Hot tomatoes!
That phrase definitely sums up this past month’s gardening adventures. We are well into, and starting to exit the gardening season for our tomatoes here in Central Florida. I’ve also had great success with peppers and blackberries. I canned tomatoes for the first time in 15 years, learning some new methods along the way.
As I looked back into my journal, I realized most of my gardening was done on the weekends. The garden has kept me very busy! I’m excited to share all of my tomato adventures in their own post. Hopefully I’ll have some down-time from the garden in July to get that written for you. It’s been a roller coaster ride of pests, diseases, blossoms, harvest and preservation.
Journal Entries
June 6th – “Giant Slug!!!”
Oh my gosh! I have never seen anything like this in my life! A giant slug has been eating my tomatoes! We’ve been getting a lot of rain this week, so slugs were inevitable. But this?!? I had to research this slimy pest that was hiding on the bottom of this tomato I was picking. It’s called a Florida Leatherleaf Slug. You can learn all about its sliminess and its slimy cousins on this University of Florida website link: Gastro Slugs
We’ve been harvesting tomatoes every day. To date, for the month of June we’ve picked: 9 black Krim, 15 purple Cherokee, 15 Abe Lincoln, 7 beefsteak, 121 cherry. I put most of them in the freezer for canning later this month. We’ve also picked two green peppers and three blackberries.
Green Peppers 
Cherry Tomatoes
The small green worms are eating a lot of the leaves on the cherry tomatoes. No use spraying with all the rain we’re getting. That’s okay, thought. The mockingbirds and cardinals have been snacking in the tomato vines. The heirloom tomato vines are now taller than me and still blossoming and growing!
There are now 9 kumquat seedlings up from the seeds I sprouted. The Jalapenos are getting taller, about 4-5 inches tall. The blackberry bush has new blossoms and berries coming on.
June 15th – “Recap of this past weekend.”
We did a lot of work in the yard and garden this weekend.
- Cut the lawn, trimmed plants in front flower bed.
- Pulled out two Beefsteak tomato plants. They have some kind of blight with brown spots. I saved all the green and orange tomatoes. Sunday afternoon I canned 5 pints of green tomato salsa .
- Pulled out all of the zucchini and summer squash plants. There was too much powdery mildew and worm damage. Plus, the fruit continued to get blossom end rot. I’ll need to have better soil before planting those again.
- I am not spraying the garden again this season for pests or disease. Everything is bearing fruit and I don’t want chemicals on the food I harvest.
- Trimmed back the red and yellow allamandas. The bees were aggressive towards each other, but left me alone. I saw several types of bees, even one that was red and black. I need to learn more about our bees.
- Pruned back the blackberry bush again. I watched some videos about how to propagate blackberries. I started another pot of canes, dipping them in rooting hormone before sticking them in the soil. I mist them several times a day. They are in my east dining room window for the summer while it in the 90’s and above. I’ll plant them in the fall.
- I re-potted the kumquat seedlings in a pot of cheap potting soil mixed with citrus fertilizer. They still look great after 48 hours. I think they’ll do fine.
- We picked 88 cherry tomatoes yesterday. The vines are promising a lot more to come!
June 21st – “Summer solstice, Father’s Day and happy birthday to me!”
High in the low 90’s today, blue sky with white fluffy clouds. No gardening plans for today. I made sourdough cinnamon raisin bread, homemade spinach fettuccine with beet greens from our beets and garlic that we grew this past winter. There were lots of fresh cherry tomatoes to go with dinner also.
Updates: the blackberry cuttings are doing good. Small leaves are sprouting on the canes. Many of the heirloom tomatoes are turning from green to orange. The purple Cherokee is highly productive. It has such sweet thick fruit! The Abe Lincoln tomatoes are growing great too. All of the tomatoes still have blossoms coming on. It will be interesting to see how long they keep producing into the summer. The pests have decreased on all the plants except for white flies. Something has been nibbling on the sweet potato leaves, but not enough to worry me. Everything looks good as long as I keep watering the garden.
June 28th. “Projected high of 98 degrees today, next to no chance of rain.”
We got out to the garden early this morning. Mike weeded several of the flower beds and filled the water bottles with the last of the rainwater we collected earlier this week.
I spent much of the morning trimming the dead vines out of the tomatoes. I threw out the last Beefsteak tomato plant. It was in a different garden bed, but still developed the same black spotting as the other plants did a few weeks ago. That variety did not hold up as well as the heirloom varieties did. I continue to water the garden regularly and yesterday I put new lawn clipping mulch around the tomatoes.
We laid down some clear plastic where the squashes grew to solarize the soil. Hopefully, the heat will kill off a lot of the diseases and pests that had plagued my plants.
The compost pile shrinks fast in this heat. The next batch of lawn clippings will go into the compost with the paper from the office paper shredder. We’re still looking for free wood mulch locally.
I found a small rosemary plant at Walmart yesterday in the produce section for only $3.99. That’s a much better price for that herb than at the local big box garden centers. There were five plants in the tiny pot. I didn’t have any available flower pots to replant, so I replanted the aloe and its pups into the garden with the bromeliads. I put the rosemary into that pot and set it with my other potted plants to get some shade and get the roots established. About five years ago I had a rosemary plant almost six feet tall. This is an easy plant to grow here in Central Florida.
We’ve been evaluating the tomato harvest this season, even doing some taste tests. The best producing tomato has been the Purple Cherokee. The best flavor tomato is the Abe Lincoln. The Black Krim is just starting to produce heavily, but doesn’t create that black top it’s known for. I’ll need to research and find out why.
We’ve picked cherry tomatoes almost every day this month. We average about 40 to 60 tomatoes each picking. I have two one-gallon freezer bags full of them now in the freezer. I plan to make tomato juice with them after the season is over.
The sunflower is drying. I cut the head of the flower off this morning and Mike hung it up to finish drying. Something was starting to eat the seeds, probably a cardinal or one of the many squirrels in the neighborhood.
The solar shade that Mike made for the peppers last month is working well. The peppers are turning red now and they no longer seem to be getting the brown sports on them. The jalapenos are blossoming and look promising.
June 30th
The tomatoes still left on the vines are starting to get sun-scalded. The leaves on the plants are dying off and letting more sunlight hit the fruits. I brought in about 30 tomatoes to ripen on the counter. Several peppers have turned red and harvested them and put them in the freezer. Our mid-to-high ninety-degree days are stressing all of the plants except the sweet potatoes and jalapeno peppers. It looks like the garden is winding down for the summer.
Here’s what’s currently growing in the garden:
- Heirloom and cherry tomatoes
- Cherry tomatoes
- Green/red bell peppers
- Jalapeno peppers
- Sweet potatoes
- One blackberry bush
Potted edibles:
- Sage
- Rosemary
- Chamomile (for tea)
- Purple coneflower (also for tea)
- Blackberry canes
Looking ahead:
The tomatoes should be coming to an end soon and the blossoming jalapenos will soon bear fruit. We plan to solarize more of the ground then mix in our compost and an organic fertilizer before we plant again.
I’ll be canning stewed tomatoes and salsa with the tomatoes I put into the freezer and from what’s still growing.
I recently wrote: The Frugal Five: Frugal Living in the Kitchen. Soon, I’ll be writing my next post in the series which will be about frugal gardening.
I’d love to hear how you’re handling the heat in the garden this summer. Did you raise any heirloom tomatoes, and if so, how did you like them? Please comment below or send me an email. Thanks!
Take care, and happy gardening!
Alisa