With Mom and Gram both passing away this spring, my garden is overrun with weeds and my tom starts all died while I spent a month in Colorado.
I did buy 4 plants at the store so I can at least have a few of my own.
We've decided it would be a good year to re-do the back yard, replacing wooden raised beds with cinder block, and creating a better play area for the grandson. Then next year I can really go to town.

And it's the same size as yours! I'm in NJ.

I know what you mean about the trees growing and changing the landscape. I have had to entirely tear out my front flower garden and replace sun-lovers with shade lovers like hydrangea and bleeding heart.

I'm pretty sure your pops was hanging around the garden. I just have a feeling.

I hope you'll do more videos. I love to watch OPG (other people's gardens).


Cher

Well, the driveway part, anyway. Not sure I'll manage QUITE as many pots, but looking forward to trying.

But it seems like my local nursery doesn't carry a lot of them. I don't understand that. Is it not as popular as some other tomatoes? Is it hard to grow? Does it tend to get problems?

Most varieties that are commonly available are far less expensive when purchased as seed....5 years ago I bought 5000 Sungold seed (when you buy in bulk, it saves much money!). Sungold is actually very easy to grow and relatively trouble free.

At Johnny's, it is about 3.50 for 20 seeds, but 200.00 for 5000 seeds - so quite a mark up for the packaging.

And since tomato seeds last at least 12 years, it is worth stockpiling hybrids that may unexpectedly disappear.

Today is an important day - as of 4 PM, the text of my upcoming tomato book is complete (meaning a first draft - still have a few appendices to finish)....I am printing it for my wife to review and critique (it hurts, it hurts!)....and in parallel, my daughter is making suggestions and edits as well. But all is on track for me to push the big (currently 92K word, 210 page) Word doc off to my editor at Storey on June 30. Photography is scheduled for mid-late July (fingers crossed the 25 tomatoes I am featuring are all ripe)....publish date isn't until Dec 2014, so lots of time for tooing and froing, edits, refinement, etc....

Ah, the garden. By crop:

Lettuce is done (sobbing about that one - it went from stunning to bolted in just a few weeks)....that area is now planted with bush beans, squash and cukes.

Big garden tomatoes are looking good - just fed, all nicely staked and tied, all healthy.

Driveway tomatoes:

edge big pot indeterminates are looking quite good, with a few trouble spots (an obvious crossed plant here, a slightly diseased one there).

small pot extreme prune indeterminates were getting too tall and heavy and topple over with every strong wind - so they were relocated to either our deck or front yard boxwood tree area. All look good except a few.

Dwarf tomatoes in grow bags look quite good; most have fruit set, a few have foliage issues. If you grow enough tomato plants, you are guaranteed to lose some to disease, so I've gotten over the annual realization of that fact.

peppers look wonderful, as do eggplant - in fact, there are small fruit coming on each.

So all in all, if I were a teacher, the garden in its current state gets an A-. Which is damn fine when compared to other seasons; the adequate rain and temps staying in the 80s are helping to keep disease somewhat at bay, and encourage good fruit set.

As always, I wonder how I did this when I worked! retirement...highly recommended (well, at least retirement from the corporate world - the garden writing thing is just at the start!)

My tomatoes continue to slowly grow. Another month and they should be flowering and the fruiting. I am enjoying the differing foliage on different types of plants. Am coming to the conclusion that having the maritime influence of the cold Pacific means while day temps are good, it cools off more at night and the plants grow slower. If I could get the ocean currents to switch directions and get warm water....

Question: this is my first year growing Cherokee purples...is the top of the fruit supposed to be greenish when ripe? Also, I have yet to see a tomato hornworm this year, woohoo! Is that normal? It's never happened to me before growing tomatoes...

I've not seen one yet either!

Question: How large is your driveway? It looks enormous.

Also, how many plants do you have in your driveway?

I'm curious as to whether the plants in the grow-bags get large and how much yield you get on the average from each of the tomatoes.

I had never heard of grow-bags or water scarecrows. Do you special bags as grow-bags or will any plastic bag work? How many holes do you put in for drainage? Do you lose a lot of soil from the holes?

Are there some grow-bags that you don't put holes in?

This year I probably have 250 plants in pots of various sizes (actually, with my 50 1 gallon pepper plants, maybe closer to 300). The only tomatoes we put in grow bags are the dwarf tomatoes and indeterminates that I prune to top out at 3-4 feet - but, yes, given sufficient water, they would grow very similarly to those in the ground - so the challenge becomes supporting them (which I am only marginally successful at!)

I get the plastic grow bags from peaceful valley farm supply in CA - the 5 gallon ones are less than a dollar each and I've reused them for at least 5 years - they can be bleached as well. But anything that holds planting mix and has drainage holes will work fine.

The Water Scarecrows, which I get from Amazon, are the only deer-proofing technique I've tried that works!

How do I know whether my tomatoes are unhealthy?

How do I prevent the bottom rot on tomatoes in a pot? Is adding eggshells helpful?

Is it true that pouring a little watered milk on a tomato plant is a good idea?

And do you suggest growing marigolds with tomatoes?

Sorry if you already answered these questions, but I think these problems trouble beginning gardeners.

Our lot is maybe 53 feet by 150 including our house. We have a driveway that is too narrow to use, but there is an oleander to the side of it. I have hesitated to plant vegetables near that oleander because oleanders are poisonous. But I am keeping some other kinds of plants there. It is very sunny and ideal for growing flowers.

As I understand it, you grow flowers not far from your tomatoes and other vegetables. I think that is so important for attracting bees.

For tomato issues, this is a great website - http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/DiagnosticKeys/TomKey.html - it is all about issues with the appearance of foliage, overall plant (wilt or lack thereof), and fruit.

As far as adding milk, it can't hurt - kind of an urban legend - deserves a small controlled study.

Marigolds could push nematode worms away, but they would go where there are no marigolds - best thing would be to plant a nematode infected bed completely with marigolds, which will improve it the following year.

blossom end rot is a pain, and due to the developing fruit lacking calcium during periods of uneven moisture availability - egg shells leech Ca only slowly - they can't hurt, but probably don't help all that much - to minimize BER, using drip irrigation, or mulching well and ensuring the plants don't dry to wilting in periods of high heat when they are setting fruit.

hope that helps!