Like so many, the pandemic has kept us close to home and involved in home-related activities. Cindy and I are gardening. I do the veggies and Cindy raises flowers. Cindy’s efforts have resulted in a very colorful deck. For a while, we visited multiple greenhouses making certain that they would not be negatively impacted by the economic downturn. I can’t get a good shot of our entire deck, but this photo should give you the general idea.
Our yard has eleven raised beds. I garden every year. This year I started my own plants indoors. I started looking for stay at home projects early. The beds looked great with the exception of the peppers which just sat there until the last week or so. The zucchini and squash plants were big and beautiful, but didn’t seem to be setting fruit (or whatever you call baby squash). Do you know there are male and female flowers on these plants and under certain conditions you take a paintbrush and help nature along? I tried, but couldn’t find a receptive female. I also read that earlier in the season there are many more male flowers and you have to be patient waiting for the plant to even things up. Patience is a virtue, but when the garden and MSNBC are the total of your entertainment you make several trips a day to check on the viny plants to see if the females have started to show up.
I had high hopes for my tomatoes. Some years I have more tomatoes than we and our kids can eat. We make hot sauce to use up the extras. Some years the plants look great, but are mostly beautiful leaves and few fruits (I do know that the tomato is a fruit). Too much nitrogen. I fertilize to try to be helpful and being helpful is not always a good idea. Plants are used to taking care of themselves.
For the last couple of years, the tomatoes start off great, start to set fruit, and then the leaves dry up. This is wilt. It has started again. I search online to see what can be done. You can mulch to try to even out the moisture level. However, in investigating various wilts I discover something called Walnut Wilt. We have a huge black walnut in our backyard and it is a truly magnificent specimen. According to my research, black walnut trees (roots, leaves, walnuts) produce a substance called juglone which basically clears the area of competing plants to reduce competition for the tree. Tomatoes and peppers are particularly susceptible. The danger area is three times the width of the branches which is pretty much my entire yard. To make matters worse, I rake leaves in the fall, put them on top of my raised beds, and then cover with some branches to keep the leaves in place. In the Spring, I dig the rotted leaves into the beds. This ends up being pretty much the worst thing you can do if you want to raise tomatoes in that area. Sometimes, the harder you try the worse you make things.
When the tomato crops begin to mature you usually can purchase them at a farmer’s market cheaper than you can grow them. Still, growing your own is the fun part.