Arrrrgggg wilt / but nice F3 development

Welp.  Backyard update: Some plants are > 7' tall now... requiring the 8 foot stakes.   Notably, these are Sun Gold, and BC.  Vigorous. But... HC prob has the wilt like last year.  In addition to increased yellowing of lower branches, both plants have stalled growing at 5', and one has some noticeable wilt at very top branches despite plenty of rain recently.   Since this happened last year too, it makes me infer that HC may be inherently pretty susceptible to this type of wilt.    On the bright side, BC looks great, FL is OK, and Sun Gold is great and now turning.  I tried a couple and they were good.

At the farm, some F3s are really looking good.  This one is from spot 5-8 which is a 55A.  These should all be gf/gf.   Purple+beefsteak+gf = goal!   Hope it tastes good.

55A in spot 5-8, farm.

DUDE NO: top wilt on HC, backyard

NOICE: backyard 6/25/17

NOT NOICE: yellowing HC, backyard

Noice

Backyard, June 19.  I like it when they get tall as me.

First one of the season was HC.   Julia approves

June 11 update

Today, the garden is doing well.  Flamme will start to color up any day now.   No wilting or disease to report, other than a few yellowing branches here and there but not serious.  I did notice a few plants with aphids, but the plants seemed pretty healthy despite them.   Probably, the aphids will suffer parasitism and decline.

Twining twining bla bla blah.  It's not too bad tho.   I can see now, though, that the whole twining thing really does call for more pruning.  It's just a lot more time intensive then I can afford.  So, I have decent twining with rather dense foliage.   Hmm.  One drawback is that the purple color is less likely to develop on those fruits, as dense foliage = less direct sunlight to trigger anthocyanin.

Nevertheless, here's more purple to report. There's very nice color on some of the 24a and 46a, which should definitely be gf/gf.   Some decent purple on some 50b and 10b too, some of which may be gf/gf.  There's clearly more segregation of traits still going on: note 24a 4-3 looks beefsteak-y while 4-5 is not particularly.

24a 4-5

24a 4-3

46a 5-11

46a 5-10

46a 5-13

50b 6-10

50b 6-12

50b 6-14

10b 6-3 

10b 6-1

June 3 2017 update

Today: more twining.  It's a little more work now, mostly because I haven't kept aggressively pruning suckers. In the last few weeks the plants are now each putting out a bunch of new stems, so, they are very bushy.  This is probably not optimal, but it would be significantly more labor to have done all the proper suckering on the ~100 plants.   It took about 2 hours to get twining caught up - a lot of this was "stuffing" the branches into the existing twining too. But it's ok. :)

And, some F3 fruit are showing purpling which is quite rewarding to see.  Here are examples:  IR for comparison; 24a in spot 4-5; 46a in spot 5-10; 55a in spot 5-8.  First number is the row # (top to bottom) and the second number is the planting position (left to right).  See map for reference.

May 28 update

Today at the farm I finished installing T-posts and caught up the twining.   So the farm garden is "caught up".!   Some of the plants in the rows 4 and up had flopped over already but rows 1-3 are ok. Plants in rows 1-2 are about 3 feet high.   Fruit set is happening, and I can already see purple on some of the F3s.  The IR plant already has an intensely purple fruit.

Backyard garden : tomatoes about 4 ft + and growing fast.  No signs of disease.  Fruit set on Flamme, HC, Sun Gold.  The Uluru Ochre plant will prob be last to set fruit.  Interestingly these were sowed about 1 week later in March than i sowed the same types this time last year but transplanted on the same date (April 16).  They are about a foot shorter than last year which must be due to the 1 week later sowing date.  I'm watching closely for signs of disease or wilt, since that started in the first week of June last year.

Update May 20 2017

Ran out of T-posts after putting all the ones from last year in the ground, and got a good amount done on the initial Florida Weave steps.   Need about 15 more posts to finish this year's layout.
About 12 or so corn plants germinated; i cleared out the weeds around them and got straw down.  And planted 1 each of: eggplant, "coolapeno" pepper, crookneck squash and zucchini.
Flowers are coming in well on the tomatoes.  Fruit set has begun on Flamme and also at home on HC.

More progress

I now have 6 rows of weed mat down; then i ran out of pins.  But it's good enough for now.  2 rows of T-posts are up, and I started twining rows 1 and 2.   Plants are moderately healthy and intermittent rain has been good.  For mulch, I got 6 straw bales which was overkill...I thought last year I got 4 bales so I thought "Better get more just in case".  Turns out I got 2 bales last year... 6 bales is a LOT. 2-3 bales is plenty to mulch 100 plants thoroughly.  These are big bales. I brought 2 home and still have about a bale and a half left at the garden.

At the home garden the plants are looking fine, and setting flowers.  I think it is about 1 to 2 weeks behind last year's schedule.