Pulled my beetroot today - sliced and steaming. So I'll have some nice beetroot for my sammies over Xmas...but not my own tomatoes or cucumer yet. I've got some more seedings underway, so maybe they will be ready when the tomatoes are in full flight. If they do - birds and bugs took half my tomato plants, so I've let the selfsets have their own way...what will I get ?
Self set tomatoes should produce fruit as well as the garden centre ones. It is just a bit of a lottery as to what 'variety' of tomato will eventuate as the seeds could well have come from hybrid plants which won't replicate the parent variety, or if open pollinated fruit produced the fruit then you have input from both parents in the resulting fruit.
We get lots of self-seeded tomato plants from our compost. The ones that we've left to grow have largely turned out to be sprawling dwarf plants with huge stems of tiny tomatoes, smaller than a cherry tomato. It's usually worth the expense of buying properly bred plants so you get what you expect.
Birds will devastate your crop. The ways we deal with that are to pick some tomatoes as soon as they start to turn colour, and ripen them indoors, and also to cover some stems on the plant with paper bags or big snap lock bags until they ripen. It's a nuisance, but if you don't do something the birds will ruin pretty well all of the crop.
I grew German Green tomatoes one year. Thank heavens for the birds. They knew when they were ripe but I couldn't work it out.
So we shared.
And, on my bench right now is the first home grown tomato of our village. My neighbour gives me his first (his are much better than mine), and in return I give him the first ripe peaches from my tree. It is a nice little ritual we have going...
(18-12-2021, 05:06 PM)Zurdo Wrote: [ -> ]Pulled my beetroot today - sliced and steaming. So I'll have some nice beetroot for my sammies over Xmas...but not my own tomatoes or cucumer yet. I've got some more seedings underway, so maybe they will be ready when the tomatoes are in full flight. If they do - birds and bugs took half my tomato plants, so I've let the selfsets have their own way...what will I get ?
My favourite all year round crop. So useful, tasty leaves and even better roots! Gorgeous roasted, and really good grated raw into a salad.
Looks like I got self set pumpkins or cucumbers too, can't tell what yet...and they will have overrun everything before I find out. I thought I got them all when those 2 fat leaves pop up. My garden is like my life - it just happens, and I deal with it, or I don't. Either way, they are both a mess.
I am hoping for bright orange pumpkins this year instead of iron barks. So far the plants are going for broke, racing along the fenceline, but the baby fruits are yellowing and dropping off. I'm hoping it is just discarding in order to foster growth, but it is frustrating all the same. My tomatoes though are doing well. No blossom end rot this year, touch wood fingers crossed. I put milk powder in the planting hole, maybe that did the trick.
And I have heaps of baby plants too, my compost is rich with them. Bet they are all yellow pear cherries. Those things are excessively fertile...
Ah, summer, and sammies with all sorts of stuff on them - and my beetroot from last week. I made 2 jars and forgot to take one up to my daughters yesterday for our Xmas. I haven't been to Auckland since August...hasn't changed.
My beand are doing their mad thing, I have golden punkins forming on the fence and big green beefsteak tomatoes on my plants. It might just be a good year in my vegie garden.
Must get the sunflower seeds in, looks like a long hot summer.
(19-12-2021, 06:42 AM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: [ -> ]I am hoping for bright orange pumpkins this year instead of iron barks. So far the plants are going for broke, racing along the fenceline, but the baby fruits are yellowing and dropping off. I'm hoping it is just discarding in order to foster growth, but it is frustrating all the same. My tomatoes though are doing well. No blossom end rot this year, touch wood fingers crossed. I put milk powder in the planting hole, maybe that did the trick.
And I have heaps of baby plants too, my compost is rich with them. Bet they are all yellow pear cherries. Those things are excessively fertile...
The reason your baby pumpkins are filling off is because they are not pollinated. You need a male and female flower open at the same time. Female flowers have the fruit, males don’t. You can hand pollinate or cross your fingers and hopefully a bee will come along. We have the same problem here, real lack of bees this year.
Yes, I figured that out a while back. Not lack of bees here with three hives within cooee, but a windy position I suspect. Still I have just pulled the most beautiful great golden orange punkin off the vine to finish dry ripening on my deck, just in case the weather turns nasty as forecast. It was too beautiful to risk. It will be difficult to cut I suspect for that same reason, but the thought of all those seeds for next year will help!
(14-01-2022, 07:51 AM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, I figured that out a while back. Not lack of bees here with three hives within cooee, but a windy position I suspect. Still I have just pulled the most beautiful great golden orange punkin off the vine to finish dry ripening on my deck, just in case the weather turns nasty as forecast. It was too beautiful to risk. It will be difficult to cut I suspect for that same reason, but the thought of all those seeds for next year will help!
Great to hear you don’t have a lack of bees. And you’re saving seeds. Makes growing veggies pretty much free
We have had hives for years but none this year. Yum your pumpkin sounds amazing! They are by far the most fun things to grow in the garden. You must be somewhere warm, our pumpkins are not ready to harvest till mid March generally.
I have a great spaghetti squash patch this year and the Atlantic giants are looking like they are pollinated Looking forward harvest time
I missed the great lumpy orange skinned punkins I grew in Blenheim, and so looked for seed. I only have the one successful fruit, but definitely will save the seed. And Auckland's sub tropical temps are good for backyard vegie gardens, so long as we can water, which is not guaranteed these days. I think this one would have got bigger if I had left it, but being on a fenceline between us and a public reserve, I was starting to get a bit wary of passing strangers, lol.
Suspicious old woman that I am...
If you have enough space, Kings Seeds sell seeds of a wonderful Italian pumpkin variety "Marina di Chioggia" . It has a fantastic flavour and the flesh is dry so it keeps well. We grew it when we had access to a paddock next door and I'm tempted to plant some next season next to the compost bins and let it run free.
Mine are growing in tyres placed on top of the compost bin site, on the basis that the soil underneath shoulf be full of good stuff. I also boosted the tyres with enriched potting mix, and the beans have certainly benefitted from that extra food.
I have put your seed recommendation on my watchlist Olive, though space could be an issue. Still, I may be able to solve that conundrum! It looks like a good punkin, nice and lumpy, lol, but not quite as gorgeous a colour as my baby...
(14-01-2022, 03:54 PM)Olive Wrote: [ -> ]If you have enough space, Kings Seeds sell seeds of a wonderful Italian pumpkin variety "Marina di Chioggia" . It has a fantastic flavour and the flesh is dry so it keeps well. We grew it when we had access to a paddock next door and I'm tempted to plant some next season next to the compost bins and let it run free.
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Oh yours is a fantastic colour. It has reminded me of another excellent variety, Bushfire, which is a fairly small bright orange-red pumpkin on a fairly small plant. It is a good size for a small household. I wasn't able to find seeds last year but will keep looking.
I tried bushfire, but had a terrible germination rate. They look fascinating though, and the perfect size not to share!
Just pulled up a good crop of red onions. Never done them before, and easy - nothing eats them except humans.
(17-01-2022, 06:48 PM)Zurdo Wrote: [ -> ]Just pulled up a good crop of red onions. Never done them before, and easy - nothing eats them except humans.
Homegrown onions are the best! We had a great harvest last season, this one was a complete fail!
Leave them in a sunny spot to cure/ harden off and they will store for months
The cucumber (actually I think it's a gherkin) has escaped and taken over the lawn. What lawn ? It's just dead brown dust, the green thing can do what it likes. My self set tomatoes are pumping out various red things, and soon I won't be able to keep up.
I usually chuck a whole bunch in a pot, boil them up, chuck in some pasta and herbs (and red onions), and it's the best pasta ever. But not every night. I used to dry them...I think we've still got the drier, updated the base to electronic.