What's going on with your Veggie Garden: Part 3

Sorry, I've been absent. The garden is kicking my tail...I don't expect I'll be grocery shopping anytime soon, woohoo! lol

I'm happy to find ya'll discussing peppers, I got quick question.
I planted some bell peppers from one of those mutli-pac varieties. I'm getting some purple bells, but they taste like green bells, which I don't really care for. How do I know when a purple pepper is sweet and mature? Will it turn red? Thanks!

It turns purple, almost a dark purple/brown.

I have baby cucumbers on my Salad Bush plants. I was happy to see them. First time for me trying Salad Bush plants.

Tomatoes growing really nicely this year. Green tomatoes but nothing near ripe. Much too early for ripe tomatoes anyway.

All my pole beans and yard long beans are growing but no blooms on either yet.

I have planted all except about 10 tomato plants, expected to do that this weekend but a Basketball tourn. had other ideas. lol After I get those planted my garden will be full! I am starting to pick tomatoes. If 1/2 of the ones that are set mature I will have a fantastic season. This weather is perfect. I also have planted/sowed Inca Berry, 3 pepper plants (the rest are going in containers), Malabar Spinach (self sowed), Basil, 2 types of cukes, 2 types of long beans, Roselle.

Containers have more tomatoes including Dwarfs, Little Leaf Cukes (parth.),too many peppers, bush beans. Just started some more dwarf tomatoes. This will go in containers. Im hoping they can be indoor/outdoor plants as the weather cools down.

This weather is so nice I cant seem to stop planting.

Vaughn-What size containers do you have your Okra in?

Well those little green tomatoes I pic'd and posted on June 3rd are still green and I am still waiting for garden tomatoes. There just happens to be a lot more of them.
My beans are off to a terrible start, I think every bug on the planet likes them also.

The "Royal Burgundy" bush beans I sowed four days ago sprouted overnight.

My daughter took home two (green) "Ace" sweet peppers over the weekend. I'll wait for a few to turn red for myself.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6748-ace-f1.aspx

The slugs and pill bugs ate the first sweet pepper plants, so I'm assuming the ones I picked are from those set out as transplants on April 15th or the 30th.

I set out a tray of eggplant seedlings that are about 11" tall to harden off. Also, two zucchini squash plants and three Sugar Crunch cuke seedlings, that are wrapping all over everything.

Thought I would beat the squash vine borer, but it occurred to me the moth could STILL lay eggs with the vines sprawled all over the patio table....duh...

Anyway, this weekend was a garden project opportunity. I painted two frames I scored a year and a half ago, curbside. They look like ladders, and I thought "trellises". So, needing something in place for the cukes, I whipped out the Kilz Latex primer and slapped on two coats. This week I'll spray paint the frames to coordinate with my fence, then attach some hardware cloth.

I'm making things easier on myself, so these two cukes are going into a pallet garden at the base of the trellis. I'm gonna poke holes in two small bags of MG potting mix, slit the top, and sink those root balls in! The cukes will either make it, or not, but I'm not sweating it in all that oppressive heat! Same for the two squash plants, but they'll get the royal squash teepee built with the two pallets underneath.

I'll post before and after pics either here or on the fall/wtr 2012 thread.

Hugs!

Got a little surprise this evening going to check the garden. Got a bunch of tomatoes, 3 good size cucumbers and this little gem that blew me away. Not bothering with singles any more, working on doubles...LOL...

A few new pictures of fruit gathered over the past couple of days.

Naga Morich (from La Palma) - hot enough to keep squirrels off the sweet potatoes. One fruit in a blender with a little water, strained and mixed up to 1 quart with some spreader-sticker. Yes, I tasted it. Don't know yet just what I'll do with them.

Tepin pepper (from Park Seed) - good in pepper-vinegar sauces.

Kellogg's Breakfast tomato - very tasty, very large and unusual for ripening full-sized fruit in our humid June heat. Wish it made more, but they are a great treat when they come along.

Momotaro (from Kitazawa Seed) - medium-sized tomatoes, very uniform and even-ripening even in the heat, and very productive. I am getting one or two fruit every other day from a single plant in a self-watering planter.

Jaune Flamme (from CherryGal), a golfball-sized deep golden yellow fruit. These are fruit numbers 2 and 3 from this plant, and I just picked two more - from a plant growing in a 2-gallon nursery container. Believe me, next time it gets its own planter or a spot in the garden!

-Rich

Rich,
What's your verdict on the Momos? They will always be on my top three list!

More pics from today's harvest.

Amish Gold from TomatoFest. Very solid, meaty plum tomatoes, very uniform and brilliantly colored.

A Guyana PI199506 from La Palma. It is a Capsicum baccatum, and like many of this species it has a very strong fruity aroma and flavor. Medium heat.

A Trinidad Scorpion (first of these) from la Palma. A surprisingly large Cap Chinense. It's hard to see in the picture, but the fruit (and all the green ones still on the plant) have a little protruding point on the end that gives them their name. Called "superhot", I haven't yet opened it. This fruit perfectly fits the description "gnarly".

Nugget tomato from Park Seed. A miniature plum, nice flavor, very productive, absolutely HUGE indeterminate plant in a self-watering container is covered with uniform, brightly-colored fruit.

Last but not least - Golden Honey Bunch (from Territorial Seed), a classic very sweet golden cherry tomato. I can't pass the plant without popping a few in my mouth, but there are always plenty more. One of my personal favorites.

-Rich

I have been enjoying them almost every day in classic Caprese style, with fresh mozzarella, a little basil chiffonade (also fresh from the garden), and a drizzle of good homemade dressing of aged balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. I have to say in all honesty they are not my favorite - there are some beefsteaks I prefer simply for eating out of hand with a little salt - but they have the incredible advantage of continuing to grow and produce for me as daytime temperature highs top 90 degrees, something most large tomatoes simply will not do. I haven't heard a lot about their disease resistance, but I have had late blight hit a LOT of my OTHER tomato plants and weaken them; the Momo is showing some slight signs on lower leaves (which I do my best to keep trimmed off) but it has not spread through the plant like it has some of the other varieties. I am very impressed and will be growing it from now on. I am also anxious to try Odoriko, another similar Japanese Pink available from Kitazawa, and I see they are offering a new Red tomato, Katana, which will go on my Spring 2013 list.

-Rich

rjogden
my Momotaro didn't do as well as yours. Very small production and they are cracking under our heat.
But I like their taste.
I will try one more year. I think I might have started them too late compared to my other tomatoes.

One of the things I most like about the Momotaro is the uniform smooth relatively thin skin. It seems to me it is the thicker-skinned types that suffer the worst cracking and checking here, one of the reasons it is hard to grow anything larger than a cherry (and some of them split pretty badly in wet weather). I have been absolutely religious about watering this year, which may have helped, as well as trying to keep the plants well fed through the period before initial fruit set. I water AT LEAST every other day, and I'm using self-watering planters that hold enough water to last at least two days even for the largest indeterminate plants I am growing. I did worry when we transitioned from several months of very dry weather to three solid days of heavy rain when tropical storm Beryl came through the area, but aside from a predictable increase in fungal diseases I didn't really see much deterioration. I am starting to see a lot of chlorosis as the plants run out of the initial fertilizer application and I've been side-dressing to try to encourage a second spurt of growth (without causing fruit damage or blossom drop). So far, so good.

-Rich

Hi! Dropping in for a moment or two -- hopefully longer. This has been one crazy spring and summer so I've been missing in action on the list for the last little while.

Anyway -- am picking tomatoes daily. The photo is from a couple weeks ago. Darn critters have discovered the garden though, so now I have to pick tomatoes before they ripen fully. But they are still good, and we have more than enough for us to eat (the wildlife is eating the neighbor's share, lol!).

Still have parsley and chard, garlic's pulled, (kale and leafy stuff long since bolted, of course). Beans produced for awhile but shriveled into a rusty mess. One or two pepper plants are starting to produce (very little though) but most got gnawed to nothing (like Honeybee's, succumbed to pillbugs, I think). Cukes and squash also shriveled (SVB). Obviously, I have not been diligent enough with Sluggo Plus and other things, and have spent most of my time on the tomatoes.

But I do want to grow other things! So Aside from that, I just have seeds in packets and am wondering what I can plant now. Reading posts above, looks like I can sow more beans. Too late to start cukes and eggplant from seed? If this is the wrong thread for that question, feel free to redirect me. I've sort of lost track of things.

LiseP ~ glad to see you are having an excellent tomato harvest. I recently learned that if you need to harvest tomatoes early, cut an inch or two of the stem with the tomato. It will continue to ripen naturally then.

My eggplants are still delivering but I have started the next batch of cucumber seedlings earlier this week and they are sprouting today so yes on the cucumbers. I also started more Delicata squash and the fall tomatoes this week. Also planted the sweet potato sets this week. Glad to see you back and posting. Kristi

Thanks much for that. I'll start leaving a little tomato stem then, and get busy with the seeds. I envy you your eggplant!
Lise

A DG member kindly sent me some "Fairy Tale" eggplant seeds, and the plants are just beginning to bloom. Such pretty blue-ish flowers!

I agree, they are beautiful blooms. I ate White Fingers eggplant last nite, am also growing Ophelia. Both are small plants and fruits.
These are definitely one of those plants that would do well in an outlaw garden ~ lol

podster, I just read your post and had to google Ophelia eggplants as I had not heard of them. I sure wish I was growing these now!!! They sound perfect. I have never grown eggplant and really never wanted to deal with giant sized plants. But one of the Ophelia would be perfect for a container. The fruits look like the perfect size for one person each.

Yes and the White Fingers eggplant is small also and the fruits are tiny and tasty. I cook them with the skin on.
My Ophelia has small fruits but none harvesting size yet.

Is there a difference between the common purple eggplant and the white fruited ones? I have only seen the purple fruits in person myself.

In the garden today....harvested jalapenos and new mexico peppers, cukes, the last zuke (SVB got the plant), and a couple pounds of string beans


-Vaughn

Rita ~ my unrefined palate can't tell the difference. lol

Vaughn ~ you've made a haul today. I am always amazed at how the areas north us of start late and catch up quickly.

well. No great refined patate here either so I am sure I couldn't tell eiher. I just have it stuck in my mind that eggplant should be purple lol!

Now that I understand. I will never think yellow meat watermelon tastes correct and I know it is all in my head. lol

I agree LOL!

This thread is too long, started Part 4 here:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1267208/

Come on over.....

This message was edited Jun 24, 2012 5:28 AM

The color of vegetables and fruit will usually indicate the nutritional value. The darker the color, the higher the nutritional value.

I don't know if this also applies to the skin color of fruits and vegetables.

I like using this website to balance out the nutrition in my diet:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/

Deleted - see you on the new part 4 thread...

This message was edited Jun 24, 2012 7:31 AM

I know....I fixed it. sorry bee.....it should be okay now.

Yes, it's working now. Thanks, Mary.