Tomato Plants for Summer 2017 Planting

 This is an Amana Orange tomato slice.  It is one of my new favorite heirloom tomatoes.  I have planted it for 2 years.  It is large and grows very well for me.

I read about planting slices of tomatoes a while ago.  I had a couple of tomato slices in the refrigerator that were getting to old to eat.  I put them in the sink and started to the water running to put them down the disposal.  Then I remembered to plant a slice.  A lot of the seeds washed away, but there were still plenty left, so I pulled this slice out of the sink and planted it instead.  We will see what happens.  By-the-way there is a layer of soil over the top of this tomato slice. It is the pot in the back left corner in the two pictures below.

This is a start from my Golden Jubilee heirloom tomato plant.  Another favorite.  It reminds me of a Roma tomato, because it has few seeds and not a lot of juice.  It is bigger and rounder than a Roma.  I thought I would take a cutting, root it, and plant it in a container to see if it would survive the winter. My house may be too cold for it.

This is a start from  a Sun Sugar tomato plant.  It is the only non-heirloom tomato I grow.  It was the morning after a freeze that I suddenly realized I should take a cutting and see if I could get it to grow indoors this winter and not have to buy one in the Spring.  I found some sections below the frozen plant tops and cut off 4 pieces.  Only one has rooted so far.  One rotted away and the other two are still in a vase of water.  Hopefully they grow roots too.

Goodbye Cherry Tree

I guess it is time to say goodbye to the cherry tree.  Most of what broke grows sweet cherries.  Most of what is left grows sour cherries.  The bark at the bottom is split and inside it looks like many tree trunks wrapped in one bark.  As you can see the main trunk was cut off shortly before this branch broke off.

Apples from the Tree Out Back

This apple tree is so heavy with apples that it looks more like a shrub. Hubby thinned it several times and probably ended up with 3 or 4 five-gallon buckets full that were composted. The quail love it under there.  It is their new hangout everyday.  In the evening you can see a long line of quail heading to the other side of the yard to sleep under one of the pine trees.

This is about 3/4 of the apples.  We only picked what we could get by standing and sitting on the ground.  The quail yelled at us quite a bit that day.  The front half of the tree above is Golden Delicious and the Back half of the tree is McIntosh.  Thus the yellow and red apples.  We canned apple slices, pie filling, and apple juice.  Also dehydrated tons of them.

Corn from the Garden

I planted Blue Maize, Indian, and Glass Gem corn.

The bed I planted them in does not grow a good crop of anything that is put in it.  It is amended just like all the other beds, but it doesn't make a difference.  Anyway here are pictures of the crazy looking corn it produced.

Here is what most of the corn looked like before I finally picked it.  I kept waiting for the corn to grow taller instead of looking to see if any ears of corn were ready to harvest.

Here is what came out of the tote above.  All are missing kernels.

This is the Glass corn.

This is the Indian corn.

This is the Blue Maize.

This is the strangest ear of corn I have ever seen.  Is this ear of corn or ears of corn. LOL.

 Here is a closeup of the stock or whatever you can the thing connecting the two cobs together.

Carrot in Bloom

I had a carrot flower and I was looking forward to saving the seeds.  It froze before the seeds finished developing.  It is a pretty flower anyway.

Carrots usually take 2 years to bloom.  I have lots of carrots in the ground still.  I will harvest them as I need them all winter.  I will save a few to flower and produce seeds next year also.

As a side note.  I don't have any lettuce seeds again this year.  I left the bag that the seeds could drop into attached to the plant for too long.  It was full of bugs that had a great feast and didn't leave a single seed.  Note to self:  You have done the same thing for two years in a row.  Don't do that again next year. 😊

Forks in the Garden

The quail dig in the empty spots of my garden beds every year.  This picture was taken the end of September.  I bought plastic forks from the Dollar Store and put them everywhere there was bare soil.  I used a few forks, knives, and spoons that I had left from who-knows-what in the house.

Here is another garden bed growing forks.  I didn't plant the Mexican Primrose here.  The wind or the birds planted them.  I left them there until the end of October.

NOTE:  Dollar Store forks are cheap and by the end of October and early November when I was removing them the tines broke off just touching the forks.  Some of the forks snapped off at ground level.  It wasn't fun cleaning up the pieces.  I did use some forks that I already had leftover that were thicker and they did not fall apart when pulled out of the ground.

More forks in these baskets that a dove tried to make her home in several times.  These pictures were taken in June.  The dove found these baskets just days after putting them up.