The Usual Garden Update!

Sorry for a lack of weekend post. Things got super busy over the weekend and I had very little time to accomplish much of anything. So here is the standard garden update post! So, the biggest change is that I went to Lowes and bought a drip hose...or rather a "spray" hose. It doesn't drip water, but sprays it out along various intervals on the hose. I figured with a hose that sprays water, I can tell just how much water my garden is getting.

Then, I went to walmart and bought this digital watering timer:

It has a 4 1/2 star review on Amazon, so I figured it must be worth it. I haven't hooked it up yet, but I've programmed it already. I've tried to hook up my drip hose to my cherry tomatoes, but so far it gives them way more water than they need, while the rest of the hose gives the garden just enough. Soooo when I leave for a week and a half to go home for my little brothers wedding, my tomatoes will probably get way too much water. That's okay, but for now I'm going to water them all by hand so they don't die BEFORE I leave!

So here is a break down of each of my plants:

Cherry Tomatoes-My four cherry tomatoes are all doing well, and in fact, they have produced more than this:

Yep, that's a big bag of cherry tomatoes right there! And I CAN'T eat them all by myself! The sad part is, none of my roommates want to eat them either. One doesn't like tomatoes, and the rest of them seem completely uninterested in eating/picking them as well as my zucchini. Kind of sad, but it's the truth. So far I've only been able to get my roommate to put some cherry tomatoes in a pasta salad she made for a party we had on friday.

They produced tons of fruit but now they are slowing down a teensy bit. It's been kind of difficult keeping them upright, especially as I've moved them around. They've grown well beyond the limits of their metal support cages.

As you can see, I had to put in a wooden stake to keep them from falling completely over.

Peppers:My peppers have grown in size, but they still haven't produced any fruit, so I don't really have a positive outlook for them. But they do provide some greenery! Next time I will grow them in pots and in a finer soil.

Eggplants:

My eggplants are doing great, despite being overrun by the zucchini. I'm going to have to go outside and tame back the zucchini leaves after I write this...but I have at least 4 eggplants growing on my plants and I'll post pictures of them when I harvest them I guess.

Zucchini:
My zucchini is growing like mad, and produces fruit IF I pollinate it, because nothing else does. Right now I've got like 8 zucchinis in the fridge that nobody will eat but me. I've tried to convince friends to take them away, but nobody has yet.

All this and MORE!

I guess I thought that I'd be able to eat all of my zucchini by myself. I stubbornly refused to believe that I could have more than I needed. Well I was wrong, I have way too much! But on the bright side, I'm saving lots of money by growing my own! I think they are at like a dollar something a pound right now at the store.

Sunflowers:
My "original" sunflowers have died, but they continue to sprout extra flowers on their stems. So I end up getting like 3 or four flowers on each sunflower stem. It's really interesting because I thought that sunflowers just have one big flower and that's it! Here are a few pictures of them:

Multiple flowers on one stem!

Big Sunflower 2.0



Frankenstein Sunflower!!!

I took a close look at my oldest sunflower, dug it up and inspected it. The seeds have dried out and it looks like this:

There was a red bug hiding on it along with two smaller ones. I'm not sure if it was looking for a partner or was protecting eggs or something. Either way it kind of creeped me out. I don't know why, but for some reason I guess it makes me think of a bedbug! =(

A closer view of the strange resident of the dead sunflower. It lived on the sunflower while it was alive, and then I noticed even after I dug it up that it was still on the dead sunflower a few days later. I'm kind of sorry I destroyed its home!

It certainly didn't have a lot of seeds, but it was interesting nonetheless!

Here you can see my largest sunflower leaning against my tomatoes. The seeds are starting to form!

Tomatoes:

My two cherry tomatoes that are planted next to my large sunflower might be cross pollinating with my regular tomatoes, because.....their fruit is becoming extremely large. The tomatoes are still arranged like regular cherry tomatoes, but each one is about the size of a golf ball. ALSO, my cherry tomatoes are almost nearly as tall as myself. They are REALLY tall. Like vines almost...and so far they are the tallest plant in my garden, even taller than my old sunflower. I've had to build them a major support cage. Here is some of their fruit:

They are REALLY big in real life. Larger than normal cherry tomatoes should be.

Here you can see two huge strands.

A picture of both our shadows. As of publishing this entry, it is pretty much up to my shoulders and has shown no signs of stopping yet!

My other regular tomatoes have a ton of big fat juicy tomatoes on them, however they are not growing so high. Here is a picture of some of their fruit:

Here is a side view of my garden:

There you can really see just how overgrown my zucchinis are becoming. Sorry for the shadow and the glaring sun, but this is arizona! We had a party on Friday night and one of our guests was pretty impressed with my zucchini. He seemed a little amazed that I haven't had any major pests (like squash bugs or cane bores). I'm pretty surprised too, and glad because it makes taking care of them so easy. Well, that's all for now!