Garden Update 2014

My typical summer breakfast.  Toast with tomatoes, a bit of mayonnaise and Spike seasoning. YUM!

A nice batch of Dill waiting for me to add to a jar of green beans for Pickled Green Beans .

Tomatoes are coming in very slow this year.  I guess with the earlier months of high heat it has set them behind.  I have lost a lot of blossoms too with the heat spells, and tomatoes are much smaller this year.  I am not sure that I will even get enough to preserve this year, which is a real disappointment.

Two weeks ago I had to pull out one of my San Marzano plants at my community plot because it had so many leaves that wilted and died off that I just gave up on it and bought 3 more plants and set them out.  They new plants were big and look good so far; already forming tomatoes.

The plants here at home seem to be doing so much better than the ones at the community plot, but still behind in production.  My Henderson's Ponderosa is one that always gave a high yield and  even those two plants are sparse. The plants in the grove are healthy and huge with lots of tomatoes on most, but having said that I did not see that many on Goliath and that one always had a high yield.  Could be that it is not getting as much sun as the rest since it is on the end of the North side.

Cherry tomato plants are doing well, but production is low on them also.  The brown oval cherry is super productive though so I could make sauce out of those.

  German Queen looked terrible the other day and I just gave up on it and pulled it out.  These are the tomatoes (green ones) that I pulled off the plant before I trashed it.  They are far enough along that they will ripen but that was all the tomatoes that were on the plant!

Summer squash of course is doing very well, we have 4 varieties at the community garden.  Aphids did move in and I lost one Crookneck plant to them but I have seeded more of it and also Ronde de Nice.  I pulled out a couple of those plants too that looked like they were getting mildew. Don't want that taking over.  I also sprayed the rest of the plants with a baking soda solution to keep it off them.  You can make this solution by mixing 1 teaspoon Baking Soda in 1 quart of water.  Spray the leaves in the early morning.

 The smaller tomatoes in the back are Southern Night, these were some of the first ones to ripen and the plant does have larger fruit on it and looks like I will get a good yield from it.  Super tasty tomato. This plant is at my community garden. 

 Sad and small San Marzano tomatoes.  I do have another plant here at the house which has some nice sized fruit on it and the plant is healthy and still reaching for the sky.  If we could just keep the temperatures down a bit I think it will set many more fruits.

 Here is a few of Dr. Wyche from my community garden, so small compared to previous years.

On a brighter note, we have been picking Kentucky Wonder beans every-other-day now.  This is from just one of the small towers that I planted.  I seeded more a few weeks back to keep us picking all summer.