torquill: A sweet potato flower (gardening)
[personal profile] torquill
Vorlon wins again. I picked the first two today because I didn't want to chance having them split with the watering tomorrow morning; they're perhaps a day away from full ripeness.

None of the other tomatoes are even really close -- even Black Krim is at least a week away. The currant tomato is a couple of weeks off, I think, and many of the others have nothing more than golf balls. Even the cayenne pepper has the jump on them.

Mites have been a huge problem in the tomatoes this year. I lost a transplant to them, and one of the Rutgers plants (a hefty individual) is webbed to the point I'll probably take it out. Its bunkmate, a potato-leaf Brianna, is totally unaffected as far as I can tell. When I lost the Noir de Crimee to raccoons (grumble) it was a second Rutgers I happened to pop into the best anti-mite spot, and even there it's struggling, so I think that variety just isn't for me.

Most of the others seem okay. Great White is probably tied with Sara's Galapagos for next-to-last place on mite resistance -- this strain of Sara's has different-shaped leaves and less tolerance for mites, unfortunately. I'll have to see whether I can screen my old seeds for plants that don't have virus symptoms and try to salvage that strain, because it was a champ. Great White is a bog-standard regular-leaf, and I'm afraid that in this season with the mite pressure the way it is, that just isn't enough. I'm not sure why it's so bad, when cool summers usually keep it down, but I noticed that mites totally wiped out all the above-ground shoots of the lily of the valley vine a week or two ago, and usually there's at least some anemic stems hanging around through August. I'll just try to remember to feed everybody heavily, and figure this is a good year to pick out especially resistant varieties... *shrug*

On the other hand, the weather has been wonderful to everything else. I have a carpet of melons, which will hopefully yield more than the three spheres I'm seeing out there now. I didn't lose a single sweet potato slip, and they're starting to spread out. The squash are flowering, but I lost a couple of okra before they finally got up to speed last week (I don't know why they struggle so here). The beans took their sweet time in the cool period, and now they're racing the morning glories to the top of the trellis (Vigna has a rather different growth pattern than common bean, but I know it well enough now to be patient and have faith they would start upward). The peppers bushed out once we got a hot spell, and now they're developing fruit during this moderate weather we've got. The basil is tripping over itself trying to flower.

And, the star of this year, the cucumbers are burying us. We got our first fruit maybe two weeks ago, and now they're trying to unload at least a dozen enormous fruit at once, while still putting out new ones all the time... Cool Breeze is a pickling-size cuke, but these are reaching at least 2.5" by 6" without slowing the plants down. Better yet, I haven't seen any visible mite damage. I plant a ten-foot row to ensure we get any cukes at all, and sometimes it's been a meager and brief harvest, but I may have to give some of these away. The variety is the only hybrid I go out of my way to get, and I sing its praises every year, but this is the first time it's really been in top form for us.

I amended the bed about the same as I do every year, but this year I did two things: I thinned out the morning glories to one every foot or so (and have kept weeding out hundreds of volunteers), and I was a little careless with the water settings this spring. They're on flood irrigation with the melons and corn, and I get to use Y-valves to apportion water between the various beds... as far as I can tell, they're getting at least half-again as much water as they were last year. That's fine, since I don't have a full set of corn this year, but I'll have to remember that if I have to adjust water levels in a full garden, skimp on the corn or even the melons but give the cukes their full measure.

The morning glories themselves may have some effect -- in profusion they choke out the cucumbers (especially early on, they can shade out the transplants, so I have to keep weeding until the cucumbers get their feet under them), but a smaller number has a sort of symbiotic relationship, I think. The leaves are more tender than cucumber (but not susceptible to mites) so they transpire a lot; assuming that there's water enough to support everybody, that transpiration raises the humidity around the leaf canopy. The leaves also shade the cucumbers during the hottest parts of the day, making it cooler. Mites like hot, dry, and dusty, so the little micro-glade the morning glories create may actually act as mite control. That, and the water itself, are the only things I can point to as to why the cukes haven't been hammered even harder than the tomatoes.

Whatever it is, I love Cool Breeze, and I'm gleefully using cucumbers as often as I can justify them. It's shaping up to be a very good summer harvest in general, minus the crop failure/general inertia in planting the corn. Not everything can prosper in any given year, that's just the way it is.

On the more permanent front, My kaffir lime is so happy about its move to the front strip that it's blooming wildly for the first time since I got it. The thyme around its feet is doing the same. My licorice is settling into its tub with the horehound keeping it company; the only one not happy with its pot is the peppermint, which needs watering every couple of days. I may have to find some way to create a bigger reservoir for it.

My nectarine has a bumper crop which will come in by week's end -- I netted it for protection, and I can't tell you how excited I am by the dozen-plus full size fruit I can see on it. The few small fruit I've had in previous years have been very, very good; Double Delight has a good reputation, and I can see why. My herbs are thriving, I've already indulged in the French terragon. Lovage is an interesting beast too. I didn't lose a single lemongrass from the store-bought bunch I stuck in the ground two months ago. Even the ephedra is still there, an enigmatic green twig that isn't doing much yet... I have faith there's more going on underground.

So that's the report from the garden here... I'll take a little time this week to tie up the tomatoes again, but otherwise I get to sit back and let the plants do their thing. Yay summer. :)

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Torquill

May 2021

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