Friday’s Garden…..

Storm breaks into pieces,
Clouds charge the horizon.
Revolving of the heavens.
Generates all movement.
Deng Ming~Dao

A few years back I spent the summer doing Friday's flowers. It was something that I really enjoyed doing.  I thought however that I would do something a little different this year and post about my different gardens on Fridays.  This will include "the good", "the bad" and the "down-right ugly"…all of which I have already experienced even this early into the season.

So even though this is Thursday, I am planning to do this each Friday throughout the growing season.  We can learn together!

Perhaps you may remember my disappointing tomato loss last summer.  I lost the entire crop to blight.  Some of it was due to the weather conditions and some of it was my own doing.  

 



One of the things I did wrong was to plant the tomato plants too close together and I didn't prune them enough.  That combined with the damp, cool rainy season spelled disaster for many tomato gardeners here in the Northeast.  I am reading that they are seeing this blight again already this year….I am praying that it won't get this far northeast.

One of the things I did differently this year was to buy some sturdy tomato cages.  Originally I was going to buy some of these, but after reading the comments, I decided to go with these instead.  They are a bitch to put together, but I think they are going to be worth the effort.  The smaller metal cages I have used in the past are just not big enough for most tomato plants.

I'm hoping with better spacing, the new stands and this product I will have better results.

I also spent some time learning the difference between indeterminate and determinate tomatoes given that I have both in my garden and the pruning methods that are unique to both types.  There are some GREAT videos on this website.  I see now that I should not have been pruning back the suckers on my Roma's which are determinate tomatoes.  On a bush type tomato such as a roma, you should pinch back all of the suckers and leaves beneath the first set of flowers and then let the rest grow un-pruned.  With indeterminate tomatoes, such as Early girl, Better boy and most of your cherry tomatoes you want to let one or two stems grow and prune all of those suckers that grow where the leaf and stem meet.  More energy goes into producing better fruit this way.

I was going to talk about a few of my other garden issues, such as my never ending battle with fornicating cucumber beetles, but I think I will save that for next week.  Instead I will leave you with a picture from my other garden…the perennial bed…so much prettier than those pesky bugs. 🙂

Coral bells…………

Until next Friday………..happy gardening!