8.18.2008

garden update

Last I wrote, the veggie garden had just gone in:



It's been a few weeks now, and I: have applied another layer of straw; have to keep pulling up the bindweed that survived the solarization; have put in some marigolds to keep the tomatoes company. Some plants have done better than others.

Tomatoes: 0 for 3
Squashes: 50/50
Beans: woo hoo!



So, the tomato leaves slowly tuned brown + shriveled. I couln't figure out what (if any) disease they maybe had. Plants never got any bigger, never set flowers. I snapped off the brown stuff, but lately, two of them seem to be setting new leaves. Weird.



Next year we'll plant any tomatoes in the perennial bed, against a south-facing garden wall. I think it will help keep the plants warmer, radiating heat into the evenings — it still gets down in the 60s most nights. All of our friends who have successfully grown 'maters this summer seem to have done the wall thing.

Squash #1 (Delicata): Also failure to thrive, but not dying either. It's about the same size as when it was planted — just not spreading out or anything. Blooms a plenty, just all squinched up there in the middle.



Squash #2 (Acorn): Yay! Lookit it go! It's sprawling all over like a good squash plant should. (Those are the beans in the background.)



All kinds of baby squashes underneath. Biggest is about the size of a large orange.



The beans are the most heartening, seeing as how they were a package of seeds (beans) I poked into the ground the day I put all the other plants in, and they're really going — beans already! They're drying beans, though — I hope they'll have enough time to mature before it gets too cold.

2 comments:

andy said...

Supposedly tomatos are water hogs so that might be the problem. Everything looks pretty green though.

Bram said...

Well, as you've noted, it's pretty green — we've been running the sprinklers. And been getting some honest-to-goodness rain (nothing like the East recently, but enough to ruin a fair amount of evenings outside).

Reasonably sure it's the temperature. And planting them in July.