Radishrain's grow log, 2020

[Radishrain]

These tomatoes set fruit by 18 June 2020:
• Eva
• Isis Candy
• Austin's Black Cherry
• B.S.X.
• Summer of Love
• Italian Heirloom
• Yellow Plum
• Pink Ping Pong
• Cherokee Yellow Red Pear
• Luna
• Chris Ukrainian, if it hadn't set already

Eva, Isis Candy, and B.S.X. have fruits large enough that they might have set fruit several days ago.

[Radishrain]

The following tomatoes set fruit by today:
• Kellogg's Breakfast
• Trucker's Favorite
• Cosmic Eclipse
• Brown Berry
• ?Bear Creek
• Blue Berries
• Cherokee Yellow Perfection Peach
• Cold Black Brandy
• Red Beefsteak
• Napoli (at least one of the others besides the larger one that already set fruit)

I'm very impressed with the flexible flowers on the wispy tomatoes, as well as on Bosque Blue, and maybe others.

Red Beefsteak sure set fruit quickly. It was one of the last ones to sprout (and one of the last ones planted). The soil it's in is unamended, so far, this year.

Cosmic Eclipse seems to have gottwn some herbicide on it (some days ago, along with a few shaded wonderberries). I've been nipping off the yellow-ish new growth in hopes that it'll overcome it with new green growth soon. I'm glad it set fruit!

[Radishrain]

I haven't checked the fruit set very much for a few days, and I didn't check more than several on Monday, but I saw that Kellogg's Beefsteak and Silvery Fir Tree had set fruit by Monday.

On Monday night, I transplanted the Black Cherry and SunChocola F2 plants that I had in a cup. I removed the larger leaves. I hope they survive.

[Radishrain]

These tomatoes set fruit by today:
• Purple Calabash (both plants)
• Better Boy F2 (the plant is pretty small; Ovita is huge next to it)
• Queen of the Night
• Taiga
• Ovita (from the original packet)

and these set before today, if I didn't mention them already:
• Sprite
• Red Oxheart
• Silvery Fir Tree

The extra Sunchocola F2 and Black Cherry plants that I transplanted looked somewhat revived, this morning. I think they'll live, although Black Cherry looks in better condition, notwithstanding Sunchocola F2 had more roots.

Another Neapolitan pepper was severed by an insect.

The UV this morning didn't bother me as much, as it might have another time. I think there's something special about the sun earlier in the day, but I don't know if it has to do with the reason the UV didn't bother me.

I ordered a food dehydrator last night, and a four-year Asurian warranty that handles the shipping. It'll be nice to dry garden fruits, and grocery store produce.

[Radishrain]

The Morelle De Balbis began to set fruit by 26 June 2020, and appeared to be fruiting nicely. The Porter tomato set fruit by then, too, I believe, among other tomatoes.

I think most of the tomatoes have set fruit by now.

It began raining again on 29 June 2020, and it's raining now. This is rare for this time of year. It is cool, too (which is rare for this time of year, but not rare for when it rains in the spring; yes, it's no longer spring).

Kellogg's Beefsteak appears to be a cross, or else the fruits just take longer to get very large than Kellogg's Breakfast's fruits. It's setting fruit on most of the flowers that it's producing (all of them, in fact, except the single one that fell off; this is awesome). I believe it's probably crossed with one of the S. cheesmaniae Galapagos Island tomatos I grew near it in 2015, as it shares some traits with my Galapagos Island tomatoes. (Plus, Galapagos Island definitely had viable pollen; that was the hottest year on record, with the hottest day of 2015 being about this time of the year, too!) Kellogg's Breakfast has much larger and fewer fruits.

The food dehydrator arrived on Friday. It's working well, so far. We're dehydrating apples and bananas now. The apple slices are thick. For the thickness we used, with both fans going, the temperature we're using (135° F.) takes longer than the manual said (longer than 8 to 10 hours), but I could see it working for thinner slices. I'll probably try 150° F. next time to compare and see how it tastes.

Edit (1 July 2020): They took 19 to 20 hours to fully dehydrate at their thickness at that consistent temperature, and they tasted much less cooked than previous things I've dehydrated (I like them somewhat cooked, but if you like them to taste pretty similar to how they tasted before dehydration, and have a softer, leathery texture, then you'd probably like them how they turned out).

I plan to get some silicone inserts for fruit leather (possibly either silicone table mats, or silicone baking mats, as long as they're 100% silicone). I thought about grill mats, but I want to avoid Teflon if possible; grill mats would be cheaper, and easier to find in the right size, though.

[Radishrain]

The Jim Dandy offtype tomato is nippled again (it set fruit by today), this year, as well as a multiflora. It doesn't look as bushy, this year, however.

[Radishrain]

I pruned the store-bought Marion, the vigorous Chris Ukrainian cross, Summer of Love, the Green Globe artichoke (I missed some leaves last time, and I pruned off the old heads, too; so fresh ones would grow), Purple Calabash (the one from Tormato), and the volunteer that is probably Mountain Princess (heavily), as well as a few odds and ends. The purpose of the pruning (for most of them, anyhow) was to prevent plants from smothering each other (or from preventing other plants from growing nicely). I pruned the volunteer and the artichoke due to disease symptoms, to prune off the older foliage.

I also pruned leaves and suckers off of Cosmic Eclipse (due to the same herbicide damage as before). I'm very impressed with that plant. If it can do as nicely as it is with herbicide damage, I'd love to see it perform without it. I plan to grow it again next year.

Cherokee Yellow Red Pear is quite impressive.

[Radishrain]

I gave the plants in the white buckets (4 and 5 gallon) monopotassium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, and Epsom salt, with the exception of the northern catalpa tree that volunteered in one last year or so. I gave Epsom salt only to the rest of the peppers, the watermelons (except the one by the main body of tomatoes), the muskmelons (except the volunteers by the sweet potatoes), the chilacayote, the in-ground West India burr gherkin with its summer savory, the tomatoes by the watermelons, and the ground cherry volunteer. I watered all those, too.

The motivation for the fertilizer was that three of the containers of tomatillos were still wilting, despite having moist soil and mulch. I figured they might need some potassium and magnesium.

I should give that watermelon with the tomatoes some Epsom salt, too.

Oh, I also gave the curling tomatoes, as well as Mr. Brown, some Epsom salt, and watered them. There were four of them (one was curling less than the others).

Some of the peppers have set fruit, by today.

Both the 5-chamber and the antifreeze Galapagos Island tomatoes have ripening/coloring fruit. It should be ripe by Thursday. The 5-chamber one was one ripening fruit, and the antifreeze one has two ripening fruits.

I think one of my sunroots that I planted this year from last year's saved seeds is part regular sunflower, because the leaves are much bigger (notably much wider)! The other one might be, too, but I'm less sure. I'm excited to see what the tubers are like. They should be edible, though, since sunroots have edible rptubers, and domestic sunflowers are sometimes reported to have edible roots, unless the genes combine to make them toxic in ways that neither parent is.

If it is part regular sunflower, I imagine the father is from among my neighbor's sunflowers. Their sunflowers volunteered from our sunflowers from years ago (probably 2013 or 2012), and they've been volunteering every year since. They have small flowers, now, but Mammoth Gray Striped is probably in their lineage. We had Mammoth Gray Stripe and a small-flowered sunflower the same year; they set seeds, which turned out to be a cross between the two. Eventually, the larger flowers disappeared after another year or two.

There are some squash bugs (not too many) on the chilacayote. The chilacayote is enormous! It's taking up about almost half of the entire plot that it's in. The plot also includes herbs, muskmelons, watermelons, tomatoes, Morelle De Balbis, red epazote, chicory, and some other kinds of plants.

[Radishrain]

Today (as in probably after midnight and just finishing now), I found a few more ripe Galapagos Island tomatoes: one on the largest volunteer one, one on the 5-chamber one, and a few (at least three) on the antifreeze one. The antifreeze one's were the sweetest, and it and the volunteer had the most flavor. (Just from the fruits I sampled, I mean.)

The volunteer tomato that looks like Mountain Princess, which had orange fruits—those fruit are turning red (at least one of them is).

Esterina F1 was the second tomato to ripen. I evaluated it in its own thread. Technically, it might be tied with the Mountain Princess type volunteer.

We got a number of ripe wonderberries from the largest plant in the sun (not the largest plant overall, and not the first plant of all the wonderberries to set fruit). The ones I ate were quite good; another taster thought the ones she ate didn't have much taste (again). It never ceases to amaze me how something can taste so good to me, and not even have much taste to someone else.

The thornless blackberries (the only kind we have) are ripening. Some are black, but still firm.

Our neighbor's blackcaps have been ripe for several days now; I think there are still berries on the plants.

The Alexandria alpine strawberries out the front are doing very well, but the ones out the back are too hot and dry, and needed to have been split up. I watered them, the tomatillos, and the peppers.

Anyway, I harvested a bowl full of Alexandria strawberries; some of them are huge (for alpine strawberries; they're the size of some regular strawberries).

I went out at night to assess the garden because the UV has been bothering me so much (and to escape the indoor light, too), and I was allergic to something that made me feel unwell earlier during this waking period (I'm not sure what it was, but I thankfully feel a lot better now).