Sunday, May 22, 2016

Garden Update - End of May 2016



The Solomon Seals my wife planted last year in the back of the hosta bed are up and blooming. We have lots of False Solomon Seal growing wild around the yard but I have never seen a Solomon Seal around here. When pollinated each flower will produce a small blue-black berry. The False Solomon Seal flowers at the end of the stem and produces a cluster of red berries.

In the community garden, now that it almost June I finally got all of the cool weather crops transplanted or seeded. What remains to do is plant the warm weather crops (beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash). That will happen the first week of June after I return from a visit to St. Louis for my niece's wedding next weekend. I still have to prepare the beds in the in-ground plot for the tomatoes and peppers, but otherwise I am all set to do it when I get back.



The tomatoes are potted up and under the grow lights. They are looking good and should hold for another two weeks before being set out in the garden. The weather here is still pretty unsettled. You can see that after declaring a disaster, I managed to get enough seedlings started to meet my needs, except for Sunkist, where only 1 of 10 seeds germinated. The current inventory (out of 6 planned seedlings for each variety):

  • 4 Bing
  • 5 Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye
  • 3 Black Beauty
  • 1 Sunkist
  • 5 Sweet Treats
  • 4 Rose de Berne
  • 5 Jaune Flamme
  • 3 Honey Drop
  • 6 Juliet
  • 4 Black Cherry (purchased)
Since I have room for 28 tomatoes, I will have to select from the above for my garden and try to give the rest away.


All of the peppers are potted up and doing well under the lights. I did have a complete failure of the Carmen seeds to germinate and I killed a few of the Super Shepherd plants, but I did pretty well with the rest. I am also missing the Tiburon Anchos I planned because I simply forgot to order seeds. Jalapeno plants will just be purchased. Here is the inventory:

4 Hungarian Paprika
2 Super Shepherd
6 Jimmy Nardello
5 Lemon Drop
6 Revolution

A couple of the Lemon Drop peppers are going into containers I will bring inside in hopes of extending the season. A big problem will be whether there is enough light for them in the winter.

The cruciferous flea beetles have found my uncovered brassicas. Fortunately they have not yet bothered the waxy leaved plants like the Golden Acre cabbage and the kohlrabi. But they have found the mustards and are feasting on them. I did one spraying of Spinosad but that did not bother them. Pyrethrin is next to try. I usually alternate those two sprays to try to avoid building up immunity. My radishes are starting to emerge in another bed so I need to get that covered before they find them.

5 comments:

  1. Your tomatoes and peppers look amazing. My peppers are so tiny in comparison. I'm glad you ended up with more than enough tomato plants. And that Solomon Seal is so pretty with its blooms.

    Ah, flea beetles are such a menace. They're everywhere.

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  2. Great, you ended up with plenty of seedlings, even with extras! I had intended to buy a Jimmy Nardello or two but there weren't any available. I'll miss them this year.

    Enjoy your trip!

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  3. Your seedlings look wonderful! You have a great variety going on - I'm glad you ended up with at least 1 of all the varieties you wanted. Last year, I recall that at least 1 or 2 varieties of my "planned" tomatoes didn't make it into the ground.

    This year, all is well with that, but I did end up falling behind on transplanting them into larger containers - didn't even realize that until I saw how big they were getting and checked my calendar. I was 2 weeks behind! I'm just hoping that doesn't have too big of an impact on their growth.

    And the Solomon's Seal is lovely. I really enjoy seeing perennials and bulbs planted in years past come up - it's so rewarding.

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  4. It's interesting to see that despite the fact we are both growing lots of chillis and tomatoes, there is very little commonality in our lists! I have some chillis called "Aji Limon" which I think are actually the same as "Lemon Drop". I have been amazingly lucky with the pests so far this year - no Flea Beetle damage at all on my Radishes, and precious little slug damage on the brassicas. If only it was always like this!

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  5. Your tomatoes and peppers look so healthy! The aphids have, as usual, colonized my pepper plants so the leaves are distorted, it's discouraging but I've learned to just wait and see and they usually recover pretty well. Cruciferous flea beetles, bleah! I hope they don't do too much damage.

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