First frost watch!

Our kitchen currently looks like a jungle, and all the remaining plants outside are snuggled against the house!

Lemon tree, lime tree, calamondin orange tree, dwarf pomegranate, spearmint, orange mint/chocolate mint, lemon balm, serrano pepper, oregano, parsley, small container of basil, ginger (new, from grocery store ginger), rosemary (from cutting earlier in the summer), and some petunias (from cuttings). All safe and sound inside the door.

Pineapple sage, cherry tomato/petunia/parsley/Thai basil, small container of Thai basil, orange mint/peppermint, cabbage, Better Boy tomato/petunia/Italian basil/snap peas are all snuggled up against the house. Since the pineapple sage and Thai basil are already flowering, I decided to leave them outside. Mint is a little hardier, so I didn't bring it all inside. Cabbage likes to be cold. The big tomato pots are just too big! Hopefully the basil and tomato survives!

Tonight's frost is only supposed to hit "areas that tend to frost before other neighboring areas," whatever that means. But later in the week, we're expecting a real frost. I think the citrus trees are in for good, but hopefully I can give everything else a few more weeks outside!

End of summer garden update

Despite attacks now by early blight (view here) and TWO types of caterpillars (hornworms and pinworms), my tomato plants still haven't kicked the bucket. The only thing that didn't make it from the beginning of summer was my rosemary plant (still have no clue what happened to it), and I've accumulated a handful of additional plants too. Here's what I have!

Dinner tonight! (Pesto - recipe here)

Italian Basil (after the pesto hair cut), some petunia cuttings on the side, and flowering Thai basil. I couldn't keep up with all the Thai basil, there's just sooooo much, so I decided to let the small pot flower. They're pretty, and I'll try to collect the seeds.

Cherry tomatoes and petunias (Thai basil in the back)

Stay away from my tomatoes, you obnoxious birds!

My makeshift bird shield to ripen tomatoes on the plant instead of picking early

As if it weren't bad enough that my tomatoes are suffering from early blight, all the ripe ones have been sampled by the local birds. I don't want to pick them early. They taste so much better when they're ripened fully on the vine!

The few tomatoes (or tomato halves) we did get to eat have been delicious. I'm no stranger to fresh summer tomatoes, but I honestly don't remember anything better. The one shown below was growing on a broken stem that I had splinted together. I cut off the entire piece of the vine as soon as the tomato started ripening, and I placed it in a vase of water until it was ripe. So it managed to avoid bird damage.

Here's to hoping my bird shield (a plastic fruit container like berries usually come in) keeps the birds away without trapping moisture/heat or blocking sun and that my tomato plant recovers enough from early blight to produce more deliciousness. Now I just need to buy some more berries or pre-cut fruit because I only had one container!

Battling early blight (tomatoes)

Sad tomato plant. All its bottom leaves succumbed to
the early blight disease (leaf spot).

I was so excited with the progress of my tomatoes. Really, they were green, bushy, and producing lots of new tomatoes. After my vacation, some of the bottom leaves looked a little worse for wear... they had gotten a little too wet. I trimmed off all the bottom leaves and laughed at my top heavy plant.

But then, bam, the problems started spreading up the plant. A little (a lot) internet research led me to a diagnosis as well as treatment options. My tomatoes have early blight. I probably did a lot of things wrong that led to disease susceptibility: mainly, I encouraged my tomatoes to get bushy and grow upward in the confines of their cage, allowing all the leaves to touch. I also spent way too much time touching the leaves. It rained for about 5 days straight, and it was during this time that I trimmed the bottom leaves and inspected the top ones without washing my hands.

Below, I'll describe what I've learned about early tomato blight, its prevention, its treatment, and my own experimental prevention/treatment ideas.

What is early blight?

A new garden!

I'm back! After a year's blogging hiatus, I've returned with a newly minted PhD, a new address, a new wedding band, a new garden, a bunch of new kitchen gadgets, and lots of new domestic pursuits.

2013 Patio Garden | Bobbins of Basil

I have a TON of wedding stuff to post, but I'm waiting on the final versions of my photographer's pictures because they are a far superior showcase of my wedding creativity. Coming soon: bridesmaid dresses, centerpieces, "guest book," invitations, save the dates, a tutorial on dyeing flowers, homemade jewelry, bridesmaid gifts, and a rehearsal dress.


For now, though, I'd like to show off my new patio garden.

I partially moved to the new place right before Memorial Day, and we bought some small plants at Walmart. After the wedding, my lemon and lime trees arrived along with my mystery plant I'd been keeping at lab. We also added a parsley plant recently (we didn't get one with the initial batch).

Fire escape tomatoes

My fire escape has been very generous to me recently! I have more mint than I know what to do with, plenty of basil and parsley, a pepper plant with two green peppers, some celery I rooted, and a HUGE tomato plant that has been giving me a bunch of tomatoes recently! The plant itself doesn't look all that great, but I think that's because it put so much energy into its fruit. I can't complain, though!

Just as the first one was turning red

My first little harvest

So many more!

My poor, poor little tomatoes

I thought it was about time for a garden update. I'm moving in a few weeks, and my new apartment doesn't have a porch like this one, so my garden will have to be much smaller and much more indoors. However, I really can't live without tomatoes, so I planted some cherry tomatoes and roma tomatoes to grow in pots on the fire escape of my new apartment. I had posted a few pictures of these tomatoes when they were babies, but then they got really big really fast! Like a good four inches tall with lots of leaves. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of this stage in their lives... They were on my windowsill when one day, it got really windy! 


My poor tomatoes got blown around quite a bit, and they never recovered:

Dead

One lone tomato remains
(I had just thinned out this pot, too,
since there were like eight)

My cinnamon basil seedlings survived the storm, though (they were on a table next to the window, not on the windowsill):