Our favorite tomato plant, cherry, first planted in March, producing fruit all the way until January, surprised me today.
As I’ve been preparing the in ground beds for the spring, I decided to finally let go of this plant, as it has been diminishing, I decided to pull of the roots to and see if I could learn anything. I did.
I recognized the bulbs on the roots as Root-knot Nematodes as I have seen a couple of videos about them from Jacques. Apparently a tomato plant can still thrive with this infection, but it generally decrease yield. The bigger problem seems to be that the nematodes stay in the soil and can kill young plants.
So, I will avoid planting a tomato in this area, and I’ll treat the soil by chopping up some mustard as it becomes available. I’ve just used most of the mustard plants I grew for compost and for other beds.
Also pictured above are White Daikon Radishes. The one on the left grew on the hill where the pumpkins were. On the right, this grew in the narrow strip on the south side of the house. Planted at the same time, two things likely causes the size difference. First, I learned that these need to be thinned very early in their growth, like carrots, or the plant will likely be “set” to only grow so wide. Secondly, the soil in the narrow strip on the side of the house is just much more compacted.
The first photo of all the potted plants show the Avocado tree doing well in its new pot, the lavender plant continuing to grow well and flower, and three 1-gallon potted plants: Catnip, Peppermint, and Lavender that I have been growing inside since the end of October. I started hardening them off yesterday, just a few hours outside. The warmer night coming up, 50’s predicted, make a good time to get them used to being outside so I have more room for younger seedlings under the grow light.
The first photo here is the bed to the left of the arch. Today I removed the lattice and pole beans, chopped up the bean plants along with some mustard plants, and removed some cedar chip mulch. I carefully aerated the space with a pitchfork (I know where the old pvc pipes are down there), watered, leveled, and then folded into the top the bean and mustard.
The plan is to let this organic matter begin to break down, and then add some refreshed coco coir from some grow bags. That coir has some perlite and pumice. I’ll mix our homemade compost into that coir as well. I’ll incorporate that into the beds and the result should be a rich medium for pumpkins and other things we’ll plant there later.
Last, Alena took the picture of the hummingbirds. We were just standing there by the feeder talking about the garden and they decided it was time to get some sugar water.