What do you think?

Here's today's harvest. Most of the tomatoes were chopped up and frozen for future use...with the exception of that BIG Pineapple. That will become the main attraction of some BLT sandwiches...I haven't decided what to do with the peppers yet. I know I'll be making some salsa soon, but I have a LOT of HOT peppers coming on...

mmmmm...tomatoes

Eastern Tailed Blue

Here is a picture of the Eastern Tailed Blue butterfly. There have been several of these floating around my backyard in the last few days. They seem to like the mud left over from my watering the newly planted seeds. I apologize for the picture quality. I had to zoom in quite a bit. This specimen is maybe a half inch long. The top of the wing is a deep blue.

Butterfly Garden Progress

This is the south side that will be the bulk of the garden. I spent the last week filling in with soil my neighbor gave me. I can't believe how nice this dirt is. Thirty feet long by seven feet wide. I planted some seeds yesterday. Coreopsis, coneflower, salvia, and a few others. I will be planting butterfly weed and other things in the spring.
This is the east side. In addition to the seeds on the south side, there are a lot of daisies and some nasturtiums.
Another view of the east side. These daisies were planted last week and are coming up now.
North side - this will be filled in with more shade tolerant plants. Hostas, ferns, coral bells and bleeding hearts to start with.

Starting to get some tomatoes...

The tomatoes are starting to come in. This is my first big one. It's a Pineapple. It was quite tasty.
From top to bottom...Grape, two Big Rainbow's, a beefsteak, and a roma. The Big Rainbows are kind of disappointing this year. The size is easily half of what they have been in past years. They still taste great.
Here's my dog Porter. He loves to sleep in the sun.

The Smokey Mountains

Here's a picture from my recent vacation.

Eggplant

Twinkle Hybrid from Territorial Seed Company (Or maybe Rosa Bianca from Park). I only grow eggplant once every few years since it's not something we eat a lot of. I do like the look of it though and just for that reason I plan on growing more in the future.

FIRST TOMATOES!

Here they are! The Beam's Yellow Pear from Seed Savers Exchange is the first to produce ripe tomatoes in my garden this year. This plant is the most vigorous of the 10 I am growing this year so I'm not surprised that it has the first fruit. I can't report on the taste as my wife took these to work with her lunch today. They come 65 days after setting out and 108 days after starting the seeds. I'll compare with the packages later

The Black from Tula and the Pineapple look like they will have ripe fruit shortly. The grape has a few that will ripen this week. I expect to have a lot a tomatoes next week and then it will be a deluge!

Bug ID

Another creature from my vacation. On Tuesday morning around 10am we started to notice these bugs flying around the backyard. We didn't see any on Monday. by noon there were several hundred, maybe a thousand of them flying all over the place. It took a while to catch one even though they were not fast. They very rarely landed. This one is average and is just one inch long. The bottom was the most reflective I've ever seen. Sort of like looking at a green mirror. They reminded me of June bugs. On Wednesday there were maybe half of what we saw on Tuesday. On Thursday there was maybe 50 . On Friday I saw 2. Very strange. ID?

Moth ID

Last week I was in Tennessee on vacation. While walking down a sidewalk at the Bass Pro Hhop in Sevierville I almost stepped on this moth. My wife pointed it out to me. This thing was very large...maybe 3 inches across. What is it?

Jumping Worms update

I watered my flower beds this morning and after 5 minutes I started to look around, expecting to see the thousands of 'jumping worms'. While I did see several there was no where near as many as last week. Maybe whatever it is in the mulch that they like is just about gone. I'm liking that...

Here are previous posts regarding the beasties...
http://gardener-matt.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-with-jumping-worms.html
This one has the tentative identification as a type of maggot

here is the original...
http://gardener-matt.blogspot.com/2007/06/jumping-worms.html

Site of new butterfly garden

Here is the site of my next project...a butterfly garden. I'm just finishing the wall by filling in with topsoil. I'm not going to start planting until the end of July. Have to finish a few other things before then.

The plan all along was to fill in this area with flowers. Making those flowers butterfly friendly just gives me some extra focus as to what plants I want. The picture doesn't give any idea as to the size of the area. The wall is 6 feet from the garage. the total length of this bed is about 100 feet, but the butterfly garden will be only 50-70 feet, depending on how ambitious I get. More to follow.

Beam's Yellow Pear

Beams' Yellow Pear from Seed Savers Exchange. This is, without a doubt, the most vigorous plant of my 10 tomatoes. It's pushing 6 feet tall and has hundreds of fruit throughout the plant. For some reason I have 2 of them. One was intended for my mom but something got mixed up. There are at least a dozen fruit clusters just like this one on each plant. I don't know what I'll do with all the fruit, but that is a good problem to have!

I have two other plants I cannot ID. I believe one is a Big Rainbow, or maybe a Brandywine...or maybe an Amana Orange...or maybe. I'll have to keep better records next year. What happened was I started a few extras with the intention of giving them to my mom. She informed me she only wanted a couple of plants so I ended up with a couple extra. I didn't write down what varieties I planted and ended up with a couple of unknowns...Oh well...they are doing fine. It looks like I am on my way to a great tomato crop this year.

Happy Fourth of July!

Big Rainbow

Big Rainbow is one of my favorites. This year they seem to be a little on the small size. The one on the left is a bit bigger than a baseball. I know this plant will produce some big ones throughout the year. I seem to think the plant is just starting to take off now.

Pink Accordion

Pink Accordion is an heirloom from Territorial Seed. This plant has the least amount of fruit. I don't know if I had blossom drop or they just didn't set. It seems to be coming around just now with a few small fruits popping out. Here is the biggest one.

Grape

Grape. This plant has always been on the smaller side. It is a wide open plant and by that I mean...it's wide open with a lot of space between the branches and leaves. Some plants you have to dig deep to find the fruit, with this it's very spread out. This plant has gone on a growth spurt the last 2 weeks ans has set dozens of small fruit. I think it may be a winner...

Pineapple

Pineapple heirloom from Territorial Seed. This plant is tall, over 4 feet, but not a lot of fruit. The ones that are there are BIG! Look at that big ugly one on top! I just love 'em when they get all scarred and deformed! How cool is that! I think when all is said and done these two fruits will go over a pound each. At first I thought this was the same as Big Rainbow, but now I'm starting to see a difference. We'll see when it comes to taste!

Ananas Noire

This is an heirloom that i am growing for the first time. So far so good. The branch here has 5 nice sized fruit, each about the size of a baseball. there a few other single fruits scattered throughout the plant. I think it's going to set another batch of fruit now as it was covered in blossoms earlier this week. It is about 4 feet tall. The description on the packet said 'Skin is green, purple, orange and yellow. Flesh is bright green streaked in red'. Sounds cool. Hope it tastes cool...

Roma

Here are the Roma's. They are looking fine. This is probably the shortest of the 10 tomato plants I'm growing, but after the yellow pear it has the most fruit. There are maybe 5 other branches that look just like this. Roma is always a good producer in my garden. These will become sauce in a few weeks. I can't wait until I open a jar this winter. That's when I'll really enjoy them

Black From Tula

Here's a mid season update on the progress of the tomatoes. Here is my Black from Tula plant grown from seed I purchased from Seed Savers Exchange. This plant, while not the most vigorous in the garden probably has the best looking green fruit of all my plants. The three shown in the first picture are all looking great. The one in the middle is the size of a baseball. You can see the darkness on the shoulders. I haven't grown them before but so far they are looking great. I can't wait to taste them!
These are some smaller ones growing another foot up the plant. There are several more small fruits on this plant. It looks like it will give me several nice tomatoes throughout the summer!

More with the jumping worms

Another video of the Jumping Worms...

Here's a close up of the creature. I can't seem to get a real good close up picture of these things (they jump right when I get everything lined up). Also, I think this fly may be part of the equation. I noticed it crawling around. When I got close to it , the thing just crawled. It didn't fly away. When looking at it I noticed the end of it (abdomen?) Is colored the same as the jumping worms. I think it was just like a fly that has just emerged and it's wings weren't ready to fly.

Another picture of the jumping worms

Maybe springtails? I don't know. I'm leaving them be for now since I haven't noticed any damage to the plants or an abundance of other insects. Again, they fold themselves in half and fling themselves open causing them to be propelled some distance. They seem to be living in the cocoa bean mulch. I just watered some zinnia's I have growing there and thats when I noticed them.

Jumping Worms?

I don't have a clue as to what these things are. They're about 3/8 of an inch long and they...jump. They fold themselves in half and then unfold quickly hurling themselves 6 to 12 inches. They are in a flower bed mulched with cocoa bean hulls and I didn't see them until I watered today.

Flea Beetles

These little bugs are just having a grand time munching on my eggplants. I only have 4 plants and while they are doing pretty good, every leaf has some damage. I have a feeling the Big-B-Gone is going to come out pretty soon!

Green Tomatoes

Here's how things are looking today. Just another week or two and these beauties will be on the plate.

TORNADO!

What an evening! Yesterday at 4:45 a tornado hit the town I live in. Fortunately it was a small one and nobody was injured. It looks like it went to the north of me. The street I live on had the least amount of damage in the town so I am thankful for that. Just 2 blocks away trees are snapped in half and some homes sustained damage. The trees on my street are fine. I was looking out the window during the storm waiting to see some debris and during that time the trees across the street were bent to near a 90 degree angle. I thought they were going over. Strangely, about the only damage at my house was the popcorn in my garden. It was flattened. I tried to trellis it up today so we'll see what happens there. Here are some pictures of my garden as well as some of the storm damage in the park behind my house.

The Tomatoes are taking off...

Here is how the tomatoes are looking just 8 days after the previous post. I am always amazed by how quickly plants grow. The weather conditions have changed a bit in the last week. The rain has stopped and it has turned HOT! The temperature has averaged 88 degrees (F) each day. Yesterday and today have both been well over 90 (f). The heat can really stress the plants if they are not ready for it. In addition to that, now is the time when the fruits can develop blossom end rot. The best way to help plants is to make sure they get plenty of water. 3 days ago I watered them heavily. I gave them 1.6 inches of water. I usually go with just the soaker hose to get the water to the roots. This time I went with a sprinkler since I wanted to water my other bed as well. The concern when using a sprinkler is that you leave water on the leaves and the high temperatures can cause fungus and diseases to grow. I watered in the morning and the leaves were dry in just an hour. No worries there.
These are some of the Big Rainbow. They are my favorites year in and year out due to the size and flavor. Right now they are just a bit bigger than a golf ball.

Here are a few Roma's. They should all ripen at about the same time. I'll turn them into sauce.

A close up of the Yellow Pear's. These are my wife's favorites. Open this up and look at the details.

Roses...

Growing like crazy!

Here is how things look 10 days later...Everything is about twice as big as it was 10 days ago. We've had at least 3 inches of rain since the last post and I think that has made all the difference. Here is a close up of some tomato flowers. All of the plants but the Grape have blooms. I'm not worried about that at all. That plant seems to be smaller and a bit behind all the others. I suspect it is due to the small size of the fruit; it is probably just a smaller plant.