Look who's finally ripening!

I must admit that I have been ignoring my vegetable bed lately. What with a busy weekly schedule and a very rainy weekend, I bet it has been a full week since I walked through the bed and really took note of what was happening. Tonight I finally made it over there and to my surprise - and delight - noticed red emanating from the "Rose" tomato plant. As you might remember, "Rose" was my last tomato to begin setting fruit. Once it finally got going it has produced pounds and pounds of tomatoes. And these big, rippled beauties have remained green all through September and into the first week of October. So it was a thrill to see some red on the vines and realize, with the sunny forecast for the upcoming week, that I may yet harvest some ripe tomatoes from this enormous plant.

In the above picture, look at the tomato on the right, all the way in the back. Yes, that is the "Rose" plant. It is actually taller than it looks, but the recent rains have knocked its highest branches downward. It was over six feet tall and still growing. This picture was taken on September 29th and you can see clearly that there was not any red to be found on the tomatoes at that point.

I am also getting some really nice ripening on the "Seattle's Best" tomatoes. They are about 1 1/2" inches in diameter and are growing in clusters of six to a truss.

And I can't leave out the "Momotaro". They have really started to come on strong too in the last week. I am excited to get them in the hands of my tomato testers and see what they think of this new-to-me variety.

The Vegetable Garden- Off and Running

Because of all the sunny, dry weather we have been having this Spring, I was able to start my vegetable garden today. First, the site needed some help. I had a nice blank slate to start with, after all the work we did last year. But before I started planting, I did want to bring in some more soil to raise the back of the bed, level with the front. After a trip to Lane Forest Products and Dad's help with his small tractor, I was ready to layout this year's garden design.

I decided to scratch the back row of sunflowers that I have done the last two years. Each year they stretch out , reaching for more sun and lean over into a walking path. Then, when the Fall rains come, they fall over. Enough of that! So I decided to move the tomato row back to the back row. Hopefully, they will still get plenty of sun there. In front of the tomatoes I want to do a whole row of Zinnias. Then, in front of them, I planted a long row of two varieties of onions: "Prince" a yellow storage onion & "Mars" a red onion , both grown from Johnny's Select Seeds seed by local Hayhurst Farms. I picked up a 6-pack of each yesterday at Down to Earth. Then, in the front as always, I prepared the 4 raised beds for my Winter Squash. The rest of the garden won't be ready to plant for almost another month, when it really starts to warm up for good. But it sure feels good to have everything ready so early.

My long row of "Prince" & "Mars" onions.