pure luck
I’m feeling incredibly lucky, not to mention wealthy, today. Texas-blessed. First of all, it rained. A lot. For a couple of days. We’ve been seriously moisture-challenged for months, at the cattle-are-dying level. It rained and it rained and then it stopped and clear dry air blew in. Now it’s one of those perfect Hill-Country-spring Sunday afternoons that you’re probably tired of hearing about. But I have to mark each and every one, because, y’know, summer is coming.
Let’s not talk about that.
My backyard is filling up with food! How’s that for wealth? For breakfast I go outside and pick up some arugula and an egg or two, soon to be joined by fresh peas (the bacon crop unfortunately has failed). Now that all the trees have leafed out I realize that the very least sunny spot of our two new garden beds is exactly where I put the tomatoes, which is very sad, but we found a couple of volunteers in another part of the garden, and some basil popping up too, though we had forgotten to plant it, and the farm is saved!
dirty mind
Can you believe it’s time to start tomato seeds again? I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow this time. One of my more impolite friends hints that it’s extremely tedious to read about kitty litter buckets and blossom drop. He needs to go forth and plant his own, I say. Meanwhile, I’m going to repeat the upside-down experiment, plus T has built a big wood frame for us to try gardening lasagna-style in the backyard. This is a layered compost method that makes up for lack of dirt underneath.
We sit almost directly on limestone. It gets so hot that turf roots just fry in our two inches of dirt even if I water them more than is reasonable for a responsible gardener, environmentalist, or tightwad. And we’re into a designated “extraordinary drought” now, so it’s going to be ever more difficult to justify. We’ve decided to slice the backyard in half…the part you can see from the back door will remain lawn, but the rest I have quit watering. We’re putting the first 12′ x 4′ garden bed out there, and will add a new one each season we stay here. By the time the wood frames rot out, we’ll have lots of great dirt to rejuvenate the yard.
I’ve got to deal with the mud if it ever rains again. I think we’ll start out with straw on the bare parts, and the whole place will look like a barnyard. So be it. The chickens are very talented with nitrogen excretion, and all those sweepings and rakings will soon have the compost cooking like a Texas dashboard in July.
tomato update again and finally
I anticipate losing my tomatoes soon, so this is it. The verdict: upright tomatoes in containers did better than upside-down ones this fall, for vigor and yield, for me. On the other hand, if you’ve got a nice triangular frame, it’s much easier to cover the upside-down tomatoes without breaking branches. On the other other hand, with all those containers hanging well off the ground, covering doesn’t protect from frost nearly as well as insulating ground plants would.
At any rate, the San Marzanos have produced a very modest crop, none of which have time to ripen before a hard frost, probably–I’ll pick them green when I have to. The Sweeties started earlier but are just now really setting large numbers, and I doubt we’ll see any of them red either. I broke one large branch of the upright plants while trying to cover them last night, and discovered two other branches that had broken without my help. Given a heavier yield and longer season, the upside-down plants might have shown themselves ultimately more competitive by breaking less. I think I’ll repeat the whole experiment in the spring and see how they fare in the heat.
Most interesting to me, the two upside-down plants reoriented themselves a while back– seemingly overnight but about five days apart–such that one afternoon they were silly-looking things growing out of the bottom of buckets and then turning sharply upwards towards the sky, and the next morning they drooped gracefully downward. They were not weighed down heavily with fruit, and in fact the smaller plant turned first. No breakage or damage. I want to know how they do that.
But mostly I want to eat my tomatoes.
tomato update
We have fruit!
san marzano
sweeties
The whole upside-down gimmick seems, so far, just a gimmick. The two San Marzano plants are fairly equivalent, though the upside-down one looks silly:
…while the upside-down Sweetie has never caught up to the right-side-up one:
We’ve had quite a lot of blossom-drop from the Sweeties and all the plants are showing some yellowing leaves already.
The only advantage I can see so far to the upside-down plants is the watering: the bottom of the bucket stays moist longer than the top, which might keep the upside-down ones hydrated better in the heat. But I’m afraid in the real heat we’d just end up with buckets of boiled tomato roots. Yum.
learning to believe
Okay, so there’s some buyer’s remorse to the fore the last couple of days. I’m the one who announced on Friday that we needed to stop spending money, and then on Saturday bought a new machine.
A yummy…new…powerful….machine. I brought it home and about two hours later had this:
Pure de-clutter points for using up stash. And coverstitched to the hilt. I love it!
Meanwhile several people asked for updates on the upside-down tomatoes, so you’ll all have to suffer. The short answer is, the right-side-up plants are ahead so far. I’ve lost track of which are which, but we have two each Sugar Sweetie cherry tomato and San Marzano pole-type paste tomato. One of each upside-down, the other right-side-up.
The San Marzanos say 80 days on the seed packet and I probably should have started them about 3 weeks earlier. If we don’t have an early frost, we may be okay. What I believe to be the San Marzanos are both growing gung-ho, but I’d have to say the right-side-up plant looks better. The upside-down one is a close second, though. It’s bigger than it appears in this photo. They’re both looking strong and happy:
The Sweeties show more disparity. They’re 65 days and both are already showing a flower bracket, but the upside-down one lags behind in foliage. I don’t think I damaged it in transplanting, but I don’t know.
So far so good. What I love most is going outside and having all these green babies at nose level. I can talk to them all I want–and I do–and I can see what’s going on, and you can bet I’ll find those disgusting hornworms instanter. If they dare.
Actually I think we’re safe from them in October anyway. Check back for another update in a couple of weeks…
tomato experiment
A fresh new eyesore container garden in the backyard:
The frame, built by T., is lovely. My personal touch, the kitty litter buckets, not so much.
We’re experimenting with upside-down tomatoes. Since we’ve never tried any kind of tomato here during the fall season, we’ve got two upside-down and two right-side-up as controls. They’re extremely happy little plants just now. We’ve had fabulous weather for a week, almost like normal summertime up north.
We potted the upside-down ones first and hung them up; by the next morning the stems had redirected themselves upwards.
gravitropism in action
T. points out the roots may respond this way too, in reverse, packing a thin layer at the bottom of the bucket as they respond to geo- or gravitropism. The leaves themselves are also phototropic and by today have escaped the underneath-shade and are turning towards the sunlight.
We shall see. If we get any tomatoes at all, I expect the chickens will be leaping up there and pulling down stems.
We could have devised nice hanging hardware, but that would have involved buying more stuff. Minor declutter points for me, using the kitty litter buckets. Except maybe not, because I had only two buckets and had to get more via Freecycle. Then again, maybe I get even more credit for taking on somebody else’s junk. Except she gave me four, so I am back to two sitting in the garage…dang. The whole thing was a wash. But maybe I’ll get some tomatoes out of the deal.
