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Bowregard
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PostSat Sep 04, 2021 2:42 pm 
Remember last year when there was a run on garden seeds? That was us (well, not all of it but my wife suddenly decided we needed to plant veggies but only the tomato and zucchini seeds actually arrived). So last year we planted some 50 or so tomato and almost as many zucchini plants in our yard (which is kind of funny because the only way we like zucchini is in bread form). We enjoyed it so much we did it again this year (minus most of the zucchini). I was going to write a Trip Report for my walk in our front yard but figured that might not be well received so I put it here in Saloon:
Those little Gold ones don't look like it but they are ripe, sweet, and juicy. My favorites.

flatsqwerl, Chief Joseph, Cyclopath, Ski, treeswarper, RichP
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neek
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PostSat Sep 04, 2021 7:34 pm 
That's a lot of tomatoes! Did you start them indoors in the spring, or directly outside?

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Bowregard
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PostSat Sep 04, 2021 8:02 pm 
62 plants - seeded them inside in the Spring. One was a volunteer that came up from last year which has a really strong stem so I think we will plan to put them out earlier next year. Sun Gold, Seattle's Best of All, Big Boy, and "currant" something. The Sun Gold are fantastic cherry size, Seattle's is mid size, Big Boy is hamburger size, and the Currant vary from bb size to 1/2 inch dia (we will never plant those again). The hot weather we had this year really didn't seem to make much of a difference. They were just as plentiful last year. This was from 9/8/2020:

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zephyr
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PostSat Sep 04, 2021 8:57 pm 
Bowregard wrote:
Great photos of your beautiful garden. This is a stunning display. So many gardens look a little forlorn. ~z

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Sculpin
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PostSun Sep 05, 2021 7:32 am 
That's a lot of tomatoes! stuck.gif My wife and I have a little ritual. When one of us comes out of the garden with an armload of produce, the other one of us responds with a bird call: Nee-deep. Nee-deep. cool.gif Here's a question for the group. I grow one Sungold each year, the sweetest and most flavorful of them all, but they don't keep. I also typically grow around four Early Girls and a couple Romas. (Bumper crops this year on all). I don't like to mix sweet and savory, just a personal preference. The Sungolds are snacks, the moderately-sweet Early Girls go in salad where I can tolerate them, and the Romas go into all things Italian. But both the Sungolds and Early Girls are too sweet for salsa, and the Romas give a strong message of spaghetti sauce when I make salsa out of them. I have tried a couple other varieties that were not as sweet, but they tasted cardboardy like store-bought tomatoes. Does anyone know of a good salsa tomato that thrives here?

Between every two pines is a doorway to the new world. - John Muir
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Bowregard
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PostSun Sep 05, 2021 1:27 pm 
I don't have an answer to your question but I do have a couple comments on varieties and pruning. I can understand growing only one Sungold. If you look closely in the first photo the far left plant is Sungold and it climbs the 6' pole then traverses across the tops of 5 more poles (probably 11-12 foot long overall). That one plant will produce a huge amount of tomatoes. The Seattle's Best are early and mid-sized but frankly I am a bit disappointed with the taste and the skin is thicker than I would like. The Big Boy variety is incredibly meaty with very few seeds which works great for sandwiches. The "Currant" variety is way too small for anything but sauces, is disease and mildew prone, and a total waste in my opinion. I like to grow on a single stock but my FIL just lets them grow any way they want and somehow gets good results too. Question: I love Romas - do they grow well here?

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treeswarper
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PostSun Sep 05, 2021 1:50 pm 
I bought a spendy box of Romas, grown locally and made salsa out of that. I think it is what you put in your salsa in addition to the tomatoes that makes it taste not like spaghetti sauce. I double the jalepenos in mine to give it more of a bite. Then it has green peppers, onions, cilantro, etc. in it. I can my salsa. I think I got 23 pints? I also have a front yard garden. It looks better than just the plain grass. But I didn't plant enough tomatoes to make salsa. The cantelope plant bloomed but no melons ever were started. The spaghetti squash is very happy as are the sunflowers. The onions didn't do well but the carrots are liking it. All this is in two 4x4 Costco raised gardens. I tried to grow cantelope last year and the same thing happened. I will not try again. Congratulations. Those are good looking 'maters. Oh, I have volunteer potatoes growing in a compost bin. They are very tough spuds because they had to survive last winter. I am a bit confused as to how they did that. I guess there was enough insulation as I fill the bins with leaves each fall. We'll see if there are any spuds soon.

What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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Bowregard
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PostSun Sep 05, 2021 3:25 pm 
I tried melons once - Watermelons. They were supposed to be yellow, smaller than the big red ones, and easier to grow here. Two plants produced four 4"-5" diameter perfect spheres that looked like nothing we had ever seen before (outside or inside). This was back when Larry's market was new so we invited friends over to dinner and put one of these on everybody's plate as a conversation starter. I told them they were "Chebuka" fruit imported from the highlands of New Guinea for Larry's market and were supposed to taste like a cross between strawberries and watermelon "they keep it in the back and you have to ask for it special". They tasted pretty good and I was having such a great time imagining my friends asking for it that I couldn't hold it together and had to tell them the truth. 60 tomato plants is nuts but just about every seed of the "Currant" variety germinated and we had a hard time thinning so many seedlings. I hope we learned our lesson and cut the numbers down next year. It helps that they don't seem to be ripening all at one time like last year. I went back and looked at photos and last year the color was more orange and they all seemed to ripen at the same time. Maybe because I stripped so many leaves off when they started to look bad. The aspirin trick seemed to keep the mildew away better this year.

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Joey
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PostMon Sep 06, 2021 12:45 pm 
Fantastic tomato crop. Your yard must get plenty of sunshine. What was that about asperin and mildew? Our tomato crop did well also except for the one SunGold we started which died young. Next year we plan to start 2 of those and then later on get rid of one before they start bearing. And speaking of melons - we have been enjoying cantelope beginning a few days ago. We grow several varieties of sweet melon under green plastic and with drip irrigation. I can report on good authority that a bowl of melon bites and strawberries is quite tasty. These are everbearing stawberries that my wife grows from seed.

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Bowregard
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PostMon Sep 06, 2021 2:47 pm 
Joey wrote:
What was that about asperin and mildew?
Dissolve 250mg to 500mg of aspirin in 4.5 liters of water and spray plants two to three times per month. We saw this on the web and started doing it this year and did not have mildew. It is supposed to help prevent disease and deter insects and keep the plant healthier. We find uncoated aspirin (Bayer) to be easiest to use. Nice looking strawberries and melons.

Cyclopath, Joey
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Backpacker Joe
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PostMon Sep 06, 2021 6:59 pm 
Turbo Yummy!

"If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide." — Abraham Lincoln
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Cyclopath
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PostMon Sep 06, 2021 9:09 pm 
Joey wrote:
I've been growing strawberries for years but rarely get to eat any. The crows and possums consider them a delicacy before their quite ripe. I learned that possums eat ticks and my enemy's enemy is my friend so I'm happy to feed them. But I'm happy to see you're actually able to eat the ones you grew, I found an untouched strawberry yesterday and it was delicious.

runup
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fourteen410
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PostTue Sep 07, 2021 3:12 pm 
Cyclopath wrote:
I've been growing strawberries for years but rarely get to eat any.
+1. My everbearings either get the gray mold or, in this year's case, something else eats it before I can. I've got chicken wire around my garden, but something still managed to burrow its way into the fruit and eat it from the inside out. Beetles maybe?

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Bowregard
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PostTue Sep 07, 2021 4:36 pm 
I don't have any direct knowledge of what eats strawberries but we have seen similar issues with tomatoes on occasion and I was shocked one evening when I went out and found a slug wrapped around a tomato and had eaten what must have been 1/3 his body weight! We put out some slug bait and haven't had any problems since. We tried strawberries at our old house but never could quite match the size, abundance, and flavor of the local growers so we gave it up.

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Ski
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PostTue Sep 07, 2021 5:40 pm 
the right kind of dog will make pretty short work of possum. guaranteed results. deer, on the other hand, are more of a challenge. fencing helps. first year I've been able to get a tomato plant growing more than a foot high. oddly, however, the real producers are these tiny little "veranda tomato" bushes that produce little cherry tomatoes like crazy. I picked a few for my sister earlier today:
you say TOE MAY TOE I say TOE MA TOE
you say TOE MAY TOE I say TOE MA TOE

"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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