Tomatoes in the heat

Summer hit yesterday and today with 39 degree days. To prevent sun scorch and and general ruin I've put up some shade cloth to help them cope.

All my varieties are performing differently. The Costoluto Genovese are fruiting well, after that initial mutant flower, but none are ripe to date. There's a bit of blossom end rot on these especially the one in the pot.

The Mortgage Lifters are about the same but with fewer fruit. I'm unsure as to why the blossom end rot is happening, I feel like i'm doing everything right with regards to watering and the ph is right. The Amish Paste are the worst affected, particularly the one in the pot, so much so I may as well pull them out.



Mortgage Lifter



Poor Amish Paste

Meanwhile the beautiful Jaune Flamme, which is in a pot, continues without problem. As do the indesctructable cherrys and romas. All of which add up to a nice breakfast.

Bean Screen

I planted beans around two of my beds to shelter them from the hot afternoon sun. It's working well and giving me plenty of beans. Here's few I picked tonight to go with those tomatoes for dinner. There's a mix of Blue Lake and Purple King.



First Pickings

The tomatoes are starting to come on line and here's some picked tonight. Hopefully a start to a good season. There's some Tigrellas, Cherrys and a couple of Jaune Flamme. I'm pretty happy with the latter, a really beautiful tomato.



Predator

I've noticed a few of praying mantis in the garden lately. Always good to see some predators instead of the usual hoards of destructive insects. A good reason, if another one is needed, to lay off the spraying.



Tomato update

I've had a problem with the first Amish Paste fruit set with what looks like blossom end rot. This usually appears as the fruit matures as a result of uneven watering making it hard for the plants to take up calcium. This plant is in a pot but I was very careful with the watering and as you can see the Jaune Flamme growing in another pot right next to the Amish Paste is unaffected.

 I noticed the problem right after a hot day of about 36 deg C, which sprung up in the middle of some mild weather. Maybe it was just the sudden temperature fluctuation that caused this and Amish Paste are more susceptible, some varieties are. I checked the ph and it was just below 7.0 so all should be well. I've moved the pot so it gets slightly less of the hot afternoon sun and given it a sprinkle of dolomite lime as a precaution.

Amish Paste



Jaunne Flamme

Onions

I've never grown onions before and while I'm happy to have a crop I'm not sure I'll bother again. They take up bed space for such a long time so eat deep into spring planting time. I planted out two varieties from seed what seems like an eternity ago back at the beginning of April and pulled the majority of the crop today. I chose the two varieties at random, Hunter Valley Brown and Early California Red. Most of the brown ones, which were the majority of the crop, bolted to seed but despite Peter Cundall’s advice I kept them anyway. This is supposed to affect the keeping qualities. The reds seemed less inclined to bolt and, because of this, and they're a bit more versatile, they may get another run
Like garlic you're supposed to wait until the tops die off completely to improve the keeping qualities and the red ones clearly haven't. I just had to get them out of the ground though.
Now what to do with all these onions that may not keep so well? I suppose I could make a big batch of onion soup and freeze it. Then I could..um..eat a lot of onions I guess. I've already given half a dozen away and there's another half a dozen growing in an old styrofoam box.
They're pretty variable in size, between tennis ball and softball.



Broad Beans Finished

The broad beans got hacked down and dug in last weekend after yeilding just over 8kg of pods. This was from a plot around 1.5m x 1.8 m plus another row around 2m long. I don't know if this is a good yield or not but I do know I've eaten an awful lot of broad beans over the last month plus given plenty away. Broad beans must be one of the best crops to grow. Apart from supplying plenty of beans they are great nitrogen fixers and supply loads of material for the compost heap or to simply dig straight into the soil like I do. Possibly the perfect crop.



Corn and Beans

The corn is coming along and the beans are starting to curl their way around the stalks. Last year I planted the beans a bit too late and they got shaded out. This year I planted at the same time as the corn. I'm a bit concerned that the beans may choke the corn, but with my trusty secateurs I'll be able to control things. You can see the third sister, the pumpkins, up in the top right hand corner of the photo. These are just about ready to start their rise to perpendicularity.



Mutant Tomato

My Costoluto Genovese tomato has a large mutant flower cluster where the growing tip of the main stem shoud be. I think this is called fasciation. There are conflicting views on what causes this, genetic mutation or a virus. Most views lean towards a mutation. I'm going to take a risk that it is a mutation, leave the plants in place and simply chop of the mutant, and hence to top of the main stem, to encourage the side shoots. Hopefully all will be well.



More Spuds

When I planted out the bed wth potatoes I put a couple of spare seed potatoes in a 40cm pot. I turned them out on the weekend and ended up with 2.8kgs. So the pot was a lot more productive than the entire bed which yielded 7kgs, mainly due to avoiding the slug attack that stopped the ones in the bed from growing to their potential.



More Paws

Here's another of the Kangaroo Paws that are flowering out the front at the moment. These ones are Yellow Gem and have multiple red stems to nearly two meters.



Weekend Past

This past weekend I planted out the last of this season’s tomatoes. These were seedlings I grew from seed ordered from Diggers. I planted out two Mortage Lifters as described in this post. Two Amish Paste that have elongated fruit and are supposed to be good fresh or, as the name suggests, for preserving. Two Costoluto Genovese, another all rounder with meaty ribbed fruit and finally two Sugarlump that have largish, cherry type 3cm fruit. The last three have been planted one in the no-dig section of the garden and one in a pot. I've never grown these three so we'll see how they perform.

I pulled my garlic over the weekend and ended up with twenty two heads this year. I grew them in the ground rather than pots and although they take up the space for a long time I think they'll be in the ground again next year. Here's a few of them

And a few of the nice purple cloves that came loose in the process



First Broad Beans

I started picking my broad beans today. The beans are mostly right up at the top of the plants leaving a couple of feet of bare stems below. Next year I might wait until August. Or at least try planting two lots a month apart and apply a bit of science to the whole enterprse. Still, for the next couple of weeks I'll get enough for a few good meals.



The Three Sisters Revisited

Last year I made an attempt at a companion planting combination called the three sisters. This involves planting corn, beans and pumphins together. The corn supports the climbing beans, the pumpkins shade the soil and prevent weeds and the beans help fix nitrogen for next years crops. It didn't work, mainly, I think, because I planted the beans too late and they were shaded out of existence by the corn. This year I've planted everything at the same time. The pumkins are going to be grown vertically as usual but I've put in a bean seed next to the corn seeds. They're up and going so we'll see what happens.



Spring Out The Front

Everything has settled in well in the front garden as it heads into it's second summer. My last house had a cottage garden in the front but now I've experienced growing natives I'll never go back. There's been a few deaths along the way. All the Carpet Queen Grevilleas and the Birthday Candle Banksias are no longer with us. Well there is one Birthday Candle just hanging on but it's not long for this world I think. I found out that these prefer a slightly heavier soil than my Perth sand.

The Gold Velvet kangaroo paws are flowering like mad. These flower over a long period and are as hard as nails. I can't recommend this variety highly enough for Perth gardens.

The Sandra Gordon grevilleas have just about finished flowering now and have been pruned back. These have a great show of yellow flowers from late winter through to mid spring. They went from about 400mm heigh to over 2 meters in a year and a half. If you want a fast growing native screen look no further. That's them along the fence in the photo above.







Tomato Tip

When I pick tomato plants from the nursery I look for ones that have been slightly stressed so they have started flowering. Young pampered ones, when they hit your nice rich bed, will start producing lots of leaves and wont bother flowering until further into the season. The stressed ones that have started flowering will love all the food and keep flowering. Take note though, tomatoes don't need, or like, a lot of nitrogen so stay away from chook poo and stick to cow or sheep. Watering them in with some seasol will help them along and a good sprinkle of sulphate of potash will keep them flowering and toughen them up a bit. Here's my Tigrella that not only has flowers but tiny tomatoes as well. I also trim off the lower leaves and plant the seedlings much deeper than their existing soil depth in the pot. Most plants hate this but tomatoes will send out new roots from the stem.



Sprung Spring

I planted up the first two beds with summer crops on the weekend. This bed is where the potatoes were. This is mostly herbs, coriander, dill, parsley, lemon basil and oregano. There's also some leaves - chicory, mizuna and something called land cress. There's an eggplant tagged Thai Eggplant. I thought these were small black ones similar to the ones I grew last year. Though they may end up being small, green ones like these. I'll found out in a few months I suppose.

I've planted two different types of beans to climb up the black meshing, Blue Lake and Purple King. These will hopefully serve two purposes. To supply beans, obviously, and to provide some afternoon shade for the soft herbs. My back yard gets cooked in summer so with any luck this will work.

The next bed has the first of the tomatoes for this year. A sweet Bite cherry tomato, a heritage type called tigrella and a roma. There's also sweet basil, purple ruffled basil, marigolds and an eggplant called Japanese Long Tom. This is more like what I was after with the Thai Eggplant above. I've also planted beans around the wire for the same reasons above.

Last Spuds

Well, I over estimated the spuds. I ended up with 7kg. I must have dug up the richest square foot before. A bit poor but enough for a few meals. Bangers and mash tonight!
A bit more vigilance slug-wise on my part next year and I should be well sorted for mash, chips and... um...more mash.



First Spuds

As the slugs had decimated my potatoes I decided to dig up a small section of the bed to see what was what. The first few to come up were smaller than an egg but as I dug a bit deeper a few good sized ones came up. Those two in my hand are just over 300g each. The total weight of this first batch was 1kg. Based on this I'm guessing I'll get around 10kg from the bed. Not a great result but I'm happy enough given my inattention to the slug problem.



Quick Overview

Just a quick overview on the rest of the winter veg.
The broad beans are coming along but still no pods setting even though I planted them later than last year and they're about 80cm high.

The garlic is going well. Some of the onions have have bolted to seed though. I removed the flower heads but according to Peter Cundall they're knackered once they've done this. I'll just wait and see.

And the broccoli have done their thing and gone to seed. I've pulled these out now to prepare the bed for this year's tomatoes.





Useful Weeds

Lots of weeds pop up over winter and into spring. Most are just a problem that needs to be dealt with but some have turned out to be welcome. Among the many problems i've had welcome cos lettuce and  red mustard. I've also had about a million wild rocket plants come up. At first I thought, "wow, what a great plant" but that soon changed to, "Wow, what a pain in the arse.", as they came up in every crack in every paving stone in the garden. At least the cos and mustard were a bit more localised.



Poor Spuds

My potatoes have been savaged by slugs. I was sick for about a week so didn't get out in the garden very often and in that time slugs emerged from the ooze and ate all my potatoes. Swine! I'll let them stuggle on until they die totally and see if any spuds have been produced.



Black Grevillea

My black flowered grevillea (Grevillea Crowleyea), has flowered for the first time. And the flowers really are black! Once they open up a bit they go a bit reddish but when they're new they're black. I'm pretty happy about this because most so called black flowers are really a sort of dark burgundy colour. It was discovered by an amateur naturalist Valma Crowley and her mate Janice Smith somewhere near Darken in WA. Good work guys.



Peas

I'm still being a slack poster so here's a quick update. I planted a crop of dwarf peas and on advice from the seed packet, and some gardening books, I didn't give them any support. They were supposed have "sturdy, compact bushes. What I ended up with was a tangled, mildewy mess. Still, I did get a few meals out of them and today I dug them in along with some weeds and blood and bone so at least they'll make a good green manure for the tomatoes this spring. I also emptied all my old bean and pea packets into the bed which I'll allow to grow for about a month before digging them in too.

I haven't learned my lesson form last season and planted my Telphone Peas at the wrong time. While they are healthy, flowering and starting to set pods the flowers don't begin until a meter above the ground. This is a lot of wasted growth. I need to wait until early spring or get them in at the end of February so they can flower up the full height of the plants.



Winter Veg

I've become a bit slack with posting lately so time for an update. As you can see the potatoes have gone from the trench to a mound. A bit more hilling up to do and they can be left to their own devices with the occasional Seasol treament and a good cover of straw.

The broccoli and brussels are doing ok. It's a bit hard too tell, but there are six dwarf broccolis in the front and four brussels in the back. These are in a no-dig part of the garden which is pretty rich. They still get the occasional feed of Seasol and fish emulsion to boost them along.

And finally for this post here are the broccolini, at the front, and tucan kale or Cavelo Nero, the three along the back. I ate the first of the tuscan kale in a minestrone on Friday, delicious. I've said it before and I'll say it again, one of the best backyard plants to you can grow.