Here’s another shot of Zinnias in bloom on the front parkway. For some reason a butterfly hammed it up for the camera.
Tomato update: Harvested around 40 pounds of tomatoes on main roof. All plants almost dead. Habeneros need harvesting.
Category Archives: Ground Level
Front Parkway in Mid Afternoon Sun
I divided the front parkway into 4 foot sections. This is the nothernmost 6 foot section that was planted with Cleome, Zinnias, and general wildflowers. The parkway tomato featured below also grows into this section. A few tree seedlings are growing and I hope this will be the location of one of the two or more trees that will grow to full size in the next 10 – 20 years. Not sure yet whether to plant a sapling or let the seedlings grow to full size.
Tomato update: Lots of tomatoes on Main Roof but all the plants are dead or dying. Don’t think they’ll make it to September. I have downsized next year’s crop to 6 tomatoes and 5 non-tomatoes requiring only 3 9cuft containers. Eight tomato plants generate too many to harvest. Plan to put them out for the neighbors to take.
Zinnias Bloom
Zinnias bloom in front parkway.
Front Parkway Tomato
This tomato in front parkway grew wild from a seed and didn’t achieve seedling status until late June and now it’s falling over its hoop cage.
Update Main Roof Tomatoes: No pics of main roof tomatoes but status needs to be updated. Here is the current caged layout since I haven’t documented that yet for this year:
OTTOTTOTOOTOTTO
O = Other, T=Tomato, numbered left to right one to fifteen, west to east.
The above chart is important since there are some problems but overall the crop looks like they will produce. BER tomatoes are still coming out. Some small Celebrity tomatoes without BER harvested 4 days ago.
Leaves on tomato in caged position 2 are yellowing badly but not affecting T in caged position 3 which is of a different type. Caged position 1 is western most. Ts in Caged positions 5 and 6, both Brandywines, doing the best and are the tallest ever. They both share a new 9 cu.ft. container built this spring. Ts on eastern end, caged positions 13 and 14 not doing well but they’re in the old 3 cu.ft. containers. Difference in growth between the two container types is striking.
Next season all tomatoes will share a 9 cu.ft. container placing same types together as they seem to grow better with their own kind. Caged positions 1-4 will be moved to NE corner.main roof which will have 1 9 cu.ft. and 2 3 cu.ft. containers. There might be some bacteria problem at the west end of the roof. The skinny eggplant in caged position 1, sharing a 9 cu.ft. with T in caged position 2 is doing very well. Eggplants never seem to have problems however.
All habeneros look big this year except the ones getting crowded out by their unruly container companion. More on this later ….
Edit: Forgot to mention that the plant behind the tomato is zoom out shot of the weed mentioned in the previous article. This plant never seemed to fully flower out even though it was always on the verge of blooming.
Some people call this a weed
Some people call this a weed. Not sure the name of this plant but it grows wild in untended areas and thus, could be considered a weed. This picture shows it about to bloom. I’ll post a panned out view when it fully blooms to show its leaves and give a better perspective because it grows around here everywhere. Since the plant seems to thrive in densely packed clay that was used as fill in the new front parkway area I let these grow out to see what they look like. There is nothing wrong with keeping weeds that flower out into something. Who knows: maybe this weed can be turned into a medicine? The front parkway has several variety of weeds growing out to their full potential. They provide contrast to the “wildflowers” I planted from seed packets. These weeds are the true wildflowers. There are certain classes of invasive weeds I pull like chickweed; weeds that creep along and choke other plants. Weeds that stay to themselves I let be unless they’re in the way of something else.
Tomato update: Picked first tomato on main roof August 1 with a little Blossom End Rot (BER). There have been lots of little BER throwaways but they are becoming less so hopefully a good crop will come soon. No sign of mites; perhaps because there has been so much heavy rain. Mites seem to thrive in dry environment. Some browning of leaves on sucker branches which I have been cropping. Nothing bad so far. Fingers crossed and updated pics are forthcoming.
Catnip Blooms
Catnip blooms in the parkway garden. There are four big bunches of catnip this year. After blooming and seeding out these plants will be done for the year. Raspberry bushes will fill in nicely. Hopefully next season the catnip will be able to grow amongst the raspberry bushes. It looks like a lot of seed will be spread from the current crop.
Wildflowers Catch Afternoon Sun
Wildflowers in front parkway catch afternoon sun light as it filters through trees.
Catnip Blooms
Catnip blooms in the front parkway; finally! There are three bunches of catnip that somehow survived all the turmoil that happened with that corner at the end of last season. With the added garden space there is more catnip this year than last. It will be interesting to see where it migrates next year as the raspberry bushes begin to dominate.
New Front Parkway
A new corner was installed last season and they turned the front into a front parkway. A container grew raspberries and catnip here in previous years and now the entire 20+ feet is an in ground garden. I was able to save the mature raspberries from last season and they are doing well. Catnip survived and I planted Cleome, and a lot of flowering seeds. There are some volunteer tomatoes and some plants I can’t identify.
The alley planters were disassembled and all that potting soil was used to somewhat raise the center of this bed. In the distance I built a raised bed structure to contain the potting soil. That box is completely wildflower.
I’m letting all tree seedlings grow. By the time the weather cleared to plant trees it was too late so I have to wait until August. If some seedlings look good I may defer to them to grow into full size trees in the next 20 years or so.
Sump pump and new front parkway
Luckily I had a new sump pump laying around to pump water off the veranda. The extremely cold winter froze the drain so water from melting ice is pooling and finding its way inside. So far the pump works although it must be operated manually. This wouldn’t have been necessary had I kept vigilant about keeping snow cleared on the veranda level.
It’s raining today and the pump has kept a lot of water from draining into the downstairs bedroom. I suspect there is a small breach on a corner seam that pretty much stays dry being under an eave so the leak never became a problem.
Pretty soon I’ll start feeding the birds and I have quite a few new garden related construction projects planned. I am eliminating all alley planters this year to maybe be rebuilt in 2015.
The wood from the alley planters will be reused into replacement planters for the main roof and front corner parkway. The front parkway will be a completely new planting this spring. More on this later. To the left is a pic taken right before the thaw. The pile of shoveled snow is the new in ground parkway that will be planted with two new trees and the mature raspberry bushes that grew in a container for the last 4 years. Hopefully the snow pile protected the raspberry roots so they’ll sprout in the next month or two.