Hallson Gardens

After last year's dismal tomato crop (we managed to get SIX tomatoes total from SIX plants over the whole year) I'm thrilled to report we picked our first ripe tomato today. Early Girl, of course, but exciting none the less

Last year it was cold, cloudy, and somewhat damp, so the tomatoes never ripened an we had a lot of issues with blossom end rot and other fungus problems. This year has been hot, was wet early but has been very dry for a couple weeks now (all the rain keeps missing us) but the tomato plants are 6 feet tall and almost as wide and just loaded with green tomatoes.

Last year the advice was to thin these out, because the tomatoes need sunlight to ripen, but I have to tell you this one ripe tomato was at the very bottom of the plant, deep inside the tomato jungle, with no sunlight and it was still nice and dark red.

It is just so exciting I had to share!

How is everyone else's veggie gardens doing this year? Anyone else harvesting things?

My garden is growing well but I do have more bugs this year. I have let the ducks patrol through the garden a few times to work on that. They have nibbled on the edges of my swiss chard and ate 2 brussel sprout plants down but it's worth it to me to have them get bugs from other plants.
We have had a lot damper weather than usual but when it isn't raining it is in the 90's I have harvested a few tomatoes from the bottom of the plants also. There are tons of green ones so now that we've had a couple days that are a little cooler I expect to get a lot of them ripen at once. I have been gathering lots of summer squash so far. The balckberries are ripe but nobody wants to stand in the heat to pick them so the birds are getting most of them.

Ummmm....I can taste it all the way down here, Chris!

I haven't had a home grown tomato yet this year. Mine were about 3 weeks late getting in the ground, so I guess I'm gonna have to go get some!

grrrrrrr
Just not right that you got a ripe tomato before me
There has been only one year that I can remember where I had a ripe tomato in July .... it is usually August before they appear ... AND I grow them in a greenhouse
Lots of tomatoes this year but still no sign of them ripening
AND they taste so much better just off the plant .........
Maybe I should nip over and steal one?

Oh not fair! I want a good tomato! I haven't been able to grow good tomatoes (aside from cherries and grapes) for 5 years due to the weather!

Hope it was nice a juicy and sweet!!!

Congrats. I'm just starting to see buds due to our unusual cooler wet weather.

Our corn was only 4" high on the 4th of July. What can we say???

It was a perfect looking tomato, with not a single blemish, and Brian didn't even believe that it was one of ours (thought I must have purchased it at the store), but he was convinced after tasting it. Oh so good

We planted our tomatoes around May 1st this year - covered them twice with a thick piece of foam topped with a thick moving blanket to protect from frost. So the extra month really helped this year - I'm not kidding - the plants are 6 feet tall!

Sorry that some of you have been having some bad weather. Hopefully it will get better

At this time in September, most of my tomatoes are dwindling, and the skins are toughened. But this year was really good for my plants.
Even though they didn't seem to get as big as my neighbors plants did, they were loaded with tomatoes.
I had planted 3 types of varying maturity. First were the tiny incredibly sweet cherry tomatoes. These tiny delicious gems are the ones
I stopped to eat after my walk every morning. The others matured to hold me through the season. I only planted a couple of each, since
I am the only one at home who eats veggies. These along with, swiss chard, green beans, muskmelon, 3 varieties of sweet peppers, eggplants (with minimal fruits), cabbage, and cucumbers, all made my garden delicious. All in all, I'm not looking forward to store bought tomatoes during the winter.

fullofit wrote:All in all, I'm not looking forward to store bought tomatoes during the winter.

Hi Char,

I hear you there! Actually, I pretty much refuse to buy the tomatoes at the store. Once in a while I'll buy one that smells like an actual tomato and while those are better than the norm they still don't come anywhere close to the real thing.

Our veggie garden had an assortment of leaf lettuce, banana peppers and sweet peppers, zucchini, butternut squash, and an assortment of different tomato plants, though they didn't turn out to be the ones we were supposed to have purchased... The tomatoes and peppers had an amazing crop this year. The Zucchini didn't produce that great though. We did enjoy the red leaf lettuce but others were a bit bitter.

Oh, and Brian has onions still growing from last year that overwintered in the garden. They are getting huge!

We will have tons of tomatoes for the winter to put in stew, spaghetti sauce, and chili