Garden of Eatin'

The other day I was visiting with a fellow gardener.   She is new to edible plants and mentioned that she had tried tomatoes the past few years with no success.   I must have been in lala-land because I failed to remember that we struggled with our tomatoes the past few years - I think my tomato failure was largely due to my extreme lack of attention BUT word has it that much of the tomato sets on the market the past few years came out of the greenhouses carrying a virus.  

This is what we picked this morning.  You can see that our tomatoes are doing well.     I always try to pick them when they are just beginning to color.   Otherwise, the mockingbirds get more of the crop than we do.   They like to sit on the pasture fence and wait for them to be juicy and tasty.     Tomatoes can finish ripening on the kitchen counter and still taste vine-ripened. 

There  are a few things you can do to increase your success with tomatoes.  

Don't plant in the same place two years in a row.    This lessens the chance of disease. 

Plant a number of different varieties.  If one does poorly, another may pick up the slack.   Different varieties will also ripen at different times so you'll have a steadier supply.   

Support your tomatoes with a cage or by staking them.    This keeps the fruit off the ground and helps the plant dry faster.

Do not sprinkle tomato plants; water the ground (i.e. the root zone). 

This is the first time that I am paying attention to companion planting suggestions.   Tomatoes can be planted with peppers, basil, parsley, and marigolds.   They should NOT be planted near dill.  Dill will pop up around the garden so remove it when it sprouts near the tomatoes.  

Gardening is cheaper than therapy - and you get tomatoes!   Author unknown 

Black Swallowtails

This is a female black swallowtail butterfly.  The mail is a bit more colorful. Unfortunately, this one was lyng dead on our back sidewalk.  We hope that she managed to lay some eggs before she bit the dust. 

With the exception of queens or monarchs, I really no one butterfly i'm another.   That's one of my goals – to be able to identify all the creatures that hang out in our yarden.  

A few weeks ago, we happened upon a few black swallowtail caterpillars feeding on the parsley.  

To my untrained eye, they look like pretty young caterpillars.  If you want to attract black swallowtails to your yard, plant dill, fennel, parsley, and carrots.    These are  "host foods" for black swallowtails - meaning, it is what the caterpillars need to eat when they hatch.   

If you are unsure of the identification of a bug, catch one.  Put it in a jar so that you can see it top and bottom.  Take a picture if that would help.   There are some great bug id websites out there.  I go to bugguide.net  You can search for yourself or you can submit photos for experts to reply with an id.  I don't know how I found info pre-internet!

This turned out to be a keeper!

When we bought our lot in 1999, this tree was already mature but not much to look at.   It was sandwiched in beneath a rotting cottonwood tree and way too many ashe trees.    It really had nowhere to spread its branches so I would guess it had less than 1/2 the width it does today.     We slowly removed the older and decaying trees, one by one.    As the neighboring trees were taken down, this American Elm, flourished.   Her color became darker and her leaves became larger.  I guess she wasn't getting the nutrients she needed.    Her canopy has completely filled in where three other trees used to be.   I'm so thankful that Dutch elm disease didn't claim this beauty.