wonderberries say they're supposed to have pretty small plants. Here are some tips to getting them to grow huge:

1. Let them volunteer (more than one generation).
2. Let them volunteer in an area with black plastic.
3. A little shade doesn't hurt.

Anyway, they grow like weeds (literally; there are wonderberry weeds in most of the garden). It's nice to have soft weeds that grow tasty fruit.

The general weeds are looking pretty good this year, too. Here's what we've got:
- Lambsquarter (of course)
- Prickly lettuce (I think it's at least 6' tall right now).
- Mallow (Malva neglecta)
- Western salsify (just a little)
- Morning glory (well, a lot of this has powdery mildew pretty badly; a minority of the prickly lettuce is catching it, too)
- Bindweed
- Volunteer sunflowers from our neighbors' yard (I'm glad I didn't pull them up this year, because we have like this huge area full of sunflowers that looks great. The birds and the insects love them. I think the sparrows like to hunt grasshoppers there.)
- Purslane (I guess this isn't looking so great, either; it catches Verticillium, or something and gets foliar issues as a result.)
- Matted snakeweed?
- We might still have some Asperugo procumbens, but I haven't noticed it in a while (probably because the forest of prickly lettuce is blocking the view of it; fortunately, the prickly lettuce and the sunflowers also block our neighbor's big dog which would stick it's head as far as it could through the corner of the fence, prying it further apart, and bark at me while I gardened; a while ago, the dog made a half-hearted attempt at finding and barking at me through the weeds, and then it left; I haven't seen nor heard from it since; weeds are awesome).

We don't have a lot of Amaranth weeds this year. Probably because it's been cooler more often up until recently. Amaranth likes it extra hot.

I haven't seen dandelions since earlier this year. I wonder what happened to them. The powdery mildew affects them, too.

And we've got lots of horseradish. It's more persistent than the weeds (you try to dig every scrap of it up, put black plastic over it, and it grows in no time, around the plastic). We planted it on purpose, but I think the instruction to only grow one plant was probably wise (a friend gave me 17 roots a few years ago; we just asked for one to three, I think). However, the plants look great, have beautiful flowers, and they smell good. The grasshoppers love them.

We've got cucumbers growing. The plants are looking good and growing fast (they're pretty new; so, they're not too big).

The grapes have a *lot* of fuit, this year. The variegated grape leafhoppers mostly left them alone until around now, too (I think the rain earlier helped). The nectarine tree has quite a few nectarines, too.

The tomatoes have been slower getting started this year, and more young plants died than usual, but the remaining ones are filling in the difference. It seems no matter how many tomatoes you grow, they always take most of whatever space you give them. I wasn't planning to grow volunteers, too, this year, but I'm growing volunteers. They're looking great.

Some of the tomatoes have Verticillium yellowing on some leaves, but nothing major so far.

I haven't been doing any foliar sprays or regular fertilization this year. I'm just going with the prefertilization, so far.

I can tell that Cherokee Purple and Cherokee Lime would probably enjoy a humid climate. That's not what we have here, but I'm trying to water them every two days, for now. They seem happier and have less leaf curl and stunting that way.

Well, I decided I wanted to reduce my garden stress this year. So, I didn't label everything. It worked. I'm less stressed. I memorized what some things are, and a lot of it is Roma VF, but some things I just don't know (but I like guessing). Our most productive tomato (by volume of fruit) so far is an unknown vareity, which resembles what I remember of New Yorker V in plant and fruit appearance. I don't know if any of my Cal Ace VF tomatoes survived or not. I know I've got Amana Orange, Carolina Yellow, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Lime, Brandywine Pink, Roma VF, Marmande, Early Cascade, Snacker_, Cilantrovaya_ (just one), and I'm not sure what anything else is. Some of the volunteers are probably Galapagos Island and Amana Orange, but we'll see.

My initial Roma VF seed wasn't entirely stable. Some plants are big and some are smaller; some are earlier than others, too (but it's nice to have harvests at different times). The fruits seem similar.

Early Cascade has a very nice-looking plant. It's not early this year, though, but I'm guessing it will be prolific and nice.

So far, what has set fruit is Cilantrovaya_B, all the Snacker_ tomatoes I started from seed, the New Yorker V type plant, some Roma VFs, one of the tomatoes volunteers I noticed today growing on a path of concrete blocks, and I'm not sure what else. Most of the plants are still mounting their initial fruit set.

I've been spending a lot of time indoors to avoid the UV.

[Shule]

Cilantrovaya_B had the first ripe tomato of all the tomatoes, yesterday. I haven't picked it, yet.

The wonderberries are extra tasty, this year, so far; even a relative who is usually not super excited about them wants eat a lot of them. The grasshoppers love hanging out on the plants. I think it's because they're too soft and pliable for the birds to perch on them (and the sparrows hunt the grasshoppers). I could be wrong.

The plants liked the weather yesterday, whatever it was. It was nice.

The tallest wonderberry fell over and started to sprawl. I pruned some of it.

Cherokee Purple is growing faster and growing some nice flowers.

[Shule]

We've been having more ripe Cilantrovaya_B tomatoes, and we've had at least a couple ripe from the one I think is probably New Yorker V. One or two of the Snacker_ tomatoes are ripening now.

Interestingly, Cilantrovaya_B is significantly sweeter than Cilantrovaya_A was. Everyone who has tried it told me they liked it a lot (and two of them said it was the best-tasting tomato they've tasted in their life). So, that's encouraging.

I think a lot of the Cal Ace tomatoes must have survived, because the fruits of many of the plants are oblate and looking about like the description.

Cherokee Purple has been setting a lot of fruit.

I've pruned off leaves with yellowing from Verticillium a couple times (and leaves from leaf curling maybe three or four times, but on viewer plants), from the tomatoes generally in the garden.

The wonderberries have a lot of fruit. We've had a higher volume of ripe wonderberries than ripe tomatoes, so far. The peppers are just getting started setting fruit. That doesn't bother me because I'm hoping that means they've missed out on the prime time for BER.

My relative who was excited about eating more wonderberries isn't anymore. I've discovered some more relatives who like wonderberries (one of them really likes them).

We've been pulling up a bunch of weeds. The prickly lettuce forest is gone, as are the sunflowers that were behind them, apparently (I didn't pull the sunflowers up). So, that dog might notice me again.

[Shule]

Yesterday, I picked a Cherokee Purple tomato that had changed color two or three days prior. We ate it. This was my first Cherokee Purple tomato that I've eaten. Considering what I've read about it for years, and related/similar tomatoes I've tried, the taste surprised me. It /was/ different than other tomatoes, and it was good, but it was very tart (and not sweet); I thought it was supposed to be sweet; I'm guessing later ones will be sweeter, especially if they ripen extra long. The other taster liked it, but agreed that it was tart (this taster isn't normally a big fan of tart tomatoes).

I discovered a ripe bicolor tomato on Cherokee Lime, yesterday, too. So, it looks like it's a cross. The colors are pink and pinkish orange. The taste was similar to Cherokee Purple, but not the same. It was tart, too. I'm actually excited that it's a bicolor, because I like seeing significant color changes when fruits ripen.

I harvested a bunch of Cilantrovaya_B and tomatoes from our most prolific Roma VF plant, yesterday, too. Those two plants are our top producers, so far. Roma VF has more flavor than it did. I picked a couple more Brandywine Pink tomatoes, too.

[Shule]

We're getting more ripe Cherokee Purples, Brandywine Pinks and other stuff. Those two have a lot of fruit coming on.

[Shule]

Oh. I noticed that the Cherokee Lime cross isn't only a bicolor. The tomatoes are also striped. So, although my Orange Jazz plants (my only striped tomatoes I thought I was growing) didn't make it, I still have a striped tomato. I was hoping for one to contribute to cross-pollination for beeding projects.

One of our volunteers looks like Sheboygan. I don't know what it is, but that's what it looks like. It has a wispy plant with the long pepper-shaped fruits. Most of our volunteers look like Galapagos Island (no matter where in the garden they sprouted). Another volunteer is a big regular-leaf beefsteak; not sure what color, but it's vigorous and fast.