A different variety of zucchini feeding on the same microplastics.
Editing to avoid confusion-
Both pictures from today's post are of the same zucchini. This plant is cellmates with the one from the other day seen here: https://walledgarden.xyz/post/225798
Bush broke in winds yesterday. But in this advanced age of prothesis injuries which would surely spell certain death can be overcome.
Foreman came to check on me.
With luck, many more winters of these sprays
It's canning time
The link is just to the image dump, all the info is in this post.
I have a very turbulent relationship with growing tomatoes. They have excellent germination and transplant success, and start to grow very well, but if I don't keep on top of them or if there are a lot of bacterial issues, we don't get a lot of fruit. My climate is very hot and humid in the summers.
Here are some links to reputable websites about diagnosing tomato issues:
Okay, on to my tomatoes. Here are a few photos of their general appearance and growing conditions. These photos are mostly after clean up. I am growing a few varieties of plum tomatoes as well as Super Sweet 100s which are a cherry tomato.
They are woven into the trellis as they grow and we try and keep them airy by removing suckers and pruning. Another priority is keeping the bottoms of the plants clear to minimize slugs.
The following photos are of some of the problems on the plants and what I think they are, based on the above links.
I think this one is pretty clearly powdery mildew. These are "extra" plants in a different bed than the ones I showed above and they are crowded and not pruned well.
I need to make sure they are being watered from the bottom and not splashing the soil.
I'm not sure what the issue is here. The tomatoes are falling off before ripe, but the stem is yellowing. It is starting at the fruit, versus at other parts of the plants like a disease might. If you have any thoughts, please do share!
I think this is blossom drop, which the ontario site says is due to stress. In addition to weather stress, nutrition deficiencies and disease/pests, the plant might be carrying too much fruit already.
These leaves are just slightly yellowish and slightly curled. It looks like it could be a nutrient deficiency, or the early stages of a disease.
I should probably test the soil.
These leaves are a little further along in being hecked up. I am going to guess these are either Verticillium wilt or Bacterial spot, but I am leaning towards the wilt. I will need to investigate varieties that are resistant, as crop rotation is somewhat challenging for us.
I started typing this all out in a post I am writing about tomato problems, but I thought I would make a separate post to share some observations about my local weather for the past 4 years. I'm sharing this as an exercise in looking at weather data, not really as a diagnostic or making conclusions based on it. The 2024 growing season isn't complete and chose to not look at max temp which is another important indicator, because I am too sleepy and lazy.
I got my data from government of canada weather stations. I live not to far from one. Your government might publish such data, or you could try sites like Weather Underground which collects data from personal weather stations.
I downloaded CSV files and used conditional formatting and pivot tables to get the data I wanted.
2021
2022
2023
2024
Some charts:
If I am going to draw one conclusion, it's that I feel justified in waiting until June 1 to transplant sensitive plants (tomatoes and peppers) but need to be on the ball to direct sow cold weather crops by mid April (peas, leafy greens, beets, radishes). 2024 might have been an outlier in terms of how soon the season started, and I don't want to risk the sensitive plants because they take so much work starting indoors. It's hard to come back if they fail to thrive.
This is one of my favorite plants in the garden and is such a miracle to me.
I told FrostyTrichs that I didn't think it was native, but I was wrong! I'm kind of glad, we really do try to buy native perennials (or at least cultivars of plants that are native in the area-ish), but sometimes get swayed by profound beauties
Obviously, the photo above is a cultivar and not a true native but the the Rose Mallow is native in my province: https://www.ontario.ca/page/swamp-rose-mallow
PDF alert - https://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/virtual_sara/files/plans/mp_swamp_rose-mallow_e_final.pdf
I should note that we are outside if it's native range and 1-2 hardiness zones colder...
I can't believe this tropical looking beauty survives our harsh winters.
This is what it looks like in April:
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It springs back to life well after everything else has, and all hope is lost. We noticed the first growth at the very end of May:
The first blooms were noticed yesterday, at the very end of August. They are in the back corner of our yard, about 150 ft from the house, but the beautiful colour stands out from the green.
This plant is a very good reminder of how useful garden logs can be. We were ready to give up on her, but looked back at least year's photos and remembered that she likes to sleep in.
Okay, so I had a pile of potatoes on my shelf in the living room, as one does, and got super lazy about them so they stayed there all winter and sprouted. Instead of just hucking them in the compost, I decided to plant them.
Here are the potatoes I gathered from the shelf:
And here they are that same day, planted. I did not plant all of the potatoes that were in the bowl.
It looks like maybe three purple and nine yellow?
Here they are all ready for a nice nap:
Over time I hilled the plants with straw.
This is the bed as of yesterday:
I started by moving the straw gently, and feeling around for potato plant stalks, like this one:
As I dug deeper, I found groups of them:
You can see how thick the straw layer was in the photo above. When I planted them, I did not place them very deep into the ground. I like to harvest potatoes with my hands and not tools, to minimize the harm I might do to insects.
This photo shows the hay all cleared away from these plants. You start to see the potatoes creeping out of the soil. Potatoes grow upwards along the stalk as the stalk growns. That's why they are hilled with either dirt or straw.
This photo shows it a bit better, you can see the potatoes growing in both the soil and the straw layers.
The yellow potatoes grew bigger than the purple ones, and I got a pretty big yellow one:
I threw them in a bowl and sprayed them directly with the hose. I probably shouldn't have done that because I damaged the skin of a few of them, meaning they may not cure very well. The soil is so sticky, and I got lazy.
Here is my harvest:
I ended up with more than I planted for sure, and maybe more than I started with. I think I can say I at least renewed the potatoes, lol.
A few of them have insect damage.
As you can see, my soil is awful. It's really heavy clay and lacks organics. This is one reason for all the wood chips. I decided to plant the potatoes in the ground to help break up the soil a bit (someone told me they do that?) and also because I had nothing to lose.
I did observe evidence of a mycorrhizal network in parts of the soil, which is lovely and showing me that there is hope.
I ended up burying the straw in the bed, covering it with soil, and covering the soil with a plastic tarp I had. Mmmmm, microplastics! I hope to keep the soil free of weeds so it's easier to deal with in the spring or later in the fall. I'm not sure if I will grow potatoes in here again (in the spring) or I'll try garlic in this bed (in October).
Header is my dragon fruit cactus I found in the garbage
This guy were parts of a sick large cactus near by that dropped pads. Opuntia grows like a weed here so i cleaned the pads and repotted large pieces so they'd root, they are now budding which means they rooted thru and will grow. The old parts will probably get pretty woody in the next few years and the fresh cactus will be on top
This is a mother of thousands.
This is a different opuntia that was growing out of my sidewalk as a nub. It has grown and I have cut it up a few times to make more, they all came from the same.
A different opuntia dropped a pad that I planted and it grew a really tall and fell over. I cut each pad and replanted each. Now they are all budding!
This is a blue agave I got from an estate sale
This is another trash cactus, when rescued it was only yellow and the other side had turned to wood, it has regrown skin over the wood and has budded, not sure what kind of cactus it is but for once it isn't a prickily pear
Yet another opuntia lol, this was in the trash with the other one and was totally dead, I can't believe it has a huge new pad and is green again.
I have no idea what this is, I found I got it at an estate sale as part of a lot of random stuff
Random plant that was in a pot that was way too small I found somewhere. I repotted it and it created a second plant in the pot I will eventually move out
Again no idea, maybe some kind of aloe or agave? It is spiny. I found it in the garbage at a friends condo complex.
