Picked our first ripe tomatoes today. All are from Jet Star plants. Due to excessive rains and cloudy days they're about two weeks later than usual to begin ripening.
I can't believe this. Tomatoes here are in what we call the cull stage. You can still pick them or buy home grow tomatoes here but there on the down turn now.
The Tomatoes aint ripe yet up here , But we have harvested the spinach , and we have cut collards 4 times , Cut turnip greens today and some nice heads of broccolli...Everything is HUGE this year . The Potatoes are flowering, the squash , zucchini, and Pepper Plants are starting to load up,
Sugar snap Peas are blooming....Cauliflower is setting ,Cabbage are Giants and forming Heads now.
Rich
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[I]You know you might be facing your doom,when all you get is a click when you're expecting a BOOM!:( [/I]
Good looking plants Oxford. We just picked our first batch of cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse today. We had a cold Spring this year, and started the plants later than I wanted.
Man, you all are really making me miss my garden!!!! I live in an apartment so container gardening is all I can do. We have one tomato plant that has produced a few tomatoes, green onions and some herbs. I miss those long rows of spinach and especially the carrots! Nothing finer than getting up early in the morning and harvesting a bunch or fresh carrots for breakfast! Also, let's not forget about the Okra. Folks up here in Wisconsin don't know what Okra is!
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Dedicated to SwedeSteve, Arkansashunter and Ezearln. Rest in peace my friends.
My first ripe tomatoes started to appear July 2nd. These were regular sized plants I planted around April 15th. I changed my garden a bit and loosened up the spacing of the tomatoes (in concrete wire cages). Seems to help. I don't have a big garden and every square foot is considered relative to what we actually use on a regular basis. Stopped planting stuff that I seldom used and just like to watch it grow.
22-rimfire...It sounds like you and I have about the same philosophy for gardening....Keep the size of the plot under control...not too big...just enough for vegetables we enjoy...nothing for show.
Another reason that I garden is that I need a place to get rid of grass clippings/small tree branches. Plus, that makes excellent garden compost...which I also use to fill in low spots in my lawn. And naturally, my wife and I enjoy fresh tomatoes.
The eight tomato plants that I usually grow increased to fourteen this summer because I had space because the cuccumbers I usually grow in the middle of the two rows of tomatoes didn't germinate...and six very healthy looking volunteer tomato plants had started...so I merely dug them up, put them in a middle row of my garden...and now...those fourteen tomato plants are all loaded with large green tomatoes, and some are just starting to ripen.
A common question I hear is: Why grow so many tomtoes? Well...I enjoy the challange of growing healthy plants, seeing them bear to the limit...eating them whenever I want, and giving them away to friends I want to give them to.
Now a pet pieve of mine about gardening is this: Some people who are perfectly healthy, have garden space, have time available, etc. will say, "when can I get some more of your tomatoes?" I enjoy giving them to people whom I believe appreciates them, who are unable for various reasons to grow a garden, and who show appreciation and thanks for the gift.
So...at the end of the gardening season I usually ask myself...Do I really want to go to all that trouble again next summer? But...by early springtime my inner interests in being outside, growing things, and thinking about how tasty those tomatoes would be...makes the decision clear again...Yes, get busy and start the gardening process again.
Good ol Mizzouri tomatoes!!! Beats the cardboard/water favored ones you get at the G-stores! BLT with cheese and a over medium fried egg, oh boy!!! I remember the mall up in Gladstone, it opened 33 years ago this summer, I got my bowling shoes and bag the weekend of the big Grand-opening, I had just grad from CMSU and had started work at the Marley Building in Mission, living in Shawnee and was seeing a friend's sister in Gladstone. Good thing for bowling, softball mens and co-ed, Starlite threater, Royals BB, KC kings, American Royal and the KC hockey team in 1976. Man, I had fun and didn't even know it...
I would get in the car and drive around "town" after eating supper, just to see what I could find. Good thing I didn't find Kelly's bar and grill in those early years, we played softball in Slope Park and in the Red Barn/Metcalf South/95th leagues. What was the Italian place downtown? Italian Gardens? Remember the Merry-Go-Round? King Louie on the Plaza was where we bowled, until the flood of 1977.
i have been getting tomatos for 6 weeks. i always start early thoui plant seeds in late jan on the hot water tank . then move them to a sunny window then the first of may. i put some out.then two weeks later some more and i put some out .over time .this spreads out when thay come in and if we get a frost i have plants to replace them .
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LakerDad...Man, you've been in this area about as long as me. Moved here in '65 when Oak Park High School first opened as one of their industrial education teachers...and I was only 28 years old(ha). Things have changed a bunch, including my waist size. Also, three years later my wife and I moved to our current home site...same as where we're still planting tomatoes. So it's been almost forty years ago that I dug up my garden plot...and started the compost pile.
Speaking of the Gladstone Bowling Alley...yes, I've been there, bowled, and eaten there occasionally. Swope Park is still a favorite destination for the Zoo, Starlight Theatre, and much more, which we've been to several times, too. But since then several popular eating and recreation places have come and gone. Currently, probably the most popular place is the "Power and Light District"...which is right, smack downtown and covers 3-4 square blocks with a new convention center large enough for shows of all types, including basketball, rock concerts, and much, much more. Out north we have a new "hot spot" called Zona Rosa...over in Platte County next to I-35 and MO 152 expressway for easy access.
Now back to tomatoes(ha). Here's a pic of what my garden plot looks like in good weather times, then in the middle of winter:
we would never get any ripe tomato's cause me and the wife LOVE fried green tomato's. so i don't plant them anymore. we get our ripe ones from the local farmers mkt. and some friends that grow 'em.
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Ox ford that's a nice stand of maters. My tomatoes haven't bloomed because it's been over 100 for 53 days now. Okra is doing great. They love this heat. Some squash is coming in and I have three ripe tomatoes. My corn did good, but I'll be getting better tomato varieties from now on. Broccoli is six inches high, ready for the fall. The fall garden will be better.
The big table inside my screened in porch is now filled with ripened tomatoes. We're giving them to our friends and eating them almost every meal. If you guys were closer I'd give some to you, too.
TT, I've got acquaintances who would take all the free tomatoes I grow as long as they don't have to do anything but carry them off. Then they tell me in the off season, "When can I get some more of those tomatoes? I just don't have time to grow a garden...or I don't like gardening."
Those are the types of people I refuse to share my garden crop with. Too many people want something for nothing...and are too lazy to help themselves.
But...people who show genuine appreciation, and for various reasons don't have a garden, I will share my surplus veggies with.
LOL... Oxford your last post reminds me of my mother when she had her garden. She has moved to an apartment and shares in my garden now but.... she always complained how all her neighbors wanted veggies, but would not go pick them themselves when she told them to help themselves, but would gladly take whatever she bagged up and hand delivered!
I personally just enjoy growing vegetables but I only give to folks that I know are going to actually use them and not just let them go to waste!
I am still jealous of your mater plants OX! LOL
__________________ Most of my life I've spent hunting,... the rest of it I've just wasted
Tomatoes are starting to ripen 
