B424DF20 B5A5 4533 BB96 3388BDB7045F This day five years ago

This day five years ago

Five years ago I grew my own tomatoes from seeds and grew a couple of unusual heirlooms that I got from C&T. I remember the persimmon and pineapple tomatoes were particularly good. The tomato plants were dying by time I put this picture up. I think this is all that I got that year. I can’t remember if this was the year that we sprayed 2-4d around and think we got the overspray on the tomatoes or not.

Here is what I picked today:

The green tomatoes are some that had fallen off. The big ones are all Celebrity. The paste are Roma. Turns out what I thought was black cherry is Cherry Sprinkles, a hybrid. It tastes super good!,
I worked so hard on the blackberries 5 years ago. Since we just let them grow wild they are doing much better for us.

To my dismay, this happened to my first ripe pink Brandywine:

I think this is from the groundhog living under the shed

We are using this motion-activated sprinkler monster to keep the deer out of the garden. My camera caught it on film in the yard the other day, but it didn’t come in the garden. It better stay away!

Jared put in the gravel I’ve been begging for!!! Now the hardscaping of my garden is complete!!!

Look at that gorgeous pathway!

Check out the how the bean trellis has filled in:

I pulled one garden of eden bean already. The first of the Roma 2 beans will be ready for pulling later this week. The Lima beans have pods but the beans need to fill in. The scarlet runner beans are about 5 feet tall now, no blooms yet.

We had some pretty big wind storms this week that blew over two of the tomatillo plants. I bought two more tomato cages to hold up the plants. It was full scale abuse. The tomato cages are the right size but it was super difficult to squeeze them over the plants. I broke off several branches and bent and twisted them in 100 different ways. They looked terrible when I finished.

But it turns out that tomatillos are TOUGH. The plants are looking great, and moved them a little closer to the main part of the bed so i can water them more easily. I bent the tomato cages to pin the plants to the trellis. I’m hoping that will keep them from blowing over if it gets stormy again.

Here are some more pictures. This is after I picked the tomatoes, so the ones you see are ones I’m going to let get a little riper before I pick them:

I have so enjoyed the garden this year. So therapeutic!

My friend, Del, from Church had me over to see his garden and gave me some of his harvest. Sam Marzano, OSU blue, and sun gold (I think), plus shishito peppers. The orange cherry tomatoes are amazing! I will grow them next year. They taste so good!

Posted by Jenny Smith

I'm Jenny Smith. I blog about life on the 300+ acres of rolling farmland in Northern Virginia where I live. I like tomatoes, all things Star Trek, watercolor, and reading. I spend most days in the garden fighting deer and groundhogs while trying to find my life's meaning. I'm trying to be like Jesus -- emphasis on the trying.