Love Apple

Our cold temperatures continue...

Because of the cold weather I have not put up my greenhouse yet. By now I would have already started my spring and summer seeds. I'll give it another week and see how things go. 

This year I will not be starting my own tomato seeds. I am lucky enough to live with in diving distance to Love Apple Farm and will be trying some new varieties that are known to grow well in my area. Owner Cynthia Sandberg is known in these parts as the "Tomato Lady". She grows over 100 heirloom tomato varieties each year and sells them March through June. I had the opportunity to hear Cynthia speak at a gardening bootcamp last year and she brought tomato seedling for all of us to take home. I picked the Anna Russian and it was just wonderful. You can read Cynthia's story here Cynthia Sandberg. She is truly inspiring.

When will you be starting your seeds?

What a Difference a Day Makes

Saturday was so cool and windy I didn't even want to go out into the garden but forced myself to get out there and do a little clean up. I started with the area in front of the man cave. This area was getting a little crazy...

Click on photos for a larger view

The strawberries in the window type planters were donated to a neighbor down the street who is farming their front yard. The sage and tarragon were transplanted into smaller pots. The trash can is my rain barrel which is now empty and can be stored away.

A quick sweep and a hose down and I was ready to redecorate.

That looks and feels much better now.

Now for the rest of the yard...

Sunday was a gorgeous day. Temperatures in the upper 70's and no wind. The photo below was taken Saturday when the beds were still covered with plastic to protect the summer crops from the wind and cool temps. 

Now that the weather is warming up it's time to get the outdoor living room set up.

I miss my sun shades! The new fence no longer has the 10 foot metal poles to support it so we are not sure the fence will be able to handle the pull of the wires and the weight of the shades. I will have to come up with a solution soon. 

Next up random photos taken this past week....

My very first cauliflower

Straight neck yellow squash.

Bush and vining summer squash.

Fox cherry tomatoes and zucchini.

The cucumbers in bed 2 are not doing very well this year.

View of beds 3 and 4.

Jujube cherry tomatoes.

Roma tomato.

Every garden needs flowers!

View from my living room.

View From the Roof and Other Random Photos

Sorry I have not been a very good blogger these last few months but I just seem to be very busy these days. Last weekend I took some photos of the garden. The always loved roof shots are up first...

Click on photos for a larger view

The next two photos are ground shots.

I don't know for sure because we have never really experienced a "real" Spring here in the California  Bay Area but if I had to guess this is the closest we have come. It's the end of May and we are still getting a little rain, cool temperatures and a lot of wind. This is just not the norm in these parts. My cool weather crops are loving it but my Summer crops are not doing so well. Had I known the cool weather was going to last so long I would have held off planting Summer crops. My cucumbers are producing fruit but the plants are small and weak. Not sure if they are going to recover. I have been feeding them with seaweed extract and fish emulsion in hopes it will give them a bit of a boost. I also wrapped the bed in plastic today to protect the cucumbers from the wind and to give them a little more warmth.

Cucumbers

 The tomatoes seem to be doing OK. The Fox Cherries have almost out grown their 5 foot trellis.

I'm getting fruit but they are not going to ripen until the weather warms up a bit more.

I had a nice harvest on May 22nd. 2 pounds of lettuce some carrots, spring onions, snow peas and dill.

Last Christmas sweet husband  bought me some new garden art...

As the sun was setting tonight we were blessed with a rainbow.

Tomatoes For Tough Conditions

Love Apple Farm sent out a newsletter listing out their
 Top 10 Coastal Tomatoes  
Love Apple Farm, 2317 Vine Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA  95065
www.LoveAppleFarms.com


Our Picks for Tough Conditions

You may love living where you can feel the salty sea air in your face. You may enjoy living in the cool shady glens of the redwoods. But I can guarantee you, your tomatoes do not.

Tomatoes love sun, sun, and more sun. But you all knew that. What you may not know, are our recommended picks for tough growing conditions like excess fog, cold wind, or less than 4 hours of direct sunshine. Prime example: a rooftop garden in San Francisco. Is there any tomato that will grow there? Yep, we've got an app for that. A love apple that is.


You want to focus on small-fruiting tomatoes: cherry types and others just a bit bigger. Don't despair, you can have a joyous, riotous, full-flavored, every-color-of-the-rainbow, tomato garden if you choose carefully. By the by, these varieties will do well anywhere, so if you've got plenty of sunlight, try them yourself.


Top 10 Coastal Tomatoes

Black Prince
Jaune Flamme
Matina
Japanese Oxheart
Black Plum
Brandysweet Plum
OSU Purple
Siletz
Gajo de Melon
White Cherry


Of course, you can pick up any of these, and more great coastal-type tomato varieties at our plant sale, going on through the end of June.

Love Apple Farm is selling tomato plants every day of the week at our new retail greenhouse located at Knox Garden Box 46 El Pueblo Road in Scotts Valley. Folks, this is the biggest tomato plant sale in all of California! We're open from 9 to 5 on the weekends and 10 to 6 on the weekdays. We replenish stock every week, so we'll always have close to 100 different varieties in stock. We'll have knowledgeable tomato staffers to answer questions, and lots of hand-outs and information on battling the Tomato Russet Mite, staking, fertilizing, pruning, harvesting, and more!


I'll try and get a garden post done this weekend.

Sunday in the Garden Part 1 (All About Tomatoes)

Finally a day without rain and I took full advantage of it! I was out in the garden by 9am and didn't come back in until 3:30pm... well I did stop for lunch. On top of the to do list was getting the tomatoes potted up. I really let them go way too long. I hope I didn't stunt their growth by waiting so long. Time will tell.

As I was transplanting the tomatoes for the Haven garden I was having a debate with myself if I should go ahead and plant out my tomatoes. The weather is looking good for the next ten days and I think at this point it should continue to get better. I ended up compromising with myself and I planted 2 out of the four but made sure they would be well protected. I'll tell you the rest through photos.

Click on photos for a larger view.

Bed 1 will be the home of two Fox Cherry Red Tomatoes as well as two Black Beauty (Bush) Zucchini

This area gets sun most of the day but the evenings are still a bit cool. So I pulled out my 4x4 pop-up greenhouse. I had almost forgotten about this little gem.

4x4 pop-up greenhouse. Both sides open up or you can just open a netted window.

It's going to be a tight fit. I want to be able to to plant these as far back as possible so I can fit the two zucchinis in the bed as well.  

Before I show you how the tomatoes look in the greenhouse let me give you a lesson on what not to do with tomatoes and what to do.

Do not let your tomatoes (or any transplants) get root-bound. This plant should have been potted up or planted in the garden at least two weeks ago.

Before planting I gently pulled the roots apart.

When planting tomatoes you can plant them deeper then the root ball. The plant will push out more roots along the stem.  In this case I'm going to plant this one at least 4 inches deeper than the top of the root ball. Before doing this I must trim off the lower leaves.

If you click on this photo you will see where I made my cuts. At this point I also remove all the "suckers" see circled area for an example. Only remove suckers on indeterminate tomato plants.

Click on the photo for a larger view. Here you can see how deep I planted this plant and where I removed the leaves.

Once this tomato was planted I could see that one set of leaves were touching the ground. I removed these as well to keep them from getting eaten and/or diseased.

Plants are in and are still a bit tall for the space so I opened the back door and clamped it to the trellis. The tomatoes were watered with a solution of rain water with seaweed extract and fish emulsion.  

Since this bed is now a mini greenhouse I planted two Black Beauty seeds to see if I could direct sow them. I also planted two in the greenhouse on the heat mat just in case. 

The other two tomatoes, one Jujube Cherry and one Roma were potted up and placed in the mini greenhouse until I can plant them into their beds in the next two weeks.

All tucked in for the night.

The tomatoes for the Haven garden are ready to be planted.

Catching Up

Last Saturday I continued working on my never ending water project. I now have soaker hoses in beds 3 and 4. Not that I need them with all the rain we have been having this week. But there will be a time in the near future that I will be happy I took the time to get the yard "hooked up". This will save me lots of time this summer and I will not need to rely on family to come over to water when I'm on vacation. My son was really happy to see me put the water lines in... as he said to me " it took me 45 mins to an hour to water your garden every other day when you were away". Ha ha! Tell me about it!

I still have more to do to get everything in the yard "hooked up". Bed 2 needs soaker hoses added to it. It currently had over head sprinklers. Beds 1, 5 and 6 still need water lines as well as all the potted plants. The photos below are of bed 4 with the soaker hoses.

Click on photos for a larger view

Square foot garden bed with water lines

The two tools I could not live without during this project...

Hose hole punches

If you are thinking about adding water lines to your beds I was doing some research on line and came across this video from the Garden Girl Patty Moreno on how to install a drip irrigation system. Which I found helpful even though I'm working with an existing sprinkler system.

On Thursday (March 17th) I about scared myself to death. I was working from home and about 9:00am the sun was shining on the patio so I thought I would take the tomato and cucumber seedlings out of the greenhouse and give them a little morning sun. So out they came and I went back to work. I walked by the window about 10:00am and looked at the cucumbers and saw this....

 Oh no! what have I done! I've killed all my cucumber starts! So what was it.... was it too much sun? No it was cool out... that's it... it was too cold and a bit too windy... I moved the cucumbers back into the greenhouse and gave them some water. After about an hour they came back. Boy was I lucky!

The tomatoes had no problems with the cool air and wind. In the photo below you can see some blooms on this cherry tomato.

 I really should pot these up one more time before they go out into the garden.

Tomato starts

Even though the weather has been cool the bok choy and pak choy is already starting to bolt. I will need to pull them as soon as it stops raining long enough for me to get out into the garden.

The carrots that I started in the greenhouse are doing so well. Who said you can't start carrot seeds indoors and transplant them out into the garden?

The sweet and hot peppers are doing much better than I thought they would in this cool weather. They have been off the heat mats for about three weeks now.

The raspberries seemed to have sprouted overnight.

And the nectarine is in full bloom.

The first apple leaf...

And finally the sweet potatoes. They are rooting very well. I updated my Sweet Potato post with some new photos. Scroll to the bottom of the post for the update.

As I finish up this post the winds are started to pickup and the rain is coming down. Be sure to check out my post on the hail storm we had this morning. Here is the link if you missed it.... Hail post

That's it for now. Happy First day of Spring!