Monday, May 09, 2011

HURRY! Look! The tomatoes will be ripe in a really long time from now.

Oh my god let's talk about the garden already because if I wait until I "have time" I'll be shoving aside tomatoes just to type these words.

Because - PEOPLE - the tomatoes are all blooming.

I'm actually blooming a lot more than this because this picture is a week old.

I might actually be a different angle of the same tomato but since this photo was taken a week ago, there's no good way to tell.

I have four tomato plants this year: 2 Better Boys, 1 Brandy-last year I was a happy mistake-wine and 1 Sun Sugar cherry tomato, even though cherry tomatoes are usually not my thing but OH do these make a good pan sauce for green beans.

Oh, and hey, the beans are on the poles, just like the good little whores they are.

Yeah, these aren't on the poles yet because this was a week ago when I took this. You know.
And I got a pretty good germination rate from the Fortex green beans which is good news, shade-wise, for the lettuce that is big, bushy and ready to hang out with some blue cheese dressing.

Look. I love blue cheese dressing and I do not even care if it covers all my homegrown lettuce (Lollo Bionda and Merveille des Quatre Saisons) because all of that makes it into my belly so I get some nutrition from the lettuce somehow and YUM I get to basically drink blue cheese dressing. Yes, the lettuce is just a vehicle to get the dressing into my mouth and no, I don't care what kind of piglet that makes me.

Though, note: not taking suggestions.

We're scared of cheese of any color now.
We're too small to know any better.

On a non-salad dressing note, the Slo-Bolt cilantro is slowly bolting.

The fact that it's not a blur of growing activity in this photo proves its "Slo-Bolt"iness.
Now, maybe it hasn't bolted because it's not that warm yet or because I've pruned it for tacos once already, but who can tell. I'm hopeful that I'll remember to plant it in successions so that we'll have some cilantro around when the tomatoes ripen in OH TWO LONG MONTHS FROM NOW but I'm not holding my breath for that particular miracle.

And can I just say that I don't understand why they can't just call it SloW Bolt rather than Slo. What do we, as Americans, have against the proper spelling of normal words. It's not like Bob Slo bio engineered this cilantro to bolt slower and therefore got to lend his namesake to the seeds. And it's not even a cocktail appropriate Sloe, like in my beloved Sloe Gin Fizzes like the one I had after the race on Saturday (with Race Fries and bacon, don't you worry) so that we could come up with some spicy cocktail drink with it.

No. It's just dumb.

A dumb thing that annoys me just like when people decide to name a restaurant Kountry Kitchen because that somehow sounds more cozy and like a place you can get good waffles than Country Kitchen. OR it sounds like a breakfast place run by the Klan.

Whatever, the grapes are up.

"Up" in the sense that they're growing.

They'll be officially "Up" when they're on the cable. I'll think of an inappropriate way to explain that situation later.
Of everything that's growing right now (including that lavender that's completely cracked out)(and so pretty)(and I can't wait for it to open up, which should happen this week, because the bees will be all over it and that is my vision) the grapes are probably growing the slowest, but I'm chalking that up to it's their first year in my yard and they're shy around all the other over-achieve-y plants.

Plants can be shy! Don't you mock me. I hear you out there. Jerks.

Wouldn't YOU be shy around this ambitious lime tree? Yes. It's cocktail making power is intimidating.

I WILL BE LIMONCELLO. BOW TO ME.
I tell you, these plants can be pushy.

Poor grapes.

We're small but mighty.
And that's about all the photos I have to prove to you that the garden is happening even though I haven't said much here.

BUT - if you're following my Twitter bullshit, you know that Team Cucumbers has a leg up on the lagging Team Melons.

And, again, this is a week old, so now there are FOUR cucumber seedlings and ZERO melon ones. Watch out boob fruit!

Now the only thing I think I have left to tell you, garden-wise, is that I've already added the first harvest to this year's Finny's Garden Tracker so get your eyeballs over there to check it out. And, if you see it and get all, "OH! I should totally do that, too. Too bad I hate making spreadsheets and how come no one just makes them FOR ME WOE IS ME." - here. (Just make yourself a copy and go nuts.)

OK - more soon, with less craptastic photos.

10 comments:

  1. Woo-hoo! Let the garden games begin!

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  2. TOMATOES! All flowering and everything! Mine, of course, are still three inches tall and huddling fearfully in their pots in the cold frame. Maybe I can put them in the ground in a few weeks. Maybe not. Gardening in upstate New York, you know.

    I am SO JEALOUS of your limes. I reallyreally want to grow citrus. But once again, upstate New York, not California. Oh well.

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  3. I am so jealous right now, and wishing I was back in CA for a bit. I talked to a Master Gardener in Seattle here a few days ago, and she surmised that a safe UNPROTECTED planting date for tomatoes would be late June/July! WTF. So basically now if I want to plant my heirloom tomatoes (Black Krim and something else I can't remember) I have to put condoms on all of them and surround them with Wall-o-Water's. Which I am going to buy, because no way am I going home-grown-tomatoless this year.

    Good luck to your masses of veggies! :)

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  4. I didn't know you could plant lettuce this time of year. Do you just do it from seed straight into the garden?

    I have lots of tomato buds and my bell peppers are trying to get some blossoms going. I ate a whole bowl of strawberries yesterday.

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  5. good golly miss molly, that spreadsheet is INSANITY. You're medicated, right? you are an incredibly high functioning OCDer. wow.

    :D

    now that I've insulted you, can I ask your advice? so I'm new to this gardening thang, and I have one heirloom tomato plant (cherokee purple, to be precise) with my 3 other non-heirlooms (early girls, roma, solar). the non-heirlooms are fine and have started producing, and the heirlooms are flowering, but the blossoms keep growing brittle at the stem and breaking off. Like all of them. so i have no cute little baby heirlooms and i'm super sad. thoughts?

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  6. Finny, you do all this and carry a day job? I'm impressed.

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  7. Hey Finny,
    Can I see a full picture of your bean support? I'm trying to find a better way to grow mine. Thanks!

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  8. Wow, tomato blossoms! Ours are two inches tall, still in flats, not even ready for the cold frame. Jealous.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Miss you Fin. Love you and your garden. Always impressed. Always. Amazed, really.

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  10. Great tomato plants. You do so much with your space in the garden. Here in Texas we just ate our first cherry tomatoes yesterday, and we have one ripe early girl on the counter waiting for lunch, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. (I'm not trying to make you feel bad. We used to live in the Bay area and I miss it very much.)

    ReplyDelete

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.