Vegetables in Our September Garden This Fall

Fall gardens can still produce good eatin' for your family. Just because the weather is cooler, does not mean you have to give up on gardening until spring. Today I share a picture tour of our fall garden. (The last post tells you what we pulled out of the garden. This one tells you what is still growing and producing for us.)


Please note, since the last post, we have no more sweet corn or zucchini. 


The strawberry plants are in the garden. Click on the previous post for information and photos of our new strawberry bed.


Now join me as we check out what delicious veggies we DO have!!

We have been very pleased with the Kentucky Wonder pole beans. Yes, they grew very tall and my DH had to add more concrete re-enforcement wire to make an eight foot support for them.

Pole beans are long, thin, and tender. Not what I imagined. A happy surprise for me.

Cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli are all good growers in cool weather.  


 Garden Tip:  Sprinkle one teaspoon of ammonium sulphate (21-0-0) around the base of these plants after they have been growing in the garden for four-five weeks in order to promote growth. (The numbers indicate the amount of Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium in the material.)






Broccoli is tasty again in the cool weather and no worry about finding the green worms on the plants with cold temperatures.

We are already digging up the sweet potatoes, but leaving some to grow larger. 

Tomatoes are flourishing on the vines. We have fantastic crops of these versatile red fruits.


We also have cauliflower, peppers, beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, and onions in the garden. 


I hope you are enjoying some good eatin' from your garden this fall.

Growing Tomatoes

Dearborn, Michigan--I snapped a picture of this painting hanging in the Henry Ford Museum Michigan Room which  houses snacks and lunch.

Tomatoes? We've got 'em! Don't you know those cherry tomatoes produce abundantly? Pop them in your mouth for a surprising burst of flavor. My DH snaps them off the vines for a snack as he waters the garden.

We have Early Girl, Champion, Crista, and Roma tomato plants. And they are all producing now for an outrageous harvest of red fruit (or is it a vegetable? LOL the perennial question)

My DH loves sliced tomatoes covered in sugar. He can also eat them like an apple fresh picked from the vine. I prefer a tomato on a sandwich or in a salad.

So far no signs of blight or fungus. Keep your fingers crossed.

Gardening tip:  To prevent fungus, do not overwater plants. It's best to water in the mornings so the air dries the leaves during the day.

If you have problems with your tomato crop click on the Tomato Problem Solver, find the picture with your tomato problem and learn how to deal with it.

Tomato Bonanza

Last year, tomatoes were hit by the blight, but this year we have had a perfect growing season producing a bonanza of tomatoes. Pictured above are the Crista tomato which came from our garden. We are pleased with this meaty tomato and selected it because of its disease resistance.

  

Brief History

Tomatoes were discovered in the Aztec culture about 500 BC. The Spanish explorers brought the plant which produced small yellowish tomatoes back to Europe where it became popular. In the 1590's the British believed it to be a poisonous fruit as it was a member of the poisonous nightshade family. But with the mingling of cultures, especially Italian, the tomato became a popular item on tables. Now tomatoes are developed  for cooking, canning, shipping, fresh sliced, salads, etc. Next year you may want to try this new variety.

I hope you have plenty of tomatoes peeking out from your vines. What variety/varieties of tomatoes do you grow? What is your favorite and why?

Tomato Cages

Tomato cages are used to cage tomato plants...Getting the plant off the ground and supporting it is the purpose for these cages so that the tomato will ripen beautifully instead of rotting on the ground. Indeterminate plants grow all over the place, so this caging helps to keep them in one spot as well as produce beautiful fruit. These supportive structures sometimes need to be staked in case of high winds.

We take 4' x 6' sheets of concrete re-enforcement wire and bend it into a circle to make the cage. The cost for this cage is about $5.00 and can be used again every year.

Spring Gardening is Here!

Lettuce ready to go in the garden.

Tomato plants transplanted into 4 inch pots. Whenever these freezing nights moderate, the tomato plants will find a home in the garden. We use gallon milk jugs to protect tender plants from cold weather. 

Garden is ready. We added lots of horse manure last fall. The ground worked up beautifully. The straw is pushed away from the strawberry plants and rhubarb.

Rhubarb plants are near the strawberry plants. Both are looking healthy.

Information on Tomato and Potato Late Blight

The county extension agent wrote an excellent article in our local paper about tomato and potato blight that is hitting our area. Brought on by cool and rainy weather, she said that the late blight is hitting every corner of Michigan and the Northeast. Late blight produces spores that are carried by the winds to infect the gardens. This infection rapidly kills the foliage of tomato and potato plants and can affect the fruit.

If you have infected plants, remove the plants, place in a plastic bag, seal and discard in the trash or bury the plants deep enough that they will not sprout. DO NOT put them in a compost pile because the spores can spread.

If your potato vines show signs of blight, cut off or mow off the tops before the stems get heavily infected. This helps to prevent the spores from washing down into the potato tubers. Wait to dig the tubers 2-3 weeks after the vines are completely dead to limit the number of spores on the soil surface when the tubers are dug. Be sure to get all potatoes out of the ground so that there will be no spores living in tubers and surviving the winter. Do not wash the potatoes after harvesting them until necessary as that could spread the disease.

One sigh of relief is that the blight or fungus does not live in the soil from year to year, so it should not be a problem for gardeners next spring.

The extension agent explains that the unaffected fruit of blighted plants is safe to eat. But, the National Center for Home Food Preservation suggests using only "disease-free, preferably vine-ripened, firm fruit for canning. Do not can tomatoes from dead or frost-killed vines."

If there are signs of infection on the tomato or potato, cut away the bad part. It is safe to eat the healthy part, but it is likely the fruit will deteriorate quickly due to the disease.

Freezing Corn from Our Vegetable Garden

My DH and I spent a little over an hour freezing sweet corn from our garden this afternoon. We process it very quickly by boiling it, after shucking it of course, for about 3 minutes in a big tub of water. We immediately throw it into a sinkful of ice water to cool it down and keep it from cooking anymore. Then drain it in the other side of the sink on a rack. We cut it off the cob and then place it in the quart size freezer bags. DH came up with a great idea of cutting the corn off the cob on a plastic, flat cutting sheet. Then when we had the corn cut off, we just picked up the sheet and used it as a funnel to place the corn in the bag. We quickly bagged 9 quarts in that short time. The cutting sheets save a lot of time and clean up. He is so clever.

My DH and two grandsons dug potatoes yesterday. Surprisingly we had great success with them. The ground seemed pretty hard where he planted the eyes, but he mulched the plants, so it helped to keep them cool and moist. The little boys are so amazed when the potatoes are dug and love to see who can pick up the biggest ones. That really helps Grandpa's back!

We have been camping and I have neglected writing the blog. I apologize, Dear Readers, for not keeping up. While we were gone the blight got our tomatoes. I have heard several gardeners in our area suffering the same misfortune with their tomatoes. But gardeners will be gardeners and all are still planning on raising tomatoes next year. My hubby pulled all of our plants up, so that is the end of the 'maters for us.

Pesky Tomato Problems

Tomato season is fast approaching and I know some parts of the country are in the thick of it. A member of the yahoo group I joined, The Veggie Patch, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheVeggiePatch/ suggested a resource for identifying what the problem is for the plant by having very clear pictures. Click on the photo, then read the symptoms. The page includes suggestions for controlling the disorder.

The link to this helpful information is
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publications/tomatoproblemsolver/

Thanks Dev in OK..

Garden Check Up

Checking in on the progress of our veggie and fruit production. Yes, I have to include fruit because the strawberries are absolutely going bananas! In our patch that we planted Spring 2008, this year we are taking out 12-15 quarts of berries every other day. AND they are nice sized berries, and may I add, delicious. The neighbors and our kids love them too. Yes, we are sharing rather than making jam or freezing. Check out my strawberry pie recipe in an earlier blog if you are in the midst of berry season.

The following is my husband's garden report in a nutshell:
Have bibb and romaine lettuce galore, but with the heat it is starting to bolt.

The first sweet corn I had planned on having by 4th of July tassled out at 2 feet, so it will not have ears worth a darn. It has been too cold this spring and early summer.

I planted tomato seed the end of April and those plants are just as big as the plants I bought in May. Go figure.

I have 36 pepper plants. They are doing real well in the heat-- yellow, red, purple, brown, green.

We have eaten all the broccoli up. Now waiting on side shoots to grow out. Cabbage is just heading up. Cauliflower is still a ways off.

Beans aren't growing worth a darn, but the onions are growing great.

Watermelon and cantaloupe are just limping along.

We have little zucchini forming on the plants.

Pumpkins are going great. We have a new one this year called Knucklehead. It has warts all over it. We haven't told the grandkids yet, so that will be a surprise. Maybe they can win the Ugliest Pumpkin award at the Harvest Festival this year.

That's the run down on the garden at this point. Summer is half over. Hope your gardens are growing well. Leave a comment and let me know how you are doing. Thanks.

Tomato Cages

Caging tomatoes makes it sound like tomatoes are wild and ferocious beasts. But as I said in the previous post, you really can grow tomatoes. It isn't rocket science or brain surgery. My husband prefers "caging" tomatoes in the garden, but you don't need to do that. He likes to keep them up off the ground to produce a ripe, healthy fruit.

Check to see if the variety you are growing is a bush (determinate) or a free growing, vining tomato (indeterminate). The bush plant is a compact plant, but the vining tomato plant needs to be confined as it can spread out into the garden and grows tall needing substantial support.

You can purchase cages at a nursery/greenhouse center, but hubby likes to make his own because they are very sturdy and can hold a large plant. He uses 4 x 6 concrete re-enforcement wire and encircles the plant with it. He stakes the wire to help hold it securely so that when the winds hit, it won't blow over. Be sure that the openings in the wire are large enough so that you can get your hand in to the plant to harvest tomatoes and big enough to withdraw your hand holding onto that huge, ripe, juicy tomato....mmmm, yummy.

I can just envision this treat in my salad. And, don't you know, there is no taste comparison to a ripened-on-the-vine tomato to a hot house tomato. The vine tomato wins every time. I guess that is what keeps gardeners going knowing what tasty rewards we get at harvest time.

Enjoy!

Terrific Tomatoes

Terrific, tantalizing, tasty tomatoes describe this juicy fresh fruit. But when thinking of planting tomatoes in the garden, people may describe them as terrifying, troubling, trying. Puh---leeze...Growing terrific tomatoes is not rocket science.

A tomato plant will thrive in a pot, in a small plot, or a field if it has lots of sunshine, water, and of course another necessity for living is well-drained soil. (People overlook the importance of a good growing medium, so I will always lecture on it whenever I get the chance...Don't dig up dirt from your yard and throw it in a pot to start or grow your tomatoes. Starting soil and garden soil in a bag is, excuse me, dirt cheap.)

Deciding on which tomato to grow is probably the most difficult step in the process. Do you want tons of little tomatoes for salads? Then choose the cherry or grape tomato. If you can't wait for the first tomato or you want to be the first on your block with a tomato, then plant Early Girl so that in about 45 days from transplanting to the garden, you will have one on your plate for lunch. (Do you like salt or sugar or nothing on your slices?)

Many of the old stand-bys like Rutgers, Beefsteak, Big Boy are the tastes you have grown up with. But there are so many more tomatoes available for you to experience. The newer tomatoes are resistant to disease, produce more fruit, and may be tastier. Try Tastee Lee and Fabulous.

I would also encourage you to shop at a garden center that actually labels the tomato plant with the variety name instead of a generic tag that says "Tomato." After the growing season make a note about each variety so you will know what you liked and didn't like by name. When you shop next year, select the varieties that performed well or tasted the best, etc. You can't do that if you only know that it was "Tomato."

Pay attention to the length of time it takes to produce a ripe tomato from your plants... Early Girl can be ready in July in our area, but some plants won't produce an edible fruit until September. Read the information on the tags to help you have a successful and satisfying experience in gardening.

So far my husband is planting Early Girl, Way Ahead, Super Boy and Husky Red. The large tomato in the photo is Husky Red. He raised it from a cell pack to this large 8" pot in a month in the greenhouse. The price for this size plant at one of the big box stores this weekend was $10.00!!!

If the acid in tomatoes bothers you, try planting yellow tomatoes.

Planning this spring for a harvest of terrific tomatoes this year is essential. Enjoy!!