Gardening: My Tomatoe and Pepper Progress

[Deadalus]

Finally drying out and warming up. Planted seedlings and additional seeds. Need some fixes on the drip irrigation.

 

[Oldskewl]

I made some heavy duty tomato cages yesterday out of cattle panels. They turned out nice. I struggle most years with them toppling over at the end of the season using store bought cages. I think these will do the job. Each panel makes 1 1/2 cages. I found the idea on instructables last year. Here is a link if anyone is interested.

https://www.instructables.com/Build-the-Best-Tomato-Cages-Ever/

 

[VApatriot]

 

[Deadalus]

 

[corkybstewart]

Tomorrow I will have 4 times as many green beans and tomatoes. This is just the start of the harvest. I pulled a few small beets for today's lunch, they are also just getting ready to pull. I'm picking cayenne almost every day but the bell peppers still have a ways to go. By ignoring the local conventional wisdom and planting earlier than my in laws I'm harvesting a couple of weeks ahead of them.

 

[Agent]

We took a week long vacation, and returned to 5 straight days of heat and rain.

Needless to say, things have gotten out of hand.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

We took a week long vacation, and returned to 5 straight days of heat and rain.

Needless to say, things have gotten out of hand.

View attachment 878869

Where do you get your solar panel seeds at??.. been trying to get a good crop for a few years with no luck.

 

[Agent]

Where do you get your solar panel seeds at??.. been trying to get a good crop for a few years with no luck.

Planted a few years ago when things were a bit more affordable - fortunately.

In garden news, the weeds got knocked down to ankle height so the veggies could thrive again. It's been a few years since a weedwhacker was necessary.

Got our first thinning crop of Turnips out.

 

[Deadalus]

I'm having moderately better luck with pickling cukes over last year. Delayed planting this year resulted in half of the starts almost dying but the other half are happily racing along. Got my first pickles fermenting right before the 4th and another batch ready to go in a fermenter tonight.

These are coming along nicely, I am going to go with 10 days max and see how they come out.

 

[VApatriot]

Hatch chiles from the garden about to go on the grill for roasting.

 

[corkybstewart]

I thinned the beets today for a lunch salad, served with tomatoes and carrots from the garden. My wife cooked a ratatouille for dinner but then invited her sister for lunch tomorrow so I guess I eat ice cream for dinner.
I will not bother trying to grow bell peppers and eggplants again, basically 3/4 of my entire harvest is in the ratatouille.

 

[Deadalus]

Lots of garlic!

 

[corkybstewart]

View attachment 880019Lots of garlic!

That's a whole month's worth for my wife.

 

[Deadalus]

That's a whole month's worth for my wife.

I'm still laughing, that's 135 bulbs! It was a good haul, much larger size than last year.

 

[DuncB]

Just planted the normal garlic and the elephant garlic. So a few months to wait for a crop.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

Late start for us and we went from a drought to having too much rain, zucchini and cucumbers are starting to roll in, some shoulda been picked earlier but we were on vacation so we came back and this was our first pick of the year. A few peppers too.

 

[corkybstewart]

I'm still laughing, that's 135 bulbs! It was a good haul, much larger size than last year.

Our refrigerator alternates smelling like good cheese or garlic-this weekend we made salsa for the Tour de France gathering and the fridge still smells like fresh garlic, 2 days after the salsa was finished.

 

[hottpeper13]

At the farmers market yesterday the garlic was 2$ a head, I'm thinking I got 160$ worth in the ground waiting.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

10lbs of soon to be pickles.

 

[Oldskewl]

^I have been making various versions of pickles over the past 3 weeks(fermented, fridge pickles and pasturized at 180F). Cucumbers are going nuts this year. I was too tired to start a batch late last night so I canned a batch this morning before heading to work. I forgot to add the dill. DOH! That will teach me!

 

[corkybstewart]

These were picked Monday and Tuesday, it finally stopped raining so I can pick this morning. . And I have 2 6L bags of Romas in the freezer to make sauce in 3 weeks.

 

[mbg]

I've been gardening a long time but never saw this happen to tomatoes (see pic). The green tomatoes look great but when they get ready to pick I have seen the decay on the first four tomatoes so far - none for me yet!

Please help - thanks

 

[Deadalus]

I've been gardening a long time but never saw this happen to tomatoes (see pic). The green tomatoes look great but when they get ready to pick I have seen the decay on the first four tomatoes so far - none for me yet!

Please help - thanksView attachment 880545

Looks like blossom end rot on the right. The left might be considered cat-facing. I know a little bit about BER. Ultimately it involves calcium, but lower magnesium somehow affects the calcium uptake. Some people add epsom salt at planting or early broadcast but you need to be careful not to overdo it. I will add a tbsp/gal to my copper treatments once early in the season.Once BER occurs, you may be able to fix it by dusting with agricultural lime. Long term a good idea is to get your soil tested and then amend it. States usually have free soil testing through ag. extension or at state universities. BER occurs on the blossom end from my understanding. Also suggested as a factor is watering periodicity but I haven't seen a definitive explanation of why and I can only gather it is irregularity in the number of days.

Cat-facing is sometimes suggested to be from insect damage maybe even bird peck. I find it seems to happen a little more frequently with specific varieties, usually the convoluted less smooth types, like Costolutos as an example.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

Also suggested as a factor is watering periodicity but I haven't seen a definitive explanation of why

The plants need sufficient water because that is what carries the calcium from the soil into roots and up through the plant. So even if the soil has sufficient calcium it doesn't matter if the soil doesn't have a consistent water supply. Basically you dont want your soil to be for a couple days then water it, or wait for rain. Consistent moisture in the soil allows for consistent intake of calcium from the soil into the plant.

I moved my garden a few years ago to a location with more sun, this helped immensely, but I got BER on all my tomatoes that year. So I went down the BER rabbit hole.

 

[corkybstewart]

The plants need sufficient water because that is what carries the calcium from the soil into roots and up through the plant. So even if the soil has sufficient calcium it doesn't matter if the soil doesn't have a consistent water supply. Basically you dont want your soil to be for a couple days then water it, or wait for rain. Consistent moisture in the soil allows for consistent intake of calcium from the soil into the plant.

Every once in a while we hand out powdered milk at our food distribution in NM and nobody wants it so I take some home(once it's given we can't take it back and give to someone else). I've used it to successfully treat BER. Just dissolve it in water and pour around the roots once a month.

I've been gardening a long time but never saw this happen to tomatoes (see pic). The green tomatoes look great but when they get ready to pick I have seen the decay on the first four tomatoes so far - none for me yet!

Please help - thanksView attachment 880545

A friend gave me a basket full of tomatoes that look like this, and then saw mine that don't look like this. We talked and the difference is that people here rarely water their tomatoes, the conventional wisdom is that they don't need regular watering. When it's hot here, over 90F, I water every other day around sundown, he waters maybe once a week.

 

[hottpeper13]

Bone meal is high in both cal and mag. I mix it in when making the soil for raised beds. I also save my egg shells, let them dry and crush with gloved hands, and line the holes of tom, pep, and squash plants. By not turning them into powder they can also be used as a slug deterrent. I put them around all the squash plants and (knocking on wood) haven't seen a vine borer yet.

 

[Agent]

Bone meal is high in both cal and mag. I mix it in when making the soil for raised beds. I also save my egg shells, let them dry and crush with gloved hands, and line the holes of tom, pep, and squash plants. By not turning them into powder they can also be used as a slug deterrent. I put them around all the squash plants and (knocking on wood) haven't seen a vine borer yet.

Found my first vine borer this past weekend.
Not a fan.

I cleansed it with fire.

 

[Deadalus]

Every once in a while we hand out powdered milk at our food distribution in NM and nobody wants it so I take some home(once it's given we can't take it back and give to someone else). I've used it to successfully treat BER. Just dissolve it in water and pour around the roots once a month.

A friend gave me a basket full of tomatoes that look like this, and then saw mine that don't look like this. We talked and the difference is that people here rarely water their tomatoes, the conventional wisdom is that they don't need regular watering. When it's hot here, over 90F, I water every other day around sundown, he waters maybe once a week.

I water 3x a week by drip irrigation and compost year round which includes egg shells. I've only added lime perhaps 2x in 10 years. I've never had any issue with BER. If it rains good enough, I'll skip a watering. Regular daily watering is too much in my opinion and too widely spaced has other issues. In tomatoes you'll get cracking with watering heavily after a dry spell. Cukes get sort of pear shaped when that happens.

I'm on the watchout for vine borers too now as my squash are just flowering. Did get 2 zucchini the other day but waiting on the others.

 

[mbg]

Thanks for the great information. Could this be birds though? I can look at the tomato one day when it's changing color and then the next when I go to pick it it has this look. None of the green/unripened ones have this.

 

[corkybstewart]

In New Mexico my soil is essentially sand and clay, debris from the 1.5 billion year old granite we live on. It has pretty much no calcium in the soil so the powdered milk is helpful. I also start with bone meal and compost for every tomato plant.
In France it's the opposite. We have a thin soil on top of chalk, so there's an overabundance of calcium.