And since learning that our Harvests don't technically have to be from just Monday, the main spread below was actually picked yesterday. Because I sit on a throne of lies.
Tally ho!
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| left to right, top to bottom: Corbaci Peppers, Mitoyo Eggplant, Mary Robinson's German Bi-color Tomato, Black Vernissage Tomatoes, Blush Tomatoes, Ajvarski Peppers, PASS Pepper, Georgescu Pappers. |
In other news, this week's harvest is sponsored by: Spider Mites! Spider mites everywhere. But that's a story for another post. For now, here's the breakdown:
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| Like shootin eels in a barrel. |
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| ...and then there were none. |
I'm pulling the plants. Before this season, I'd only ever eaten eggplant at restaurants where they had chefs who knew what they were doing. So it's been a fun experience to grow and cook my own this year! But, alas, I'm just not that passionate about them: neither for veggie-hack nor culinary purposes. So tomorrow these spiney sponges will be cleared out, both to help get the spider mite population back under control, and to free up prime garden real estate.
While the child in me keeps screaming 'gotta catch 'em all!' in regards to growing as many varieties as possible, I've got to be more diligent about culling less inspiring plants and only keeping those that really excite me. We have enough tolerated baggage in our daily lives, nay? I must be careful not allow my garden to become a dusty museum of spring sown misadventures.
P.S. Any clever advice on how to cook those two extra pokey, rock hard, green ping-pong balls would much appreciated.
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| ...basically, unripe tomatoes. |
I got exactly one partially ripe fruit off Mary Robinson's German Bi-color Tomato plant this year. That's a mouthful. Both literally and linguistically. This is another variety that I have a lot to say about, and will be saving most of for the main review later this year. At the moment, Mary is engaged in all out war with the spider mites and is losing, badly. Lost, really. I'll be cutting her web covered mass down to about 8 inches, washing what's left with soapy water, and seeing if she's got a second wind left. She was never particularly vigorous. Still, the one not-even-completely-ripe fruit I did get was pretty good... so I'll give her a second shot.
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| we're not ripe either |
They were right.
About these tomatoes... these are... well... they're kinda... they're really bad tasting, actually. Quite mealy. Vague flavor.
HOWEVER, this plant can take a beating. I started one dinky seed out of a weird obligation complex. Germinated super quick. Almost mad, I left it in four inch pot forever because now I didn't know where to put it. Didn't care, kept growing. Finally, I gave up caring and planted it in a 5 gallon bucket. Happy as a clam, branches everywhere. Even in un-ammended native dirt (which is to say, sand) it hasn't so much as whimpered all season
It even held out the longest against the spider mites. This is one of only two tomato plants that won't be required to undergo the dramatic haircut treatment. So despite the fruit being super blah, I'm pretty excited to do a few crosses with "Vern" and one of his tastier neighbors.
And in case you were wondering, the tomatoes never actually turn black. They just get a little darker red, with burnt orange/dark green streaking.
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| Blush, with a Corbaci photobomb |
I disgust myself.
Though tasty, Blush will also be getting a sever haircut to deal with the mite issue, since mites also seem to find her delicious. Which is why the above are not the prettiest specimens.
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| With friends like these, who needs enemies. Dammit Corbaci, keep your noodle to yourself. |
I'm watching you Ajvarski... always watching.
They really do look like something out of Monsters, Inc. I just need some googly eyes to stick on them. I was really excited to try a ripe Ajvarksi pepper at the start of the season. And now... well, I'm still really excited about it SEEING AS I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN ONE. Tantrum.
As I've
mentioned previously, my garden had some serious issues early in the season with
blossom end rot. Even in things I didn't know could get blossom end rot, like watermelon. But while everyone else seems to
have grown up and gotten over it, Ajvarksi is still sniveling in a corner and
wetting his pants. Between that and the sunburning, the left pepper is
the closest I've gotten to ripe. And I hate green peppers.
In other news...
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| it's ripe! |
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| nnnce nnnce nnnce |
I dunno what techno-color rave these two went to last night, but they were certainly out past their bed time. Similar to Ajvarksi, I've been waiting for a taste of a ripe Georgescu pepper for far too long now. Last week I got a wee nibble on one the size of a bouncy ball. I've been watching these two sizeable gents for a while now, waiting for them to ripen.
They were fine yesterday... So I dunno what shenanigans they get up to last night, or in the hot afternoon before, but it must have a been a doozy. I'm kinda jealous, actually.
Though I was moving some metal objects around near the pepper bed. Perhaps I left one sitting at the perfect angle to the sun. Pre-cooked peppers, anyone?
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That's it for this week! If you haven't already, head over to Dave's and see what everyone else harvested this week. I mean, you don't want to hang out here all day, do you?
Happy Planting!
Red spider mite does savage the eggplant, doesn't it? And yes, I pull out things I don't like such as Astia squash, other types are just fine if only they would produce male flowers.
ReplyDeleteIt does! They must have solanaceae radar or something. Though frankly it's been flirting with anything else in the garden that's close by, not just the tomatoes and eggplant. Luckily it hasn't found the peppers yet. And after everyone gets chopped later today, let's hope it stays that way!
DeleteGood luck with the spider mites... My guess is that your plants are stressed, the pests always find the stressed plants. I see you are gardening in really sandy soil. That may be why you have so much BER, sandy soil just doesn't hold enough water and nutrients. Or if you are growing in pots they are equally difficult to keep adequately watered.
ReplyDeleteIt think you hit the nail on the head on both accounts. It's also likely that in amending the sandy beds with composted chicken manure, I may have introduced too high a dose of ammonia based nitrogen, which caused rapid vegetative growth but an inability of the plants to process the calcium fast enough.
DeleteJust keep the witty, wry attitude toward your successes and, well, less-successful successes, and you will keep us all entertained.
ReplyDeleteRight back at you!
DeleteYuck on the spider mites! They hit my greenhouse cukes every year and then I pull them up. Thanks for doing the hard work on the Black Vernissage for us all. I got a free seed packet too and was tempted to try them next year. I say sucky veggies need calling out - especially when you can grow one like Blush instead, which isn't real productive for me but ohhh sooo tasty!
ReplyDeleteMy post below was supposed to be my reply to you, here. I'm a blogger noob, bear with me XD
DeleteYou'd think that the lousy varieties of tomatoes would just go extinct like the dodo bird, given the hundreds of varieties available. There must be some diehard fans of that variety, still keeping the strain going, because. . . BER can also happen when the soil pH is wrong. Too alkaline or too acid and the calcium is not available as water soluble ions.
ReplyDeleteA good point on the soil! I have absolutely no excuse, but I've yet to send my soil in for a test. I have a small un-amended, un-planted section that I'm saving for just that, so I can get a baseline reading on what the native soil is like. For some reason, this simple task keeps getting pushed to the end of the to-do list.
DeleteIf you're looking for a tasty tomato, Black Vernissage definitely isn't it. It's not entirely without merit if you're using to breed new tomatoes, because as I mentioned it's very productive and very hardy. But since not many people are into casual tomato breeding, I can imagine that once Vern's mealy reputation got around, people no longer ordered that type. Which is why they're giving out freebies, because they're overstocked now.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I understand this from a business standpoint, I also think it's stupidly short sighted: send my a freebie of one of your best varieties, and I'll probably buy it every year! Send me a freebie of one of your worst, and I might begin to question the quality of your varieties, and may look elsewhere.
*gets down off soapbox*
Red Spider Mites... UURRGGHH!!! The slightest dry spell and there they are hanging out on the aubergines and cucumbers like they have the right to be there, and nothing much will shift them, well, apart from a flam thrower but that does seem a little extreme.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the BER you mention, have you tried home made comfrey feed once a week (as well as regular watering of course) as it is high in potassium, which helps the plant utilise calcium better? Just a thought
Uurrgghh is right! It's one thing to have cabbage loopers, or something large enough I can easily squash/pick off, but fighting a spider mite army is like fighting the wind -- wash them away, and before you've even rolled the hose up they're right back where they started, twice as strong. At this point, the flame thrower idea doesn't sound half bad...
DeleteI'll do a post on spider mites in the near future, as I've learned a lot about them during this experience that might help other gardeners. A lot of the information on the web is incorrect, at least concerning the ones I've been facing. One reason they got such a good foothold in my garden is because I followed information that turned out to be seriously misinformed. Ah well! That's how you learn.
A great suggestion -- I'll definitely look into it. Most of the plants that suffered BER earlier this season, especially during our heat waves in June, seem to have shaken it off now. Which leads me to believe it was mostly due to water stress. But if those Ajvarski peppers don't start shaping up, I'll definitely do more research on comfrey and other high potassium amendments.
Can't wait for your spider mites post. They mostly leave my tomatoes alone - washing occasionally seems to keep them at bay- but they totally decimated my beans this year. I had to replant them in containers at my apartment 5 miles away, which in Los Angeles is a completely different microclimate with no spider mites. ("completely").
DeleteI've been really bummed to hear all the bad press for the BV tomato. I have a very healthy specimen happily and healthily living next to some tomatoes with some terrible disease that my garden neighbor didn't want to pull out. I've been really impressed with how healthy the plant is.
Hi Denver! The spider mites post will probably be a few weeks off still, as I'm running a few experiments on the little buggers and I want to see which ones are/aren't effective before doing a full post on it. They really do seem to have a strange choice in plants. For me, they hit the eggplant first and hard, then tomatoes, then beans, then the squash (which doesn't even care), then the melons a tiny bit, then absolutely decimated the watermelon. They completely ignored the swiss chard, despite the fact that it was directly in between two of the species that were attacked. And not even a single one came close to the peppers, despite them being in the same family as tomatoes and eggplant. So strange.
DeleteAs for BV, I will absolutely agree that it is a hardly, healthy, and very productive plant. I did not treat mine well at all, and it has still outproduced everybody. I wonder if the taste is still in development as well, like maybe the variety isn't really stabilized yet and the taste can vary plant to plant, seed to seed. Just a theory. Because mine definitely isn't that great tasting, though it doesn't me from eating a few while working in the yard!