Tomatoes

Tomatoes are starting to ripen now. We've had a few mater sammmiches this week. Yummmm!. My favorite so far is Eva Purple Ball. Unblemished, not very acidic, meaty. Tigerelle has rather small green striped fruit that split around the middle. Won't grow them again. Amana Orange is very flavorful and quite large but cracks at the top which lets in rots pretty quickly. Speaking of rot... we've been having very humid weather with afternoon storms almost every day for the past 10 days or so. I'm not complaining about the rain because we are still in a rainfall deficit here. But these are prime conditions for tomato leaf blight which is busting out all over the plants. I brewed some compost tea over night to spray on the tomato plants to suppress the blight but it has been raining all day so far so i can't spray. The tea is only good for 12 more hours so i hope it stops raining soon otherwise i'll have to brew some more tomorrow. In the mean time the blight is spreading by the force of the raindrops.

Damn!

What's New!

We transplanted our strawberries from the community garden. We had enough plants to fill the space at the Funny Farm and to pot up a bunch for sale at the Urban Gardener.

Our friends found an abandoned lot in the west end where leeks have perennialized and spread all over. They dug some up and gave us 2 buckets full. We planted one bucket along the new asparagus patch and gave the other bucket to Holly who is planning to plant them in the kids garden at Piedmont Park. Thanks Shannon and Steve.

There is some sprouting going on in the greenhouse which is very exciting.

I harvested some clover and millet from the community garden to make compost with. This is the first time i've had to make compost since last summer. This should be some primo compost which we'll use to make compost tea. I added lots of kelp meal, granite sand and alfalfa meal to the pile. The greens from the community garden are highly nutritious having been growing in the great soil we've made there over the years. I really want to harvest some of that soil and move it out here. I would be a real waste to just leave it for the weeds and whatever future development happens on that property.

Happy Spring everybody!