~ Blog ~
It’s Time to Bring your Tomato Plant Indoors
I successfully grew cherry tomatoes in a south facing apartment window (the same plant) for five years running. I have no idea how long it may have lasted, as I let it die when it was time to move. It was planted in a long narrow planter box, so it had plenty of room for roots. Once I learned how to control the growth and watering I had almost constant tomatoes.
The key was to keep the soil evenly damp. I achieved this with a string that fed water into the pot from a quart jar. If the soil began to look dry, I added water. Forced air heat is not easy on plants in the winter time. Another key was spraying the plants daily with a misting spray bottle. Without this step, the blooms won’t pollinate and produce fruit.
Then there is the height and fullness of the plant. The goal isn’t to produce luxurious leaves, but luxurious tomatoes. For this, beauty might need to be sacrificed. I found that my plants produced the most tomatoes when they were kept quite short – 1 to 1-1/2 feet high. Initially, I had leaves to the ceiling, and no tomatoes at all. I kept trimming them back, worried all the while that I was going to kill them, but they put out new leaves closer to the base. You may want to stake the plant if the tomatoes are so abundant that the weight may break the branches.
Use standard potting soil, as you don’t want a heavy soil for anything in a pot. I’m not a fan of fertilizers, however. I only use fertilizer if a plant shows signs of stress and the symptoms indicate that might be the problem. I do believe that I had to resort to fertilizer in the last couple of years of the 5-year-tomato’s life, if memory serves me.
This year, I have a young volunteer tomato plant in my garden, and the same plastic planter box a few feet away. Now that our cat has gone to kitty heaven and the window sill is empty, I think I’ll go out and start my next indoor tomato experiment. I’m not sure about transplanting an existing plant. The tomato plant I wrote about here was purchased in the spring as a starter plant.
Tomatoes are hardy things – the good news is that you’re bound to succeed. The biggest danger is over-watering, causing the fruit to split open. A little experimenting, and you’ll be a pro.
Need to keep track of your gardening efforts? That’s why I designed the garden journals. Sales of the garden journals and student planners help fund our Giving Garden food pantry garden and give me the freedom to volunteer my own efforts and to help our nonprofit volunteers meet the needs of hundreds of families each month. I hope you’ll check them out for yourself or for a gardener or student you know.
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Better than Mulch!
Why apply new mulch every year to fight weeds when you can plant something like the lovely Chocolate Bugle Weed (Ajuga reptans) in your beds which looks like mulch from a short distance, and like an adorable little plant close up? There are so many ground covers which prevent weeds better than mulch. Bugle Weed, of which there are many varieties to choose from, stays green (or bronze) year around, and puts up short sprays of purple flowers in late spring. It allows perennials to emerge, and yet suppresses weeds. What could be better? If you worry that the soil will lack enrichment without a new layer of mulch every year, sprinkle some compost and shake it down through the leaves.
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Tiger Lily Tips – The Danger of Tiger Lilies
Did you know that it’s dangerous to plant Day Lilies in with Tiger Lilies – or more succinctly – to allow those wild Tiger Lilies to seed themselves among your tame and cultivated Day Lilies?
It’s not that they have an evil influence, or that they will breed with their higher-class cousins. No, it’s a simple but deadly disease called Botrytis Blight or Botrytis elliptica. While the disease attacks both wild and cultivated lilies, it rarely kills Tiger Lilies, whereas the results are much deadlier for cultivated Day Lilies.
For that reason, it is advised to grow Tiger Lilies in beds of their own, as far from Day Lilies as possible. Botrytis Blight is prolific in damp conditions, which explains why you see large swaths of Tiger Lilies growing on hillsides, where the soil dries quickly after rains.
If you see yellowing and brown-spotted leaves on any of your lilies, remove those leaves. If they continue or return, dig up the plant to determine if the root bulb is rotted. If it is, dig up not just every part of the plant, but the soil surrounding it. The disease lives in the leaves, contaminates the ground, and releases air-born spores the following spring. The sooner any diseased leaves are destroyed, the better your success with preventing loss.
Are Tiger Lilies worth it? Oh, yes. That’s my hillside you see, in front of my house. It’s a very steep hillside, much too dangerous to mow. My solution is to let it overgrow with groundcover and interplanted with Tiger Lilies, which are prolific propagators. Not only is my hillside no longer eroding, but it looks great all year long. The only downside is that it’s a bit too steep to easily remove the spent lilies, or the dried flower stalks. But, what a spectacular show in the middle of July, when few other flowers are blooming!
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Symbiosis ~
Ants on Peonies: Did you know that Peony flowers can’t open without ants to eat the sugar off the buds? It’s called symbiosis. In the same way, we can’t live without each other, although in the case of people, it’s not our extra sweetness that needs to be removed. Peonies exist to remind us of what sweetness looks like. I want to be a big, flamboyant flower blossom, too. Don’t you?
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Food Garden Journal Coming Soon
I’m working on the cover now and the inside pages are ready to be compiled.
I hope that when you see the finished book, you’ll think that the box label pictured here should be stamped on the box that arrives at your front door!
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Watermelon Carving ~ Just in Time for Summer Fun
Here’s a fun site I discovered today – who better to show us how to carve watermelons in a multitude of ways than watermelon growers? You could say they’ve carved a niche for themselves.
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See The Garden Journal at the Philadelphia Flower Show!
Yes, it’s true. The Garden Journal, Planner & Log Book will be carried in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Societies on-site store.
Thank you to the Philadelphia Flower Show for the tweet and the compliment. I’m honored to be included in this proud tradition.
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7 Reasons to Start Your Garden in January
It may seem like a very long time before you’ll see green again, but that doesn’t mean you have to give in to the mid-winter blues. Mid-winter is actually the best time to do many garden-related activities. Here are just 7 reasons to get a jump start on the 2016 garden season now, rather than waiting for the first signs of spring:
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Insects are hibernating
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No bees, no bites, no annoying nuisances to deal with. Now is the time to wander your property, look for and remedy situations that promote unwanted insect habitats. Certainly not all unwanted insects can be mitigated during winter, but some can. Many insects survive through the winter under the cover of fallen leaves, or in the first inch or so of soil under groundcovers. Keeping the ground clear of the warm blanket of leaves can kill off hundreds of earwigs and other insects that do damage all year long.
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Plants are dead or dormant
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Now is the time for your mid-winter clean up. Most of the leaves have fallen, even though we all know that a few continue to fall throughout the winter. With the majority gone, it becomes easy to see what remains of anything still green. Any sneaky little trees or shrubs trying to grow up in the borders? It’s much easier to dig them out root and all now than in the spring when they’ve grown over winter.
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Hardscaping lines are clear
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Looking at your landscaping while the plants are dormant gives a whole new perspective. What you see in the dead of winter are the bare bones, the skeleton, of your property’s landscaping. Hardscaping refers to the man-made elements of a landscape. In the Monet exuberance of summer, the plants are the thing, stealing the show. In the winter, all that is left are the evergreens, bare deciduous trees, shrubs and a few brown remains of perennials. Now is the time to view the lines of sight from different perspectives in the yard and from the house. Now it’s easy to examine the condition and appeal of the walls, sidewalks, patios, edging and seating options.
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Animal tracks are easy to track in the snow
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Another excuse to get outside! There is nothing more beautiful than the tracks of birds and animals in pristine snow. A fresh snowfall is a good time to find breaks in deer fencing and holes where destructive animals might be burrowing; a way to be proactive with repairs before the planting season begins.
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Seed catalogs and hot beverages require an easy chair
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Every gardener knows the guilty pleasure of browsing seed catalogs, whether online of off, while snuggling with a blankie and a hot beverage in the dead of winter while the winds howl outside. The feeling of laziness pays off in the long run with proper planning for the coming season. There is time to logically think through purchases so that your budget isn’t stretched past its limits. (Who hasn’t succumbed to temptation at the garden center with purchases that had no connection with the original reason for the trip?)
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It’s not too late to protect plants from heavy snows
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Most heavy snows come later in the winter, so if you haven’t protected those tender plants, it’s hopefully not too late. Mulching, wrapping with burlap and staking with twine all are easier without fighting the foliage of summer or fall. If the temperatures are near freezing, be gentle to avoid breaking branches.
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Planning requires planning
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It’s one thing to make a list; it’s another to make a list based on an overall plan with goals and objectives. Most gardeners start as I did, with a shopping list of much-loved plants, only vaguely aware of the needs of the plants, or the suitability of the plants to the site.
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After years of failures, it became apparent that education and tracking were in order. What began as a homemade logbook to record my warranteed purchases and bedding placement of plants soon became a very fat expandable file folder stuffed with plant tags, seed packets, and flower bed folders with garden plots drawn out on graph paper.
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Over the years my record-keeping evolved into finely tuned logs that kept me on track. Below is information from those logs and records, and these were included when I turned all these logs, lists, and folders into a journal that any gardener can use:
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List of suppliers
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List of purchases
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Weather log
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Information for each individual plant
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Logs to track every aspect of each kind of plant from starting seeds to harvest
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Plans for pruning for all the various plants
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Seasonal and yearly plans
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Log for soil amendments
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Pest and disease treatment log
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Formulas and recipes for treatments
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Cultivation and propagation log
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Log of bloom and harvest times to plan sequence of bloom time for flower beds, and to plan harvest workload
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The book, The Garden Journal, Planner & Log Book, also includes handy guidelines for many of the logs, a zone map, and conversion charts and tables specific to gardening.
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Even in this day of online information and apps, a paper journal and log sheets are a must. I can look up a plant on my phone while standing in the garden to see why it’s looking so poorly, or find an insect to determine if it’s a good bug or a bad bug. I’ve played around with designing garden plots on various apps and online (most are for veggies.)
But nothing replaces a written record that encompasses all the variables of my garden. Bloom times and harvest times are different not just for different planting zones, but within a half mile. What works for my neighbor doesn’t work for me. Soil ratios can change within feet. The same flower could be planted in twelve locations in one yard and perform differently in each location. No app can handle that level of information, and no technology is long-lasting. Think of how many phones and computers you’ve been through already, and you know that you need something more permanent to track your garden.
That’s why when I designed The Garden Journal, Planner & Log Book, I also planned the cover and the artwork on the logs themselves to be a delight to the eye as well as practical. A good garden journal needs to be able to go from coffee table to garden and back, because you never know when you might want to thaw out with that warm beverage by the fire, dreaming of summer to come.
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Chicken Tunnels
Unpaid Migrant workers, or the best weeders money can buy?
For the cost of the wire and a little wood to make the tunnels, you can afford to sit back in the shade with a glass of tea and watch your garden being weeded and tilled. How much more fun would that be than sweating in the hot sun? Seriously. Watch the video in this clip, and decide for yourself.
Keep in mind, though, that this works beside the plants. Those chickens will kill every insect, worm and green thing within their reach, all while providing fresh manure. Notice that the end result is bare, tilled earth. Not sure how many earthworms survive? Is there a study on that?
To see the article and video, click on Chicken Tunnels
Garden Kitch with Joy Kieffer 