The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

I just realized that the last post on this page (9/2/2007, Potted Plants) was number one hundred for me.

One hundred postings seems like a lot to me. I don’t ever remember having to write 100 papers or stories in a class at high school or college. Do you?

It has been very enjoyable sharing this season’s gardening experience with you. One of my main goals has been to provide you with at least a little bit of inspiration so that you can keep up the enthusiasm about your own garden.

So if you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.

Bob

p.s. Judy has a lot of interesting material to write about. Now if we can get her out of the garden long enough to do some blogging…

A big part of our time spent gardening involves containers, that is, growing plants in pots.

Containers are an effective way to accent a part of the landscape or add plants to an area that has no soil.

In this photo we have an example of an area that was in need of plants but had no soil. It is an area near a building with a drive way running pretty much right up against the wall.

There is a narrow concrete strip about two feet wide between the asphalt and the building. This is where we put the pots. Pots of English Ivy are set up on a small ledge up under the eaves and allowed to grow down.

The plant in the center with the large green leaves is “Elephant Ears” (Colacasia). It makes a dramatic visual statement even though it has no flowers.

To the left is a Canna variety “Roi Humbert”. It too can be spectacular when grown in a pot. Roi Humbert has bright red flowers that bloom all summer in addition to its reddish foliage.

You can see the difference these containers make in an area where people drive by every day.

This is only a part of the area around this particular building that has been visually improved with potted plants. Next time we’ll see some more of these plants and discuss them in some detail.

Bob

We grew 6 varieties of tomatoes this year. This is not unusual, we have grown as many as 14 varieties in a single season.

Why so many? The answer is simple…I’m on a quest for the perfect tomato!

The views expressed in this post are just my opinion! Someone else’s perfect tomato may be one of my rejects and vise-versa.

Anyway, here we go with my review of the tomatoes growing in our garden this year.

Starting from the top left,we have ‘Red Grape”, a small tomato that grows on a “truss”, (a stem-like structure that supports all the tomatoes as they grow). They are small, about the size of a large green grape you see in the produce section of a grocery store. These are very sweet. I have had a lot of non-tomato eaters say that they won’t eat any tomato, but will eat this one. One such person I know ate nearly a quart of these in one day and made herself sick on them they tasted so good!

Next, in the upper middle, we have ‘Tomatoberry” also a truss tomato. This variety was featured in a previous post a few months back. It is a new variety offered exclusively by Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Tomatoberry is also quite sweet but not nearly as sweet as ‘Red Grape’, having more of a “tomato flavor”. It is bigger than Tomatoberry but still can be considered a salad tomato.

To the right is ‘Juliet’ a salad/pear tomato. Juliet is right at the line between salad tomato and “pear” tomato. It is about 2″-3″ long , which makes it a little big to be served in a salad, but too small to be considered a size good for slicing. Never mind the size though, it is one tasty tomato.. not too sweet, with lots of tomato flavor!

Next, on the lower left, is ‘Italian Heirloom’. It is, as you have guessed by its name, an heirloom variety. Now, I have grown many heirloom varieties in the past… some good, some not-so-good. I put this one in the not-so-good category. It has a very mild flavor, which some people like, but for my taste, it is a bit of a “washout”. This tomato is very fragile, its skin is quite thin and easily damaged. It is also difficult to harvest from the vine, its stem being nearly impossible to separate from the plant without bruising the tomato. Because of these two characteristics, you will never see these for sale in the grocery store.

In the bottom center of the photo is “Amish Paste” another heirloom variety. Despite its second place showing at a taste-test, it too seems a little bland for my palate. Once again however, enough taste-testers liked it to give it second place. It may make good juice and sauce. Like the Italian tomato, it too is very fragile, bruising easily. You wouldn’t want to just “toss” these into your bushel basket!

Finally, we come to “Better Girl”. In my opinion, the best tomato we have this year. It is full flavored, easy to pick, holds up well in transport and looks marvelous! The skin is a little tough, which accounts for the east of picking and transport. Better Girl also grows great in our greenhouse through the winter, making it the best all round tomato this season.

Don’t take my word for it though, it’s only an opinion. Grow some of these for yourself next time!

Bob

No, not the Michigan Lotto ticket… the green bean.

We have been picking our E-Z Pick bush beans for quite a while now. Earlier in the season we planted four beds at different times so that our crop will be spread out over the season.

You can see by this photo how this variety got its name. All of the beans grow in a line like this, making them easy to pick!

They are very tasty too!

Bob

Today we planted part of our outdoor fall vegetable garden.

The list of vegetables today included:

• Lettuce: Iceberg (Crispino), Romaine, Buttercrunch, Black Seeded Simpson
• Onions: White Spear (for green bunching onions)
• Spinach
• Beets (Detroit Dark Red)

One thing you have to be concerned about when planting these cool weather crops is the weather. Today it was fairly cool, in the low 70′s for the high. Also, after yesterday’s rain, the soil temperature was cool as well, making ideal germinating conditions for the lettuce seeds.

The forecast for the remainder of the week is for a return to hot summer temperatures. If air and soil temperatures get too warm, these cool weather seeds may not sprout. It’s worth taking a chance on the weather however, as we usually get most of our fall crops to grow.

Of course, weather at the other end of the season is as much a concern. A colder than average fall can ruin these crops… that however, will be discussed in a future post!

I’m thinking about sowing peas as well. I have never had much luck with a fall pea crop, but, I have plenty of seed left over from the spring and will probably go ahead and plant them anyway.

Each fall I get a big kick out of looking at the prices of lettuce in the produce department as I harvest our own from the garden. It doesn’t take much to entertain me.
Bob