Tomato, ToMAHto

So, tomatoes are my favorite food. As such, I only eat them in their prime. Which, here in B to the more is August. Namely nearly my birthday (August 19th. I will be 30. Am scared) week. So, why are all of my tomato plants full of GREEN tomatoes? We have some flowers and some tiny tomatoes but nothing ripe. Well. We have had 2 ripe tomatoes since June (both now in quotes "Early" Girls) and one in June (yellow pear) and nothing else. For all of June/July we pretty much had zero flowers so at least these flowers speak of potential but we are going to Belgium for a little over a week in early September and I have horrible thoughts that they are all going to ripen then. Is it in bad taste to ask the neighbors to pick my tomatoes and then hold them for me? We have like 10 heirloom varieties I am dying to eat. This summer was supposed to be the summer of tomatoes, not the summer of suck. Le sigh.

Blackberry Season!

It is harvest time! We've been harvesting nearly 2 cups a day from our single bush. Matt bought a net meant for ponds to cover the bush and it worked better than the tree/bush net we had last year at keeping out birds.

Mammoth Sunflowers

Now taller than us!

Blackberries!

Sorry for the lull in posting, but not much has been happening in the garden lately. A lot of growing, but not a lot of flowering or fruiting. Oddly all of the baby plums on our tree have vanished but the blackberries are going strong.

Greenwood Nursery Woes

Last year we ordered a few plants from Greenwood Nursery and were pleased with the experience. They sent the plants right out and they came back this year. So it made sense that when we wanted to buy some plants for the yard this year, we'd use them again. This year we bought golden raspberries, a pussy willow tree and some cold hardy hibiscus. We placed the order over the winter and the deal was that they sent it to us when it was safe to plant in our zone. They sent them a little early, but we have an enclosed porch, so they were okay and we had a place to put them.

The first problem we had was that they had sent us less hibiscus than we ordered. This was troublesome, but when we notified them of the problem, they sent more to us and they actually looked better than the ones we received in the first place.

The second problem we have had is with the golden raspberries. We ordered 6 bushes. They told us that they would arrive looking like sticks but to plant them and they would be fine. They looked dead but we believed them and followed their instructions and waited for them to grow. And waited and waited. We kind of half wondered if they were just slow growing (it has been sort of unseasonably cool this year) but when we went to Matt's parent's house in the slightly colder Staten Island and saw that their (red) raspberry bushes had leaves and were quite large we really started to think ours were just dead.

So when we got back to town, Matt contacted Greenwood to tell them that the raspberries weren't coming up. They said to wait until a month had passed. We contacted them again on May 22nd and said that the sticks are clearly dead and that we want new plants quickly, before it is too late to plant*. They responded that we'd have to pay $12.50 shipping for the replacement plants. Which annoyed me but we went ahead and paid. And heard nothing until Matt contacted them again today. Now they are saying the replacement plants are shipping out this Thursday, May 31. Which means we probably won't get them for another week or so. Which will make it very late in the season for planting raspberries. I am pretty disgusted by the whole thing. We ordered the plants super early so we could plant them on time. Then they died and Greenwood totally brushed us off until it is really late in the season for planting. Plus they made us pay for shipping, which I thought was unnecessary. Is it my fault they sent us dead plants? $12.50 isn't a huge amount of money but I hate to lay out additional money for a product I've already paid for. I worry that they won't do well this year and then will die over the Winter and we will have to deal with them again next Spring.

Do you see raspberry plants? Nope, me neither.

*Just as a rough guide, the blackberry plant I picked up at Home Depot this Spring and planted around the same time as the raspberries has already flowered and is starting to berry.

The First Rose of the Year

Isn't it pretty? I am not sure what variety it is, the bush was here when we moved in. Like I mentioned before, when we bought the house (July '05) there were a lot of existing plants and bushes but they were oddly placed. Last year Matt dug a lot of them (roses and peonies mostly) up and rearranged them. He transplanted the roses to a clump all together on one side of the yard and they all are doing well. Lots of new growth and blossoms, including this one. It is great gardening with what you have. It is cheaper (of course!) but you are also making the the yard really "yours". And now that the bushes have moved, we can actually see and enjoy them without having to duck behind a shed.

More plants...

We just got back from Walther Gardens (again) and this time bought some flowers (heliotrope, lantana and celosia) and some veggies (brussel sprouts, patty pan squash and a "sugar baby" watermelon) and the guy threw in some chocolate mint for free. I've been wanting to make mint ice cream, so I can't wait for that to spread a little so I have enough to make it. I also can't wait to see what brussel sprouts look like "in the wild".

azaleas

Azaleas may be considered "the royalty of the garden" but they are not my favorites. Matt likes them and we compromised last year and bought three hot pink bushes. This year only two came back. They are both still pretty tiny, but they really had a lot of blooms. Now he thinks he might move them to somewhere else in the yard, they are sort of out in the "middle" on the back quarter of the yard. Which may or may not have been something I suggested last year (before the initial planting) and was ignored.

Walther Gardens & Vegetable Plants 2007

Around the corner from my house is a little neighborhood nursery called Walther Gardens. They have been there since before there even was a Walther Blvd and they also run one of the city's first snowball stands. Everything is grown right there and they have a great selection of vegetable and flowering plants. The prices are excellent as well. All of the vegetable plants are only $1 each and since they count as food, are tax free. So for $9, I bought the box of plants below.

This year I bought: 1 cloud nine eggplant (white eggplants!), 1 dusky eggplant, some tomatoes (better boy, early girl, beefsteak and sweet 100s), scotch bonnet peppers (very exciting-they are hard to find in stores and a lot of Caribbean recipes call for them), and two zucchini plants. I am tempted to go back and get some more cucumbers or a different variety of squash, but I am undecided. The woman who checked me out said not to put the squash or eggplants in the ground yet anyway, as it has been getting down to almost freezing the last couple of nights.

I am excited to have some more varieties of tomatoes (or as the lady at the nursery called them "toe-may-dahs"-okay, when I lapse into Baltimore-ese I call them that too) we already planted a variety that are supposed to be super producers (50-100 lbs of tomatoes each or something like that) but I really love tomatoes. What if I don't like the super producers? And early girls are, well, early producers, beefsteaks are big and the sweet 100s are cherry tomatoes. So you can see that I really do need about 7 tomato plants to adequately feed 2 people.