Friday, June 12, 2009

vegetables

I am starting new tomato plants from side shoots whenever they escape my notice long enough to get big. I just stick them in fine sand from the sandbox, put them in a mostly shady spot, water them regularly and they grow strong enough roots to transplant within a few weeks. I am planting these new tomatolings in pots because...
though I am still in denial, I am pretty sure my tomatoes have fusarium wilt. Horrors! I have had to pull several plants and several more are looking peaked. This is a Black Krim. I cut off one of the leaf stems today and the inside is not yet affected, but I think it is probably inevitable.
A close up of the stem. Not good, right?
The cucumbers are booming. My husband removed all the baby cucumbers and gave the vines a good trim last week. It is looking like we will be drowning in cucumbers in a few days. The green beans in the foreground are also producing nicely. They have become a new target of the evil orange bugs, but so far are going strong.
The watermelon almost succumbed to aphids in the beginning, but after consistent spraying with diluted dishsoap seems to be making a recovery.
The three remaining zucchini plants are also still producing despite their white bumpy stem disease (I think that is the scientific name for it!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your garden is coming along nicely! I love the addition of the two-footed critters in the foreground ; )

Congratulations on a lovely zucchini! Mine always turned to mush after 3 cm. I wish I could help with the tomatoes. Keep trying!

Brooke in Fujisawa

Xana said...

Thank you. I am always trying to find ways to include the girls without showing their faces. Sometimes I have to get creative.

Do you hand-pollinate your zucchini? Last year I only got one to grow, but this year I am hand-pollinating and average about 5 a week total from three plants, despite their moldy white bumpy problem. We hand-pollinate the pumpkins, too. My five year old love to do this. The 2 year old is eager to try, but the whole point is to get MORE squash to grow, not to squash the growth.

I had to pull the Black Krim tomato today ): I hope I manage to get a few plants to last until the tomatoes ripen.

Xana