Photo by Rick Gush
I was a picayune late bugger off my tomatoes in the ground this year .
at long last ! I put the first Lycopersicon esculentum plants in the ground yesterday . By my calculations I ’m about a calendar month behind my usual planting agenda . It ’s been a really rainy belated winter and spring , and the ground just did n’t ever have a chance to dry out to the point that it could be worked .
It ’s usually my finish to have the firsttomatoesin the earth on Valentine ’s Day . Of of course , when I engraft so early I need to protect the picayune plant from both cold and rainfall damage , so I have a whole set of cloches to put over the vernal plants . I also have a few 1 - Imperial gallon - size shabu jugs with the bottoms reduce out that make superb cloche , but most of my short glasshouse are cut from formative jugs . They work just as well but just are n’t as coolheaded as the glass jugs . Because I ’ve been dull to institute , I have n’t get behind out the cloche — they ’re sitting in a mountain in my storage area .
My recent planting scratch line probably means I ’ll spray less of the copper fungicide this year , and that ’s fine with me . A mickle of the organic farmers in Italy conceive spray with the Bordeaux mixture is OK , but I ’ve never been too crazy about using the stuff because I know it ’s a poison . When it ’s cold and soused , copper color is the only style I ’ve found to get the young tomato through into the hot weather without developing fungus trouble .
The Lycopersicon esculentum I planted yesterday aredatterini , which are the large , oblong cherry types . They are call up datterini because their shape resembles a giving , fat date . They will be the primary tomato variety we plant this yr . We ’ll grow a fewcuore di bue(beef heart tomatoes ) and a few of the yellowish Pyrus communis variety because that ’s the sentimental favorite I remember growing when I was 6 year honest-to-goodness .
I was a little late getting my tomatoes in the ground this year.
This year , I ’m building more cucumber racks to support more cucumber increment .
In other study yesterday , I construct the rack on which we ’ll grow the cucumber . We call on into more avidcucumberfans a few years ago when my wife figured out we could make cold cucumber vine soup . She add a mo of really gentle cheese or some yoghurt and then chops it in the blender along with the cuke . Boy , is that good on a red-hot summer day ! I used to just eat up cucumbers as a salad ingredient , so we really did n’t ask bushels full of cucumbers . But now that we and our relatives have rise this taste for cucumber soup , our cucumber desirability power has skyrocketed and I demand to plant a whole lot .
I call up the cucumber fruits form good when they can hang easily , so I ’ve been build rack out of river bamboo in such a mode that the cucumbers plant on the terrace above hang out over the terrace below from where the fruits can be easily pick up and picked . We ’ll grow both long , green cucumber varieties and the small , round Citrus limon cucumbers . Lemon cucumber vine are a bit seraphic , and there ’s no bitter taste in the rind , so I can rust them whole without peeling when I need a quick snack in the garden .
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