No infinite money, but it sure cost way more than the grocery store. I have to consider it a personal hobby I do for fun, I am not doing it just for the food (but the taste of garden tomatoes IS like eating sunshine)....

If you include the mulch, seeds, plants, sprays, fertilizer, and the elaborate fence, I'll bet that garden cost $1000 (of course not including the mortgage payment, or the 2 hour each way commute I endure to afford such a piece of property)... but many of those things are reusable. Could you have a tomato garden for cheaper, for sure!

I agree.
Ultimately life is a pursuit of pleasure, after some fundamental needs in Maslow's hierarchy.

Sey

Yeah, I think most here grow tomatoes for fun.

Masochists!

Geez daniel, of course I know he didn't use infinite money nor do I need infinite money. I was just showing my enthusiasm as I would have a yard just like his if I had the money. Technically he does have infinite money because he has an income. $1000 is a lot. I don't know how big his yard is, but I'd say mine is much larger. Even if I go the cheap route it would still cost me hundreds if not thousands. I can't afford a fence that I would really like to put up, the fungicide I am very much recommended, or any of the other supplies I need. I lost my job and did not have the chance to save money. I have car payments to make. I don't know about you, but I would prioritize my car.

It's all fun and games until someone gets bacterial wilt ;)

I definitely have a case of the summer burn outs. I wish I could take a week off :)

If I harvest half the tomatoes out there it is twice as much as I can eat. Next year I grow 2 cherries in the space I crammed 5.

Geez shijitake, I only liked your poetical image: INFINITE MONEY.

a little bit of this week's harvest (all the tomatoes). Still no Jet Star yet.

I'm already mass freezing the zucchini

Onion harvest 2015... nothing spectacular but not too shabby.

Looks great Peter! I pulled my first onion yesterday, still a bit small I think.

I also nabbed my first tomatoes, black cherry, although they are big for cherry.

This was the rest, my first true harvest as opposed to a couple of pieces here and there.

Soon I'll have buckets of tomatoes, which is great as my wife make and freezes lots and lots of sauce.

Looking nice Jim! I pulled the last of my beets this week, and my carrots are just about there but a little behind. I have my first beans also to harvest this weekend.

And all I got was 3 hornworms and a bunch of stinkbugs... lol... ok, ok, and some good fruits of the labor. Tis the season for enjoying the return on our efforts. :-)

Daniel, I'm not sure what to make of your responses. If you're being sarcastic or not. They have a forceful tone.

Peter, nice haul! Onions are nothing spectacular?? That's a lot!

Jim, are you sure those are black cherry? The shape looks like black plum tomatoes.

Well I planted a lot... but they are not as big as I was hoping for.

Speaking of onions... Peter, when I lived up near where you do, it was closer to Florida NY. You ever visit there to get onions? This was a while ago of course, but there used to be an old store/gas station that had been closed a long time right there in Pine Island. Out front there was a coffee can and 50 lb. sacks of red, white, and yellow onions and sacks of red potatoes. It was like $8 a sack!

That black dirt was the best!

@Shijitake I 'purchased' black cherry tomato but they are the biggest cherries I've ever seen. The other black cherry is, well, normal size. I'm thinking it is a plum. It tasted awesome!

@Peter, how do you freeze the zucchini? I have too many of them and the white scallop squash. My beets were small, they always are for some reason, delicious but small. These carrots are awesome, too. They are the half-danvers and sure do taste good. I dropped 24 bush bean seeds and ended up with 22 plants. We did our first harvest of the beans that morning. Sunday I'm taking the first bit of corn, I've got my fingers crossed on that. They seem a bit on the small side. This weekend I'm dropping the garlic and shallots and starting the fall broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale seeds.

I don't have any energy left for a Fall garden this year. The garden is pretty much full anyway... I'm struggling to take care of it all as it is. I will plant half a row of peas and some lettuce, and the brussels sprouts I would have transplanted already if it wasn't over 90. Not sure if they are going to be ok.

I freeze the zucchini by cutting it up and sticking it into the freezer. IMHO it comes out just fine come winter. Of course nothing is a substitute for fresh.

I had tomato sauce tonight, it wasn't even full on sauce just maybe 20 Sungold and a single Sweet Tangerine, and it was painful to eat it was so sweet. Wow! I can't make full on sauce out of those it will be inedible. I think it was the Sungold.

Wow. Nice harvests y'all. All I've got is jalapenos, cherry peppers, tomatoes and cukes (as always, way too many). The melons are doing well, but not ripe yet. And the beans are so far behind because every time one of them grew leaves something nipped them off. Finally covered a couple of a bush variety and one is starting to flower.

Something is definitely wrong with my eggplant. One plant was bought and it's about 2 feet high but has no eggplants. The other was a tiny seedling I grew and it's catching up in size but no eggplants yet either.

I'm trying fall broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage this year. Just put them in over the weekend. I'm not sure if that's too soon or not.

Caryltoo I don't think it is too early.

Eggplant can be finicky. I think I am only having luck because I bought good varities. Others have great success but most are in warmer climates.

Bolero and Purple Haze carrots... recovered from severe groundhog damage!

Wow, that's a nice gaul on the tomatoes! I saw the first black krim with color starting.

My leeks are so so skinny, :( maybe a half inch after 90 days, although they have doubled in size the last two weeks. I grow Caracas and half Danvers, next year I'm adding the purple carrots.

Can't wait for my tomatoes to ripen...

I planted way too many tomatoes. 14 plants, including 3 sungolds (planted way too close together though). If they don't succumb to late blight or something I will be driving around the neighborhood leaving them on porches ;) We had a beautiful hot sunny week that was good for ripening.

Most of my leeks were not that big, and they bolted. They were Lancelot Leeks and I followed Dixondale's recommendations and they were planted too early which caused them to bolt. Thankfully they are still totally edible, not woody, but they don't taste like leeks... they have a pungent onion taste that dissipates on cooking and not that unique leek flavor. They also weren't blue-green. I won't be planting the Lancelot Leeks from them again. I have been considering doing my own onion and leek starts this winter.

I'm sure you will have a huge haul starting any day now. I am still eagerly awaiting my potatoes to die back already... but with all I am harvesting I am really not in a rush for a glut of potatoes, not sure I can eat them right now.

Be careful of the late blight, USAblight.com said it is in Ulster county.

I have a lot of tomato plants and it will come in handy as we have a big family, eat a ton of salad, and the wife makes lots and lots of sauce.

Next year I am adding the sungolds, brandwine and the Big Rainbow to my collection of tomatoes. Black krims are my runaway favorite and I have 8 of those plants. They just get huge, 4' wide and 6' tall or so. Loads of unripen tomatoes on them now. Salivating at the thought of full ripening....

Yeah, there is always LB around this area.... if they get it they get it I am choosing not to stress over it. Already got tons of tomatoes.....

I do scout almost every day and remove any diseased or dying foliage. Honestly for maybe not for LB but for other diseases this is probably more useful than fungicide. They said the farm in Ulster that got it had been using fungicide.

The Sungolds are over 8 feet. I can't keep up with them, I need 20 minutes a day to harvest and prune these 3 plants.

It looks like a forest! My Krims are 6-7 feet tall, maybe 15-20 tomatoes on each. None of the other plants look anywhere near that size, all 4 foot or so and under. I transplanted late since I had to expand. As always, I am out of room. The squash is taking over the garden. I am running out of walking area.

Me too...

Peak garden season 2015

Potatoes won't die back

Jet Star & Sweet Tangerine.

Bush delicata bush fail

IMHO, jungles are good.... IF they are well organized.

I tried to do that and I think I succeeded.

Some vines in the jungle bellow, were almost 20 ft. long.

I highly doubt that a 4-5 ft. tall CAGE, could handle such long vines.

No offense, but maybe people should find better ways to handle their jungle(s).

JMO.

Peter wrote: > I do scout almost every day and remove any
diseased or dying foliage. Honestly for maybe not for LB but for other diseases
this is probably more useful than fungicide.

Removing diseased or dying foliage, is good and necessary;
the only problem is that when you remove and remove, you might get tomatoes like the ones in the
picture bellow…

Peter wrote: > The Sungolds [sic] are over 8 feet. I can't keep
up with them…

How about if the vines are 20 ft. long ?

Daniel, did you look at the picture? The plants are huge! I couldn't remove and remove to get the picture you posted if I tried. I have already harvested a couple buckets of Sungolds and have absolutely no complaints. If you think you can do it better that's great, but I think I have been more than successful!

Also I am not sure what you are measuring but that support in the picture and the plants sure aren't 20 feet high.... nor do they look much less a jungle than mine. That's great you are proud of your plants, they are impressive for sure, but there is no need to keep posting last year's pictures to say how you can do it better in every thread.... I am very proud of my garden this year and was hoping for postive feedback.

I am overwhelmed with Sungold tomatoes. I am still out picking them 20 minutes a day. Strangely the later ones have more tang than the earlier ones. Are they supposed to have some tang? They are a strong mixture of both sweetness and bite. I imagine many would like it that way... it is hard to tell if they are really ripe. I think I will wait to harvest them until they are ripe on the vine from now on. Honestly if disease takes them out at some point in the future I am fine with that as I can't imagine spending a half hour a day tending to tomato plants and having buckets of tomatoes for the next 3 months until frost. 1 Sungold next year!

The Golden Rave do not have that much flavor, are fairly slow producers, and wilt on some branches... perhaps it is verticillium I don't know but they are the only ones that do. The foliage is also more whispy and less vogorous. They are good for a mild tomato like my wife likes but otherwise I don't imagine many here would want to grow them and I wouldn't either if she didn't.

The Jet Star are an all around average tomato, but I really like them anyway. They received high ranks from everyone I gave them to but so do all garden tomatoes :) .. when I say average, I do mean in the world of awesome garden tomatoes. :) . They started off in a determinant growing pattern, setting about 15 tomatoes per plant on compact plants and spending all their energy ripening. Now that those are ripening up they have started getting back to indeterminates and growing again.

The Sweet Tangerine are similar to the Jet Star but yellow to orange, and they are determinates

Awesome Quickstart cabbage

Wow, so prolific the Sun Gold, I will grow some next year. Have you thought of making tomato basil soup with all those tomatoes? Having eyes far bigger than my belly, I grew about 40 tomato plants and that is our intention, although we have not done that before.

Nice looking cabbage, too.

Sun Gold is prolific and tasty.

A keeper for me.

I no longer grow cherry/grape tomatoes. But when I did I used to make sun-dried tomatoes (in the oven) from them. Worked pretty well.

Cabbage looks gorgeous.

I grew Sungold last year. It did great, but when the other tomatoes came, they tasted better. Nobody wanted to eat Sungold in my family. Finally I gave up and stopped picking them. I will not grow it again. But Peter if you have a lot of them, the best thing is to dry them. Cheap dehydrator is the easy way to preserve tomatoes.

Sounds like a good idea to "sun dry", can I do it in the oven? Put them in oil in the refrigerator after drying?

You can try to dry them in the oven, but it did not work for me, I always burned them. And the problem is that they need to be dried at low temperatures for hours. Can you stand hot air in the kitchen for several hours? I could not. And I always kept thinking how much money I have to pay for the air conditioner running. On the other side my cheap dehydrator costs around 25$ and it does the work just fine. Tomato, peppers, herbs, even eggplants. I usually keep them in the Ziploc bags and store them on the shelf. You can add the oil, but you need to store them in the cool place. I do not know how perishable they might be.

2012 Summer I tried to sun dry in my car. But it didnt work. So I put them in the oven. It took 2 days. I kept them in the freezer for 2-3 years. Just finished them up.

Peter, you have my dream garden. Except I would also grow strawberries, blueberries, and have a peach and cherry tree. And if I was in a more tropical place, passionfruit, mangoes, promegranate and acai :)

I had a whole berry patch in another location, but they were pulled up as it was just way too much work and it was overgrown with weeds. I have two apple trees I didn't spray and are riddled with fungus and no apples. I do have two very productive pear trees.

Sorry to hear. My yard has an apple, pear, cherry, and some other tree whose fruit I don't know, and just found raspberries. My dad planted them all except the apple. He doesn't take very good care of them though. They are growing and no problems, but since he doesn't fertilize them, the fruit are tiny. The apple tree was here when we moved in and the fruit is plentiful but small. Unfortunately no one in my family eats them and he threw out all the ones on the ground!

Today's harvest

Leftovers from earlier this week.

I am overwhelmed with tomatoes and eggplants despite the verticillium wilt.

Future updates will go in the harvest thread - http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3271281/harvest-pics-2015?n=61

Also see my Squash Vine Borer success story thread -

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3230732/squash-vine-borer-success

I hope you enjoyed my thread. I know I will refer back to it next year myself! It has been a wonderful year with abundant harvest and so much learning!

I caved and planted Fall broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, carrots, lettuce, and beets.

Briussel Sprouts from seed? I am growing from seed for the first time, usually got small plants in the past as my seed plants didn't exactly prosper. Are you going to do any cauliflower? I found some early snowball seeds that mature in 60 days. The ones I grew in the spring were delicious. They were about 7-8" across except the one on the top right. That was the only one that yellowed, the other one was caught in a shadow. It wasn't very tight, either.

No I haven't tried cauliflower... maybe next year.

The Brussels Sprouts are seeds I started indoors. I got lazy and didn't have the time and didn't harden them off properly, so they took a beating. I feel like everything else is a little late... we will see, I don't have high expectations at all. Any Fall crops are totally a bonus to me this year.

Cauliflower is fussy I am told. Needs the right temp and amount of water or you end up with little to nothing. The spring ones supposedly were ready to eat in 70 days or so. Ha! It took more like 90 days, but worth it. I have raised beds and found that I had to water them fairly heavily every day to get them to cooperate.

I just started my Brussel Sprouts about ten days ago, dropped 6 seeds and have 5 plants started. Dropping the broccoli, cabbage, kale, and cauliflower next weekend I think. I need to clean out the beds I just cleared, like the corn. The corn is tricky because the honey bees have decided to take up residence in the one corner of the bed. I haven't a clue as to how big their hive is. It will be interesting.

I also started lettuces, mustard greens, and arugula.

I wanted to give my Fall crops more time, because my garden doesn't have an extreme amount of sun (and the best spots are taken by the summer crops), so with the declining days of Fall there will definitely be a lack of sun....

Just wanted to say thanks for keeping us updated - I'll check your other thread!

I just wanted to update this thread for my own reference next year.

The Fall peas I planted are doing great! In the same spot I planted the Spring ones. Nice nodules on the Spring ones. They are flowering and 4 feet tall, growing no slower than in the Spring.

The Fall beets had poor survival. It looks like I will get at least a few smaller beets, in the sunny spot I planted them.

The lettuce planted in the shady bed stopped growing about 3 weeks ago. It is baby greens. I will try some MG to give them a boost.

The carrots planted in the shady bed are growing well, but probably not well enough, I will be surprised if I get any decent roots.

The brussels sprouts are looking pretty nice despite all the mistreatment and I hope for some sprouts in November.

The direct sow cabbage and broccoli was a total fail. The seedlings just wouldn't grow in the summer heat. They are growing now but too late.

And for the summer stuff...

The beans are pretty much done. A little bit of poor quality dribs and drabs left. The earlier planted beans did much better than the summer planted ones.

The Alexandria zucchini is still hanging in there, all other squash is long dead from PM and pests.

The Ace and Biscayne are rocking. I LOVE my peppers! They did just as well in the late september cold as the summer heat and sun.

The eggplant is doing well. The Hansel has lost quality pretty bad now, but the Galine is still doing great and is plenty of eggplant. The later planted ones are doing better, but they are also getting much more sun.

And, the tomatoes. The smaller plants, the Jet Star and Sweet Tangerine, are about 75% toasted from septoria. The Golden Rave are still producing but also looking really bad, and unsplit Sungolds are difficult to come by. All of the fruit is poor quality and honestly I wish they would just hurry up and die at this point, so I can clean up the mess. I have harvested enough tomatoes for the winter for sure.

This is going to be a hard year to top!

Hey I just wanted to update to say I decided to start a blog this year, Peter's Vegetable Garden, so as not to hog up the tomato growing forum. :) I am going to keep a full journal of everything, I think it can be really helpful to others and me too next year!

I started onions from seed this year, and will be starting artichokes and a hot pepper plant this weekend!

Of course, I will still be here on GardenWeb. Happy tomato growing, I bet there are some starting seeds already! Alas, I won't be growing that many tomatoes this year, most of what was grow is going uneaten due to my wife's stomach problems, so I will be replacing at least half of what I grew last year with more peppers, and making red pepper sauce/paste instead (which we really love anyway!) I am thinking of doing one Sungold, two Golden Rave, and two large tomatoes, maybe a Jet Star and a Chef's Choice which I bought new this year.