Tomatoes in bloom!

15 years ago

Oh happy day!

It started with the smaller plants, surprisingly. One day I was out watering and noticed two yellow flowers and about screamed with happiness. The next day I repotted all of the small plants into much bigger pots and fertilized them, and now all of them have little baby blooms.

My bigger plants I added in more fresh potting soil and just a pinch of fertilizer. All of them already had blooms forming, but nothing was happening with them. So, I decided to move them back beside the little ones, where they get at least 2 1/2 hours LESS sun, and sure enough their blooms are finally starting to open and turn yellow.

Even one of the plants I thought I might have to kill because it was withering so much is doing ten times better.

It seems as if they don't really need the usual 6+ hours of direct sun. At the moment they get filtered morning sun from 7 until about 9ish, direct sun from 10 until 2, and then shade for the rest of the day. Apparently it's the perfect sunlight recipe for them.

As for all of my other plants...

My mixed lettuce was devoured by ants and grasshoppers, but I'm going to see if what is left will grow through the hot season.

The single garden bean plant is taking off like crazy. Looks like a slug might have gotten on a couple of leaves, but other than that it's growing beautifully.

The two strawberries continue to grow, but no flowers or fruit.

The raspberry vine has outgrown the trellis, although the edges of the leaves on one vine are turning brown. Not sure what that is about.

My moonflower vine is engulfing the birdbath at an alarming rate - apparently it really likes this weather.

Pumpkin and watermelon and finally developing their adult leaves and starting to spread out of the pots. Not sure if I should plant them or leave them potted, and if I planted them where they would grow best.

My two jasmine vines are filling up their trellis nicely, and today I saw two seed pods on there.

Crape Mrytle is in full bloom and littering everything in frilly pink flowers.

Lavender is still hanging in there. Hasn't grown anymore, though it hasn't died off either.

And, at last, my asiatic lillies are finally coming to an end despite how much I keep them watered. I suppose it's time to cut off their stocks and just let the bulbs do whatever they do underground.

Despite this horrible weather, everything has done fairly well.

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Comments (2)

redding
15 years ago
My tomatoes are finally starting to set fruit, after putting up a shade for them. They are much, much happier than they were. Nearly the first of August and we're just now getting tomatoes. I hit the new blossoms with a dose of blossom set this morning to see if I can keep encouraging them, and they also got a drink of alfalfa tea.

You might want to find a nice large spot for those melons, quick while you can. I always seem to underestimate the amount of space mine are going to use, and next year I'm installing vertical trellises (cattle panels) for them.

In this hot weather you probably won't get any production from the strawberries other than some runners. It's too late for them to do much more than that, but you can let the runners take root and then clip them loose from the parent plants if you want to increase them.

I'm thinking that my mother's raspberries used to get pretty dried and funky looking by mid-summer, once the balance of the crop is gone. Just keep them watered a bit and then prune them back in the winter. Are you using an upright trellis, or an espalier for them? For me, the espalier has always worked best. I'd do that with them even if I had them trained on a cattle panel.

I hope you get lots of lovely fresh garden tomatoes!

Pat
BrittB
Original Author
15 years ago
I've got the other half of the garden that's all nasty and weedy I can throw the melons over there after cleaning it up a bit. I know how much they grow out - last year my moms pumpkin patch completely took over everything in the fall. I'm just not sure if I want to put them where the remnants of my lettuce are in the flowerbed and just keep the vines within the bed, or let them take over the other half of the garden. I'm not terribly concerned yet because melosn don't need as much attention as my other stuff does. Everytime we've ever grown them at the farm they just kind of take care of themselves.

For my tomatoes, I got some bloom set tonight and will be spraying them tomorrow. I'll be damned if I loose the blooms now after all of this lol I wish I could speed up the fruiting process but I'm lucky to have my flowers.

I had no idea about this espalier thing until you mentioned it. They're on an upright bamboo trellis, just a little 1 foot one I was able to get from work that we start the climbing plants on. They never produced any raspberries this year, or even flowers. Hopefully next year will be better for them.
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