Fall Garden

My spring garden began to wither away in late July and early August.  Many of the tomatoes just quit producing and started to burn up.  So I trimmed them back quite a bit and they started to grow again in late August and early September.  Thus began the Fall Garden!

Just for fun, we also planted some chrysanthemums.  And since this is about Bucket Gardening... What better way to plant fall flowers than in trick-or-treat buckets. At $1.00 per bucket, it's hard to go wrong!  What a fun floral display!

Above: To the back yard for the edible garden.  I planted a Sugar Baby watermelon mid September.  We're  not really sure if it will have time to produce completely, but I thought I'd give it a try.  It's doing very well in the bucket, so I'll definitely try this again in the spring!  Oh, and maybe add a couple of cantaloupes as well.  Also pictured, Better Boy tomato (bought on summer clearance) and the Patio Tomato, trimmed way back.

 Above:  Far left is a squash, middle is my Lemon Boy.  It has so many tomatoes on it right now that I'm just AMAZED!  I can't wait for them to start turning!  They're all green right now.  The right most bucket is a stray tomato from the kitchen.  It was a sweet surprise when it started producing small grape tomatoes.  Wonderful flavor!  Also in a bucket with an Anaheim Pepper.

Above:  Sweet 100 Tomatos.  This duo of orange buckets are just vines galore!  I had to craft some ropes to hang the vines and keep them off of the ground.  Also in yellow is a lingering squash from spring.  Doing well. :)

 My daughter, Alexandra, is showing you that the watermelon is producing!  YEAH!  Keep growing...

I also picked up on summer clearance a couple of sweet peppers.  Showing here is a beautiful purple sweet pepper.  The flavor is strong, though I think the first one I picked was a bit green as well. These are #2 and 3.  I'm letting them stay on the vine just a little longer to sweeten up. 

Happy Gardening!

Harvest

Squash and Sweet 100s.

 

It's certainly been a while since I've blogged about my garden.  And I have yet to show off some of my harvests!  So here you go.  These are several different day's worth of harvest.  Usually the Sweet 100's disappear as soon as they are washed. 

Fresh basil from the herb garden makes some great Pasta al Pesto!

More squash, tomatoes and peppers.

And more tomatoes!  Seriously, these get eaten quickly here

And here is one of those beautiful Lemon Boy tomatoes sliced up for Miss Addison.  She just LOVES these!  Just a tad tart with a wonderful sweet follow-up.  And beautifully sliced as well.

Happy Harvesting!!!

Trials of gardening...

In many ways, my garden is doing well.  Being that this is my first year to garden in a very long time, I'm thrilled with the garden thus far.  But it's not all perfect either...

I've actually separated the buckets into two areas.  The yard has the tomatoes and squash for the most part and the peppers, herbs etc are now on the porch.  The tomatoes were getting so big, I had to spread the buckets out to make room for harvesting and so everyone could get some sun.

The strawberries are growing wonderfully.  Addison, my youngest, is forever on watch for the latest sweet pick.  They've not produced a lot as yet, but are consistently harvesting 1-2 small strawberries a week.  Just enough to keep Addison on active watch!

I have an Anaheim pepper in a Topsey Turvey planter which is now doing well.  It had a rough start with heavy West Texas winds, but is now producing nicely.

I have a Cubanelle Sweet pepper which is also doing well, though it had some issues, too.  I'm still a bit nervous that we might still have issues with a fungus of some sort.  I sprayed it last week because some of the fruits had bad spots and also the joints of the plant seem to be turning.  I harvested the bad fruits as well and the remaining seem to be spot-free.

Now, on to the good stuff, right!  Tomatoes... Some are producing, and some seem to be a bit slow.  I have lots of small Sweet 100's, but the plants appear to have some issues.  I'm researching now to see if I can find out what's going on there.  If anyone has suggestions, please feel free to comment!  I'm stumped...

The leaves are starting to yellow and fall off.  But also, on the stalks, I have spiky growths.  It's very strange... These were small bumps that I notices last week (maybe week before) and then with all the recent rain, they became spiky growths today.  Very strange... I'm thinking some sort of fungus as well, especially considering the mushrooms that have also popped up in the soil.

My Lemon Boy is producing, but not as well as I'd like.  He also has the spiky growth on his stalks.  And his leaves are curling... Not nice!  Yet we did pull off two small ripe tomatoes from him today.  His fruit is tangy and really delicious!  Great to add more color to a salad.

The squash is a consistent producer, but we have no bees in the back yard, so most of the blossoms have gone bad and thus has the fruit.  I now know that lack of bees means I need to hand pollinate.  So that chore has begun.  Maybe we'll have some good fruits soon!

Happy Gardening, and Happy 4th of July!

So we went on vacation....

While on vacation, we borrowed a couple of teens from a friend to cat-sit and keep the garden watered.  They did a great job!!!  I was oh so happy to see all of my plants were still thriving when we got home!

Now, that said, no one is as good in MY garden as I am.  So while they did fantastic, I still had some work to do.  Some of the plants got dry and/or sun baked (it was 90-100 degrees here while we were away).  The squash seemed to suffer the most.  But in all honesty, I think I underestimated the container space needed!  I made the mistake of putting 2 squash in one container... I'll have to stay on top of watering and fertilizer from here on.  I also did some re-arranging of the containers to better accommodate those that seemed to get too much sun.

My pepper plants all did FANTASTIC!  They love the heat, though, so I'm not terribly surprised there.  They also have plenty of room in each container.  Yummy!  My husband grilled up the first pepper of the season for his hamburger just a few short days after we got home from vacation.

And, I have to mention that my cats all very much appreciated the company while we were away.  I have one cat that usually gets serious attitude when leave for the weekend, so being that this trip (see that blog here) was for over a week, we really appreciated the help of Kayli and Hanah in keeping them happy. THANK YOU, Ladies!!!

Happy Gardening!!!

Ladybugs LOVE Aphids!

Yesterday I went down to the local gardening center and picked up a bag of ladybugs.  My pepper plants were just covered in little white bugs.  Either aphids or white flies, I'm not 100% sure which, but either way they are destructive.  So at dusk yesterday evening, I released the ladybug brigade on my pests.  And it worked amazingly!  Upon review today, I didn't see a single aphid!  Well, there were 1,500 ladybugs after those aphids, after all!

So now my beautiful sweet pepper can continue to grow in relative peace.  My tomatoes were not yet effected by the pests that I could tell, but I have faith that my beautiful ladybugs will continue to do a proper job of guarding my garden.

Oh, and since I'm here, I might as well show you my squash in process!  Que bueno, si?

I love Ladybugs!

The First Tomato of the Season!

Yeah for the first tomato of the season!

This is my Patio Tomato and you've gotta love that the smallest of plants produced the first fruits of the season.  Here's one to the little guy!

 But Patio Tomato isn't the only one producing.. All of my plants have either blooms galore or tomatoes in progress or BOTH!  As is the case with my cherry tomatoes below.  You can only see a few tomatoes in this picture, but there are a good hand full of small cherries on this one!

And below is a pic of some of MANY blooms on my Sweet 100 Tomatoes.  I'm so excited!

 

Ok, I obviously love tomatoes.  But lets see what else is in the garden.  How about squash?  Yes!  I have some of that!  And there are hidden blooms on this too.  But seriously, look how big its grown!  It now sits on the opposite fence with my Ace 55 Tomato.  These two over grew the buckets somewhat and I separated them to let them grow more and get more sunshine.  I had to open up the whole garden, really.  Love my Bucket Garden!  So very versatile!

Let's not forget about the peppers, either!  I have one small pepper growing on my sweet pepper plant and LOTS of blooms on all 3 peppers.  You might can see the pepper in the pic below.  It's a bit small, but towards the top, right side.  Can you see it?

Let's talk food...

I have my plants in the buckets and they're growing quite well. Now, how do I sustain and support continued growth and productivity? Well, I asked my local garden center that exact question. I really am new to this gardening thing and need as much expert advice as I can get! I think I lucked out, the guy in the fertilizer area of the garden center (Holland Gardens on 50th St in Lubbock, for those interested) happens to also be a Container Gardener. He shared a few of his winning ideas, so I'm now here to share them with you!

Our first discussion was 'organics'. He introduced me to Tomato-tone by Espoma. Now, I don't only have tomatoes, but thought I'd buy some Tomato-tone anyway, since it is the majority and most important item in my garden. I bought one small bag... and will be buying more next week! This is good stuff! I actually had issues with my tomatoes early on and went back to the garden center for help. I was advised to "double up on dosage with the Tomato-tone. You can't over fertilize with organics!" So my application has been about 1/2 cup of Tomato-tone per 5 gallon bucket, less for smaller containers, every 2 weeks. My plants really love this.  I'll back off again after this next dose, reducing from 2 week intervals to a monthly dosage.

Next, he suggested a product that is not organic, but seems to be quite marvelous, still the same! He suggested Ferti-Lome's Blooming and Rooting Soluble Plant Food. I water with this probably 3 times a week. It's suggested to used daily, but I'm too lazy for that! I don't always use my fabulous watering can, most days it's just the hose. But I make sure to periodically use the can so I can add my bloom support.The combination of these two products has really provided a great boost to my garden! My tomato and pepper blooms haven't fallen off since I began using these, as they were falling off prior to use. Peppers are showing the beginnings of too many blooms to count and tomatoes... Likewise! It's impossible to know which is best for the plants, as I've been using both for almost a month now and they all seem to be so much healthier than they were prior to use! I'm thrilled with what I've got going right now. See.... My Garden GROWS! Remember how I pinched off the bottom leaves of Lemon Boy last month? Well, he's really grown a lot since then. He's green-ed up well! What you can't see very well in this picture, is he has a lot of blooms and several small tomatoes in process. As well as one tomato of about 1/2 dollar size! He's not the only one, though. All of my tomatoes now have lots of blooms and all but the Sweet 100s (which are younger than the rest) have several small tomatoes in process as well! So exciting... :)

Tomatoes!

I love fresh tomatoes! There's just nothing better in the middle of the summer than a sweet tomato fresh off the vine. That's really the reason for this year's gardening attempts.

I REALLY WANT FRESH TOMATOES THIS SUMMER!

So today's post is about my tomatoes. I planted a variety in hopes that a few of them do great in buckets. Because I'm container gardening, I chose the obvious Patio Tomato (pictured top). This one is doing fantastic so far, and only a few weeks in the buckets. I have a total of 4 small tomatoes showing on this one plant. Very unexpected, and thrilling! This plant is by far the smallest tomato plant in the garden, yet is producing already like a champ!

Growing up, my favorite variety, and producer of the most important item in the garden (in my humble opinion), was the Sweet 100 tomato. Why most important? I just loved picking fresh, red grape sized tomatoes and popping them in my mouth. We never had enough plants for my personal liking. So, having 3 daughters of my own who love tomatoes, this is the most important plant for me this year as well. I planted a total of 4 Sweet 100 varieties (pictured above). I also picked up 1 Porters Dark Red Cherry tomato variety (right). I'm anxious to see which does better. The Red Cherry is older than the Sweet 100s, so he's obviously a bit fuller.

Up next are a couple of random picks, that will hopefully bode well. I wanted a different variety, and chose Lemon Boy, a yellow meat variety. This one seems to be fairing quite well so far!. We have a handful of blooms and one small green tomato in process. You'll notice in the picture to the left, the plant seems bare at the bottom. We had a lot of rain (very unusual for the Lubbock area) over the course of 1 week and all of my tomatoes picked up a fungus of some sort. I am by no means a horticulturalist, so couldn't tell you what fungus it was. Most leaves at the bottom were brown spotted and starting to turn yellow. Because of this, I sprayed them with fungicide and I pinched off a lot of these damaged leaves. Most of the plants are LOVING the fact that I relieved them of the damaged leaves, but Lemon Boy here is a little slower to fill out. I think I pinched him later than the others or something, I don't recall. He'll be beautiful again in a couple of weeks, I promise! So keep checking back for the next update on tomatoes to see how he's doing!

OK, last on my variety list is Ace 55, pictured to the right. This is an older variety, from what I can learn. My husband picked this one because 'it looked healthy'. I'm ok with that! The Ace 55 is my only determinate tomato. It's said to be low in acid, too. That's probably a good thing!

So that's my Tomato Story! I'll keep you updated as the year progresses to let you know how we do. My mouth is watering now for fresh tomatoes! YUMMY!!!