Garden Update - June 11th
Lucky me! My husband’s uncle, a hobby farmer (one of my gardening heroes), had extra tomato plants that of course he grew from seed! After making sure that no one else wanted them (I didn’t want to be greedy), I decided to plant them in The Victory Garden and The Tomato Bed. Because I had not measured The Victory Garden before I started my seeds (35 by 45!), I had extra room. I also gave some plants to my friends. Who doesn’t have room for more tomatoes??? I am embarrassed to tell you how many I brought home, but needless to say, it was ALOT! We love tomatoes and we will can tomato soup, juice and stewed tomatoes. We will also freeze some for tomato sauce, chili and stews.
As always, I lovingly toured his garden with all kinds of vegetables and dreamed about new vegetables I would grow next year! I knew his tomatoes would produce alot of tomatoes because he starts his seeds with his garden’s “magic dirt” and most of them already had flowers on them. Maybe one day my garden will have such rich dirt, but for now, I have to use soil-less seed starting medium as I noted in my How It All Began/Planting Seeds post. I am also super excited because he gave me new varieties that I haven’t eaten before. I have eaten Roma and Early Girl tomatoes before, but I have never eaten Box Car Willie, Jetsetter, Baby Boomer Cherry or 4h of July. I always want to try new varieties, but I still want a lot of my tried and true heirlooms. Maybe through his generosity, these will become my staples too!
The weather for the last two weeks has been perfect for growing vegetables. We have had warm sunny days and a fair amount of evening rain. But because it has been so warm (mid-80s to low 90s) so early in the growing season, I still had to water every other day to keep the soil relatively moist (really moist for the carrots). But these conditions have allowed The Victory Garden and The Tomato Bed to have explosive growth!
Here is how my garden looks today. What a difference a few weeks make! By starting the vegetables from seed, not only are my vegetables much cheaper than buying the plants, they are about three weeks ahead of schedule. What better reasons do you need to grow from seed? The Victory Garden is off to a great start!
From right to left: swiss chard, beets, kale, kohlrabi, arugla, eggplants, and rhubard that was split and transplanted two years ago.
I picked some yesterday for a delicious salad.
The beets are starting to crown so I know they are becoming nice and plump underneath.
Same with my kohlrabi.
The Black Beauty eggplants are starting to flower. Hopefully the Chinese Long Purple will flower soon as well.
I picked these today. The weeding I did two weeks ago paid off and I was able to see some of these smaller beauties that would have been hidden by the weeds, or worse yet, maybe choked off! This is an established bed; not started this year from seed, and so it will continue to produce these large delicious jewels until the end of June and many years in the future. They are the gifts that keep on giving. Pie anyone?
These are just SOME of my tomatoes! They are all about one month ahead of plants purchased because they were started from seed. Of course, the wonderful weather helped too. Nothing like a homegrown tomato!
This is one of my Mortgage Lifter tomatoes which produces 1 1/2 pound tomatoes on large clusters. These heirloom tomato seeds were supposedly brought to America by an immigrant who paid off his home mortgage in one year. Hmmm, I need to calculate the net present value of each tomato. Still…isn’t it a great story?
I am pleased with my five varieties of peppers. It will be interesting to see how many peppers I get from both the red varieties that I obtained through my library seed swap.