2021 garden thread

[Kbr42]

Clearly, not your best week @Killerbunny ...ouch to both!

[Happy]

Sheesh KB! Be careful out there!
Well my cucumbers are still limping along. Most of my pickling cuc plants succumbed to wilt . There's still a couple limping along. I did get 8 quart jars done. I have 9 cantalopes that I'm babying along and a couple squash and as many zucchini as I'd want so I'm declaring a win against the cucumber beetles this year. Much better results than last year anyways. My tomatoes are just "meh". Lots of plant but not a ton of fruit. There's a lot of small ones starting so maybe the next heat wave will get them growing. Peppers have been amazing this year. Especially jalepenos. Huge size and tons of them. Hubby and I both on vac next week so we will be canning some salsa for sure.

[labradors]

Is anyone else finding their tomatoes taste bland this season?

I'm very disappointed in most of mine, and I always picked them at first blush if there was any mention of rain in the forecast. OTOH the compact varieties, grown in pots on the deck and dragged under the awning when it rained, are all very tasty.......

Linda

[Happy]

Same @labradors
On the mushy side. I thought I may have just picked the wrong varieties but maybe it is all that rain

[Brebis]

Well, the stars of my gardens this year are the tomatoes and zinnias. Most other things are doing well though the cucs have been slowly dying of wilt and the peppers struggling all season with some sort of mosaic virus.

Here are some of the tomatoes. These are the San Mariano variety and are laden. I started them mid April and have been harvesting for the last week. The packet said they were indeterminate but I noticed that they weren’t so was able to modify my pruning.

The other varieties are Principe Borghese and Chadwick cherry. They’re both about 1-1 1/2in in size and have nice flavour. The PB is traditionally used for sun dried tomatoes so I’ve got an experiment going with some- a screen with halved tomatoes a slatted crate with a metal pan on the bottom, moved around to get max sun…I’m on day 2 so we’ll see! All of the tomatoes have been healthy and vigorous which has been great since I had to reclaim their part of the garden from mostly sand and a tangle of fabric cloth. And touch wood, no Tomato hornworms!

And the Zinnias, they have been magnificent! They were started mid April and though slow to get going after transplanting but have really done well. From a single stalk they branch endlessly so fill a space beautifully. They make the best cut flowers too,
lasting ages. Here’s the patch of them in front of my house, facing west in what was an ivy and weed ridden garden when I started. The neighbour across the road thanked me for the view!! Love it when you can cheer people up by growing things.

[Killerbunny]

Love zinnias. Ours get covered with bees and butterflies.

[labradors]

Beautiful zinnias! How lovely that it cheers up your neighbour! Perhaps she would like some seeds so she can do the same for you :).

Hornworms! I picked off about 16, most too small to bother trotting them over to the chickens, but two of them were mid-size and much-appreciated. All was good for a while until I noticed that the top of a Green Tiger tomato had been severely chewed. I searched and searched, but never did find the culprit. Septoria was pretty bad, and I decided to remove most of the diseased leaves before doing a thorough search so, hopefully, the caterpillar went in the diseased pile, far away......

[Brebis]

My landlord loves what I’ve done to restore the gardens too, which is nice.

[Ontario Chick]

Mushy tomatoes here too, have several varieties some from seed and some purchased seedlings, and accept for the Sweet million , they are all rather tasteless.
Not a great lover of tomatoes, but used to like ours from the garden, not so sure now.
May just end up growing cherry tomatoes only.
Otherwise garden doing very well, cucumbers are very good and steady harvest, reseeded Mesclun sprouted after 4 days and was ready to eat after 10 days, love that kind of gardening :)
Many green raspberries and still blooming, the bees are commuting between raspberries and cucumbers, but not counting my raspberries until the hatched

[Kbr42]

I find the only tomatoes that have any taste are our yellow cherry ones. Ours are red and a bit mushy as well. We are going to try salsa this weekend.