Garden Fared Well During Vacation
Back from vacation now, and I’m happy to say that the garden is coming along.
Most notably, my sweet potatoes took off while I was gone and the foliage has filled in nicely. We lost all of our original sweet potato plants when the tree fell, but I had 10 or so slips still sitting in a jar of water that I never found a home for, so those went in the ground the week before we left.
The flowers all look great, and one newly planted tomato plant has doubled in size while we were gone. The others grew, but not as much, and the new peppers are only a bit bigger.
On the surviving side of the garden, my trellised roma tomato plants are looking great, although I’ll echo earlier posts about blossom end rot. I’ve got more than normal this year too.
The hot weather apparently speeded up my winter squash growth too, because I’ve got my first ever pie pumpkin ripe in July! A whole bunch of butternut squash is also getting close to being ripe.
Beans are ready to pick, and the ground cherries are falling nicely and ready to gather up. The ground cherry plants and Jerusalem artichokes got HUGE in our absence. Something – some insect probably that snacked and left – demolished my remaining bush cucumber plants. The tree literally squashed the vining ones and some unknown pest took care of the bush ones, but I’ll probably plant some more bush seeds and hit the farmer’s market until they grow.
Thanks to a homemade self-watering system, our plants in containers did fine while we were away. Next Saturday’s article will be about taking care of plants while you’re on vacation, so if you have any tips that work well, please pass them along.
July 22, 2012 - 6:36 PM
I’m glad to hear so much is growing for you. This weekend has been a good one here for picking beans and tomatoes. All the potato and half of the butternut vines have already died. Crookneck and zucchini are hanging in but this is definitely a big insect year. I’m planning to do dilly beans and possibly pesto this week. I’m still picking blueberries and our valley is getting overrun with a most aggressive variety of blackberry so when I feel like fighting the thorns, I’ll pick more of them. Last summer I helped my niece make 240+ half pint jars of jams and jellies for her wedding favors. The peach-blackberry, peach-blueberry and straight blackberry jellies were the most popular so that’s what we’re needing to restock this year (just not on that scale).
Tell us about your homemade watering system, I am intrigued. I have containers on my deck for flowers, herbs, and tomatoes.
Kathy: I’ll be describing a couple of methods in Saturday’s article, but here’s what I set up for my containers. I grouped them together in the shade and used an old cooler as a reservoir to hold the water. I watered the plants well, then took a length of rope and buried one end in a container and submerged the other end in the cooler of water. I used a rope for every container. The ropes act like wicks and send a slow steady supply of water to the soil.
After nine days, we came home to healthy plants! The reservoir showed a good 6″ of water had gone from the cooler into the plants.
Looking forward to hearing how folks keep their gardens watered while they are gone. Nice idea you have Karen about using the cooler of water and rope.
Back to Blossom End Rot – The Cassidy Folly’s tomato continues to have a higher percentage of this. We ate our first one yesterday. We were more curious to see what it looked like inside than the taste. It has a little red on it but is covered mostly with orange stripes. We found a good bit of meat inside so it should be a good paste tomato.
We also canned our first batch of green beans and have been picking blackberries and steaming them for juice. The yellow squash and the zucchini plants were planted later so they are just now getting to the point of flowering. After poor germination and the Derecho, the corn is tasseling so hope it will continue to survive. We may have to visit the farmers market to buy some local corn to be able to freeze any.
72 half pints of peach jam weekend before last and 18 half pints of pineapple jam[my all time favorite] this past weekend and another 24 half pints probably tomorrow of peach jam. That should do it til apple butter time rolls around.
D. Carol, my Early Girl Hybrids are what took a hit this year. Strange tho. Have two 5 gallon pots, 8′apart, and 1 pot took a hit. Must have thrown away over a dozen and never got a good one. The other pot is bearing like crazy with a dozen or more picked and still loaded. Pulled up the one pot and planted squash to see if they do the same thing since they get blossom end rot also. If so, I can track it to the soil. I’ve heard a bunch of folks say they had blossom end rot also.