Fall tomatoes

Three tomato plants survived the summer and are now loaded with fruit. This cherry tomato (I think it is a Sweet 100) was a volunteer which has sprawled to cover half of this raised bed. It probably has more than a hundred pea-to-marble sized tomatoes on it now. Two other plants in another bed, ironically among the ones that I thought had died last March, are also huge bushes bearing dozens of green tomatoes.

I'm not sure the tomatoes will ripen before a frost does them in. Although the temperatures are close to perfect for them to set fruit, it ripens much more slowly during the shorter days. That's what happened last year in my experiment with a fall tomato crop last year, and why I didn't plan to repeat the experiment. However, this year I didn't have to put out new, small transplants in late July and baby them through August and September...this were established plants that refused to die. I couldn't bear to dig up such healthy looking plants, so I decided to leave them alone.

We'll see what happens.

Sweet potato harvest

I've been dithering about when to harvest the sweet potatoes we planted from slips last June. I kept reading articles, and couldn't get up the gumption to destroy the beautiful vines, which grew happily and prolifically through the hot summer. My decision that today would be the day came not from something I'd read, but  because I was in a bad mood, and I've found that digging and other kinds of heavy garden work are excellent therapy for bad moods. Anyway, they obviously were ready to be harvested as some had reached quite a large size.

Here's one of the articles I found about harvesting sweet potatoes. I started to use a spading fork as suggested in the article, but was concerned that I'd damage the potatoes with its tines, so I used a trowel instead. After I pulled out the vines, I scraped away with the side of the trowel at the base of each root until I saw the top of a potato; then I used the pointed end to dig it out.

The potatoes will have to "cure" for a while before we can try eating them, but I definitely consider this year's sweet potato experiment a success and will try them again next year. The only thing I think I'll do differently is plant them earlier- in May rather than late June.

Damage Control

We noticed today that a large, heavily fruit laden branch of our lemon tree had broken. It could have been damaged by some of the monsoon winds, or it might have broken under the weight of all the fruit. The branch was undoubtedly weakened by neglectful (read: nonexistent) pruning practices. Several branches were growing far too close to each other, and had actually grown together where they joined the trunk. Wind or no wind, that's a bad thing because the cambium on both branches is compromised. We should have removed the smaller branch long before it got to this point. Now we need to take both of then out. The photo below, taken from another angle, shows the crowded branches clearly.

The lemons are mostly full sized, but still green. I've read mixed reports as to whether they will ripen off the tree, but we're going to wait and see what happens. We cut into one and there is plenty of juice, so they may be perfectly fine for the normal uses we'd make of them. If they were oranges, it might be a different story, but I don't expect lemons to be sweet when fully ripe. As you can see in the picture below, there are a lot of them!

October surprise

I found this watermelon growing from a vine that came up as a volunteer. I knew the vine was hiding beneath the zinnia jungle, but it didn't do much until we cleared out some of the zinnias and the watermelon vine had access to sunlight.

I don't know that it will reach an edible stage this late in the year, but it made me wonder. What kinds of hidden treasures might we find in our lives if we look closely, clear away some of the overwhelming busyness, and give overlooked possibilities an opportunity to flourish?