Tomatoes finally
Top: Purple Cherokee, Fireball/Moira, Black Pear, Thai Pink Egg
Bottom: Mystery Yellow, White Currant, Mystery Cherry, Golden Honey, Isis Candy
I lost a couple of the tags for the ones bought for me down south, hence the Mystery status. Also the Moira and Fireball look a lot the same to me, so now that I've picked them I can't tell them apart.
I was starting to think that tomatoes were not going to happen for me this year, but finally in the last couple of weeks I've been harvesting. First, just the Golden Honey. And then a few Moira, and a few White Currants. Then finally the rest. Earlier this week, due to a risk of frost I pulled in every tomato that looked like it stood a chance of ripening, and they must like the indoors, because I have a pile of tomatoes now!! I will most certainly be making a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad this weekend!
The only ones that didn't work out for me were the Green Zebra (again). They seem to need too much time to ripen - not sure I'll bother with them next year.
Potato Problems
I won't repeat myself here - but see my post on the UBC botanical forums for the problems we've had with potatoes:
http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43427
Carrots, finally
I can't believe my eyes - I have tried growing carrots every year... and this is the first year that they have finally made it! This success was not without it's failures. I originally planted 3 rows of 3 different varieties:
Napoli organic,
Purple Haze, and
Chantenay Red Cored Carrot. Only the Napoli (on the right in picture) produced a significant amount of carrots, but a few purple ones made it, quite to my surprise. They didn't do much at the start, and then I kind of forgot about them, until I went down to the garden the other day and ta-da! What you see in the picture is ALL of the purple ones that made it, but better than nothing! I have plenty more Napoli still in the ground to last the next few weeks. There is nothing like fresh carrots.
What I did this year that was different, that may have led to success?
1) added peat moss to the garden - the earth has always been really really heavy, which carrot seeds do not generally like.
2) watered them - or rather, the fact that it rained almost every day seemed to help.
3) I planted radishes in the same row. I do think that this broke the soil for the carrot seeds - the rows (Napoli) where I had lots of radishes were the rows where carrots did the best. A terribly unscientific-ly derived conclusion, but I think I will continue to do this.
Next year:
1) I've heard that planting carrots into long hills is the way to go - my mom's neighbour does this, and has amazing carrots every year, so I think I will try this next year.
2) Also, add more sand! I didn't have any around this year, and just got lazy at planting time. Next year - add sand into the planting trough. Carrots like sand.
