Plates of Red

I see bushes of green, yellow flowers too

I see them fruit for me and you

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

My favorite snack these days are tomato sliders.  A potato roll from the bakery, with a bit of mayonnaise and thickly sliced salted tomato.  What a wonderful world!

The plate is one days harvest.  Notice that one was saved in the nick of time from some pointy faced critter.

The ripe tomatoes so far are all coming from the plants in the front.  And for the most part, the plants started in Nov and Dec.

The raised tomato bed in the back, is growing like crazy and has a lot of green fruit.  It doesn't get quite enough sun.  Hopefully I will get a bountiful crop before it gets too hot.  According to averages, I should still have May and June; but our nighttime low the past 3 nights has been 70.

Time to start [more] summer cherry's and currants.

Next year I will need to plant the back sooner, as well as plant more early hybrids.  The Tropic Boy hybrid is hands down the winner back here.  Although, black prince isn't too shabby himself.

The row of tomato pots in the front are doing well.  Growing, blooming and fruiting.  Needing lots of water.   Pictured here from left to right is Mortgage Lifter (green pot) and Tropic Boy (pink pot).  Also growing are Black from Tula and Green Zebra.  I think - the tags faded on these last two.  Green Zebra is a very nice container plant, though slow to set fruit.  Black from Tula is a gangbusters healthy youngster, and was doing excellent until I damaged it.  Dang it all.

Tropic Boy is again in the lead.  The plant is full and vigorous and there are about a dozen good size tom's on it.  If the taste test passes this will be a winner in our garden.  Though special plans are needed for staking the beast in our front yard garden.  ** More to come on that at a later date , I have the plan **  Mortgage Lifter - growing really good but no fruit.  This plant gets the least amount of sunlight; so maybe lack of sun is the issue.

All in all, not to bad.  Trimming the monster Laurel Oak is going to add a good 3 to 4 hours of sunlight to this bed I suspect.  Should make everything happier.

Next spring, I need to stick a couple of pots of dwarf tomato plants along the rose arbor.  I'm sure I can sneak in 2 or 3 pots around beans and greens.  The rose arbor is getting plenty of sun.  And I can easily add 3 more of the 3.5 gallon pink/green bucket pots to the back row of the NE bed; that is with the added sun to help them grow.

We are harvesting, and eating: tomato, pepper, eggplant, beans, berries, onions and greens on a regular basis.  Squash though?  It hates me.  Lovely blooms, lovely females that don't want to show off their glory.  I'm down to suspecting lack of early morning sunlight.  Sigh.  But on the other hand, our CSA, which is quite near us doesn't have squash quite yet either; though they are setting fruit.  My cucumber has fruit, but not the squash.  Gardening under the oaks can sure be hard at times.

I still don't own a kitchen scale.  OMG - how can buying a scale be so darn confusing??? Then I decided to just go get an old fashioned manual scale at a thrift store.  Get out!  They were more than a new digital!  How can that be?   Well, I shouldn't need a scale to can tomato sauce.  And as for how much is my harvest worth?  Priceless!

In other news, it seems that I have sprained the middle knuckle of my index finger.  If I don't use it, it doesn't hurt.  Much.  At least I can type a bit more.  I am to expect several more weeks before it completely heals up.