Yes. They’re in large pots. I think we’re in zone 22. Inland South Orange County, CA. Last year they were planted around the same time, grew faster and started to ripen by now. Our season can go another 3-4 months, so I’m assuming I just need to be patient. I just didn’t want them all ripening at once.
Usually I do two plantings a few weeks apart. The first typically is more successful as warmer temps bring rust fly. I found a little sign of it today - not too bad, but some. I’m going to try and get this bed picked this week. Our 2nd crop (actually our 3rd, because pincher bugs got #2) is doomed due to a late start.
A lot of folks around here will cover their beds to keep the rust fly out. My approach is plant and pick early or late (just not mid-season), and rotate beds annually. I have a 5 year moratorium on any bed which has hosted carrots.
Cleaned of their greens (and including yesterday’s pick), it was net 9 lbs. I found rust fly in about a dozen of them total, which is an acceptable rate of attrition to me. I also left about 2 dozen small ones in the ground, which I’ll pick in a few days to make roasted baby carrots.
Kept in the crisper, in a green bag with a paper towel, they’ll hold up for months.
Nice! How much soil or soiless mix do those hold? Are they connected to the soil underneath? What do you fill it with? I’m guessing you re-use it; is there a straegy for that?
I do almost all my gardening in long term containers.
Yes! I noticed your container set up and was immediately attracted to it.
The capacity of this one is about 50 gallons. We have a couple of different sizes. We drilled holes in the bottom for drainage.
We had 4-way brought in to fill them, but first mixed the 4-way with a lot of compost, worm castings and any available organic material. We try to keep our beds continuously planted (or at least 3 out of the 4 seasons), and with each rotation work in more compost and worm castings. Most years, during a down season, we’ll mulch: leaves, straw, grass clippings. I have yet to find a mulch I’m happy with, but it all helps. The quality of the soil in our older beds is noticeably nicer than in our newer beds. As things compost, we do have to top them off with a couple of inches every couple of years.
ETA to add: the quality of the 4-way we get varies widely, from barely acceptable to terrible. One year it was so bad I had it tested … mostly sand! So we do work in as much organic material we can.
I’m a novice gardener - only began randomly during quarantine.
This year in the garden I have:
6 heirloom tomato plants (Cherokee Purple, Mr Stripey, Polish Giant, Black Cherry, Pink Brandywine and Black Brandywine.) These have a few green fruits. The stripey and giant I bought as seedlings; the rest I grew from seed (!)
2 tomatillo plants (first time trying these.) At the moment these have the papery shell, but no fruits inside yet.
2 poblano peppers (new), 2 shishito peppers (third year with these, love them) and 2 bell peppers
6 beet plants
6 heads of buttercrunch lettuce (already harvested - delicious)
In containers on my deck, I have red sail lettuce (second planting growing now) and arugula (already finished for the year.) Once again this year I tried growing strawberries in containers. One container has produced nothing; another occasionally gives me berry, which I savor.
I’m always impressed by folks who pursue the heirloom varieties. We grow mostly common, generic stuff. My goal is to have a grocery store in my back yard, but my ambitions don’t go much further.
Thank you! I did grow some non-heirloom varieties in the previous two years but I generally prefer the flavor of heirlooms, and they didn’t seem more difficult (or different at all really) to grow, so…
The black cherry is my single most beloved tomato. I am obsessed with it. Third year growing it.
It does indeed grow like gangbusters.
So far this year, Mr Stripey is outpacing all the other plants, but in past years Black Cherry caught up and outgrew/outproduced everything else by about midway through the summer.
I use 6-foot T-stakes in my garden for tomatoes. I do some combo of a Florida weave, and also stringing garden twine between the tops of the stakes and then tying the growing plants up to the twine. I don’t prune them.
(The first pandemic summer, I grew all my tomatoes in containers, and spent the whole season tying them to various parts of the deck to support them. It was comical.)
The black cherry tomatoes I eat raw, frequently straight off the plant. They are sweet and complex. I do give some away, of course.
The other heirlooms I also eat raw, plus I preserve them:
I can two kinds of tomato jam, one sweet and one savory
I can chopped tomatoes for use throughout the year.