I was successful with cucumbers this year. We’ve had half a dozen good ones. Squash on the other hand was a bust. The plants grow and blossom. The little squash forms and then withers and dies. Bell Peppers have done well but not eggplant. The eggplants grew, flowered and then one plant died and the other was ravaged by insects. We got about a dozen nice and large blackberries and a few blueberries.
I may have finally cracked the code for growing tomatoes here. We’ve picked about 10 so far and there are at least 50 more coming along. Appropriately, the first to produce was the Early Girl variety. Now the Better Boy and Bush Goliath have dozens of fruits growing in clusters on them. I found I have to use a garden pesticide or else the bugs will get in the fruit right when it ripens. I also have to toss a plastic bird net over the plants because if I don’t the birds will peck holes in and eat the fruit just before I would want to pick it. I’ve been fertilizing once a week with a liquid fertilizer and my plants are watered automatically by my sprinkler system. Most of the plants are in containers that hold a reservoir of water at the base. Water is always available to the plant from the bottom of the container as the plant needs it. The reservoir is replenished daily with any excess draining out the side of the container and not soaking the potting soil. We have had so much rain in the past week that some of the tomatoes got too much water and split—even with the good drainage. I’ve also had to reapply pesticide after each heavy rain because the bugs show up in quantity as soon as the stuff washes off.
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Penny and I are finally recovering from our colds but our appetites have been lagging. This may be a result of the medication we are on or the effect of the cold itself. In any event we have not had pasta cruda or BLTs yet this year. It won’t be long though—the tomatoes won’t last forever.
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