These are the re-rooted tomatoes! It took exactly 2 weeks from the time they were laying limp on the ground broken at the stem, until they could hold their own with their newly formed roots and be planted back where they were originally planted in the garden!

I have since planted them and they are smaller in size then their counterparts, but they should catch up to where you could hardly notice the difference, but I thought you would want to know what happened!

Propagating tomatoes from cuttings is easy!

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Propagation Event

 What seemed like the wind that had broken off my tomatoes at the ground and blown them around the yard, was actually discovered to be Rolly Pollies (Pill Bugs) having nestled down into the moist darkness next to the stem and they chewed through the stem of the tomatoes and the wind just took off with them and blew them around the yard. So I took the limp broken tomato plant and stuck it into some moist potting soil and placed it into a large terrarium, sprayed it with a fine mist and covered it to keep in the humidity.

 The next day I see that 3 more tomatoes had fallen to the evil Rolly Pollies! So this called for a larger moisture retentive covered something so that they would all fit, and this storage box was perfect.  I sprayed down all of the tomatoes and added the glass of water for additional moisture and quickly put on the lid.

Here are the tomatoes the next morning completely rehydrated. If we go on like this, they will sprout roots and hopefully do so fast so that I can get them into the ground and get plenty of tomatoes this summer! This collection of tomatoes currently hanging on by a thread are Sweet 100, Roma, Brown Sugar and Hawaiian Tropic.

I then went outside and sprinkled Diatomaceaous Earth down into the holes around the stems the wind created by blowing them in all directions, because that is where the Rolly Pollies are hiding out during the day.  Last year I had tomatoes and zucchini with holes in them, and I suspected mice or something because the holes in the fruit were huge. Then I found one of my pepper plants laying on the ground and when I picked it up there were 100's of Rolly Pollies on it! When I found that out I raked up all of the mulch in the yard in an angry rampage because those bugs had multiplied into an pillaging night army!

Now I am considering placing mulch in the walkways for asthetic reasons, and I might have to shake myself and rethink that whole idea!  In the meantime, I am using the D.E. and also a snale and slug bate that is made of Iron Phosphate that is essentually coated iron pellets (think yellow Grape Nuts)that when they Rolly Pollies eat it, they cease eating and eventually die. 

I am sure that this will be an ongoing problem but hopefully this year I won't have to pick my tomatoes while they are still green like I did last year!

Thank you for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Run Out of Room

Here is the first Climbing Iceberg rose from the new rose bush that is intended to eventually cover the arbor! Yes, I would like about 50 more of those flowers please!

When you plant unknown iris, you wait for for over a year depending upon when you bring them home for that slight hint of color in the forming bud to their eventual full blown glory and this one was worth the wait! Looking it up on google images, I have found it to be Eleanor Rosevelt. I have about 5 stands of unknown iris and quite possibly I have spread this particular beauty throughout my yard.

Such a little thing can make a big difference! Here is a simple emitter stuck into my watering can and I use this everyday and it saves me from having to walk over to the hose spicket and turn on the hose, then to the end of the hose that is draped across the yard, oh, I need to take the sprayer off, (damn, the water is on!, back to..... ) then fill up the container, then back to the spicket to turn the hose off (or on depending...), then put the sprayer nozzle back on..... Believe it or not I found myself taking my shoes off at the door and walking into the house to fill this thing up at the sink because it seemed less daunting! So now it self fills, and I always have a half full watering can!

The wind has picked up so I have moved all of my babies into the house! I started planting the beds with tomatoes yesterday. I still have winter vegetables in two beds that aren't ready to pull yet. These are tomatoes, peppers and eggplants that were seeded the first week of February. The list includes Hawaiian Tropic, Brown Sugar, Roma, Sweet 100, Violet Jasper, Black Mauri, Warren's Yellow (Tomatoes), Casper, Japanese Long, Black Beauty (Eggplant), Tomatillo, And Red and Yellow Marconi (Pepper).

It's unfortunate but all of the beds are planted, and I believe that I have run out of room....

Thanks for stopping by! To all of my gardening friends, Carry on and hurry back!

All the Best

I am calling this post all of the best and here is the reason why. I have been gone for an extremely long time, and I want to share the most awesome photos that I have collected as I still do take about a handful of photos a day, but I have been busy reading recipes for preserving the garden harvest, and obviously a myriad of other things, but apparently they didn't amount to much because I can't remember their significance in the whole scheme of things.

So perhaps busy isn't always best..... But I do really enjoy this photo of the Copper Dragon Fly solaring up in the warmth of the morning sun and wanted to share this with everyone.

Here is the perfect effect of the Morning Glories and they are all that I imagined that they would be.

The Red Canna from the Master Gardener's giveaway is more than expected! Perhaps the person who brought them in needs to drink more coffee so that they are more excitable and explenitive in their decriptions...... Just Red Canna had me thinking, well.....you know.

The Tomatoes have been a delight to pick everyday. They are starting to fade off and I am okay with it. I froze some in a gallon bag and made salsa and pasta sauce, and we have been eating them everyday, so all is fine by me.

The Armenian Cucumbers are in the midst of things. This is the fifth one harvested so far, and it will go into the pickle jar. The other half went into the salad last night. They are spectacular and recommended to me by Leslie Doyle last year. They will become a Black Mountain Garden standard.

So this is how the Armenian Cucumbers are presented in the garden. If you double click the photo, you will be able to pick out a few handing on the vine.

The Green Room is alot of fun to walk through and you can see the corn on the left which has grown tall and has produced ears. The white flowers in the center on the right are Lime Basil and they are quite lovely and I totally love the effect. I want to grown Lime Basil as a ground cover next year.

Here is a closeup of the corn before I picked them. I didn't know when to pick the corn, but if you wait too long the sugars change and they are no longer at their tasty best.

And I had no idea when that was...but either way they are sure beautiful. These are the prettiest corn in my little world, and I am going to let them dry. I remember all of the colored corn hanging from the lattias in one of the adobes at the Pueblos de Taos Indian Reservation in Taos, New Mexico. It made falling over the furniture really quite enjoyable and a remarkably, memorable experience. This one is for "Up the Hill" Susan. I miss you girl. Are you still just as wild as I remember? (Nobody could grow colored corn like Susan!)

Thanks for visiting! To all of my colored corn loving gardening friends, carry on and hurry back!

Building a Labyrinth

You don't have to build a labyrinth, just throw down the hose and walk it when you are half awake.

There was rain in the rain catchers this morning!

I headed out to Leslie's to train as a garden coach for the Sweet Tomato Test Garden. She asked if I wanted to pick a few tomatoes. Doe's she know me or what?

Everywhere you looked there were tomatoes accompanied by tomatoe glee.

I tried some new "Twister" moves, having not played since I was 8.

This is what we picked and Leslie said she would pick the other half of the bed later in the evening.

These were like amethyst pods. (The colony would like these.)

And here is a yellow sweet pepper and she has this in purple, too.

Thanks for visiting! To all of my gardening friends, Carry On!