More summer vegetables

In spite of the dry summer so far, the main vegetable garden looks lush and the satellite garden looks like a jungle. Yes, I do water, but I try to be judicious and soak deeply (and am thankful that the winter and spring rains have filled the lakes that provide much of our local water supply).

Compared to the crushing drought conditions of the last few years, it's basically unbelievable to have so many productive tomato, pepper, and squash plants. (The beans will recover from their slump, and I'll be planting a last round of French filet bush beans tomorrow, thanks to my friend CEN's extra seeds). Her garden was lovely, neat and tidy, when I visited it last week. I couldn't help but think about the contrast as I watered this evening!

It's a good thing that a 7 ct chest freezer is being delivered tomorrow, to go in the basement. I feel obligated to do something with all these vegetables, whether it's preserving the harvest or giving them away!

Succession planting of squash, beans, and tomatoes

As I'm harvesting garlic and the final bit of lettuce in the main beds, I'm thinking about what to plant next. The peas are just about finished, too, and one of the pea trellises will need underplanting with beans or a climbing cucumber or squash. (The other already has tromboncino squash ready to replace the peas). I suppose if I were more orderly and less into having fun in my vegetable garden, I'd had have already planned out my rotations.

And I really should think about preserving the harvest, too (wait, I'm still determined to enjoy the process) -- Barbara Damrosch in her revised Garden Primer talks about freezing whole tomatoes, then rinsing off the skins in hot water before using them in sauces in the winter. That's my idea of a great approach.

We've had a nice bit of rain today, after some unusually hot weather that's now moderated, so it's a good time to put out more summer squash, beans, and a few new heirloom tomato transplants that I acquired last weekend.

I also thought I'd experiment sowing some more seeds of specialty peppers (Corno di Toro, Ashe County Pimento, Numex, Sweet Red Cherry) and tomatoes (Black Russian and Super Marzano hybrid) to transplant later on. Peppers do their best in the warm days of fall here, especially if summer turns out to be especially hot. And tomatoes will keep growing until whenever frost comes.

I'll have the potato beds to swap out, too, probably in the next couple of weeks. I've already harvested some new potatoes around the edges, but will wait until the shoots start dying back to harvest the rest.

The soil in my vegetable beds work hard, so I'm trying to add LOTS of homemade compost (rather than commercial) at each rotation, as clearly I'm not replenishing my beds as much as they might need. A Thai eggplant planted in a container filled with this compost is huge, the biggest eggplant I've ever grown, witness to the power of nutrients! I'll have to see if the plant produces many fruits. I did see a tomato-sized eggplant last fall (the plant), growing in a large container in a Portland urban garden -- whoa! I'm not sure any of mine will get that big.

Growing tomatoes

In a warm summer climate, with plenty of sun, tomatoes are almost a given in a vegetable garden. Even non-gardeners may stick one or two tomatoes in the ground, just to have some fresh ones. One of our neighbors has two staked tomato plants at the side of her house, in otherwise a sea of lawn.

a 'Beefy Boy'

Garden centers, nurseries, and local 'feed and seed' stores usually offer up the traditional hybrids: Big Boy, Better Boy, Roma, and Sweet 100, with some recent additions of Brandywine, Mortgage-lifter, and other well-known heirloom varieties. There are hundreds of different varieties of tomatoes, with varying levels of acid and sweet, shapes and sizes, colors, and stripes.

I've grown different sorts from seeds, too, and tried unusual types bought at horticultural student plant sales, and have just about come to the notion that growing ONLY disease-resistant tomatoes in my Southern soil is productive, and any non-disease resistant (heirlooms) need to be in containers. I love the diversity and history of heirlooms, and they're wonderfully delicious, too, of course.

This summer, the VFN-resistant varieties have been the clear winners. The so-called Amish paste tomatoes (actually a striped heirloom of some sort) have declined due to nematodes, the non-resistant Sweet 100's haven't lasted long either, and a couple of heirloom peppers have had some sort of sudden wilt, bacterial, I think. Hhrmph.

I haven't always been so scrupulous with rotations, and of course, that's the first line of organic management of common plant diseases like fusarium and verticillum wilt, and buildup of Southern root-knot nematodes (they LOVE the roots of non-resistant varieties of tomatoes and peppers).

Using rotations with French marigolds, canola, sesame, grasses, and cole crops are other ways of reducing nematode populations, along with solarization in mid-summer - I'm going to give those a try, too.

I'm quite tired of yellowing tomato leaves and sad-looking plants!

Red, white, and blue

Since this is our Fourth of July holiday here in the U.S., Independence Day, I thought I'd post images of three natives of the Americas that fit the red, white, and blue theme, all from our garden.

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum and others., originating in Central and South America)


Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), a deep-rooted prairie and grassland plant of the Eastern U.S.


Rabbiteye blueberry (Vaccinium ashei), a native of the Southeastern U.S.

A good day for planting

Trombocino squash last year

It was overcast all day, with some showery periods, and a forecast for more rain tonight. Perfect weather for transplanting and sowing seeds. I spent most of the day puttering in the garden, planting, digging, transplanting, with some weeding thrown in.

The soil temperature here is now about 70°F, so warm enough to sow seeds of cucumbers, squash, and beans. I put in heirloom Armenian yard-long cucumbers, trombocino squash, lagenaria squash (Lagenaria longissima- a new species to try), Ronde de Nice zucchini, Eight Ball zucchini (similar to Ronde de Nice, I think, but from a different seed company), patty pan squash (Johnny's 'Flying Saucer F1'), and scarlet runner beans.

For good measure, I also sowed some 'leftover' seeds in small pots to put on the germination mat: Toma Verde tomatillo, Corno di Toro peppers, "pizza" peppers (from two sources), a hybrid 'Italian Gourmet' pepper from Park Seed, and eggplant 'Listada de Gandia.' I also sowed more cucumbers, squash, and zucchini in pots, to rotate in, as space becomes available.

Seeds are such fun! I hadn't sown any warm season things earlier this year, as I've been busy with work-related things, and when I realized it was late to get any interesting plants via online ordering, thought I'd try some late seed starting. Our growing season is long enough that even warm-season veggies can produce by mid-summer, even if not started until now.

I transplanted some pretty lettuce seedlings that were part of a 'wild salad mix' -- I love the look of the 'speckled trout' or 'Freckles' lettuce and the soft textures of the butterhead lettuce.

I also managed to get in most of my purchased tomato and pepper plants - most from a horticultural student sale on campus, including some interesting heirlooms, but also some old standbys from the local nursery yesterday -- Better Boy and Beefsteak tomatoes.

Tomatoes and frost

I'm glad I didn't put any tomato plants out early this year. We wait anxiously for April 15 -- our average last frost date, but since that's an average, frost CAN occur, as it did last night. It wasn't a heavy frost, barely a sprinkling, but tomatoes, liking warmth above 55 ° F for their night-time temperatures, and soil temperatures in the same range, are not happy with frost, being of tropical origin.

My tomato, pepper, and basil plants are still in the mud room, waiting transplanting to either larger containers (with continued protection), or into the garden. They definitely need 'up-potting,' since they're in small pots, but we'll see. I need to look at the next week's weather forecast!

Our Clemson University Extension folks suggest May 1 as the first date to plant tomatoes here in Upstate South Carolina. Lots of people like to 'push' this planting date, but it's always fraught with potential hazards...