Kerry’s Garden

In addition to the rain/alfalfa tea barrels I put together this weekend I also tied up my tomatoes. In years past I have used t-posts between every other tomato. In other words, two plants between posts. This year, being a bit short on posts I went to three plants between posts on the Indeterminate Big Beef and Mr Stripey and 4 plants between posts for the Determinate Celebrity and Jet something or other. I am not sure how this will work, I may end up with vines all over the ground but I am keeping my fingers crossed. The jute is woven around the tomatoes behind the first, in front of the second etc and around the post. Coming back on the other side the jute is placed woven through the plants the opposite of the first run. This creates a figure 8 between two plants. What this does as they get larger is allow the weight of one plant to pull against the weight of the next one, keeping them up and balanced. The first tying happens at about 8-12″ from the ground. The second and third tyings are about 12″ above the previous and use much more string as the plants are much larger then. The Indeterminate varieties often need a fourth tying while the Determinate varieties do fine with three. The goal is to keep the plants off the ground. I got carried away this year and planted them a little too close together. This may increase their chances of disease but I can always trim the plants if needed to increase air flow.

I picked up some more Black Eyed Susan vine and tucked them in the open areas of one of the flower beds. Hopefully the vine will fill in the bare spots and give some color.

I planted some dill this evening. The spot where it usually comes up doesn’t seem to have any this year. That is really OK with me though as it wasn’t a great spot now that I have extended the garden. I used some seed I had gathered from my plants summer before last. Not sure I will get many to germinate but I used a lot of seed so even getting a 10% germination rate will give me more than I can use.

I noticed some spots on a few leaves of one of my grapes tonight. It was getting late so I didn’t have time to really get into the plant. I am afraid it may be black spot but I have to do a bit more research.