I have given up this year. I’m sick of watering — again. This has become a common theme from year to year. The alley vines were the worst ever this year even with my soaker hose solution. The drought conditions we’re still under since July has been devastating without some sort of drip irrigation. The tomatoes produced but the habeneros failed miserably for the first time. Sunflowers turned out to be a terrible companion plant. Eggplants did not produce much because of them. Will need to come up with a plan for next year. My main goal is to replace half the tomato containers with 7.5 cu. ft. ones. This will be a 150% increase so I’ll be able to see how container size affects growth and productivity. I did learn some things this summer so it wasn’t a total loss. Will contemplate and post a list of what to do next year and what I learned this year. Until then …
Heavenly Blue Morning Glories
Heavenly Blue morning glories bloom on veranda level. Veranda level MGs doing well. Alley level; not so well. I am considering eliminating alley level planters next Spring due to difficulty in maintenance (i.e. watering) and their lack of performance these last bunch of years. The veranda level produced nice MGs this year for a change.
Harvest on 9/1
No need for another harvest porn pic. Should have gone up yesterday. Picked about 20lbs and the squirrels got at least 5lbs (maybe more) — some ~2lb big Brandywines. I left them on the vine too long. The tomatoes are coming in too fast and I don’t feel like canning. All plants are shot but I think they produced OK to somewhat heavy. Not really sure. Next year I want to build 4 new tomato planters at 2.5’x2’x1.5′ = 7.5 cu.ft. This is 2.5x the current 3 cu.ft. planters. If I do 4 planters that’s 4.5×4=18 cu.ft. of new mix which is 5 bags of pine bark plus a TBD amount of mushroom compost. I think this will help the tomatoes last farther into September. The neighbor’s in ground tomato plants look healthy and going strong even though mine appear to have more tomatoes. There’s always next year. Thankfully I can pull these soon and retire the main roof and quit watering early this year.
Rain on 8/30
Rain sweet rain. Rained hard on Friday 80/30 evening and much of the morning on Saturday. First rain in a long long time. I heard that this August was the dryest in 27 years which ironically followed a very wet May and June. I hardly watered at all in June. These dry spells are what make me become sick and tired of my garden and welcome Fall to make it all go away. There’s a new addition to the indoor plants this year. Aldis, the food store and not known for its plant selection, had a Redwood on sale a couple months ago and it’s thriving in its spot outside. I feel fortunate having found it.
More Harvest Porn
Harvested 27 tomatoes on 8/27 evening. The Brandywines are huge with some tomatoes almost 2 pounds. The harvest bucket felt like 20+ pounds. The plants are producing heavily which may be why they’re dieing — they put everything they had into this harvest. Each plant does have a lot of tomatoes so I shouldn’t be complaining about not getting a second harvest. Have to give most of this away. I don’t feel like canning and I still have the canned harvest from last year.
Pineapple Mint
Got to 97F today. Probably should have checked to see if I needed to second water for the day. Last few weeks I have been watering in the morning instead of late evening. All plants on main roof are in decline. One maybe two habeneros out of 12 planted may yield something. The habs are a failed crop this year. I noticed all kinds of different bugs around the pineapple mint in caged position 12 from bees to flies to dragon flies and even wasps. These might make for a good buffer plant. The pineapple mint in that container started as a volunteer this year and is doing extremely well. May get a pic one of these days since it’s still in bloom. This type of mint thrives on the main roof. Found some garlic chives barely surviving in the western wall debris clump. Garlic chives are in bloom now.
Blight
Late blight hit the Celebrities and Big Boys. Not sure why this happened. One theory is lack of nutrients. I have been lax fertilizing as of late and I did not add compost to the mix this year or any slow release ferts. Another theory is blame it on the sunflowers again. They may be a vector and using them as buffer plants may have brought this on. The two Branywines are unaffected and very healthy. All tomato plants are producing a lot of tomatoes. I probably should be measuring the harvest with a scale. Maybe next year. Despite the blight I would consider this year’s tomato crop to be a success in that it produced a decent amount of nice round tomatoes without BER or cracking or other weirdness. I’m probably around 60-70 harvested so far. A second wave harvest is doubtful. The Brandywines have a shot at a second wave but I don’t see any new flowers on them either even though the plants themselves look good. A couple Celebrities look kind of stunted. In past years the Celebrities were the hardy ones — not this year. Maybe Gethsemane in Rogers Park sold me bad tomato seedlings. I have already decided not to use them next year because of their selection has been poor. This seals the deal for me.
Harvest Porn
Harvest on 8/22. Eggplants from fat eggplant in caged position 1 which is growing extremely well. The tomatoes are producing without BER and will probably reach an average of 25/plant or 200 tomatoes total for the year. This haul was 17 and today (8/25) there were 13 and they keep coming day after day. Second wave harvest might be doubtful as some kind of blight is setting in. More on this later.
Update 8/20
No pics. Celebrity tomatoes not doing well and dying on top. Brandywines look very healthy but also have some brown leaves. No mites. This may be due to lack of nutrition since I didn’t add any compost into the mix this Spring and I’m behind on fertilizing. Fat eggplant in caged position 14 is stunted due to sunflower. Fat eggplant in caged position 1 is very big and healthy as well as its two habenero companions. None of the 8 habs in NE corner will produce anything. The sunflowers there look very nice however but they don’t play well with others. Tomato harvest is coming in. Second wave looks unlikely or maybe small due to flowers dieing even though there are tons of bees due to the sunflowers blooming. We’ll see. Maybe later I’ll post some harvest porn. Until then….
BTW: It hasn’t rained since I can’t remember. This might be considered a drought right now and watering is a PITA.
Note: Veranda north wall box was not being watered properly because I couldn’t see it. Drip irrigation for these boxes is a must. Soaker hose on alley level boxes somewhat work but is not a solution. Those boxes need proper irrigation. That is all….
Sunflowers as buffer plants
Here’s a shot of all 14 caged positions with sunflowers in bloom. There are a lot of bees now and it looks like the tomatoes have a lot of flowers. As mentioned before these sunflowers drink a lot of water and they don’t seem to make for good companion plants. The habeneros shared with sunflowers are probably not going to produce anything. Out of 12 habeneros planted I might see 4 plants produce anything. Next year sunflowers will not be used as companion plants and will have to have their own container.