Garden

Each year I end up comparing several varieties of tomatoes trying to find the best for our climate.

This tomato was named “Fourth of July”. It did not live up to its name, but given our cool summers that is no surprise. It has produced a lot of small (salad) tomatoes in clusters. Since it did not ripen more than a few days before some of the large fruited varieties, I probably won’t plant it again next year.

This one is called “Northern Exposure”. It was a winner producing clusters of very large tomatoes. It is a determinate variety so the basic plant has stayed at a smaller size than several of the others which needed to be clipped to keep within the allotted area.

“Summer Girl” seems to be similar to “Northern Exposure” With respect to the fruit. But it has been producing more vegetative growth.

This one is Park’s “Whopper”. It seems to ripen a little later than the other two, but fruits are again, quite large. It also makes for a very large plant which needed trimming.

“Red October” is supposed to be good even when fall weather comes and cools off. It is making large fruits and is later than that other types. Remains to be seen how late it will be productive and if it will live up to its name.

It wasn’t just the usual morning fog, there was humidity and clouds — it felt a bit like being back east.

And then it actually rained enough that the ground got wet. A passing thunderstorm managed to make it to our area which is quite unusual for this area at this time of year. Normally anything more than an heavy fog doesn’t manage to materialize.

We have “May Gray” and “June Gloom”. I am not sure what you call it in July, but it was a not untypical foggy morning. Being close to the ocean, the marine influence is significant that way. A nice cool morning is a good time to work in the garden.

This year I did four plantings of corn. The one in the foreground was the first and halfway done. Further down, the next planting had tassels just starting for more in a few weeks. With luck, the other two will be providing sweet corn well into the fall.

This year, the melons actually worked. Several kinds were planted and grew into a tangled mess.

The tomatoes are getting ripe. And some are a very respectable size. Maybe Miracle-Gro actually works.

Three Cinderella pumpkins have gotten quite large and will be a challenge to get from the little shelf of ground between the raised bed and the lower level with the fruit trees.

One of the pluot trees, just loaded with ripening fruit. These are of a nice size despite looking like more thinning should have been done.

The apple trees as still very young with wimpy trunks and not many branches, but they are producing some a surprising number of apples.

It looks like I will be doing canning and freezing in the next couple days. Santa Barbara peaches, Santa Rosa plums, Hollywood plums, Emerald Drop pluots and burgundy plums all were ready to pick. Need to do a better job of thinning next year so there will be fewer but larger fruits.

Between one thing and another, I have not had a lot of time for faceting lately. The garden has been one of those “things” that have kept me occupied elsewhere. Due to the wonderful rain this winter and how late into the spring it continued, more than a couple routine garden chores did not get done as early as usual. Some (such as tying up the trailing blackberries or the third dormant spraying) did not happen at all.

The winter pruning of the fruit trees did get done eventually. At first, it was like in past years — removal of obvious problem branches. But then a second pass was made where the focus was on getting the trees shaped better. That resulted in the removal of a lot more wood, and in some cases was that pretty much removed most of the fruiting wood. In the long run, it will be worth sacrificing a year’s harvest to get a well-shaped tree for the remainder of its life. And as it turned out, most of the trees still had plenty of flowers and now have lots of developing fruit.

The later rains and seriously windy weeks between them, meant that the fruit thinning did not happen as early as it should have been done. Actually, at the proper time for thinning, the fruits are terribly hard to find in the foliage. And although I thought I removed more than enough of the fruit when I finally got it done, now it looks like only half as much should have been left on most of the trees.

The sweet cherries finally provided more than a few for a snack in the garden. It was much better than I expected. (The local birds did not try to share them!) It appears we will finally get some apricots this year also. And the dwarf mulberry is producing berries. The birds have not attacked those either so I collected enough to make a pint of mulberry jam. The mulberries are tiny — I guess it goes with it being a dwarf tree. Birds are supposed to like mulberries better than fruit from other trees and the idea is that the mulberry would protect the other fruit. So far that is not working. Maybe I need to have a tree with full sized mulberries? Or maybe the country birds just happen to have different taste than the ones in more suburban areas?

Meanwhile, the blackberries have appeared in abundance. Since the did not get pruned properly over the winter, reaching into the bush to pull out the berries is hazardous — most have lots of thorns as well. How the deer can munch the parts they can reach through the fence is one of the great mysteries.

The veggies in the raised beds are starting to be productive. The snow peas and snap peas have been producing. The green beans have just started and the zucchini is just about ready. We were doing the sunroom addition last summer and access to the garden was difficult because of the construction. There were a lot of crop failures last year and that was one of the factors. Critters also were a problem. For instance, field mice attacked the corn just as it ripened. The later plantings of carrots and lettuce just did not germinate or were dispatched by the local wildlife was sprouts. Things are so much nicer now. Hopefully the veggies will also be better with a little extra attention.