Gabrielle and the Beanstalk

My backyard is chaotic. This beanstalk illustrates that pretty well. I wish I had somehow arranged it so it could continue skyward. I'm sure that if I had it could be taller than my 3 story house.

Scarlet runner beans are kind of amazing and hummingbirds LOVE their flowers.

 

My fairly neglected back porch tomatoes are thriving. These are super sweet and juliette. I think I might dehydrate some juliettes for later.

 

Sidewalk

My sidewalk is very lush. This 1st picture is my terrace which has filled out completely.

Next to it is my feral tomato. I am glad that it is a cherry tomato.

My yarrow is growing in well, and so are the weeds. Hrmph. Everyday, I weed it a little bit.

You may have noticed that I have let my garden spill out onto the sidewalk. Most pedestrians seem not to mind though some plants get a little trampled. It's not as bad as some hedges on my street.

The sidewalk makes some things easier. I don't have to search in the dirt for these seedpods.

One plant I have growing in various locations is nasturtiums. After a while they go to seed and when they do they tend to die out a bit and drop these seed pods. I might save some to plant next year. They are also edible if you pick them early enough.

I will let the seedpods dry out then break them open for the seeds inside. That'll be one less package of seeds for me to buy next year.

Tomatoes sure do grow fast.

I think I'm gonna look up some 'before' pictures to compare to these 'after' shots even though these tomatoes haven't even peaked yet. OK, Tomatoes(before) is the link to see if you are not on the mainpage. All but the back door tomatoes are represented at an earlier age.

I did not post a 'before' picture for these guys. Really, these are my orphans, left pot-bound for far too long They seem to be doing all right now. Tomatoes can be fussy but they are resilient.

I am enjoying my driveway tomatoes now. Supersweet are great anytime snacks. Really, I end up eating more raw food when it's just a bit just in reach.

Where's the tomato? Uh, somewhere in with all those sunflowers. This is part of my obscure backyard. That's a white queen. I think I will let the sunflowers mature then chop them down to save for winter, then the tomatoes will get their space.

This tomato on my sidewalk has produced the earliest. I am pleased with its productivity and people walking by have complimented it. I do sort wish that this was the supersweet because this juliette is basically a mini-plum which isn't as nice to snack on. I want people walking by to fill free to snack on my tomatoes. It just isn't a great eating tomato. I mostly using juliette sliced on homemade pizza.

Homemade pizza is a wonderful way to use fresh produce. If you have basil and tomatoes, you are more than half there. Some fresh chives or other onion type plant is great too. I also LOVE fresh eggplant sliced on pizza too, which is one reason why I really enjoy the smaller varieties of eggplant.

Green Fruit

My turkish eggplants are pleasing me even though I have yet to truly sample them. This is a unique growing experience. I suppose that I should use google to figure out how to best use these. These are not yet ripe. I have found numerous images of shiny orange eggplants.

These sungold are staring to ripen. Sungold are delicious as well as pretty. I suppose supersweet might rank slightly higher, that is if I only have room for one tomato it I might choose supersweet, but I think that these should be more common. Cherry tomatoes are necessary for me because they do ripen early. I can't stand waiting around for SOMETHING to ripen. Cherry tomatoes let me bid my time for the big'uns.

Speaking of of big'uns, here is a green carbon tomato. Last year a groundhog sealed his fate by gnawing the stalk of my carbon tomato. There were perhaps a dozen green tomatoes on it many as big as this one that I lost. I feel safe from groundhogs this year. If there were one around he wouldn't get to this one as it is growing in my tomato box.

This is simply a view of the left side of my front yard showing many edible plants flourishiing. An incomplete list is ghostbuster eggeplant, royal purple beans, sungold tomatoes, alaska nasturtium, strawberries, lemongrass, he shou wu... you get the idea.

I am so glad that yesterday was a traditionally cloudy Pittsburgh day. I like my photographs better.

Feral

I am less obsessed with my garden now. The most important plants are flourishing and have done so for more than a few weeks. It's getting hot and humid, yet I've had little rain. My water cistern is dry, and has been dry for about a week. I need to water my garden pretty frequently which annoys me. A large percentage of my neighbors are using their air conditioners. I have none. I hear the hum of somebody's air conitioner everytime I go outside now.

I was just sitting outside drinking a beer thinking about the people I see walk by. Some are friendly, some are not. I think the only one I can justify feeling superior to is the woman, just a girl to me, who walks by with her jack russell terrier who is always talking on her cell phone. One day Abe ran across the street growling and hissing at her dog for no reason that I could understand. He was batting at the dog and generally acting like a mad cat. The girl's response was to keep talking on her cell phone and walk faster. That is not how I would act.

My neighborhood is pretty mixed. I don't actually know everyone's story, but there are working class people, mostly that actually, but also students, and a few arty types I suppose. Really I live in a buffer area. A few blocks either way go rough or somewhat upper class. My neighbors are perhaps half white, half other. I like my neighborhood.

So gardening is less high a priority for me now. Everything seems OK. None of my tomatoes have late blight so far. My one feral tomato is showing itself to be a cherry tomato. Hopefully it will be interesting. I grew 6 varieties of cherries last year and it could be any number of cross breeds. I suppose I will know in a few weeks.

I called this post feral because Abe was a feral cat who chose domesticity, to a point, and because of the tomato. Abe gave me a bit of a scare after a fight he had with one of his rivals. He was given a clean bill of health by the vet today.

Rake Lawn Ornament

This rake struck me this morning with beauty as the cypress vine wound its way through it. I found it in the trash like so many garden things I am using.

The confusion of plants below are nasturtium, basil, monarda, calendula and marigolds. I have denuded the 2 tomatoes in this planter so that the other plants are not overshadowed. Some believe that tomatoes with less leaves produce more tomatoes and are less susceptible to disease.

All of these plants seem to be benefiting from the bokashi I have buried below.

This photo is much better seen full size.

The Wilder Side

I have 2 categories of wild in my garden though arguably, most of it looks wild. I have had someone walk by and ask if he might help me by weeding. Well, let's just say that no one can weed my garden but me. My 2 wildest things are my bird/squirrel sown flowers and almost all of my backyard.

This safflower is finally in bloom. It is a birdseed flower. It's not as pretty as sunflowers but I am committed to letting it go to seed. Perhaps I will collect it before it resows itself.

This is part of my cilantro bed. Right now all of it is bolting and going to seed. The advantage of this is that I may adorn my food with flowers and green coriander seeds, milder than mature seeds.

This white queen tomato is flanked by more birdseed flowers, sunflowers which I transplanted when very small to the back.

Here's my Dr. Wyche tomato. I look at this picture and see several problems with my backyard. I think this explains why my front gets more attention. I might do something later on to help this tomato grow better than it will as currently planted. I oughta rip out those redmustards that are bolting. Aw, the warmth of summer!

Wall Tomatoes and CATS

I am pretty happy with how these are growing. Tomatoes are basically a vine, if indeterminate. That's really why it is necessary to stake or cage them.

A few years ago, I had some supersweet on a stoop growing out of strawbales. This experiment ended up being fairly high maintenance as I lacked any soil and had to thoroughly water and very frequently fertilize them but still, the results were very spectacular. They grew much better than the ones in back. One major reason I believe is that they were growing on a very hot, tar paved alley, my place's front entrance was a crowded, alleyway, largely devoid of any life except litter, some weeds and irresponsible neighbor's dog poop. I swear the sweltering heat made them thrive.

I am happy to say that I have moved up a bit. Now my neighbors... well, I won't get into specifics, but my surroundings are closer to 'middle class'. I suppose it depends on your perspective. They do pick up after their dogs. Er, so out of this experience I realized that tomatoes will grow endlessly if the conditions are right and you let them. I imagined building a tomato hut.

I will return to the present. I am not keen on this railroad tie wall here not the globe arborvitaes. Arborvitaes are an interesting tree and shrub native to North America that the locals ate for its vitamin C content. I can't remember the specific history, but it has been used to prevent scurvy in many situation where fresh food was not to be found. So I do have some admiration for arborvitae.

I just don't have much room and these plants are in a very prime location as far as light and warmth are concerned. Rather than destroy them I compromised by trimming them back a bit and planting some things in spaces that they aren't supposed to grow.

If you click on either tomato picture you'll see a stake coming out of nowhere and a staple or 2 driven into the railroad ties with some velcro tomato ties attached. I've been limiting these from branching out a lot. I consider these tomatoes to be my 'guerilla style' tomatoes. Click on that link for more info and many fun pictures, like people planting cabbages while police lights flash. I thought it was pretty funny that they refer to a 360th anniversary of guerrilla gardening taking place at the same time of the G20 protests in London because the G20 is going to be in Pittsburgh in September. That doesn't have much to do with anything but I like the idea of people defiantly planting vegetables in 1649.

I probably should have made this 2 post but anyway, here's a couple cat pictures. The cheddarhead and abe aren't exactly friends but they do swat playfully at each other every once in a while. They have a rivalry over the catnip dome.

Sally prefers solitude but does tolerate others. She's just a little queen.

It's hard to decide

Which photographs to publish. My camera decides sometimes, like the coriander seeds forming I thought I had focused on came out blurry. Everyday my garden is different. Especially after lots of sun and warmth.

This faded sunflower still has a sort of beauty. There are now 5 others blooming in its place. I ponder whether when this is ready for the birds whether I should leave it standing, save it for myself, or saving it for the birds when it is winter again. I suppose with more than a dozen blooms I may do all of the above.

This broccoli must be harvested. Oh the burden of fresh vegetables.

I want to do a post on my 'wall tomatoes' as they grow up to the stakes I have poking into my shrubbery. I have a feeling that they will end up growing better than some of my tomatoes this year despite their unorthodox location.

These are 'juliette' what I think of as a cherry plum tomato. These are larger than the ones i grew last year which also were quite susceptible to blossom end rot. These don't seem to have this issue, at least not yet. I have been pretty vigilant about watching for that as I have had this problem with quite a few of my tomatoes over the last couple years.

These are tansy flowers. I think I got these at a garden swap. I got another variety at a garden event outside Trader Joe's. I like this variety better. I know that one of them had some babies in my garden which I chose to remove. I understand tansy can get pretty invasive. I ended up transplanting my other tansy to a part of my garden that is dark and less visible. This tansy here is more delicate looking so I might end up making it my only variety.

Tansy is one of those herbs that has been eaten by people but more so I believe during medieval times. Based on what I've read, I don't think I will. I mean, it is sort of poisonous. It could be handy if I had worms. I think it's one of those herbs that kills worms which would make it more useful in midieval times than now. It does have an interesting flowers and ants do not seem to like it very much.

I have so many kinds of plants in my yard. I should count them sometime. There are still a few I haven't documented.

Backyard Chaos

I am a little embarrassed by my backyard because I haven't given it as much TLC as the front and it shows. It has however been productive in some ways.

The best thing I've got going here is my cilantro bed. Everything in here is self-sown and though I should probably weed it, it is mostly cilantro. In addition to cilantro are chives and numerous mitsuba, a japanese herb that I am not fond of but I haven't had the heart to eradicate. I did however pull up the original generation of mitsuba and replant it in a dark corner. That is why there is some bare soil here. I also poked in a couple tall growing snapdragons just for fun.

This white queen tomato is my centerpiece. In front of it is some giant red mustard, all self-sown. To the right behind it is some birdfeeder sunflowers that I transplanted here. There's more stuff in the background. I'll try to get to that later on.

Here's the Dr Wyche straw planting. I have tided up this area a little bit. The bark mulch helped a lot but I think Iwant to lay down some sort of stepping stones as well. I might want more bark mulch too in other bare spots.

Here's a spot that was planted with a thyme groundcover that has turned into weeds and parsley. The jug has some weed tea. I am trying to really go all organic and LOCAL, as far as fertilizer is concerned. So far I think it is working out pretty well. I feel I'll feel certain as to whether this really works for me when this growing season ends.

Tomatoes (part II, frontyard)

Here's my prime gardening space, my front yard. Right off the bat I am breaking tomato growing rules. This tomato, a juliet cherry is growing under a globe arborvitae. I kinda ran out of room so I planted this and another cherry tomato under it. As it grew I broke the leaves off. It is too dark under the shrub for it to benefit much anyway and extra leaves can make it more susceptible to various afflictions. I also broke off extra branches. I will let it branch out a little, but not too much. I intend to train it to this railroad tie wall, possibly with landscaping staples. This borders the sidewalk and gets a lot of traffic so hopefully people walking by will sample these tomatoes and enjoy them. I think I will have some issues with nutrients here as the soil quality is pretty bad but I have taken steps to correct that.

Here's the 2nd wall tomato, a supersweet I think. It is on the driveway. I am training it towards the sidewalk. Supersweet cherry tomatoes will probably be in every tomato garden I have. They are very productive and taste great. They also are very early. They gratify me while I am waiting for my big tomatoes to do something. Unintentionally in this picture is a bottle of weed tea. I won't talk about weed tea in depth in this post but recommend any gardener to know about this.

Here is my most traditional tomato planting. These are sungold, an excellent cherry and costaluto genovese, a delicious and beautiful(to me) tomato. I can't even remember if there is any bokashi buried below these tomatoes or not but I did a lot of amending of the soil for these guys. Last year in this space I had artichokes. Unfortunately in Pittsburgh, wintering them outside is not a great idea. I dug them all up except for one which was killed by the elements despite extra mulching. Anyway, it might not be readily apparent here but I kept the diamond planting of strawberries around this bed. I also have decided this year to prune away most of the sideshoots and to strip my tomatoes of excess leaves. I want them to have a bare stem that goes above the companion plants around them. This should allow their companions to grow batter and also should make the tomatoes less likely to be infected with blight. I also have these tomatoes attached to a 7 foot stake. I will encourage them to grew very tall. There are some that believe that removing extra leaves makes tomatoes put more energy into growing tomatoes. Perhaps this is true.

Here's my tomato box. In it is a bucket of bokashi, buried very deeply. I think that this will be excellent for my tomatoes. Varieties here are carbon and brandywine. I think that this will need more water then the in ground tomatoes but this box is so big it might be be a big issue. I have to admit that around here, water is not the issue it is in other areas. We have 3 rivers so we never have to ration.

I'm going to post this in each post. Please take a moment to answer my little survey. Thank you!

Tomato Strategies (part I side and back yard)

This is one of those posts where I attempt to keep my thoughts coherent. I have 10 tomato plants this year and 6 tomato growing strategies. I've said it before, tomatoes are complicated. They are pretty demanding and there are multiple philosophies about how to grow them right. I wouldn't say that any one is the right way, but like so many things they do deserve examination. The things to strive for are productivity, tasty produce, beauty and low maintenance. Another question is how much space do I have and how well will it grow here? Well, my gardening style is freestyle. I'm not worried about maintenance because I am obsessed with gardening. I like to experiment, follow rules and break them. I like to try obscure things and throw some new ideas into the mix. And that is how I grow tomatoes.

We'll start with my most neglected tomatoes. A problem I have is indecision. This makes me put things off because I cannot decide what to do. Such has been the sad fate of these 2 cherry tomatoes, super sweet, and juliet. I just planted these here 2 days ago. They are on my back porch which does not get as much light as the front in an earthbox. The earthbox is a self-watering container that is nice for a lot of plants, most actually, but not all. I had some herbs in here that weren't very happy because they liked it less moist. Anyway, these poor tomatoes might do better than they are right now.

This is my straw planting. It is a Dr Wyche. A couple years ago I did a lot of plants in strawbales. This was an excellent experiment. I learned a lot about what makes different plants happy but I also found it to be fairly high maintenance. The biggest problem with bales is that things get dried out fast. This time I cheated a little. I mixed in a little moist stuff, um what's it called? Some people actually plant disposable diapers but I have yet to take that plunge.

Now that I have taken the time to research this tomato, I am finding it likes LOTS of water and usually is not very productive. Uh oh. This might not have been a good idea for this variety. I was actually thinking about mounding up some compost around this to keep it wetter. I might do that.

One more thing. This isn't a bale. It is a metal laundry basket I got at yardsale for 50 cents that I stuffed with straw. This allowed me to shape it the way I wanted to and to include a deep pot shaped cavity in the center. I am of the philosophy to plant my tomatoes as deeply as possible. Up to the top leaves. A lot of new gardeners don't know that the stems will grow roots. You want your tomatoes to soak up as much water as possible. This tomato was 3 times as tall as it is here because 2 thirds of it is underground.

This is my centerpiece tomato for the back yard. It is planted on top of some bokashi. I am hopeful that my bokashi will greatly reduce the need to fertilize all the tomatoes that are above it. You may have noticed that all of my tomatoes are planted with other plants including marigolds and basil. You can't see it so well but I also planted leeks with these 3 tomatoes. I think if I planted them alone that they might end up being more productive, I can't really say but I've decided that a very important thing for me is beauty. I think tomatoes look prettier with flowers. However, flowers are more than pretty. They attract pollinating and pest eating insects so I grow them together.

There's so much more I could say about tomatoes and I will say more, but in my next post. Next is my front yard tomatoes. Please humor me by responding to my little survey. Thanks for reading!