Dreary weather pictures.

Decided it is about time to trim the bottoms of the tomato plants to keep rain water from splashing up on the leaves.

In this photo you can see my three Cherokee Purple plants on the right and one Porter's Pride on the left, with my two Liberty Seed Ghost peppers plants in the foreground (yep, one is seriously out performing the other, but these plants were probably started too early in the season).


Two Porter's Pride plants with two Ghost Pepper plants from a seed company that does not deserve mentioning. As mentioned above, I probably started the ghost peppers too early and some of the chill nights could have stunted them, but the Liberty Seed plants are doing fine...


Man the Bermuda sure loves the rain!

dave said: And Everglades is doing well. Really filled out this trough nicely. You can see some red fruit peaking through on the left side of the planter.

Beautiful plants, @Dave.

How do you prevent pests from dining on your tomatoes and how do you keep your plants healthy with foliage so close to the soil?

Man, that is a specimen Everglades planter there! The one time I got Everglades tomatoes growing here, the birds, squirrels and everybody else dined on them and I hardly got to taste them.

Cages have fixed that problem for me, but now I feel sorry for the pretty cardinals that sit on top of the cages wondering why all the fruit is out of reach . . .

I am happy to report that I did get some tomato plants planted in ground today. 10 plants planted. 6 were my Early Girls that I always planr 6 of in the front yard near my front porch. I am debating if I sould plant 2 more Early Girls along there as I have extra plants. Haven't decided.

Not that many more to plant but I did not get more done as it started to rain.

Way to go, Rita and that rain will help you with the watering chore on the newly planted tomato garden, as well.

dyzzypyxxy said: Way to go, Rita and that rain will help you with the watering chore on the newly planted tomato garden, as well.

All though the weather was not the nicest for me being outside it was perfect for the plants as they don't get stressed by the heat.

The tomato starts in ground look great. I did a quick tour of tthem all today. Now just need to wait for them to start growing.

My rain stopped and I got my six planted. With three duplicates up potted in reserve.

sallyg said: My rain stopped and I got my six planted. With three duplicates up potted in reserve.

sallyg said: My rain stopped and I got my six planted. With three duplicates up potted in reserve.

Rain has set me back 2 weeks with all my garden chores. Isn't it nice to finally get garden tasks done?

Yesterday was insanely productive. Not sure I had a choice with all I had to do. All the pots have refreshed soil and are ready for the dwarf tomatoes. Tomatoes are fully hardened so they are ready to be transplanted. I still brought them in today, as we are on the high wind side of this weather system, gusts up to 50!

On that note, Godspeed to our people in KS and OK. High risk for long track large tornadoes is rare and not to be taken lightly. The whole system might drop tornadoes from South Dakota down to Texas.

Definitely a weather aware kind of day.

Map from Storm Prediction Center below.

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/produ...

Yeah, the storms hit us and swing back up thru the Ohio Valley and onward to Rita in NY. We know the signs.
Tie up the tomatoes again tomorrow, they are growing by leaps and bounds and after all this rain I need to scatter more fertilizer granules. Discovered who chewed the bag in the shed - large brown rabbit - he apparently got a whiff of when I trimmed back the oregano and was searching for what he smelled, chuckl - even checked out the back of my mower cart...but that armload of oregano went to chickens next door. The kids were breathing the smell and saying it made them hungry, chuckl.

kittriana said: Yeah, the storms hit us and swing back up thru the Ohio Valley and onward to Rita in NY. We know the signs.
Tie up the tomatoes again tomorrow, they are growing by leaps and bounds and after all this rain I need to scatter more fertilizer granules. Discovered who chewed the bag in the shed - large brown rabbit - he apparently got a whiff of when I trimmed back the oregano and was searching for what he smelled, chuckl - even checked out the back of my mower cart...but that armload of oregano went to chickens next door. The kids were breathing the smell and saying it made them hungry, chuckl.

How did the rabbit taste?

Bunnies in my yard avoid mint, oregano, pretty much any strong smelling herb, although I'm not sure about basil.

bunnies in my yard try to avoid me:)

My porter's pride tomato plants are putting out some nice looking tomatoes!







And I have a nice mess o Cherokee Purples coming into their own!

frankrichards16 said: bunnies in my yard try to avoid me:)

Mine literally sit there only feet from me while I pop their butts with BB's.

I planted 4 tomatoe seedlings today. I think I am done!!

70 plants this year and I am so tired of planting tomatoes. I do have plenty of leaftover seedlings but this year I am just not going overboard with my tomato plants.

I have a bag of tomato tone that I need to put the fertilizer around the plants in the next few days. I also have AgroThrive Liquid Frtilizer and will be using some real soon.

Rita, I can't even imagine how tired of planting tomatoes you must be - I planted the 18 tomatoes in my high tunnel today; this doesn't include the 15 micro dwarf plants, some of which I hope to give away, and 2 Sunrise Sauce plants that I'm going to grow in largish pots because a friend gave me seeds of a couple of varieties that ended up taking the spots that the Sunrise Sauce would have occupied... My plants got much leggier than I would have liked this year, but after removing the lower leaves and putting about a foot of stem underground, they don't look too bad; and now that they're getting better light they should do fine. Seems like some years they get so much leggier than other years - I think I may have had them too crowded after potting them up into 3" pots.

Ziggy gave me some "help" while I was working...

Aww, Ziggy's doing a fine job of supervising there.

Megablossom on my Westerlund I-26.



Young Delicious.



German Queen.

Weedwhacker said: Rita, I can't even imagine how tired of planting tomatoes you must be - I planted the 18 tomatoes in my high tunnel today; this doesn't include the 15 micro dwarf plants, some of which I hope to give away, and 2 Sunrise Sauce plants that I'm going to grow in largish pots because a friend gave me seeds of a couple of varieties that ended up taking the spots that the Sunrise Sauce would have occupied... My plants got much leggier than I would have liked this year, but after removing the lower leaves and putting about a foot of stem underground, they don't look too bad; and now that they're getting better light they should do fine. Seems like some years they get so much leggier than other years - I think I may have had them too crowded after potting them up into 3" pots.

Ziggy gave me some "help" while I was working...

Ziggy is a good garen helper!!!

I know what you mean about sme years the plants get too leggy. Mine are monsters this year and I sowed them same time as always. It really made the planting more difficult than it needed to be. Dig deep holes or trench. Takes extra time and effort.

I am so done. I have extra plants but I do not want to plant any more tomatoes.