Sunday, April 1, 2012

You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato

Did I get you signing that song?  If you did, you're welcome!  If you didn't then you're just a whippersnapper.  Like my choice of words lately?!

Anywho, my Back to Eden garden is looking excellent.  Hardly any weeds; except a couple of nuisances like dollar weed.  I can't seem to get a handle on them.  I think they'd grow on a rock if they didn't have any other choice. Any ideas? 

We'll have way more tomatoes than we need this season.  Everywhere I look there's the making of more and more tomatoes.   I did plan it this way on purpose, as I want to learn how to can this season, and what better to practice with than tomatoes.  (If I have too much, guess what the family gets for Christmas this year!)  I also want to harvest the seeds from these heirloom varieties;

Beefsteak, Brandywine, Yellow Pear and Speckled Roman


Otherwise, we have the start of peas, green beans, cucumbers and lettuce.  Also coming up are watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, corn, carrots, onions, radishes, and Swiss chard.  Some of these are doing better than others.  It may be a combination of soil conditions as we've only just applied the Back to Eden principals and the mulch has not composted enough yet, or we planted some of the varieties too early.  It wasn't cold, they just prefer it warmer.  I experimented with some of the typical cool season crops like cabbage, and they are not doing very well.  They are typically grown here during the cooler fall months.  I may need to stick with that plan.

We may experiment in the next few months with putting up shade cloth over parts of the garden to see if the plants fair better.  Our strawberries did much better last summer after we put up the shade cloth.  Otherwise we were losing plants every week, and not from lack of water.  It was actual burn out. 

I'm very happy with the results in the garden to this point.  We'll see come harvest time how things look and taste.  Happy Gardening!

4 comments:

  1. Lots of tomatoes for us this year as well. Have Rutgers, Marglobe, Mystery (saved those from Publix a few years ago - doing great so far), Brandywine & Celebrity). Also started grape, cherry, purple & yellow. Will plant those in straw balesinthe next few weeks. Crossing fingers.

    p.s. Hate the word puzzles. Too old to see them clearly.

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  2. Brandywine is a good performer in my garden and apparently our climate is colder than yours.

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  3. That Dollar weed is edible and quite tasty as a green in salads.

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  4. DFW - I'm sorry about the word puzzles, but if I don't have them, then I'm blasted with spam. Thanks for following along.

    Sista - thanks again for all the comments and continuing to follow our antics.

    Spud - I had no idea you could eat Dollar weed. Maybe they should rename it something other than "weed". It gives it a nasty connotation, and since it's loathed in yards, why would you even consider eating it?! I will however, upon your advice give it a try and let you know what I think. I may be a lot of things, and opinionated is definately one of them!

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