7/11/15 - just a few tomatoes so far. etc. etc.

Today despite a lingering cold I managed to get to the garden.  The tomatoes are all self sufficient now - not much else to do till harvest, though I did add a few more loops of twine to a few plants that were tied on solo poles.    It's definitely true that the mat has pretty much eliminated the weeding right around the tomatoes themselves.  The florida weaving (while mainly in better shape than last year), still sort of requires heavy pruning of bottom branches else they are gonna just grow all under and around anyway. Otherwise you definitely need a very wide row space to get in between the rows of plants.   Some are too close.  

Tomato harvest is a week or two behind last year and I still have some plants that look like they need a few more weeks to produce.  So maybe they will, or not.   Anyway there will still be a good harvest in the next few weeks.  Today I picked one cherokee purple that is underripe but will ripen nicely at home in a few days, and about 2 dozen Hawaiian Currant.  Boy those HC plants grow big - they have really long branches that invade their neighbors.

Also I picked a few peppers - 1 banana, 1 "mild jalapeño" and what I believe are 2 of the "salsa peppers".  Nothin' on the poblano plant.  Unless the 2 "salsa peppers" are really very young poblanos.  But they look too skinny to me.

I've got several pumpkins growing! Although the plants look a little dry.  Also, I weeded onions some more - a pain, because they are too close to the edge of the plot and got overgrown.   And picked some basil.

The IRxCP F1 hybrids now have nice, round green fruit that are now about the size of a nectarine.  Definitely bigger than IR, smaller than CP - and not a trace of purple color visible.  Nice fruit set.

Finally, I did one cross, between Reisetomate (female) and Mortage Lifter (male).  Would rather have used Cherokee Purple pollen but couldn't find good flowers on CP.   I think I managed to get a little pollen from ML flowers, using black paper plate material to collect.  After brushing this onto an RT stigma, for good measure I just took a ML anther and brushed the stigma with it.   Tagged OK. This cross is = 2015 #1 RT x ML.

At the home garden, the Straight Eight cucumber is a winner.  Lots of very long straight fruit and no bitterness at all! so it lived up to the "burpless" marketing.  This is a great cucumber.   The home tomatoes are not much to shout about.  2 died and 2 are still very small due to having late starts and just not much root system before planting.  The home IRxCP has some fruit but the others are not doing much yet.