How big is your garden and how many tomato plants?

   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #181  
DFB, I think you got that plant exactly right. I thought it looked like a nightshade, but not exactly. The blossom wasn't right for our common purple blooming nightshades we have here in Texas.
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #182  
Yea thanks Jim

Common Jimsonweed...more folks than not ask me if Datura is an eggplant when they see it at my market. Both being nightshades. I have 4 big ones to sell this week 2-3 ft tall. I'm under the impression it does not survive zone 4 winters but the NEVM pest indentification guide lists it in the weed section (W24) so the established range is pretty far north. Probably regrows itself from seed instead of coming back from the rootstock like a true perennial. It forms a big knobby seed pod after the flower. Its supposed to be a hallucinogenic if ingested.

Dig it up and pot it! :D

IMAG0102.jpg IMAG0105.jpg
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #184  
I'm late to the party, but I will tell you about my garden. Last year the bottom bloom rot was so bad in our tomatoes, we decided not to plant any this year. [Margie changed my mind later] We started off with 30 pepper plants. 4 sweet banana, 2 Habanero, 2 Marconi, 3 jumbo/mammoth jalapeno, the rest regular jalapeno.

Then I planted 7 hills of banana cantaloupe. A week later, I added 7 hills each of two kinds of melon seeds from my freezer. One was labeled 'long green good', the other 'icebox.' A few days after that, put in 12 hills of cukes and 8 tomato plants. Then I took down my fence and tilled up more ground. I planted four rows of melons with 18 hills in each row. I did the 'long green good', 'icebox', 'yellow meat', and some that wasn't labeled, but looked like Crimson Sweet seeds to me. Of the newer melons, the ice box and long green good have put on the most melons so far. Some of the ice box are almost as big as the first ones I planted. We had 18 days of rain, and that, along with the heat is tuning my cukes yellow. They are on soaker hoses, which I just turned back on day before yesterday. I do give them blue juice twice a week, but they are not getting any better. I'm afraid the cukes will all be gone before the tomatoes get ripe. So much for a salad.

We are making a plastic shopping bag of peppers everyday. We picked the first cukes a couple of weeks ago, and the first cantaloupe yesterday. There is a couple of tomatoes that are starting to turn. As you can see from the pictures, everything is too close together. But Margie kept adding to what she wanted. Next year I will till up on the other side of the water line so I can stretch out a little.

007.jpg018.jpg010.jpg022.jpg 058.jpg

1. The whole garden. 2. Banana cantaloupe, long green good and icebox. 3. Some people do square foot gardening. It's so crowded in my garden, it's cubic foot gardening. This melon is growing on the fence. 4. Yesterday's peppers. 5. Banana cantaloupe.
 
Last edited:
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #185  
Good pictures. Yes the very first year I sold it I said to my boss hey that's a poisonous plant...its loco weed. People and animals can get high on it. He says well what's wrong with that! :laughing:
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #186  
I pulled up a couple of those weeds in my garden last week. They did kind of look like flowers to me, but a flower in the garden is still a weed. It was PITA to spread all the hay, but now I have very few weeds. It also helps hold the water. [who knew it would rain for 18 straight days?]
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #187  
The 20 to 30 volunteer tomatoes coming up around my compost pile are doing better than the dozen plants in my garden.
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #188  
Larro, that banana melon looks like it could ripen a bit more. It seems to have a very thick rind or not quite be fully ripened. Is it sweet all the way out to the skin?

328223d1374250823-how-big-your-garden-how-058.jpg
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #189  
We go to the tomato fields every year. They have gone up to $9 a five gallon bucket this year, but still a good price. We make salsa and all that, but you never use as many as you pick. Once in a while, when I didn't want to deal with our hyper chocolate lab, I would throw the bad ones out the front door into the flowerbed. Our flowerbed tomatoes always looked better than the ones in the garden.
 
   / How big is your garden and how many tomato plants? #190  
Larro, that banana melon looks like it could ripen a bit more. It seems to have a very thick rind or not quite be fully ripened. Is it sweet all the way out to the skin?

View attachment 328231

I found that out, Jim. It was ripe enough to eat, but two or three days would have put it right. This is the first time I have grown them, and I was unsure of the right time. The vines are starting to turn yellow and some of the leaves are dying, so I went ahead and picked it. I will wait a little longer on the next one.
 

Tractor & Equipment Auctions

(30) 9' Pipe Fence Posts (A50515)
(30) 9' Pipe Fence...
2016 Kenworth T880 T/A Vactor 2112P-16 Combination Sewer Jetter Vacuum Truck (A50323)
2016 Kenworth T880...
2015 Terex PowerScreen TrakPactor 320 Crusher (A50322)
2015 Terex...
2021 John Deere 333G Two-Speed Hi Flow Compact Track Loader Skid Steer (A50322)
2021 John Deere...
2020 Utility Trailer Manufacturing, 53' Trailer (A52384)
2020 Utility...
Swict 84" Bucket (A50121)
Swict 84" Bucket...
 
Top