updates

It is May 30 and the thermometer reads 95 degrees. The sun is fully out and here's the status of my plants.

The Amateur's Dream tomato has 10 medium sizes tomatoes. It is by far the best tomato plant in my operation.

The Urbikany tomato has 4 medium sized tomatoes.

The Galina plants all have cherry tomatoes.

The strawberry plants all have strawberries.

Every tomato sucker I planted has rooted and all are doing quite well.

The weakest and smallest of my Black Russian tomatoes has been attacked (viciously) by spider mites and other nasties. I sprayed a hot wax pepper spray on it and that killed 99% of the attackers.

The flowers on one of my potato tubs died about 1.5 week ago.

And, by far, the best watering technique is the cloth wick system. In terms of simplicity, this technique beats all others. Today, the wick is still moist in spite of 80+ temps all week with full sun. The soil is moist but not soggy. The original wick pot dried out but that one has a very narrow cloth wick.

Of the self-watering containers, the 18 gallon totes are doing the best, followed by the 5 gallon buckets. The 4 gallon buckets are requiring water every day. In their defense, the 4 gallon buckets have the largest plants, loaded with fruit.

My onions and garlic seemed to have stopped growing.

My beans and peas are in desperate need of some kind watering solution. I am working on the D.R.I.P. system (Diminished Rate Irrigation Process).
Ok the name is supposed to be a joke but the method is as serious as a heart attack.

The peppers on the ground have refused to grow but the ones in the containers are doing ok.

Corn, squash, zuchini, melons, carrots, lettuce, sunflowers are all doing as expected.

Over and out.

P.S. It's HOT!!!!

I am feeling hot hot hot

It's been 80+ for the last few days and my new wick-watering experiment is a total success. I planted a couple of Marygolds in a pot and this time I put a much wider wick connected to a bigger water container -a plastic milk gallon jug. Not only has the wick stayed wet during the very hot, very sunny days, but the soil is moist throughout. Now, there is one itsy, bitsy issue with this method of watering and that is it's sheer ugliness. So, I don't imagine that it is going to take with the population at large but for growing vegetables such as squash, or maybe a cucumber plant, this method should work great.

My Amateur's Dream tomato plant continues to outperform all the others with the Urbikany coming a close second. The Amateur's Dream is loaded with tomatoes. The fruit is a medium sized, red tomato. I can't wait to taste it!


The first pepper plant to produce this year is my Mini-Bell. These are supposed to be miniature bell peppers. All my pepper plants decided to start growing this week. They were small for the longest time. Here's the first pepper of the season:


I love my volunteer plants this year. This is the first year I've had any volunteer vegetables.
First I saw what appears to be a cucurbitas of some kind. I grew Sugar Baby watermelon here last year so this could be a watermelon. I also grew cucumbers here so it could be a cucumber as well.

Then, all of a sudden, this tomato plant just appeared! I swear I did not see it 2 days ago. I grew Galina cherry tomatoes and Black Russian tomatoes here last year so it could be either of those.

I ate my first lettuce of the season. It was a Thumb Tom and it was delicious. A squirrel dug up all my second batch of radishes. I have a third batch doing well in a container so I am ok.
I planted my sweet corn in a spot that doesn't get full sun all day and they are leaning a bit. I will leave them be to see what happens.
My puppy chewed on my new rain barrel and spilled all my rain water. So now I have two barrels I have to fix. We are supposed to get rain tomorrow so hopefully I will refill them.

Over and out.