Clean Up As You Go

It's hard to keep the garden in top order when temperatures are in the upper 90s.  Let me rephrase that:  It's impossible to keep the garden in top order when temperatures are in the upper 90s.  Fortunately the last couple of days have been in the lower 90s (!), so I got a little bit of clean-up done.

Sadly, the two Mexican sunflower plants that the recent storm knocked over did not survive.  If it hadn't been close to 100 degrees the next day, they might have made it.  I pulled them out. Fortunately, there was a third one in that location.  And actually, one of the ones I pulled out had a branch that had been touching the ground and put down roots, so there's still one limb of that growing.  I also have four other plants in two other locations, so I'll still be able to get seed for next year.

Removing those two plants left a large gap in one of my plots, so I decided to go ahead and plant another row of yellow beets there.  I also put down some more lettuce and carrot seed.  I have no idea what to expect, because although I've always thought I'd plant a fall garden, I've never actually done it before.  I was always pretty well tired of harvesting by July and August, and with the heat, never inspired to go plant more stuff.

I didn't know anything about garlic when I planted it this year, and didn't do any research - shame on me.  I think I left it in the ground too long.  These bulbs are rather small, though, and I don't know if that's the type of garlic or something else.  They didn't form nicely covered, tight cloves.  Or maybe they did and I left them in the ground too long.  In looking up some information after the fact (not uncommon with me, I have to admit), I found that there are two types: hard neck and soft neck.  I don't even know which these were supposed to be, but if I had to guess, I'd say soft, but I could certainly be wrong.  I'll do better next year.

I don't know what this convention of flies was doing on the garlic before I dug it, but they were lined up like planes on a runway.

The tomatoes are ripening now, and I can make some judgements on the ones I haven't tried before.

'Black Beauty' is a mystery to me, because some of the fruit are all green, and some are green on the bottom and black on the top.  Some of the former have ripened, and I can see that they won't make my list of favorites.  For one of the purple varieties, they have the advantage that they don't crack like the varieties I tried in previous years ('Cherokee Purple', 'Black Krim' and 'Black Icicle').  That's great - something I've been looking for - but they don't have much flavor, either.  And the couple I've cut have a lot of white pith.

So, I'm still on the search for the perfect purple tomato.

Unripe 'Black Beauty'

'Gold Medal', which is advertised at Baker Creek as a striped tomato is also behaving in a variety of ways.  Some are nice and round and all gold with yellow flesh and are much less tasty than the 'Golden Jubilee' yellow tomatoes I grew the last two years. I'll be going back to that variety next year for my yellow tomato.

Can you notice the light speckling on the bottom tomato in the picture above?  I'm pretty sure that when I cut that tomato, the flesh will also have some small whitish spots that correspond.  That's the sign of some bug with a piercing snout (as opposed to chewing mouthparts) feeding on it.  In the case of my tomatoes every year, I find that the typical culprit is a shield bug (aka stink bug).  This year, thankfully, there hasn't been as much feeding as in previous years.  

I don't seem to have taken any pictures of shield bugs, but here's one from a website called Do My Own Pest Control:

You can see the shield shape of the adult is distinctive.  There are more than one kind and colors range from greens to browns.  They get their other common name - stink bugs - because if you disturb them (or kill them), they release a pretty disgusting odor.  My kill jar full of dead Japanese beetles actually has a gag-inducing smell, but they don't stink when you disturb them, or when they're freshly killed.  

Others of the 'Gold Medal' tomatoes are oddly formed and colored with red stripes (which is what I as expecting).  The one in the picture below had some feeding damage on the stem end, and the plant was overloaded with fruit, so I picked it before it was ripe.  As it sits, it's coloring up, getting more and more red in it.  It's not wonderfully tasty either, but still more flavorful than 'Black Beauty'.  Next year, I'll go back to 'Mr. Stripey' - the striped tomato I planted the first year that was delicious.  It produced poorly, but that could have been a fluke for that year.  It's worth a try to get that flavor again.

This may not be the best time to pass judgment on taste - or sweetness - of the tomatoes since it's been so hellishly hot ever since they put on fruit.  It could be that they are not ripening like they should in milder weather.  Maybe they'll be tastier later in the season.

The currant tomato that was free seed with an order I placed is tiny and tasty, but the skins are tough, and the plant is sprawling and unsightly.  Not good for either eating or ornamentation.  It was labeled as a currant tomato, but I wonder if it's not just a wild tomato - something that was (is?) used for hybridizing purposes.

I cleaned up the bug-eaten first 'Early Jersey Wakefield' cabbages, leaving the plants that had multiple heads regrowing just to see what becomes of them.  I do like this cabbage - it's mild tasting, not peppery like many cabbages.

Side-story here:  I've had a Madagascar Palm (Pachypodium lamerei) that was about four inches high when someone gave it to me while I was living in Galveston six or seven years ago.  I have to take it indoors in the winter here, and this year, I put it back outside a little too early.  It dropped its leaves, which is not uncommon in the winter, only this year, it didn't.  Until I put it outside, that is.  Then we had a couple of big rains in the spring where I forgot to bring the plant under the patio roof.  Without leaves to draw up water from the drenched soil, and since the plant is a succulent that doesn't require much water, I repotted it both times.  The roots didn't look so good, and it just didn't put new leaves out.  I was afraid I'd destroyed it.  But!  A couple of weeks ago, I could see little green bumps all over the top of it.  It's now crowded with several terminal-type bunches of leaves where each of those little green bumps were.  I'd been waiting for the thing to branch but never saw any sign of it doing so.  Maybe my mistake actually was a good thing in that these numerous individual "tops" will now grow out each on their own to be new branches.  Stay tuned!

Neatly formed vertically layered whorls of fronds, summer 2016

This has been the year for getting unexpected plants from seeds I planted.  I thought one of the peppers amongst what were labeled as jalapeños, I've now got a plant with something resembling a chili pepper, but is green-black.  It finally occurred to me that this is probably one of the pepper seeds I saved from a 'Black Hungarian' pepper that perhaps crossed with a chili.  But that was in 2015.   I must do better at labeling.  I thought I was doing a good job of that.

I'm afraid to taste it.

Speaking of peppers that I'm afraid to taste, these green-leaved 'Black Pearl' peppers are coloring up to be beautiful.  I can't call them 'Black Pearl' because they've reverted back to something akin to whatever parent plant was used to hybridize 'Black Pearl'.  What shall I call them?

And for another surprise, that 'Charles Darwin' David Austin rose just seems to put out whatever it wants.  It's supposed to be a yellow rose, and sometimes it is.  Other times...

Go figger.

In my last post, I admitted to having let my second planting of onions get covered by zinnias.  I said they were the yellow ones, but I misspoke.  They were the white ones, and I had to just go ahead and pull them up, because they'd been broken over.  This is all I got.

Oh, well.  I got this plate of garden fresh veggies for a farmer's lunch today, so no worries.

'Black Beauty' tomato, 'Shiraz Tall Top' beets, mix of red, yellow & white potatoes, 

'Jing Orange' and 'Red Burgundy' okra

Eat well.  Till next time.