Volunteers' Verve: Surprise Tomatoes Thriving

To briefly recap, I wasn't going to grow any tomatoes this year. I spent a lot of money last year on twenty-four organic heirloom plants. I had 6-7 different varieties. Most withered and died. The plum tomatoes did really well, but it was too much work for too little reward. Now I hear we had a tomato blight last year. Oh, well! Back to this year—ALL sixteen of my current tomato plants came up on their own, right in the middle of where they were last year. Only problem was I had already planted 12 dahlias, 24 zinnias, a few Celosia, black-eyed Susans, cosmos, morning glories, and sunflowers. Most of the latter annuals were decimated by the spring rabbits and chipmunks, but the zinnias and dahlias remained. Above, San Marzano plum tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness.

Plum tomatoes taking on colors. Looks like a traffic light with red on top, yellow in the middle, and green at the bottom.

I call this my "wall of tomatoes." I pruned most of the lower leaves on all the plant a couple of weeks ago. I prune to just about the 4-foot level, allowing the fruit to get the most sun, The leaves at the top get plenty of sun to generate growth down the stems.

Beautiful San Marzano tomatoes best suited for sauce in my opinion. I don't find plum tomatoes that delicious raw. Big, fat, juicy Cherokee Purples, Brandywines, Celebrities, all delicious garden fresh and raw. But the sauce is just wonderful from plums.

The flowers at the top are still giving off new fruit. There are tomatoes from the 1-foot to the 5-foot level on every plant. I have eleven San Marzano plums, one yellow cherry, and four of the mystery round green tomatoes. I'm hoping they're Green Zebras, a variety that died early last year, only giving me one tomato.

This is the latest dahlia to bloom, "Midnight Dancer," a beautiful dark purple and dark red multi-petaled variety. It's just gorgeous. I'll have lots of photos of this plant in the future. Look at the clumps of green tomatoes in the background. Veggies and flowers grew together next to each other this year.

This is the mystery tomato variety. I have four of these plants, all clustered around where a Green Zebra was last year. Here's hoping! It's one of the sweetest tomatoes there is, but it's already late September and they're barely ripening. They still may be red tomatoes. We'll know soon enough  if they have another couple of weeks without a frost! I count more than one hundred green tomatoes.

Bonus Photo

This is a good view of Midnight Dancer, a dark red/dark purple, multipetaled dahlia. It has purple stems, too. I hope we have a few more weeks without frost so these dahlias can give some great flowers! They take so long to mature in Connecticut that they only have a few weeks of actual blossoming.

Coming Along Nicely!

Second week of August and things are finally starting to grow! We've had perfect days lately and plenty of rain. I was able to buy some great mulched and organic manure from Maine, and I've been very diligent with my weeding, pruning, staking, caging, and deadheading. Above, a saturated portrait of one of my Nasturtiums. 

A nice white Cosmos. I believe two pink and two white Cosmos made it through the rabbit and chipmunk wars, but they're not all flowering right now.

Amaranth. This is a very pretty wildflower that grows stalks 5-6 feet tall. It resembles a maroon corn plant almost, with fuzzy flowers that will both stand up and hang down depending where they are growing on the plant.

An annual begonia in the cast iron Victorian planters in front of Pink Gardens. They match the paint beautifully. They're planted with pink geraniums, nasturtiums, vinca, and a few other annuals.

One of my purple wild Thistles. Yes, they grow horizontally, too, lol. They grown 4-5 feet tall and tend to "lean" one way or another in the gardens.

One of my dahlias growing alongside a tomato plant. AFter I planter my cutting garden, I had many, many tomato plants reseed from last year.

This dahlia is a very simple and small white blossom. 

A nice view showing a dahlia, celosia, zinnias, and a tomato plant sharing cages in the "cutting garden." They all seem to be agreeable about it.

A ten year-old white geranium is putting out small clusters of flowers. It's in a primitive clay container.

One of June's heirloom tomatoes. She spares no expense with organic plants and lobster mulch from Maine. My garden plot is a little lower than hers so I hope I get some of the runoff, lol.

 This heirloom turns a pretty pinkish orange.

Sungold cherry tomatoes of June's. They're more than six-feet tall and are arching over to meet the deer netting on the other side of the walkway.

Portulacas are planted in containers on the front porch by neighbor Rick.

One of my "freeby" tomatoes is this plum-shaped variety known as a San Marzano. It's growing next to celosias, or cockscombs, an annual that's very nice in arrangements.

One of my sedums. I found several of these in the woods and transplanted them back into the sun. They're all around the yard, and seem to bloom from June to September. They are very ungainly however. Some sedums have very thick strong stems, and others grow way too tall for their weight and fall over. I like my messy ones.

Another view of the Sungold cherry tomatoes, with my new herb garden in the background. It's bordered with small rocks and sunbleached white scallop shells.

This angle of the yellow cherries shows my cutting garden in the background. I have about an 9 x 12 plot and it's crammed with tomatoes and annual cutting flowers.

This is the new Tradescantia zembrina, or the old-fashioned coloquial name, Wandering Jew, with a Nasturtium that must have been in the soil. I'll add new soil each year but don't throw away the old in the containers. I like the surprise plants that reseed themselves.

Some of my tomatoes. I don't know what type they are. They seem to be plum-sized when they ripen to a pale yellow green, but they're completely round.

Zinnias growing next to my plum tomatoes which are growing in the same cage as a dahlia. It's completely crowded but looks so nice. I'll add a photo of the entire garden in the next day or two.

Poppin' Fresh (Up)

 

My violets are really going crazy these days. All three plants in this indoor garden are blooming, I'll take it out on the porch tomorrow and photograph the entire thing with good outdoor light.

 

Probably the last Daffodil arrangement this year. They were really beautiful and strong this year, though.

I think the back of flowers is just as interesting as the front...

 

This forsythia was heavily damaged in the last 25 inch snowfall. As soon as these meager, though pretty, blooms are finished, I'll prune the bush to the ground and let it come up fresh all summer. It should be perfect for next spring.

Pointing the camera towards the ground, the petals remain a solid look in the strong, late afternoon sun.

I have at least six varieties of ferns. They range from bright green to dark green, from frilly to thick, matter to shiny. They all love shade or "dappled" sunlight the best, though.

 

My mother's perennial Primrose has come up once again. It seems to be getting smaller each year, but what's left always makes me smile.

 

This variety of fern has a fuzzy frond when full grown. The late afternoon sun really gave them a golden hue.

My pink granite bird bath. I gave this to my mother for Mother's Day in the mid 1980s and I've moved it to wherever I live. This is the same type and color of granite as my ancestral family's granite quarry in Leete's Island, Guilford, Connecticut. Our quarry furnished much of the granite for the base of the Statue of Liberty.

 

 Blooming valiantly on broken stems. Next year will be their year!

My grandmother brought this ornamental Ribbon grass to the shoreline area in the 1930s. I believe she sent away for it from a western company. It grows perfectly almost anywhere and I always bring it with me. I have a couple of dozen clumps of these around Pink Gardens now. This one is only a few inches tall right now. They'll get to about two feet with four foot tall "wheats."

This is a giant fern. My friend Mary gave several of them to me a few years ago. They grow to about three feet tall and have dark fronds with a sheen to them.

A slightly longer view of my violet garden. The pink plant can be seen peeking from behind, and there is a second purple plant. The flowers are slightly lighter and smaller then this one.

 Rescued from the woods, Solomon Seals just began to pop up from the ground this season.

One of the three white Triliums I found under some wild rose bushes last year, I transplant them to the shade garden right next to the granite bird bath. I planted three last summer and now I have four! They've only broken ground in the past two weeks and are about four-inches tall. They should get another foot taller and will have beautiful white flowers.

 

Last But Not Least

 

The vegetable garden this afternoon. I've established perennial gardens all around the perimeter of it. I have a few varieties of day lilies, iris, sedum, foxglove, rose campion, ribbon grass, cinquefoils, hosta, thistles, Solomon seals, jack-in-the-pulpits, and I'm sure a few more, lol. As each perennial finishes its cycle, I plant Marigold seeds so by fall it's full of tall orange flowers.

Last Day of AugustColour, 2012

 

My sunflowers have been being attacked nightly by raccoons, breaking off the tall stems. I've picked them and left them around the yard for the birds and bees to find them. Above, a circa 1920s Amethyst and sterling thistle brooch of my grandmother's finds a home on one such sunflower.

A small arrangement of dahlias and a marigold from my garden. So far, all of my tall dahlias are yellow again, sigh, but the mini plants I bought for containers are white and that pretty yellow and red bicolor.

 

This purple Tradescanthia is going on four years old now. I winter it over in the attic along with my geraniums and begonia "annuals."

 

Untouched by the raccoons, so far, in the garden, is this fantastic nine-foot sunflower.

 

The south side of the vegetable garden fence is adorned with yards and yards of morning glory vines. I can't wait for them to start blooming. I have morning glories on three sides of this garden. I had to plant them inside the fence so they wouldn't be eaten by critters.

These are some of my tomato plants this year. I've lost seven or eight, but I still have about 12 going strong. They're mostly golden cherry tomatoes and red plum tomatoes, but I'll take what I can get. My brandywines and other heirlooms didn't make it through the season. I love them, but organic heirloom plants just aren't strong enough to withstand today's onslaught of small creatures and insects.

 A few of my tomato plants have reached six- and seven-feet tall. They're called "indeterminates" which means they keep growing until they die. I keep staking them and they keep growing taller.