Been a while...

 Wow... Been quite some time. I guess I got burnt out on gardening, then my camera died, then my computer died, and then I lost a lot of plants through one winter, and when I got a new computer, every site got mad at me and refused to let me in. I finally wrestled my way into this plant blog again though I don't know why! Heh!

Last year I wanted to take it easy and stick to annuals.

(I apologize for the quality of pictures. I used a very terrible Kodak camera to take these pictures and the view screen isn't a touch screen at all.)

 

Tiny Tim and Micro Tom tomato plants

I wanted to grow these tiny varieties of tomato plants, figured they'd be fun. I was trying to find Tiny Tim that I grew from a tomato kit years back but the plants that grew this time around didn't match what I grew years back so I'm still trying to figure it out.

And it was super fun watching all these tomatoes pop up and I couldn't wait to try them all.

 

But then some animal came by and chewed Micro Tom in half and took off with the whole batch of tomatoes on that one. Geez.

Velvet Queen Sunflower

Velvet Queen Sunflower

Lemon Queen Sunflower

I also wanted to grow multi-headed sunflowers and poked around, saw that Velvet Queen and Lemon Queen sunflowers were multi-headed. I fought tooth and nail to keep these plants alive and when they did grow, they seemed stunted? I was under the impression they were supposed to get very big but they didn't seem to want to get tall. They did at least grow a couple more heads which was all I wanted, I suppose. The seeds were from Ferry~Morse and I still have some seeds leftover to try again this year.

Sadly none of my morning glory seeds took off. I planted Heavenly Blue and Blues Bros and so on and none of them did anything.

Birdhouse Gourd

I had a volunteer birdhouse gourd pop up last spring and I said I wasn't going to invest any time at all in it because I was so discouraged from the squash lady beetles that keep showing up and killing off the plants. They look like ladybugs but are orange in color. 

So naturally I invested a lot of time. 😂 I cross-pollinated 3 flowers, only 1 took, and two more started growing that were openly pollinated by bugs. And I had to go out there every day with soapy water and pluck off 3, 4, 5, 6 of these orange squash beetles off my plant so that I'd at least have 3 gourds by the end of the season.

It finally reached a point where I'd go out and there'd be no beetles but once in a blue moon one would show up and thankfully not much damage by the time I come across it.

Then the strangest thing happened; these moths showed up and they were super aggressive. They were just flocking up and down the vine through all the flowers. Then the underside of leaves were huge fuzzy patches that I assume were their eggs or something, and I went from 3 big gourds I fought tooth and nail for to a whopping 21 gourds that started growing and I was worried the vine would feel overloaded.

Tomatoes

My vegetable pots pretty much shriveled up at this point. I think I have some unidentified vegetable vines still growing but no idea what they are. The female flowers die off even though there's plenty of male flowers.

The tomatoes that I planted just for the heck of it are still going strong.

These are the Tiny Tim tomato plants. I tried tying them up but the plant sort of bent over seeing as how they were unable to support the tomatoes.

That big weird streaky red tomato on the bottom right is from a grape tomato plant. It was growing in a pot that had the husky cherry tomato plants. Kind of odd!

Vegetables

The vegetables are slowly coming along!





The squash are hit and miss. For some reason the plants sent out a lot of female flowers first so a good chunk of them rotted off before the male flowers popped out.





These tomatoes are uh... Not sure. The two big ones are Husky Cherry - I believe. The small flimsy one is Grape Tomato. There were two but one sort of broke off but it re-rooted and I stuck it in a separate pot. I know I should remove one cherry tomato plant but they're so big and healthy and.. I may as well let them stay and see what I can get away with. hehe.



Amaryllis seed pods! I may have to get another flower box and plant more seeds!

Darn birds!

I hate it when birds pick THE worst places to build their nests. I walked by my hanging tomato plant and this madness of fluttering zoomed by my head. A bird didn't like me being too close. Too close to what? .. Apparently the hanging tomato basket!

A lot of fidgeting, ladder climbing, leaning in awkward positions - I was able to find out that the nest did not have any eggs.



I feel like a monster for pulling the nest out and chucking it aside but the tomato plant is more important. If there were eggs in there - then I'd be really out of luck. There's been situations where we were way too late and we had no choice but to leave stuff sitting in one spot for weeks. A couple examples - One bird made a nest through a hole on the side of the grill. Because there were eggs, it had to be left alone. Another situation, there were three folding chairs on the cement porch out back and someone threw tarp over it to prevent it from getting wet. A bird actually made a nest in one of the cupholders of the folding chair. There were eggs in it so we left that mess alone until the babies hatched and they all left.

I need to put something over the holes to prevent this from happening again to any of them.

New Tomato Hanger

I got a new tomato hanger. This time it is "Tomato Planter" by Handy Trends. I was thankful that my tomato plant was still rather small. The plastic 'star' there was really tough. I'm not even sure this was a good design. What happens when the trunk of the tomato plant gets thicker than that?



I struggled to pull the tomato plant through and filled the bag up. I hope I didn't damage the root system or anything. Guess we'll see. This is definitely a temporary location! Just couldn't find any other hook! hehe.




And then an update on my peat pot tray. Some of my Salvia grew and then died. I guess it was too much for them so I may have to stick the seeds directly into the bed that I plan to make for 'em. The Scarlet O'Hara Morning Glory seeds were planted in three peat pots but for some reason only one peat pot took off!

Topsy Turvy this time around!

Suffered a tiny setback when one of the metal wires came loose. Improvised and fixed it. So here they hang for now. I didn't think the old rusty hooks would support them but this will do as a temporary location.

One tomato plant is "Husky Cherry" and the other is "Quick Pick". I decided to stick with small tomatoes since they usually produce much better for me than regular tomatoes do.

Hopefully this will do much better than the Upsy Downsy did. With extra dirt and the possibility that it can contain water better, it might produce more.

Hornworms! Green Caterpillars on Tomato Plants!

I went out today and noticed lots of white specks on my tomato plants. Close inspection reveals - Freaky Green Caterpillars covered with white bumps! After some research online (Gotta love Google), I found out that these are hornworms. The white stuff on them are Braconid Wasp larvae. Apparently the female wasps inject their eggs into these hornworms. The larvae eats the inside of the caterpillar before coming out and forming these cocoons.

Several sites suggest that these caterpillars are already dying and to leave them alone so that the larvae can become wasps and go on to kill more hornworms. Sounds good to me!

I believe they're the "Tobacco Hornworm" because I only count seven lines on this uncovered one.

Update

My vegetable bed failed horribly. They're all dead. Spaghetti Squash was the first to die as I knew it would. Zucchini was the next but I've never had any grow successfully. What *did* knock me flat to the floor was that the Yellow Squash was next to die. What made me faint was that the cucumbers died as well. I don't understand why they did so terrible this year! I've always had luck with the Yellow Squash and Cucumber. I feel so discouraged in this department...

At least I can say that the tomatoes are doing good. The cherry ones are producing many. My upside down Better Boy made around three or four red ones so I don't know whether being upside down helped it at all or if it's just my usual bad luck with regular-sized tomatoes.

Vegetables

The latest update on the vegetables. Every single vegetable plant experienced rust after a rainstorm. Even the grape tomato sprouts in the flower boxes had rust. It was peculiar. Most of the rusted leaves were removed as soon as possible.




Below is a picture of the Tiny Tim Tomatoes that are growing. Pretty soon I may pinch out the extras so that each one will just have one plant instead of three crowding each other.

Below is the Better Boy Tomato Plant. The extra tomatoes are growing in so the plant is now tugged down to the ground. All the better to get the water to go down and swell them tomatoes!

Picture below of the two tomato plants on the porch steps.


Close-up below of the tomatoes.

Picture below is of an unidentified plant. At least I know it's not a yearly return of the birdhouse gourd. It's made yellow flowers so no idea what it could be. I put up a brick circle to prevent them from being mowed down or weedwhacked.

Upside Down Tomato Update!

Looks like my Better Boy tomato plant is refusing to take the whole 'upside down' thing. I already knew something like this was going to happen. Should one stake this tomato plant? If the plant keeps growing up like this as it gets bigger, I'm worried the weight of tomatoes will break the bend instead of helping the plant straighten out. Hmm!

Hanging Tomato - Eastern Prickly Pear

I dug up the two eastern prickly pear that I found in the bed. I did kind of regret tossing out the others but once the fire ants sunk them - it just felt like one big mess so I just tossed them. At least now I'm starting over. I just actually wonder if these two came from a fallen pad or if they grew from seed. Hmm...






After discussing it with several people who had experience with hanging tomato planters over several years - I was told that bags tend to fray after a month or two and it gets messy. The idea is to stick to something hard and plastic. This convinced me to re-open my Upsy Downsy tomato garden planter and give this baby a whirl!

Um... Why is the ground above me?

So we'll see if this thing takes off. My prediction - It'll be a very very very happy plant but it won't bother producing tomatoes in the slightest.

I plan to get a little flowerbox type planter and grow some Tiny Tim tomato plants. I still have some seeds left over from the last one.

They're selling like hotcakes, sir.

Has everyone seen those upside down tomato baskets? Of course you have! They're advertising it like nuts! Of course, I got a variation of it (Upsy Downsy: Hanging Tomato Garden) and after close inspection, I decided I didn't like this version. It came with seeds of its own but I thought I could stick a pre-grown tomato plant in it. I was wrong.

I set off to the local nursery and bought a "Better Boy" tomato plant.

Only one problem. Every store I hit for the upside down bag version - all sold like hotcakes. Quote unquote from a saleslady who laughed at how fast it went. Guess I'll have to wait a bit more for the next batch.

I am worried though. I wonder if Better Boy might be too big or heavy for the bag!

Hanging Basket Grow Kit - 2

Finally opened the kit and assembled it. The seeds planted are "Tiny Tim Tomato Seeds". Looks like a strange set-up for the tomatoes but an interesting idea nonetheless. My fear is that a bird will make a nest on the side!

Hanging Basket Grow Kit

I had a very positive experience with Buzzy's Mini Tomato Grow Kit that I decided to buy this!

Buzzy's Hanging Basket Grow Kit. Yup, more tomatoes! It's still in the box and I've yet to take everything out and examine it closely.

Tiny Tim Tomatoes - Tomato Kit

I was asked to make an update on the Tomato Kit that I posted about awhile back. I'm kind of embarassed because I haven't really put much effort into watching them.





Most or all have fallen over due to the weight of the tomatoes. I should've staked them up once I saw it happening but I didn't do it. At least the tomatoes are still growing. I'm surprised about that.

Tomato Kit continued...

According to the instructions, When the plants are approximately 5", you split them up. I could've tossed out the smaller ones but I decided to give every plant a chance.



Sorry for the badly "bleached" picture below. I split them up, then ran out of pots and stuffed four of them together in the last pot.




So who knows if they'll survive or not. I didn't think moving small plants was a good idea but I'm just following instructions! I do still have the packet in case I decide to try again if these meet a bad end.

Mini Tomato Grow Kit

Ahhh, I'm a sucker for plant kits.




The seed packet says "Tiny Tim". I looked it up on the 'net and it doesn't seem to be very popular.