I get powdery mildew every year I garden in San Diego. It hits my tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini badly. I had used neem oil in the past to try to prevent powdery mildew, but I just found this article today with another prevention method. They suggest using a milk and water spray to prevent powdery mildew. I will be using this method on my zucs and cucs this year. I will try to remember to post results.
I was reading MSN.com today and came across this article about tomato prices increasing. Not sure how this situation will turnout, but I am glad I picked up a second garden plot at the Ocean Beach Community Garden so that I can grow a whole plot of heirloom tomatoes.
This is the first post since September…sorry for the huge gap. Brian and I are going to start blogging much more frequently now. At the end of September, I joined the OB community garden and have been gardening there since. My next few posts will be about how it’s gone at the new garden.
Feel’s good to be back at Agridude.com again!
One of my favorite appetizers is using our heirloom tomatoes and basil from the garden and make a modified bruschetta with goat cheese. You will need a loaf of french bread or sour dough, some heirloom tomatoes, basil, and goat cheese. It’s a pretty easy recipe. You cut the bread into small slices and butter each side and bake at 400 for 4-5 on each side.
The picture above is of the tomatoes we used. Using home grown tomatoes in this recipe really makes this taste superb. We have used grocery store tomatoes (trader joes heirlooms) and they just don’t compare.
To the left is a green zebra diced up into small pieces. The basil leaves are to the right and still need to be minced. You will be blending the cream cheese with the basil and spreading it on the bread, so the finer the better.
Once the bread is done (done is as crunchy or soft as you want it), you can start spreading a layer of the goat cheese and basil mixture. Once you are done putting the spread on all the bread, spoon the diced tomatoes on top and eat when you finish. Here are two pictures that show what they should look like
So this is the most recent picture I have of Cape Mayhem Gardens. My camera was dropped on my birthday and broke so I am using Kelly’s. I would love for this to be the reason I have been slow to post, but I have just been too busy to make a post…sorry. As you can tell, the tomatoes are not looking so hot. I think they will be ‘done’ soon, but I am waiting to see if any more fruit will come. I am also debating putting in a few tomatoes that I had in pots to try to sneak in some late season tomatoes. The rest of the garden is still doing pretty well though and I have been taking a gardening class at the Solana Center in San Diego. I am getting excited to give my first full time effort to grow cool season crops like Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts, etc.
I am going to start by showing off the newer parts of the garden that are doing well. To the right are my cucumbers. I have been trying to train them to grow in different directions in order to help airflow and reduce the chance of powdery mildew. They are doing better than the last group of plants, but I still find myself removing a few leaves every time I’m at the garden that have mildew on them. We have had some heat here in San Diego the past few weeks and the cucs have been loving it. Tons of new growth at the ends of the vines and lots of flowers. The corn below is doing well too. I can see where the ears will be and I’m hoping that they are not empty.
To the left is one of my three hot pepper plants. These turn red and I like to try to get a variety of colors for my hot peppers. I have yellow, black and red. The yellow peppers are just coming along and the blacks are still flowering. I also grow these because I noticed that uber hot peppers sell for 50 cents a piece in grocery stores. These plants produce so many peppers that I give quite a few away.
And we’re back to evaluating the tomatoes… This happens every year and I wonder if I can stop it some how? The plants are bear for the most part. You can see tons of fruit and healthy growth on the top of the plants, but the bottom 75% are barren. I harvested quite a bit of fruit on Sat as you will see in the next photo even though the plants look like this. I think the issue is that I didn’t cage the plants in the beginning. You can see how many vines are running up from each plant. I let them get bushy, then trained them to grow tall, and now they can’t supply enough energy/nutrients to keep all the vines healthy.
You can see the green zebra’s, crnkovic yugoslavian’s, and black carbon’s. They are all delicious. I can’t tell you how much better these tomatoes taste than store bought. We make bruschetta, caprese, or another version of bruschetta with goat cheese pretty much everyday now that we have the tomatoes. I put two slices of a black carbon on my sandwich for work today and it was amazing.
Well, I will try to do a better job at posting more frequently. I have one more recipe for tomatoes with goat cheese and some worm updates for you. I will hopefully get a new camera soon too.
This post is all about tomatoes and jalapenos!!
On the left is pea currant tomatoes. They are super small and packed with sugar. Megan made a pasta salad with them today for lunch. On the right are my cherry tomatoes. Unfortunately, I can not remember what type they are. I am going to turn then into a Cous Cous salad. Recipes to come!
Here is a couple of close up pictures of the pea currant tomatoes on the vine.
My jalapenos are finally starting to show some fruit. They are pretty small yet, but with the last couple of sunny days they really took off. I bought a Weber charcoal grill today from Fleet Farm and smoked a whole chicken!! Pictures to come. Find recipes from agridudes on this blog!!!
Sorry for the uber late post…This was from 2 Sundays ago after I did all that worm work. It was my birthday last Friday and the celebration started on Thursday which didn’t leave a lot of time to post. I ended up going to the nursery for a few supplies and ended up buying a 6 pack of pole beans and an edamame plant, a bunch of lady bugs, and 2 giant stakes to tie the tomato plants to. The picture on the left is the vermicompost that I harvested from my Worm Factory 360. I bought the lady bugs to eat the catepillars that were eating the tomato leaves and fruit. After learning that legumes put nitrogen back into the soil, I decided to buy some bean plants to help put some nutrients back in the ground. I also want to experiment with the Native American method of the 3 sisters garden, except I’ll only be using corn and beans.
The directions from the Worm Factory 360 say to dig holes near your plants and then fill them in with the vermicompost that was harvested. To the right, you will see a hole next to my green zebra tomato plant. By placing the vermicompost in the whole, when I water moving forward, the water should pass through the compost and bring the nutrients down to the roots.
Here is a picture of me filling in the whole with my vermicompost:
To the right is my corn growing. I think it is doing pretty good for the late planting it received. The three sisters garden is a Native American technique of growing corn, beans, and squash or pumpkins together. The corn acts as a pole for the beans to climb, the beans put nitrogen in the soil for the corn to grow, and the squash provides ground cover to retain moisture. You can’t see the beans in this picture, sorry, I’ll get a better picture next time.
In the picture on the left, you can see some lady bugs crawling on the leaves. I noticed some holes in our tomatoes and on leaves on many different plants. We have had this in the past and we used to look for the caterpillars by hand, but I learned last year that lady bugs will eat them. I bought a pint size container of them from my nursery and dumped them on plant leaves in the evening. They will stick around the garden as long as there are bugs for them to eat. I saw some on Saturday so I was happy that they are still hanging out.
Here are two pictures of my tomatoes. I am trying to show how bare the bottoms of my plants are. Do they look normal? Seems kind of bare to me…but there is tons of fruit so I’m not sure…
In the above picture, notice the one ripe tomato, it’s a Crnkovic Yugoslavian’s, we used this tomato for a topping on our burgers that night. Here is a picture of Mike and I near the grill, and the second is of kelly cutting the tomato into slices for the burgers:
Next post Ill update you guys on the beans, how the new cucumbers are doing, if I still see lady bugs around, and if I see any noticeable difference in the plants after using the vermicompost
It’s been 2 weeks since I last updated everyone with how our cape mayhem garden is doing…sorry about that. I went up to San Fran and Napa for a 5 day vacation, then to Big Bear for Grant’s birthday blowout. Ill show you what’s going on in the garden, but my main focus is going to be on the tomatoes. This year I have been removing the yellow leaves/dead branches on the plants. I’m not sure if I should be. You can tell in the picture on the left that the bottom third of so of my plants are pretty bare (notice how there are no leaves in the next two pictures). I think as the tomato begins to fruit, it focuses on giving the water and nutrients to the fruit versus old branches/leaves. Can anyone confirm this to ease my concerns that I’m doing something wrong? This year I have also been watering way less than years past, just once or twice a week. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. To see if that is the issue, I have begun watering every other day. I am going to buy some mulch this weekend as well to help with water conservation. I will let you know what happens.
To the right are my Crnkovic Yugoslavian tomatoes. I have eaten 3 of these and they are uber good. I just realized that I should take pictures of the whole plant so that you can see how many tomatoes are on this plant, they are everywhere. Can’t wait for full on harvest mode so that I can eat caprese or bruschetta pretty much everyday. I brought in a green zebra and one of these in to work for an afternoon snack and everyone enjoyed it.
Here’s a picture of our cherry tomatoes. Again, I’ll take a picture so you can see the whole plant. These are great for salads, I pulled 8 this morning. One thing I have been noticing is that when I pick these, the skin splits. Am I picking too early? Are they just too juicy and bust the skin open? Am I squeezing them too hard like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy? After watching that clip, I need to watch this movie again ASAP.
To the right are my 6 corn plants. They are doing surprisingly well. I poured a bunch of blood meal in this part of the garden to help the corn grow. Blood meal contains tons of nitrogen and that is what makes plants grow. I have been reading that you need a lot of corn plants in order for them to pollinate each other. Anyone know if 6 is enough for that to happen? Leave a comment or I’ll figure it out by the end of the season…
To the left are my first super hot peppers forming. I have this one in a pot at the garden and we should get plenty of these devils this year. I cannot handle spicy food so I give most of these away. Last year we made the mistake of using them in Mike’s chili and it was fiery hot and we ended up making rice to help contain the heat.
We have 6 strawberries growing in pots and I found a few berries in there. I honestly can say berries straight from the garden are the best tasting. So good…wish we could get more out of the plants. I also don’t know why, but they don’t grow very large for us. Maybe it’s just my variety.
Here is Pete and I posing for a picture last Sunday after I was in Big Bear. The hat I’m wearing is his although I should probably pick one up for myself.
This weekend I am going to the nursery, going to add my 3rd tray to the worm bin, try to ‘use’ my finsihed vermicompost in the garden and go to the Muir Street block party on Sat. Should have lots of material to post on here next week. Hope everyone has a great weekend!
My garden is growing faster than my capacity to keep up with the posts. I’m backlogged by about a month. But I had to get a quick post up to show the progress. Here are some photos showing the growth during the last few weeks after the big expansion was completed on June 9, when tall Paul and I built the garden boxes and planted all the new plots.
The onions really shot up out of no where. Here’s a picture of the ones Paul planted in the Patriotic Plot. I was shocked to see the onions grow so high in only a couple weeks.
The main plot is still doing pretty well. The tomato plants seem to have benefited from the fertilizing Paul gave them back on June 9. And my one featured marigold in the foreground is killing it. My jalapenos, however, are dead as a door nail. Is there some limit on plant life? That jalapeno plant is the only plant left from my original planting two years ago. I’m a bit nastalgic about it, but maybe I should just put it out of its misery? Is there any possible cure for it?
Now it’s time to get up close and personal with my tomato plants.
The Green Zebra tomatoes are looking good, if not green. I let these ones get too ripe I think.
Up next are the Mr. Stripey tomoatoes. I love these guys. They’re great on bruchetta. I just wish they grew a little bigger.
Last but certainly not least, here’s a shot of my cherry tomatoes. These are so much sweeter and better than anything I buy in the store. And this plant is a producer.
Moving on to the more recent expansions, here are a couple pictures of the fence side plot and old bush territory plot. The fence plot isn’t doing so hot. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. Maybe too much sun, or maybe it is just that the berries are too tough to grow, or don’t do so hot. Either way, everything seems to be suffering. It is good to see a little bit of lettuce popping up at the back.
The old bush plot is doing pretty well. The zucchinis are well on their way to total patch domination, as if they are some meglomaniacal bond villain. The egg plants are doing well too. And you can see the onions are shooting up just like over in the patriotic plot. In my next update, you’ll be able to see the cucumbers I’ve since planted in the back of that plot. A power struggle with the zucchs is imminent!
Last weekend, Grant and I and our girl friends went up to Big Bear Mountain and Lake for the weekend to celebrate Grant’s 31st birthday. We both brought up veggies from the garden to use for meals/appetizers over the weekend. To the left, you can see a zucchini that Grant grew, a few small red tomatoes from Grant, cherry tomatoes from both of us, green zebra tomatoes from both of our gardens, and jalapenos and serrano peppers from my garden. We got up there late on Friday night and had some burritos with sliced up zucchini from the garden thrown in with peppers and onions. They were tasty.
On Saturday, we woke up and cooked waffles and eggs before heading out to rent a boat and do some tubing and wake boarding. You can see in the picutre on the right that Grant was having a good time and definitely did the best of all us that went wake boarding. Big Bear is very nice, it reminded me of northern Minnesota with mountains. 
The next picture is of myself wake boarding. I was going to water ski but our boat driver said that is for sissies and I should agridude up and get on a wake board. This was my fifth attempt and by far my best one. I will tell you that it is not that easy to get up when you are one half of QT…. I also want to note that I am still UBER sore from wake boarding. My back and arms feel like I did 200 pull ups and everyone knows that would be impossible for me. 
After everyone went wake boarding, it was time to bring out the tube. Grant and I had a blast out there. Tubing really reminds me of being 8 years old and having fun on the water. Our driver took it easy on us until we were tired of the joy ride and Grant thru up the finger to get buck wild. I was the first to bail on a full speed nasty turn. I think I did a cart wheel after I bounced off the water. Good times…
On to the food portion of the trip…and let me tell you we ate a ton. Here is some bruschetta that Grant’s girlfriend Jilly made. It was so delicious. I ate at least four pieces. It was made from Grants red tomatoes and our green zebras, and basil from my patio garden. We made caprese salad too but I forgot to take a picture of that.
I made stuffed jalapenos again because I like them so much. Not all of these were from the garden. I bought 20 for 2 dollars at my local farmers market and they were uber large which made it easier to stuff and allowed for much more cream cheese in the middle. We had a grill at the cabin we rented so we decided to grill them up versus baking them. We also stuffed a few with burrito meat that we had left over and put shredded mexican cheese on the inside instead of cream cheese. These have the 
potential to be great, but I felt they needed some type of hot sauce to go with them. I suppose frank’s red hot would also be good on them. We ended up grilling them almost to perfection. I’ll post the pictures below for you to see. The one on the left is the meat stuffed before being cooked, and on the right is the finished product.
Welcome back, welcome back!!
Here is a picture of what had happened in the last couple of weeks.
Basil is looking good. This is just two plants that have took off. When the basil starts to flower I cut off the tops and feed them to my worms! It smell great and is awesome in salads.
My Swiss chard is out of control. I cut some off about 2 weeks ago to eat. It just keeps coming back.
I am starting to get lots of tomatoes. I have two different species . One on the rights is a pea size heirloom tomato. On the left is a cherry heirloom. I got these seeds from a buddy from work. I always save some seeds from the year before. 
My hop plant on the left came back from death. Maybe I will get some flowers soon!! That’s all from Koom’s Patio!