1st Golden Nugget tomatoes

Came home from work Friday afternoon and found 2 ripe Golden Nugget tomatoes.  They were delicious.  If you have ever had a Golden Nugget you know what I'm talking about.

Apr 26, 2011 pics

Here's some Easter weekend lemon and veggie pics.  Everything's looking healthy.  Going to spend the weekend pulling weeds and taking care of the turf grass and the flowers.   Still no rain in Houston but the weather folks say maybe we'll get some rain Monday and Tuesday.  I've also added a Weather Underground link to the bottom of the blog page.  Enjoy and Happy Easter everybody!

Improved Meyer Lemon

first flower on Purple Rain eggplant of 2011

first Celebrity tomato of 2011

and marigold



Gold Nugget tomatoes; greenbeans, Matt's Wild cherry tomatoes, and Sun Gold bell pepper

Purple Rain eggplant - mutant like!!!

Pics from Saturday afternoon - Apr 16

Spring garden

This year's garden didn't end up as originally planned.  Mostly because the wind damaged most of my tomatoes while outside to harden off.  After some reading and lectures about crop rotation maybe it was for the best.  Rather than 7 varieties of tomatoes I've planted the following spring garden:

• Purple Rain eggplant
• 2 Celebrity tomatoes
• Baby Red roma tomato
• Matt's Wild cherry tomato
• Gold Nugget cherry tomato
• Mr. Stripely tomato
• Golden Summer bell pepper
• 2 green beans

This year I've planted French marigold dwarf flowers next to the beans and tomatoes.  The French marigold is supposed to be a deterrant for whiteflies and nematodes.  I haven't used marigolds as a companion plant in previous tomato gardens so I'm looking forward to see what, if any, difference they make.

Kirby taking a well deserved break from weeding and tilling.

Kirby helping plant the Improved Meyer Lemon tree in February

Burpee green beans seeded March 26, 2011. One was planted April 3 and the other planted April 10th.

Classes completed

I'm finished with my Texas master gardener classes, reading, and tests.  I took was a seven week condensed evening course and I'm now spending my spare time working on the volunteer component of the program and tending to my own garden.  I've reconsidered a full garden of only tomatoes.  I'm adding some green beans and squash and a bell pepper (in the nightshade family so not helping my rotation).  I'll upload some pictures soon.  I just wanted to check in after a long absense.

1st Week of Class

I completed my first week of the Texas Master Gardener class.  The first week included almost seven hours of lectures covering an introduction to the MG program and Plant Growth and Development.  There was also an excellent presentation on citrus and fruit trees plus some home reading on these topics.  The first week was great and found it to be informative and interesting.

Next week's topics include Earth-kind landscaping and more on citrus and fruits.  I've already got a jump on this week's reading and I have finished the chapter on Earth-kind landscaping and I hope to finish the chapter on citrus and fruit trees tomorrow night.

To update you on this year's tomato plants started from seeds I had a 54% success rate.  I have about 9 seedlings of each variety with the exception to the Virginia Sweet which yielded nothing.  I think I'm going to try to seed a few more as back ups as I'll be giving some plants away and I usually manage to kill a few before March.

The vegetable and herbs aren't doing so well.  These seeds were probably a couple of years old and had not been stored in a cool and constant temperature.  I didn't expect much from the herb and veggie batch.  The thyme and the squash seeds did grow but everything else was a dud.  I'll start a new set of herbs and veggies with new seed packets.  I may experiement with the seeds packed in clay just to check them out.

Still have not found a flourescent lamp.  I didn't put much effort in to searching for one this week with class and everything.

sg

More Transfers

Moved another Big Rainbow, San Marzano, and Tiny Tim to cell packs.

Did not find a UV lamp today.

First Transfers

Naked seeds sown indoors last week were moved to cell packs and put under a UV lamp today.  Transfers included (1) Big Rainbow, (2) Mortgage Lifter, (1) Cherokee Purple, (3) San Marzano Plum, and (1) Tiny Tim.  I'm going to shop for a bigger UV lamp tomorrow.  I once had a UV desk lamp that would've been perfect because it had a long arm but I thought the base was too big and bulky so I donated the lamp to Goodwill.  That lamp would've been a good thing to hoard.  Instead I kept bank statements from 1997.

Trial and Error

I am new to both vegetable gardening and blogging.  This will be my third year to garden and my first day to blog.  I attended a few Saturday Texas Master Gardener workshops with my parents and armed with the knowledge of three Power Point presentations and six hours of Q&A I felt confident enought to try my hand at my first tomatoes, herbs, and peppers.  The first year's results were abysmal but I had a lot of fun and was I determined to improve.  I enjoyed it so much I decided to take the Texas Master Gardener classes this spring.  More on that later.

For 2011's garden I've seeded six types of heirloom tomatoes.  They are the Cherokee Purple, the Big Rainbow, the Mortgage Lifter, The Tiny Tim, and The San Marzano Redorta.  My dad started Yellow Pear and Golden Nugget plants for me so I'll plant what he gave me rather than try to seed them myself.  I'm also seeding some green peppers, sweep peppers, and zucchini.  I'll post pictures soon.

My objective with this blog is to have a record of my gardening trial and errors in Zone 9.  I encourage other gardeners to share comments and feedback.