It occurred to me that I titled yesterday’s post “Tomatoes!” and I don’t believe I showed an actual fruit, just the pruned plants. I finished the pruning and weeding on Friday and I could actually see the fruit. So here are photos.
Most of the fruit was growing right on the ground, the stems rooted in firmly. I used garden shears and cut the roots. You can see the masses on some of the stems. I didn’t see any chewed up fruit except for the one below. I’d seen that one yesterday and expected to find many like it, but I didn’t.
It took 2 more hours but I got the tomatoes done. The Hungarian paprika has 3” pods on it. One plant at the far back left corner, the top snapped off just above the tomatoes. There’s another stem there, so the plant shouldn’t die. That’s the only one I broke out of all of these.
Next year, I will be on top of tying them up, I hope. This was an awful job.
The next big job in this section was thinning the carrots. For the first time in forever, the carrots germinated well. I even got the germinating boards off in time. But I never got out to thin them until today. I hope it wasn’t too late….
Besides the Jerusalem artichoke, the groundhog chewed up all the lettuce in the mesclun bed. Some of the stems look like they will send out new shoots, but about ⅔ of them I had to pull out. I got the rotting and bug eaten leaves off and it looks like most of the plants are sending out healthier leaves.
Then it was the beets turn. They have done very well this year, not much bug pressure. I picked 3 of them to have for supper. By the time I got this far, I was getting pretty tired.
My helper friend was doing the foliar and milk spraying and had gotten to the squash. He noticed a huge increase in squash bug eggs, so I spent some time removing them. I’ll do a quick post about the bugs also.
A shot of the hollyhocks growing in the middle of the squash area.
I rested a while and then started organizing the clean room area. I got it about half done. I need to contact the plumbers about getting that sink in.
On Saturday I will get out and finish this section. I need to weed, especially the onions, and then mulch the northerly garlic area. Then this garden will be done.
My intern is coming to stack some of the wood and a friend is taking me on the milk run into the hilltowns in the afternoon.