Pulling Together a 2019 Summer Garden Wrap-Up
When we went hunting for input from local gardeners for this article (September 12, 2019, Alameda Sun – see below), not only did our respondents give us good feedback on this year’s successes and disappointments in their yards, they also talked about ingenious hacks to keep such disappointments at bay.
Overloaded pluot branch
We also include a few dont’s along with the do’s, including illustrating what happens when not enough culling of baby fruit happens in a big-crop year. Below is a grafted 4-in-one pluot with its Dapple Dandy and Flavor King grafts having crashed to the ground just about a week shy of getting fully ripe. Maybe it was the 90 or so pounds of fruit on each limb, or maybe it was a hungry squirrel that climbed up and walked out the branch, but the owner came out one afternoon in July to find this (see photo on right).
Culling down to ONE baby fruit every FOUR inches on a branch when the fruit is the size of a quarter will stop this from happening. It may seem wasteful, but it’s worth it in the long run. Plus, each developing fruit will get more of the tree’s resources, thus higher sugar content. The good news is, the Flavor King branch did not break. The Dapple Dandy branch did, but we were able to tape it back, minus all the fruit and most of its length, but it’s healing.
Taped broken pluot branch
Finally – tomatoes!
Honeydrop tomatoes
We got reports from all around town that this year’s tomatoes have had good sugar content and have been plentiful, though many of us found that ripening came a bit later than usual (around mid-August, when anywhere between early July and early August is more often the rule).
Following are some tips to avoid built-up soil-borne pathogens and get warmth to the roots of the plants.
Thanks to all the tomato-decimating pathogens that have built up in my soil over time, I had 13 plants to get in the ground in April and was desperate for any patch of dirt that wasn’t suspect. So some of my toms went into containers (15-gallon nursery containers and 20” plastic pots). All except one plant in containers have done wonderfully.
Jasmine Tokuda went one better: she experimented with black 5-gallon nursery pots to see whether those warm, limited spaces could give her tomatoes an edge in case we got a repeat of last year’s overcast spring and summer. After getting good yields, she dubbed it a success and decided that in future she’d pay closer attention come spring to long-term weather forecasting, since a hot summer forecast for the interior = Alameda summer chill. Jasmine also says placing large saucers under the pots will not only catch water runoff, they’ll retain moisture in those little pots longer.
Milk spray for powdery mildew
Jennifer’s Sungold tomatoes
Jennifer McGaffey says: “I garden in containers on my balcony. I’m growing 10 different tomatoes, which got planted rather late – early May before they were in their final containers. But this has been an incredible year for them. Most of the plants have hit the roof of my balcony and swung down to keep growing, and all of them have been producing quite a lot of fruit. I grow indeterminates, and usually pick as they ripen, but I went away for two weeks and my Sungold decided to splash out while I was gone. I currently have about 2.5 pounds of tomatoes picked and ready for eating (about half Sungolds), having eaten about a pound already since I got back from my trip four days ago. There are still a lot of green and blushing tomatoes on the vines – no sign of any slowdown.”
Oh – my first ripe tomato (a Sungold) was early August.
I did have problems (as usual) with powdery mildew on my snow peas (now done and pulled up) and on the tomatoes that were planted in the same space. I used the solution of spraying diluted milk on the affected plants, as early as possible (as soon as I noticed) and repeatedly – and it worked! The overabundant Sungold was one of the mildew sufferers and it’s almost gone. The instructions I got at Earth Day say to spray once a week, which (I’ve done it previous years) suppresses the mildew for a while but then it comes back. This time I sprayed every other day, thoroughly, for about three weeks then went away for two weeks and came back to almost no visible mildew. I’ll spray again and hope to kill it entirely.
Margie’s Agricultural Lime application gave her garden a big boost
Anyone who attended this June’s ABG Garden Tour at Margie Siegel’s Brown Kitty Farms in Central Alameda can attest to the gigantic tomato plants she had in a large raised garden bed. Margie reports that not only were the plants beautiful monsters from early on, they’ve been putting out a variety of great-tasting toms since mid-August. She attributes the upturn in quality and quantity to adding agricultural lime to the garden, including that huge raised garden bed, explaining that since sandy soil tends to be acidic, a judicious application of the lime would balance things out—and she was right. (Note that agricultural lime is different from dolomite lime and gypsum and they are not necessarily stand-in supplements for each other. Use due diligence when deciding if you need to apply one of these amendments to your soil.)
Keeping veggies warm with pavers
Warm Pavement nearby helps heat-loving plants during our cool summer night
Some of us rely on warm cement walkways next to our heat-loving veggies to stimulate them and keep the night time cool-down from affecting them strongly. I’ve learned that placing my zucchini as well as tomato plants next to sunny sidewalks or placing pavers between plants helps keep the warmth in the soil.
Apples are coming on strong!
Carolyn Mason lost two branches off her 35-year-old California Red Delicious apple tree thanks to : the biggest crop ever. She says that caused her to “bag up 120 pounds of apples (most not yet ripe) for my hair dresser to take to her horses”. A genius use and a win-win, except for the tree.
Brown Kitty Farm’s Braeburn apples are ripening up a bumper crop. Margie says she should have actually culled the applets down to two per cluster a few months back rather than three, as the tree is looking a bit stressed out.
Katie Button on the East End had plenty of Ein Shemer apples which she and her husband Russ preferred to eat semi-ripe. They are great applesauce apples and by the time they do get golden yellow-ripe, the texture’s a bit mushy. Ergo the applesauce. Katie’s espaliered Fuji apples are ripening and producing a moderate crop. She’s good about keeping the espalier shape on this tree, so she keeps it in bounds and allows plenty of sunlight and air to circulate. Coddling moth doesn’t appear very often on either apple tree.
Fuji apples on espalier
Alameda Sun, Thursday, September 12, 2019
by Marla Koss
“Hey – how are your tomatoes doing this year?” is one of those questions Alamedans have probably used as a late summer greeting since the advent of kitchen gardens in the 1870’s. And with 2018’s never-ending gloom in mind, Alameda Backyard Growers decided to survey gardeners around town about 2019’s backyard crops. Survey participants represented Central Alameda, the Bronze Coast, Bay Farm and the East End. Gretchen Doering, Seed-to-Table Director for Italo’s Garden at the Alameda Boys & Girls Club (ABGC) answered for the West End.
The 2019 winners for Best Performance in a Slightly Cooler Summer Dotted With Mini-Heat Waves: Come on up and grab your statuettes, Bush & Pole Beans, Tomatoes and Zucchini! Though generally slow to ripen this year—beginning mid-August for many—most tomato plants are still going strong. This is also turning out to be a good fig season. Varmints everywhere—winged, four-legged and sneaky family members—are matching frustrated gardeners one-for-one for those ripening figs. Non-astringent (Fuyu-type) persimmons, though still green, are at this very moment being eaten all over the island by squirrels.
Thanks to a good rainy season followed up by dry days around blossom time, apples, raspberries, blackberries and lower-chill plums and pluots have yielded to overabundance. The Blenheim apricot that Project Tree planted in the Boys & Girls Club garden in 2017 produced enough sweet, aromatic apricots that director Gretchen started looking for ways to dehydrate the excess, once all the youngsters had their fill. On the other side of town the owner of a young grafted 4-in-1 pluot walked outside one day to find two of the grafted branches on the ground with a crop too heavy to withstand (culling baby plums/pluots down to one every 4 inches prevents this sort of collapse).
Surprisingly, though there were some middling performers like blueberries, heirloom squashes and peppers, there were also outright losers in the garden. Fire blight attacked pear trees and took out plenty of vital foliage that could have helped produce more and better pears. Peach Leaf Curl not only defoliated peach and nectarine trees, it spoiled the fruit on some of the earlier-ripening varieties as well. And it was too cool for melons in an open garden to set fruit until just the past few weeks.
Read the original article in the Alameda Sun here (coming soon).