Viewing comments posted by robynanne

The pods are growing with some purple ones!! I grew this in nearly full shade, and it is doing well. I keep it in a cage, much like tomatoes, because otherwise the long floppy stems get all over the place and I end up stepping on more rat tails than eating. When supported, the stems can get up to 3-4 feet long but they don't mind crowding.

I love picking a bunch of these and eating them with hummus!

My notes from this year, my first year growing tomatoes from seeds: The cherokee tomato plant was one of the hardier sprouts I started. It even survived being outside through a little too much cold too early in the spring. I think it might have been damaged in that, though. The stem of the seedling was scarred after it finally grew bigger and even though I planted it in the ground with that part of the stem well underground, the plant never got very big. Maybe 4 feet total in growth.

It set tomatoes early, which I didn't prune off, so that might've been part of the reason that it was so short too. In all, it only set about seven tomatoes. Four of those tomatoes are inside now because they fell off the plant. I have never picked a cherokee tomato because they all have fallen off the plant. This is my only tomato plant that has been dropping tomatoes.

The tomato that I tasted was delicious! Easily the best tasting tomato of my garden. I plan to grow these again next year and hope to get at least one much healthier plant.

This has been my first year growing peppers from seeds and I didn't get them started nearly early enough. That said, this plant did very well, both in the garden and in pots on my deck. It is a hardy little pepper plant! It made a lot of little green peppers that sat in the green stage for a long time. You can pick and eat them green, but waiting for them to get red was worth it. They are NOT hot. They don't taste like bells either, though. They have a unique taste that I really enjoy. I can't wait for the rest to be ready. I wanted enough to pickle, but I don't think that will happen this year.

I harvested the first ripe one of these today. They are smaller tomatoes, nice and round, a bit bigger than a golf ball. They are pretty tomatoes, though the one I picked had a small crack. I think they taste fine.. nothing very intense. I asked my daughter if she liked it and she rolled her eyes at me and said "It tastes like a tomato."

Thanks for adding this!
I got this tomato from a 2008 burpee package. It states origin, France, lot 1. No real information beyond that. It is delicious and sweet.

I first heard of these apples at a "pick your own" orchard. I fell in love! They have a sort of bland appearance with almost a brown/gold/red color. Hard and crisp and tart, these are the perfect apples! They are only slightly smaller than "regular' apples. Just a few months ago, we added one of these to our yard. It actually flowered this year, but there was nothing else flowering to pollinate the blooms. On that note, it is not a self-pollinator. You will need another crabapple that flowers at the same time. I was informed that my neighborhood "probably" has someone with an appropriate tree and I shouldn't worry about it, but we'll see.

Almost as soon as the tree had leaves, it had aphids. I've checked it a couple times every day squishing aphids and it seems to be rid of them now. That would be harder when it is larger with more leaves. I've also wrapped the trunk with tree wrap and put tanglefoot on that to stop the ants from transporting the aphids. That may have helped more than squishing.

One thing - when you are planting your bare stock in the ground, make sure you do NOT put dirt over the graft scar. The tree I have is a "dwarf" tree because it is grafted onto dwarf root stock. If you put dirt over the graft scar, the actual chestnut crabapple tree will be able to put down roots and the root stock won't be able to control the growth anymore.