Fruits of labor

Lovely French Breakfast radishes & sungold cherry tomatoes

Lots of cracks after heavy rains.

Nice and bushy now :)

Purple spotted leaves have appeared on all the plants.

Some weird disease that afflicts a couple of my plants every year...

As you can see, the tomatoes I'm growing this year (Red and Green Zebra heirloom tomatoes) are very susceptible to cracks and scarring - nearly every single tomato I've picked is cracked. It's been raining a lot which doesn't help. 

Honestly though I don't care because they taste so damn good. Like a million times better than those hard Publix tomatoes that are "ripened" with gas and taste pretty bland. These are juicy and meaty and sweet. 

Since I've been harvesting roughly 10 tomatoes every few days, and we can't keep up with eating them at that rate, I simply cut around the cracks and scars to prevent mold from growing and store them in a glass container in the fridge. Whatever is not eaten within 1 weeks time I'll turn into a sauce and freeze.

Also, after lots of delaying, I finally purchased a pressure sprayer. Before I was using those horrible spray bottles from home depot at $3 a piece. One broke after using it twice. And trust me when I say your hand will hurt after spraying 10 plants with it. I literally stopped spraying my plants since the spray bottles were such a pain in the ass.

I used the pressure sprayer for the first time today and it was AWESOME. Finally sprayed the plants with an organic copper fungicide and next time the plants are overrun with caterpillars I've got BT on hand.

First cantaloupe!

So I was making my usual rounds, watering the plants, pollinating them (with an electronic toothbrush :) and when I got to the cantaloupe plant, I noticed it was gone; obviously it had fallen someplace. I did support it with a stocking but apparently I didn't do a very good job of that. I found it in the dirt several feet away being eaten by snails. They didn't do any real damage, they just ate a bit of the outer skin. It actually tasted good! It's about half the size of a cantaloupe you'd find in the store, but still exciting nonetheless. Especially considering that I never planted it but it sprouted on its own.

New season, new beginning

I have just started planting seeds for the start of the new gardening season here in Miami. The tomato plants that are currently growing were all started from a few tomatoes that I left rotting in the containers and tons sprouted. I separated them into cups and then put them in containers. 

Most of them are fairing well so far. This season seems to be the attack of worms and caterpillars - fruitworms, tomato hornworms, etc. I check the underside of the leaves often for the eggs to prevent the damage before it even begins.

This season I'll be growing: Tomatoes, Broccoli, Lacinato kale (aka dinosaur kale), Bell peppers, Radishes, Spinach and possibly Beets.

Newly planted seeds, mostly in Styrofoam cups. 

(tomatoes, broccoli, kale, pepper and marigold seeds).

Tomato plant in the front, weed plant in the back container which I need to uproot...

Compost bin.

Tomato plants sprung to life after fertilizing with Miracle-Gro.

Basil plant. Will let it go to seed as the bees love the flowers.

Volunteer sungold plant, diseased, but still producing.

Volunteer cantaloupe plant!

Tomato plant with companion mint plant.

Bell pepper and tomato.

Thyme.

Mint.

Oregano.

Started a mango plant from seed :)

Yes, just weeds. But my plan is to cover with strips of cardboard, paper, etc. then a layer of good soil. Hoping this method of adding organic matter that will break down over time will improve the native soil and evict the nematodes! Will plant broccoli, kale, spinach and radishes in the ground and see how it fairs.

Future home of vegetable plants!

A Productive Tomato Season

The cherry tomato plants have been incredibly productive so far, with hundreds harvested over the past few weeks. I was even able to give away quite a few containers. I plan on making a roasted red pepper and tomato soup with these tomatoes:

The two tomato plants growing out of the compost bin are doing well so far, it has started to set fruit which what look like plum tomatoes. 

These three cherry tomato plants (Sungold & Black Cherry) have been hugely productive. I've been getting a large amount just from these 3 plants alone. Each one probably yields around 200 tomatoes. They look like they won't last much longer which is fine since I have new seedlings ready to go in their place.

Heirloom tomato on the left, Sungold on the right. They're doing a lot better since I placed them in direct sunlight.

The dill plant on the left finally started growing well, while the one on the right is looking sad, with a red, purplish hue. Not sure what's causing it.

Arugula is doing well. Growing lettuce is great since it keeps growing back after cutting it. 

Bell pepper plants. They had a really bad infestation of aphids. The ants that made these containers their home were non-stop farming black aphids. No amount of blasting water got rid of them. The leaves started turning black so I tore off almost all the leaves and put a large amount of cornmeal and cinnamon to repel the ants. So far it seems to be working.

Lettuce going to seed.

Big beef - looking really good. Can't wait till these ripen.

Cherry tomato plants have gotten completely out of hand. They've toppled over several times so I put large wooden stakes to support the cages. The containers as you can see are completely falling apart and cracking from the sun so once these plants die I'm going to replace them with 5 gallon buckets since they are comprised of a much thicker and more durable plastic.

Heirloom tomato plant not doing good; the fruits are rotting as they ripen. Strangely they are rotting on the top, not bottom of the tomato so I don't think it's blossom end rot.

A leggy tomato plant (gets only directional sun), started from a cutting.

The basil seeds I collected from the original plant are sloowwwlly starting to grow.

The cilantro, above, and parsley, below, are not too happy in these small containers.

Tomato seedlings.

Three heads of broccoli harvested this week.

Started saving my own seeds for the first time. Collected sungold so far and now black cherry. Glad not to have to spend more money on buying seeds.