2015 Garden Report

Will anyone be terribly surprised if my plans expanded beyond what I said I was going to do back in May?

I did plant the one cherry tomato plant and the one pumpkin plant. I did plant the lettuce tray. They it just didn't feel like enough.

Some of that was caused by additional research. I was looking at companion planting charts to make sure there were no conflicts between pumpkins and tomatoes, and I saw a note that when basil is planted with tomatoes they grow ten percent bigger. I really wanted to check that out, but I was only planting cherry tomatoes. Should they even grow ten percent bigger?

Also, as I looked up the pumpkin type that I had got, Spirit, it seemed like they wouldn't be big producers. It might be a good idea to get another one. I went to the garden center searching for two more tomato plants (because I had two more tomato cages), a basil plant, and one more Spirit pumpkin.

The pumpkin plants were completely gone, and I had no idea there were so many types of basil. I went with Sweet Italian because that seemed most likely to have a kinship with me. For tomatoes I got one Early Girl (I have always been fond of that breed) and one Jet Star, because that's Ray Toro's Danger Days alter ego and that was awesome.

Ultimately, I probably should have stuck with one tomato and one pumpkin.

The lettuce tray never did a single sprout. I am not sure how it managed to fail so badly.

Jet Star only had one tomato, and Early Girl looks like there will be a total of six when the rest ripen. Those are both good breeds, so I am wondering if they were just put in bad spots. I did add plant food and egg shells to the soil, but they are closer to the concrete and their spots did not have the soil worked as much by the ivy. Maybe it was the exact wrong kind of basil.

(Incidentally, I keep finding new ivy sprouts in odd places. I suspect that will go on for a while.)

I also for a long time only had one pumpkin.

Even without the crookneck squash encroaching, I guess pumpkin fertilization is not a guarantee. You see, pumpkin blossoms are gendered. You get a lot more male blossoms, and you need more quantitatively, but you still need some female blossoms, because only they will become pumpkins.

A female blossom is recognizable by the green knob at the base of the flower. If she gets fertilized, that know grows bigger, and a darker striped green, then keeps getting bigger and turns orange. (Well, the color changes can be different for different breeds, but that's how mine went.)

If the blossom doesn't get fertilized, it shrivels up and falls off. I had that happen more often than not. I lost at least three, so was starting to think about hand pollination, but then I didn't get any more female blossoms. Fortunately a few days ago I got one more, and without any interference on my part it is turning into a pumpkin.

This is especially good because it means I will have a pumpkin in October. The first one is already ripe.

Also, they are kind of small. Spirit may not be the breed for me, but also there is reason to believe that I am kind of the opposite of a green thumb with pumpkins, and am going to have to keep making slow incremental process.

At least my cherry tomatoes are going strong.

They may be going a little too strong. I should have guided their early growth more. They are now a gloriously messy bush, that frankly may have been responsible for suppressing Jet Star. They come in so many different sizes that I have no way of knowing if they are ten percent bigger than they would be otherwise. I have to consider the basil claim not validated at this point.

Still, even without either reserving a community garden plot or rototilling, I grew stuff. I have those cherry tomatoes I coveted now. I wanted more than one pumpkin, but even before I had to admit that my pumpkin growing was a big improvement over last year. Now that is doubly true.

That's how my garden grows.