Gardeners of AW, unite

EllaM

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I've only gotten a few tomatoes so far - lots of green ones, but they just aren't ripening! Very frustrating to see them all sitting there, waiting for...what?!

This happened to me when I reseeded with grocery store tomatoes. I didn't know at the time but they will stay green until exposed to a gas. I'd put them in with other ripe fruit and see if they turn red. Mine were a freebie garden gift from my worm bin castings. I lost all the tomatoes as they had went bad on the vine.

Sorry, I don't know the official process-but try a few and see what happens. Unless you know where these seeds come from, and trust the plant. Otherwise that's my one idea! :) good luck!
 

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These were grown from bought seed, so they should be okay - and I've gotten a FEW ripened ones from the vines, just... maybe one per vine?

Maybe I'll try the gas-sharing approach all the same. I could do an experiment! Leave some on the vine, put some on the windowsill, and put some in a bag with... what, apples and bananas?

Whee! Science!
 

shakeysix

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Brandywine has some problems. I used to grow it but switched to Brandy Boy--a hybrid. Sometimes the fruit cracks and then doesn't ripen. The branches do break easily because the fruit is heavy. There is a sling contraption you can make out of a tee-shirt and a couple of stakes to keep the tomato on the vine after the vine has broken but is not off completely. I never used it but saw it in a garden mag once. It is so hot and dry here that I do better with Cherokee Purple, Jet Star or Nebraska Wedding. German Queen does well until it dries up about this time of year--s6
 

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I've had really good luck this year with an unusual (at least to me) variety of zucchini called "Cannonball". We had one freakish cold night in late May that killed off all my zucchinis grown from seed, and I had to buy plant starts. I found this one at my fave local garden store, and decided to try it, just for fun. It has produced wonderful fruits, which are spherical and dark green. I have eaten a couple of these now, at a size between a baseball and a softball, and they are crisp, with a more robust nutty flavor than I usually find in zucchinis. Also, up here in our cool summer clime, I often have trouble with zucchinis rotting at the end. Not these. They've made my short list for next year, for sure. I'll have to find seeds someplace.

For you benighted souls in the warm southern climate, I'll hereby recommend my all-time favorite summer squash. It is, or at least used to be, available from the Park Seed Company in North Carolina, where I always bought seeds by mail-order when I lived in Texas. It's called "Park's Creamy Hybrid", and is a squash that grows slightly larger than a standard zucchini, is a rather unspectacular beige color, and slightly bulbous. But it has wonderful flavor. Alas, I've tried it up here in Alaska, and our growing season just isn't warm enough or long enough.

caw
 

ssbittner

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Hello, fellow gardeners! I figured I should stop by and join in the discussion. Sadly, I have few vegetables to brag of; it's too hot in the summer in Phoenix to keep many of them alive. I hope to plant a few tomatoes and some catnip in the coming months, though.

My potted dwarf mango tree is really growing well this year. I'm hoping this winter to get some fruit to set. Last year, they just fell off within weeks. Sadly, my dwarf orange isn't doing as well, although it's not sickly. It seems determined to stay the same size. I may move the pot to somewhere sunnier.
 

c.m.n.

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Hey all, I'm a newbie gardener with a problem.

I have a tomato plant of doom! It's a roma tomato that, unfortunately, none of my family liked. So I never caged or staked it and it grew out of control. The underside it really disgusting, with a lot of spiders and other crawlies.

Now I need to consider either letting it freeze and die before pulling it, or if I can trim it away, pick the good 'matos and blanch, then pull it once it's trimmed. What would be the best method?
 

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Hey all, I'm a newbie gardener with a problem.

I have a tomato plant of doom! It's a roma tomato that, unfortunately, none of my family liked. So I never caged or staked it and it grew out of control. The underside it really disgusting, with a lot of spiders and other crawlies.

Now I need to consider either letting it freeze and die before pulling it, or if I can trim it away, pick the good 'matos and blanch, then pull it once it's trimmed. What would be the best method?

I've actually wondered about this - if you're asking about trying to save it over the winter? If you're just looking for a way to tidy it up, I'd say it kind of depends how much snow you get. where I am, I leave them in the ground over the winter and they're covered with snow so I don't have to look at them, and in the spring I pull the dusty husks off the cage and the rest of the plant more or less dissolves into the soil. Problem solved. But if you have less snow, it might be ugly to look at the rotting leaves all winter and uprooting would be better?

But in case you were asking about SAVING a tomato plant... has anyone done this? Trimmed one back, dug it up, and potted it up to overwinter in a cool room inside? I've got a plant of uncertain origin that's been giving me GREAT tomatoes this year, and I'd love to have it again next spring...
 

SWest

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I've only planted in containers, then trimmed down to a few viable nubs with tiny leaves, sprayed for bugs, and over-wintered indoors under lights.

I'm not sure how hardy root balls are when dug and trimmed to pot size...but if I'd grown attached to a particular plant, I'd try it anyway!

:)

Indoor tomatoes crave a lot of light (even though they drink somewhat less if the room air is cool).

*****

c.m.n., it sounds like you just want to get rid of the beastie? In which case you can cut the main stem(s) off at ground level with a branch lopper (and let the roots decay back into the soil).

Salvage any sizable tomatoes once you have the plant cut down (wear gloves if you have doubts about the venomous qualities of your local spiders)...green ones can be put in a paper bag at room temperature to ripen.

If the plant is infected with any kind of powdery or black spot mold growth, do NOT put it in your compost...mold spores have been known to survive and get after your susceptible plants the next season. You might also dig up and discard the roots as well in such a case.
 

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The compost bins (one for mushrooms only, the other for all manner of vegetable discards and fallen leaves) are in place. Frost has killed off most of the veggies, except for kale and some swiss chard. And tonight we expect our first dusting of snow, maybe an inch at most. I still have some potatoes to dig, but those keep well in the ground as long as it doesn't freeze deeply. That's about it for my gardening this year.

The mushroom compost was an idea I came up with last year, when I saw garden stores selling bags of it in the spring. So I collected a bunch of woodland mushrooms, threw them in a bin and let them rot all winter. After spring thaw, I worked the remnant gooey black organic mess into the soil in the single raised bed that had performed most poorly the year before, and the results were magnificent. So this year I made an industrial effort over August and early September to comb woodland parks for trash mushrooms. I have 3 or 4 times what I had the year before, so we'll see how that works next spring.

caw
 

Amy_D

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Gardening is my therapy. Right now, I'm stressing that winters around the corner which will bring months of inside activities and no playing in the dirt.
 

shakeysix

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Early frost warning last night. I hauled the Christmas cactus, all six of them, a couple of coleus, an aspidistra, a big begonia, impatiens and my pink hibiscus into the house. Not a lot of room for them and the big, sunny, marble window sills in my classroom are already filled with plants.

I need to remove the towels from the decorative baker's rack that I use as a plant stand in the winter and a towel holder in the summer while the plants are on the porch. But there is no place to keep them. In years past I kept the towels in a cupboard over the washer but that was removed in the renovation. What to do with the towels this winter? We could store a few in our bedroom closets but that is not as handy as having them in the bathroom. I could buy another cheap shelf unit but it would front a gorgeous south facing window. Perfect for a miniature rose or a small geranium--soon the towels would be crowded and covered with plant debris. My roomie hates plant debris. We debate the merits of indoor gardens all winter.

This question almost always boils down to what is more important, towels or houseplants? Of course I say houseplants but my kid/roomie insists on towels first. (Wait till she finds out that the bathtub is full of potted plants!) --s6
 
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This question almost always boils down to what is more important, towels or houseplants? Of course I say houseplants but my kid/roomie insists on towels first. (Wait till she finds out that the bathtub is full of potted plants!) --s6

Yeah, if the tub's full, there's really no need for towels, is there? Problem solved!
 

c.m.n.

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Thanks all! My best friend ended up pulling it straight out of the ground over the weekend. We kept the decent tomatoes and made a bunch of salsa.

I'm looking forward to trying my hand at gardening next year. If I do a tomato, I will get a cage and keep it trimmed. My dad is going to save some sugar snap pea seeds for me and I'm planning to plant those in early/mid March.

My favorite of the year was the "yummy snacking" peppers. Will have to grow more of those next year, too.
 

mrsmig

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I'm just about ready to pull up my veggie garden for the year. It was a major disappointment all the way around. What the deer didn't destroy, the whiteflies did. I still have some brussels sprouts to deal with and the collards are doing well, but I don't think I got a dozen tomatoes off my plants this year and I usually have a bumper crop.

Next year, the first time I'm planting is a fence.
 

mrsmig

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I harvested my brussels sprouts today. I had two huge plants that were mostly producing stalk and leaves - the sprouts themselves were on the small side - but I did get about a quart and a half of nice, clean produce. I still have collards to harvest but that's going to have to wait for a couple of days. Pretty much everything else is done for the season and either pulled up or about to be pulled up.

I hit my local farmers' market today and bought a bunch of tomatoes, Italian green beans and some apples, and spent most of the day stewing, dehydrating and freezing. So in spite of a lousy vegetable season, I still have a freezer and pantry full of summer goodness.
 

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I harvested my brussels sprouts today. I had two huge plants that were mostly producing stalk and leaves - the sprouts themselves were on the small side - but I did get about a quart and a half of nice, clean produce. I still have collards to harvest but that's going to have to wait for a couple of days. Pretty much everything else is done for the season and either pulled up or about to be pulled up.

My garden is so sad right now. I don't know what it is with this year's tomatoes, but they are still disappointing me. My cukes finally gave up when the squash bugs from the front of the garden came back there.

I think my brussels sprouts aren't getting enough sun. The ones in the front public bed looks a lot better than mine do. Upside, no one has made any moves on the ones in the front. Downside, someone has been mistaking the sprouts' leaves as collard greens, and snapping them off.

I have another bunch of radishes in, but they are pretty blah. Rhubarb and asparagus are still booming. I'm waiting for when it's time to chop down the rhubarb. The asparagus is getting buried, but I don't want to deplete the rhubarb this close to the winter.

I'm already missing summer.
 

shakeysix

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Three seed catalogs in the mailbox yesterday. I expect more in the next few weeks, enough to fill an empty hour or two but not enough to soften the next 4 dreary months.

In the winter I like to read about gardens. I have several nuts and bolts how-to books about flowers, vegetables, fruits, projects but my favorites are pieces written by actual gardeners--like the Weeder's Digest; Birds and Blooms; A Gardener's Bedside Reader.

I recently bought an anthology at a second hand book store- A Celebration of Gardens by Roy Strong. It contains hundreds of short pieces on gardening: prose, poetry and drawings, some centuries old. I just finished a section on Cats in the Garden with contributing authors like Chaucer and William Cowper.

My very favorite type of winter garden reading is about someone who restores an old, overgrown garden. Anyone else want to share? --s6
 

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I'm thinking about starting tomatoes extra-early this year... I'm tired of waiting until late August to enjoy them from the garden.

Has anyone tried this? If I give them big enough pots and some artificial light, will it work, or will I just end up with leggy plants that don't produce fruit until August anyway?
 

shakeysix

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Yes, I have but all I ended up with was 12 pale, leggy, floppy starts. Almost half damped off the first week. I think I ended up with 4 and they were later to fruit than the nursery stock. I keep houseplants instead--s6
 

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Yes, I have but all I ended up with was 12 pale, leggy, floppy starts. Almost half damped off the first week. I think I ended up with 4 and they were later to fruit than the nursery stock. I keep houseplants instead--s6

Grrrr. Did you use artificial lights?
 

CoffeeBeans

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Has anyone tried this? If I give them big enough pots and some artificial light, will it work, or will I just end up with leggy plants that don't produce fruit until August anyway?

I tried this with artificial light, and didn't fair much better than ShakeySix. My biggest problem was moving them outside - the first heavy rain/chilly night and they were dropping like flies. I've done cherry tomatoes indoors, any time of year with a lamp, and they've been happy. In my climate, if I waited for the weather to be convincingly warm, I'd be waiting longer than I do with nursery tomatoes.