Tomato season

This has been an early tomato season. We have picked about 400 pounds of tomatoes already! The pantry boasts 130 jars of tomato juice and three different batches of salsa. In coming weeks we will be putting up pizza sauce, and a bit more salsa.

Tomatoes and Apricots

We picked another bowl full of tomatoes yesterday, and weeded out several that had blossom end rot. We've nearly always had blossom end rot at the beginning of the season and this appears to be no exception. The good news is that the next tomatoes on the same vines do not suffer from that malady so in a couple of weeks we should be picking substantially more. Pictured below is one of the mortgage lifter variety tomatoes - about four inches across and heavy.

We also harvested about a three gallon bucket full of apricots, with many more to come in the next few days.

Tomato update

The tomato plants that are in cages are now over five feet tall. That's up to my nose high, and covered with green tomatoes.

Grapefruit harvest

After eating all the grapefruit we wanted, and giving some away, we picked three full wheelbarrows of it and made about 75 jars of bottled grapefruit juice. Amazing how much one tree can yield.

A Garden Teaches Patience and Planning

So for those who think a garden is for food, here's a news flash. It is also for learning things like patience, and planning. Look at the difference one month makes in a tomato patch along the right side of these photos.

Sprouting tomato seeds

This was a first for us. Tomatoes from the store developed dark bumps, which when cut open turned out to be little tomato seedlings trying to push their way out. The skin is pulled back so you can see the seedlings.

Growing, growing

Everything is growing, blooming, and setting fruit. We did have some difficulty with the Zucchini this year. Fruit would blossom and set, and then over the next several days slowly wither and blacken on the blossom end. Turns out to be the same malady as blossom end rot that tomatoes have. Calcium spray on the leaves and presto - fruit are now ripening normally. Albeit, with zucchini, normal means if you miss a day checking them they multiply and replenish the earth. My father in law said zucchini fed the Israelites in the wilderness, because every morning there was more of it...

The tomato plants are approaching three feet high, and starting to fall over to the point that a person can't walk between the rows, or even see the rows for that matter.

Blossoms

Canalilly

Angelita Daisy

Lisbon Lemon

Gold Kist Apricot

Bearss Lime

Tomatillo blossom in daylight

Mortgage Lifter tomato

Zucchini

Tomatillo blossom at evening

Apricot

The bare root apricot we planted was dead, so we found a potted tree at a local nursery and replaced it today. We could not get a Katy (sold out) which would have been our first choice, so we got a Gold Kist instead. This is the same variety as the 12-year old tree we have in the back. It has smaller fruit but the taste is excellent and the tree has done really well. We make jam and fruit leather from it every year.

Katy has larger fruit and that's why we wanted to try it, but no luck. There are other varieties that do well in the Phoenix area, but these are two of the best and have the lowest chill hour requirement. Remember that we get about 450 chill hours a year here on average, which is why many fruit trees aren't grown here - they need more cold weather to set fruit the next season.

Gold Kist Apricot

Garden Update

A few new pictures taken in the garden today. The tomato plants look really happy (except for the ones the birds broke in half...) and we are anxiously looking forward to harvest season. We put fertilizer in the drip system about once a week to help the plants get big quickly and cover what will be very hot dirt between the rows come summer time. We've also spread mulch from pruning the trees and bamboo between the rows.

Tomato rows are filling in 3.1.2015

Tomatillo forming blossoms

Tomato blossoms

Zucchini blooming

Apricot Tree

Following the advice on the label, we planted a Blenheim Royal apricot tree about four years ago. It had bitter fruit every year, and more of it each year. This week we pulled the tree out of the ground and replaced it with a Gold Kist apricot which is one of the two highly recommended varieties for our climate in the Salt River Valley. It was hard to find, and perhaps that is why we trusted the label instead of our research when we planted the Blenheim, but it cost us four years of effort. Let that be a lesson. Fruit trees take time to grow and one needs to be sure they are planting the correct variety in the correct spot in the yard.

Garden Progress

We transplanted into the garden on February 8. Photos today show that so far everything looks great!

Tomatillo

Early Girl Tomato

Emmy Tomato

Seedling Photo

Here is a picture of the tomato and tomatillo seedlings. Tomatoes were started the week after Christmas, and tomatillos about a week later. These really started growing quickly once they got some direct sun outside starting two weeks ago. The tomatoes are easily four inches tall. We moved the lights a bit higher after taking the picture.

New Seedlings for 2015

We are giving the tomato crop one more try this year, and have started two trays of early girl (with some gurney girl mixed in), as well as six each of another dozen varieties, some we have tried before and really like and others we just want to try. Emmy is one we really liked, as were the cream sausage and pink brandywine varieties. We always want to  try more varieties than we have room for. Yellow pear is another we have really enjoyed with salads. Tomatillos in the photo, as well as onion, watermelon, and cucumber. This photo is a couple of weeks old, and the tomato plants are 3 to 4 inches tall now.

New Drip System

After years of using quarter inch tubing with 2gph emitters, we are switching to in-line emitters. It seems that every time we moved a line to till or plant, tees were breaking or they would catch on something. This new line wont break, and wont get stuck on things. The only downside is the emitters cannot be cleared if they plug. Cost is the same, so we will see how things go.

Frost

It called for cold weather last night, so we harvested all the lemons and tangelos. We had so many lemons this year that three large branches broke and fell off the tree even though we had pruned back 200-300 lemons in late summer. We picked over 1500 lemons yesterday! These would all have frozen in the cold. Our outdoor thermometer read 21 degrees this morning.

It's a new season

So the fall tomato experiment was a total failure. We had lots of rain that splashed mud all over the plants, and after that, even though we washed them off and sprayed with an anti-fungal agent, the plants just seemed to hibernate. They lived until the frost came, but never thrived and we harvested only a few tomatoes. Today we ripped them up and put them in the garbage. New seedlings are planted in the growing shed and we are hoping for a better season in 2015!