Chocolate Tomatoes

I get so excited each year when Livingston Seed Co. donates seeds. Several varieties catch my attention, but I usually only try one or two. One variety I tried this year was "Chocolate Drops" tomatoes. The picture on the front of the seed packet looked intriguing. So now that we are in full swing with the tomato harvest, I've sampled one of these unique cherry tomatoes. My opinion - great tomato, very sweet but with a thick skin. I'd definitely grow these tomatoes again. Not sure how they would mix with other variety of cherry tomatoes or what type of dish I'd use them in.

Saturday Work Day

This year the main garden, Epworth Veggie Garden, has really gotten out of shape. I could list a ton of excuses: 1) too much rain 2) not enough help 3) the end of the community service program from the Juvenile Court System 4) letting weeds go to seed. Today, I finally decide just to spend as much time as I could getting things back into shape. Cory and Roni worked with me this evening and we filled almost 4 trash containers full of weeds. Roni put more stakes in for the tomatoes, but there is still so much to do.

Saturday - Food Pantry Delivery

Dropped off the harvest from several different gardens at the food pantry over at Christian Assembly. When I sit back and reflect on gardening this is really what it's about. Our original vision ("sermon moment") was to grow corn on the church lawn and then give the produce to the food pantry. So many lessons have been learned including: 1) not putting just washed strawberries into sealed ziplock bags (mold) 2) most people think red lettuce is weird 3) volunteer tomatoes never produce the same as tomatoes grown from a seed 4) keeping things simple applies to gardening as well (grow the basics - tomatoes, cucumbers and beans - not some of every variety of 20 different veggies) 5) you don't need a thousand ziplock bags - you can use recycled plastic grocery bags, plastic containers and bread trays.

Friday Night Harvest

Harvest  from the Northwold Garden off Cleveland Avenue (above)

Tomatoes from the Maple Grove Garden (above)

A few more veggies from the Epworth Veggie Garden (above)

Pests in the Garden

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this might be an armyworm on a tomato plant at the Northwold Garden (above).

Looks like the deer are chewing up some stuff at the Northwold Garden as well. (above - pepper plant below - tomato plant)

Epworth Veggie Garden Harvest

Good harvest tonight at Epworth. The peppers are doing really good. Some of the bell peppers are mini bells. We have about 4 jalapeno pepper plants that they are producing really well and have a number of blooms still. The big tomatoes are growing slow. We got a late start getting the tomatoes in the ground. We continue to have lots of cherry tomato plants (volunteers). They are not producing in big numbers, but there are enough of the volunteer plants to give us a decent amount of tomatoes. We had 47 cherry tomatoes last night. Next year we will let the majority of the volunteers go and plant first year cherry tomato plants.

Maple Grove Garden

Nice harvest tonight at Maple Grove. 29 fantastic looking tomatoes and a few other veggies. We decided it was time to let the broccoli and bean plants go. The beans have done good this year with a couple of exceptions: 1) the rabbits nibbled on some of the plants at first and 2) the mexican bean beetles started eating some of the leaves and beans as well. The broccoli has done well, but after a number of weeks of continuing to produce little florets it was time to let those plants go as well. Soon we will be adding compost and tilling to get the garden ready for next year.

Tomato Worm

I noticed something appears to have eaten a little bit on our tomatoes. On the tomatoes you can see some with a spot that is quite round. I also found a few limbs that had a number of leaves chewed. Looks like it must have been from a worm! After a little bit of searching I found the culprit!

Harvest Time!

Above you see the harvest from Maple Grove UMC Garden. We have 23 Brandywine tomatoes and all of the cherry tomatoes came off of a single tomato plant. The tomatoes are just gearing up while the beans are almost done. We are still getting some green peppers are well. These peppers are still a bit small and we'll harvest even more peppers on Tuesday evening. Normally the harvest from Maple Grove goes to the Clintonville Resource Center (CRC) Food Pantry. Below you see the harvest from the Epworth Veggie Garden. We harvested what seem like a little bit of everything from Epworth.

Christian Assembly Garden

We harvested a number of cherry tomatoes at the garden tonight. It's definitely tomato season right now. These tomatoes will head down to the food pantry at Christian Assembly on Saturday morning. We hope to have a few peppers and cucumbers from the gardens to add as well. Also doing well are a number of herbs in the garden. These herbs include: basil, rosemary and parsley.

Buckeye Lake - Cabbage Worms

The cabbage a the garden is being consumed at a rapid pace by a number of cabbage worms. On one plant I counted at least 4 worms. We didn't bother picking off the worms or treating the cabbage. We figured just to let nature run its course. I've seen plenty of damage done by these worms in a number of our gardens, but this is the first  time I've actually seen the worms on the plants.This worm will grow into a white butterfly.

Buckeye Lake - Caterpillar

Tonight, we found a number if pests out at the Buckeye Lake garden. First up is this caterpillar we found in the carrots. This same caterpillar is often found on celery as well. This turns into one beautiful swallowtail butterfly, so I like to either sacrifice some of the leaves or relocate these caterpillars. See if you can spot where the caterpillar in the picture below.

Here is a picture of what the swallowtail butterfly looks like. For more information see this article from Wikipedia : Black Swallowtail.

Maple Grove Garden

The cucumbers have almost completely stopped. We took the majority of the cucumber vines this evening. The squash is slowing down as well. Most of the squash has fallen victim to vine borers. The tomatoes are starting to crank up. We're harvest easily over 100 cherry tomatoes a week off of just one plant. The biggest issue is keeping the garden consistently watered. Many of the tomatoes have split because there go through periods of lots of water and then not enough water. Another problem is the weight of the tomatoes on some of the limbs has caused limbs to break (you can see some green tomatoes above) or the entire tomato cage to lean. We've really got to watch the tomatoes that are laying on the ground so they don't rot.

Epworth Veggie Garden

We're starting to harvest a variety of veggies out of the Epworth Veggie Garden. On Sunday evenings, the children and youth typically harvest veggies for the Epworth Food Pantry. On Friday evenings, we harvest again and send the produce down to the Christian Assembly Food Pantry. The cucumbers are slowing down drastically, but the cherry tomatoes and peppers  are starting to pick up. We finally got our first Porterhouse tomato out  of this garden.

Christian Assembly

I'm really excited about the watermelons growing at the Christian Assembly garden. We've got about another month or so for these melons to develop. It will be interesting to see how much hot weather we have left this summer. When the weather cools off many of the summer veggies will slow down significantly. I forget the exact variety, but these are an ice box type melon that will be small. Its still fun to watch them grow. I believe there are 3 or 4 melons growing on this mound.

Maple Grove Harvest

We had a great harvest tonight at the Maple Grove Garden - lots of colors from the different veggies. We harvested tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, broccoli and lettuce. The cucumbers are almost done for the season. The vines are beginning to die and each week that goes by we are harvesting about 1/3 the number from the week before. There are lots of green tomatoes on the vines. The weight of some of the tomatoes are too much for the plants. We'll need to figure out a way to tie and stake the bigger tomatoes.

Northwold Garden

We're beginning to harvest twice a week now at the Northwold Garden. With over 100 tomato plants we should have plenty of cherry tomatoes. The squash and cucumber plants are looking good as well. This morning we spent time taping up the tomato plants, tilling, weeding and spreading some more leaf compost around the plants. Finally this lot is starting to look like a garden!

Christian Assembly Garden

The gardens are starting to produce each week now and the garden at Christian Assembly is no exception.  This is the first year for the garden and we got a late start getting veggies in the ground. This Saturday we expect to harvest green peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash and some herbs. Another exciting thing happening in the garden is we are seeing  our first watermelon. It will be interesting to see if we have enough warm weather left this season for the fruits to mature.

Maple Grove Garden

The first Porterhouse tomato has ripened. You can see the Porterhouse on the left in the picture above next to an average tomatoes. I have not done anything special to grow the biggest tomato possible such as pulling off smaller fruit or pinching suckers. This tomato weighted around 1.5 lbs. I'm satisfied with this variety over all. The big question will be if we have the support structure in the place so the weight of the tomatoes do not damage the plants. Should be a few more porterhouse tomatoes this season. We've got perhaps 15 plants total in the Maple Grove and Epworth Veggie Gardens.