response 1 of 33:

Jul 1 08:56 UTC 1997

Didn't have time to do much in the garden last evening but
water the container plants.  The flower and vegetable beds
got plenty of rain, thus not needing extra water, but some
of the not yet planted pots of flowers are placed where they
don't really get rained on.  The japanese iris I bought at the
farmer's market a few weeks ago and planted in one of my brand
new flower beds bloomed yesterday.  It's incredibly gorgeous,
with multiple tones of blue in a huge, open flower.  I will
take a photo later today...  Note for next year:  more japanese
irises! 

The tomatoes are looking very vigorous.  I'm using a new method
of staking them, on curlicue special tomato stakes.  No tying is
necessary, but I have to nip off all the suckers and train the
plants to a single stem.  Sometimes I miss a sucker and it gets
really big before I catch it, like today...  I didn't have my
pruning shears with me, and the sucker in question was too big
to snap off.  Alas, it even has flower buds on it!  But it
must go, so off with its head tomorrow.

My sugar snap peas are nearly ready for harvest.  I munched on
one while standing in the twilight.  Yummy, though the peas inside
could be a little bigger.  I'm so happy to have a pesticide-free
garden!  Munching right off the vine is a special treeat.
The peas yield is a bit lower than I thought it would be.  I
will plant twice as many next year.  Actually, I can plant another
batch as soon as I harvest these, though I'm not sure if that's
a good idea, since I'm supposed to be practicing crop rotation...
I planted these peas on May 17, so that's only 6 weeks between
planting and harvest.  Coolness!

response 3 of 33:

Jul 1 16:58 UTC 1997

I also toil and play in arabella's garden, so I'll chirp in from time to
time.  My current puzzle is wondering why the new flowering sweet peas
are so wimpy.  Even the one which has finally grown to the bottom of its 
trellis seems to be too dumb to grab on and keep climbing.

response 5 of 33:

Jul 3 07:00 UTC 1997

Well, the new sweet peas are growing next to the old sweetpeas,
which have vigorously bloomed and reseeded themselves for years
now, but the new ones are also a different variety, so we
didn't know what to expect from them.  Also, since the old
ones are self-seeding, they've been in the ground since last
fall, and have probably been establishing roots since February.
I seeded the new sweetpeas in late March.  Maybe that's too late
for them to grow well...  Dunno.

As for tomatoes, the main reason for pruning off suckers is to
direct the plants energy to blooming and ripening the tomatoes
on the main stem.  If you let all the suckers grow, you might
get more tomatoes in number, but they will likely be smaller
that you get with one stem.  In the case of the curly tomato
stakes I'm using, you need one stem to keep the tomatoes tidy
and growing up inside the spiral.  With a caging system it is
OK to let the suckers go if you want to try that method.

response 7 of 33:

Jul 4 19:41 UTC 1997

 You can call me a bleeding-heart plant rights freak, but I refuse to 
grow anything in my garden that I have to prevent from escaping.  ;)

response 9 of 33:

Jul 12 07:08 UTC 1997

Actually "Early Girl" is an excellent variety. We grow those along with
"Better Boy". The latter are tastier, but the former are available a lot
sooner. These are both widely grown but only by people, not by farms, as
neither ships well. That's why our garden tomatoes are better than anything
you can buy in stores.  (One reason, anyway).

response 11 of 33:

Jul 28 07:37 UTC 1997

I went out an harvested a bunch of veggies from the square foot
beds last evening.  The heat and humidity were brutal, even at
8:30 PM.  I got about 3/4 pound of Royal Burgundy snap beans from
my two square foot planting.  The beans are a rich purple, but 
I am assured that they turn green when cooked.  They taste nice
raw, though.  I also harvested a handful of Kwintus variety pole
beans.  The vines have gone over the top of the 8 foot poles, and
are seeking more places to climb on the nearby corn plants.  No
problem, the Native Americans used to do it that way.  These
beans are green, but somewhat flattened.  I'm told pole beans
(unlike the Royal Burgundy bush beans) will keep producing for
the rest of the season if we keep picking them regularly.

I also harvested several stalks of celery, a big bunch of 
swiss chard, the few remaining snow peas and sugar snap peas,
3 pickling cukes (one of which was hiding under leaves and had
gotten rather large), and 3 small ball-shaped carrots (I forget
the variety name, but they look like thumbelina carrots).
I also harvested the first two onions of the year.  I was so
excited to see them bulbing up, that I didn't want to wait 
until they were large, and picked them small.  But I have lots of
others that I'll let grow larger.  One of the onions was an
italian bottle-shaped variety.  I tasted some while preparing
guacamole with them, and the italian variety was *very*
sweet, with hardly any bite to it.  (I can't bring the variety
name to mind, but I *did* grow the italian onions from seed.
I'm so proud of myself. ;)

The tomato vines are heavy with green fruit.  We will probably 
become sick of tomatoes in about a month, when everything 
ripens too quickly for us to eat it.  Between us, Ken and
I are nurturing 17 tomato plants.  Yikes!  A few of the
currant tomatoes were ripe, so we ate them standing out in
the yard.  Extremely yummy, though tiny.

Two of the corn stalks have started to show tassels at the
top.  Ken and I have decided that we love the look of corn
growing, even if we don't get much of a harvest.  It's a very
handsome, architectural plant.

One of the pepper plants (French Cadice) has two small green
peppers on it, and the other four plants have lots of flowers.
The melon vines have lots of flowers, and I spotte a tiny
sugar baby watermelon just forming.  I'm concerned, though, 
about the striped cucumber beetle I found a couple of days
ago, since they spread bacterial wilt, and I found some
wilted leaves on one of the melon vines.  I cut them off
the plant, and I also squished the beetle.  I hope I don't
have to resort to a pyrethrum spray for the beetles...

response 13 of 33:

Jul 29 22:57 UTC 1997

Shortly before we left for our July vacation I top-dressed the four 
tomato pots with some of our home-made compost.  Coincidentally (?), 
the bottom few leaves on three of the tomato plants got a bit yellow.
The currant tomato plant, however, got *alarmingly* yellow, though it 
still seems to be producing flowers and fruit.
 
Between our vacation and the heat wave, Flower Bed #5 is still waiting
to be spade-forked.  

response 15 of 33:

Aug 1 08:07 UTC 1997

That's exactly right, they are the size of currants, and absolutely
delicious.  Sort of light tomato raisins.  I grew these currant
tomato plants from seed I saved from my neighbor's last years crop.
It was very exciting to seed the whole seed cycle through from
beginning to end.

-----

Last night a daggone raccoon knocked over three of our corn plants.
They don't even have corn on them, and are just beginning to show
tassels!  I know the critter did it just for fun, which is annoying
as all getout.  One was broken, but the two that were bent I tied
to an 8-ft. pole.  I hope they continue growing.  I discovered
masses of aphids in all the newly forming tassels, and ants herding
the aphids.  Yuck!  I hope my late afternoon application of
insecticidal soap will take care of that problem.

Wednesday evening I finally felt well enough (been fighting a 
sinus infection) to plant the front half of flower bed #4.  I put
in some cheddar pinks, some sea pinks, and one other kind of
pinks.  Also a couple of hollyhocks (which will probably grow too
tall for where I've put them, so I'll have to move them next year),  
a few coleus, and three charming snapdragons.  This is a learning
year for me, so if some of my flower combinations turn out to
be infelicitous, I'm prepared to move all the perennials around
next year.  I also hope to grow a bunch more annuals from seed
next spring.  I'm interested in lots of unusual annuals that Franks
isn't likely to carry.

I got a big box of bearded iris roots in the mail last week, and they
really need to be planted soon.  I'm running out of dirt to put
things in, so there might be some more digging and bed preparation
in our future...  It's all so much nicer than when it was just grass
though.

We ate two of our pickling cukes today, and they were *wonderful*!
Much more flavorful than the store-bought cuke we were trying
to finish up.  And there's a slicing cuke out there just about
ready to be picked.  I love cucumbers, hurrah! 

response 19 of 33:

Jun 30 05:21 UTC 1998

This seems like a good time to revive my garden diary.  I've been 
very short of gardening time for the last two weeks, because I've
been preparing and performing in an opera ("The Bartered Bride")
up at MSU, but I had a chance to do a few things on Sunday
afternoon.  The tomato plants that looked so small ten days ago
were pushed into tremendous growth by the heat, and were sprawling
on the ground since I hadn't staked them yet, so I got out the
wonderful spiral stakes I used with great success last year,
and carefully wrestled the plants into upright positions.
These stakes require pruning the tomatoes to one vine apiece,
so I also removed all the burgeoning suckers from my 12
plants.

I also thinned my pole beans and corn.  I had some germination
problems last year, so I planted two seeds per hole this year,
and had to cut off the extras.  I decided to plant four varieties
of pole bean this year, and no bush beans, since the pole beans
tasted better, and they're much more fun to look at too.  Now
I have to put the eight foot bamboo poles in the center of each
circle of bean plants, or they'll start grabbing anything they can
find, including the cucumbers right next to them.

The pea vines are almost done, still loaded with slightly overgrown
snow and snap peas, since we haven't had time to pick them in
awhile.  They still taste wonderfully sweet, even though they
get a bit tougher when they grow too big.  Certainly still worth
eating right off the vine, while you're standing in the yard
contemplating all the luscious plant life.

I feel a little disappointed in my flower border this year.  It
seems to have way more green than flowers, and I need to rethink
some of my plantings.  I'm also annoyed that several huge plants
fooled me into thinking they were valuable perennials, when they were
actually weeds (this is their survival strategy, I suppose).  They
are now on the compost pile.  One of my rose bushes is blooming
tremendously with yellow/pink/apricot flowers that smell nice if
you stick your nose right in them (watch out for bees!), but I
have another rose whose leaves are all yellow, and which hasn't 
bloomed at all this year.  Since I don't have time or desire to
spray roses for fungus etc., I think this particular rose will
be coming out shortly, to be replaced by something more disease
resistant.

response 21 of 33:

Sep 29 17:58 UTC 1998

... and Mr. Squirrel came along and dug out the ornamental onion bulb.
 
I finally gave in and trimmed back much of the tomato foliage and 
flowers on "my" tomato plants, the beefsteaks in pots.  Supposedly this
tells the plant to get on with the business of ripening the existing 
fruit.  We still have maybe a dozen beefsteak tomatos and two dozen
plum tomatos working towards ripeness, and the weather forecast looks 
like we could be grazing the freezing point on Thursday or Friday 
morning.  

response 23 of 33:

Oct 4 18:18 UTC 1998

Yes, we are still getting tomatoes, but they are probably ripening more
slowly.    I collected another few pounds of tomatoes before the near 
freeze; it looks like we didn't actually freeze.   I'll probably throw 
in the towel on the next cold snap and pull in all the green ones.