Another Charles Ingalls Moment or Sleepy Eye Here I Come

If you've watched your share of Little House on the Prairie, you know that Pa was always losing the crop and having to take dangerous or low paying jobs in places called Sleepy Eye or Mankado.

Well, Sleepy Eye here I come.

I lost my English pea crop and in a tragic tomato branch incident, lost 8-10 expected tomatoes.

English Peas Don't like Full Sun

Nothing but the dead and dying in
my little pea container

The seed package says full sun, but the peas died. Despite the packaging instructions, they need both shadier and cooler conditions. A farmer at the farmers market told me this morning when I bought his peas and some spinach.

The picture at the left is from last week. The pea plants looked even deader this moring, so I pulled them out. I'm going to try again in September.

When I do replant, I'm going to use a different container. I though peas were perfect for my long, narrow window box container. I planted a row and gave them a trellis upon which to climb. Peas are climbers and have cute little fingers to grab on to the trellis.

Now, I'm beginning to understand that peas need more than a jungle gym on which to climb. They need room for their height and roots below. They might just get the tomato, zucchini or pepper container after their season is over.

In their place in the window box container, I planted some lettuce and put the container in a shadier area of the balcony. Leaf lettuce needs some shade too, but has shorter roots and does pretty well in a window box container as my Red Sails has proven all summer long.

The Great Tomato Plant Tragedy of 2011

Tomato plant after unintentional
pruning of productive branch

Ok, maybe that's overstating things a bit. I know a local gardener who lost several mature Japanese Maples in the storm last week, so my tomato incident is probably nothing special. But, I feel bad about it.

I was trying to stake up the tomato plant because it was battering its neighbor, a container with 3 pepper plants (Carnival Mix Sweet Peppers). I gently picked up the offending branch and was holding onto one of the branches that forks off the main line. The fork branch snapped off. It was a productive branch holding about 8 or 10 babies, too small and green to eat.

I'm comforting myself with the notion that the plant was getting to big for its own good. After a couple of normal sized patio tomatoes, the later blossoming ones seemed smaller than patio tomatoes should be. So, maybe this is a good thing. The plant can concentrate on fewer, but better tomatoes (maybe?)

My patio tomato plant is determinant, meaning that it is not a plant known to sprall and should not require pruning. I pruned it a bit before I knew that, but I'm now of the mind that I should have pruned it more. Some of the tomatoes were getting lost in the shadow of huge unproductive leafy side branches. Now, the remaining producing branches will get more light, so I'm hopeful that my remaining tomatoes will do well. We'll see.

Other Struggling Crops
As I mentioned, I purchased some spinach at the Farmers Market this morning. My own spinach is stuggling and will not grow to any harvest-worthy size. All the plants remain tiny seedlings. Same with most of my spring onions, although one I mindlessly planted with the green beans is doing well. My inside dill is also struggling to get past seedling stage. I replanted from seed and the new seedlings are struggling as much as the older ones I pulled out.

On the Bright Side

The zucchini plants are flowering and look beautiful. I'm starting to get a second wave of Bush Blue Lake Beans. My Red Sails lettuce is regrowing off the stems I cut down after they provided me with several tasty salads. My strawberry plants runneth over with runners. My parsley has made a recovery from what appeared to be an emerging powdery mildew problem. I have several baby peppers growing and getting larger every day. AND, I ate part of one of my California red onions. Delish.

On the Indoor Bright Side
The sage has come up nicely. I've been regularly using the Rosemary, Lemon Thyme and Basil in cooking. The hibiscus blooms regularly. After attempted murder of my Purple Ruffles Basil, the mint is doing well and I've already made some tea with it. The one stem of surviving Purple Ruffles Basil continues to recover. The lavender, English and French, is growing like crazy and smells great, but is not flowering. The Lemon Balm is also doing well, but it, together with the French lavender has murdered my chamomile. I saw the same grouping at one of the local garden stores, but it was a bad idea. I'm going to try and rescue chamomile by pulling it out and replanting the surviving stems.

Hibiscus