Roma Tomato Transplant - Tomato Row Complete

Previously I'd shown the transplanting of the Money Maker tomatoes and of the Better Boy Hybrid tomatoes.  I had the Roma tomatoes in plastic gallon size milk cartons.  This has been my best homemade planter yet.   I especially loved the handles I left on them.   It made it really easy to transport them in and out of the house on cold nights.  The Roma tomatoes were one of the first tomatoes I planted.  These were in the eggshells.  Hence why they are so big in size compared to the others.   You will find these on the left.

Roma Tomato Plants

  The last one at the end looks a little scrawny.  This was one of the ones that I pulled apart because they were too close together.   So I played with the roots a bit and I imagine it is still somewhat shocked.  In addition to that when I was cutting apart the gallon to pull them out I noticed that it did not have very good drainage as it was holding plenty of water and not letting it run through.  So we'll see how this scrawny plant comes along.   I have more tomato plants I can put out so I'm not too worried about loosing it.   I do hope it will make it though because Roma tomatoes are awesome.

Eggplant Flowers

On my daily trip today of watering my plants a saw little yellow specs on my eggplant plants.   On closer inspection I went to go get my camera.   This time the camera on my phone would not do as the flowers were much smaller and difficult to capture.   So I instead switched to my 12 megapixel camera for clearer pictures and better focus.   Here is my Egg plant.  Perhaps I'll have little eggplants in time for Easter.   That would just be darling.  There were bees quietly visiting these as well.

Squash Flowers

Earlier I mentioned that when I figured out how to identify which squash flowers were male and which were female I would write about it.   Today I woke up and when out into the garden and found the squash that I still have in the pot in full bloom.  There was orange everywhere underneath the leaves.  So I thought it would be nice to collect more squash flower photos and to my discovery, some had fruits attached.

Squash in the Pot

The first few pictures are those that I photographed in the pot above then I went over to the squash I planted in the garden.  The first ones in the pot you will notice are a long fruit.   So these are either Dark Green Zucchini or Straightneck Early Yellow.   The ones next to the corn are round so I think these are Pumpkin - Small Sugar.

Female Flower

 As I found out there are two ways to identify a female from a male flower.   One I read about is that the females have a fruit at the base.  The other way which I discovered by observing the flowers is the middle of the flower where the fuzzy pollen resides is very different in the female flower than it is in the male flower.   Above is pictures the female flower.  You can see the little horseshoe ring like structures that are really very decorative.   While the male flower has a simpler center that is just a little rod sticking up.

Male Flower

Squash

Flower Female Bud

Female Flower

One thing I discovered while observing these flowers is that there are bees quietly visiting the flowers collecting nectar and pollinating.

Bee visiting flowers

Bee visiting the squash flowers

Female Flower

Male Flower

Female Flower Bud

Male Flower Bud

Female Flower and Female Flower Bud

Female Flower

Female Flower

Male Flower

Female Flower Bud

Female Flower Bud

The funny thing about the order in which these bloomed and when I could identify a fruit is that those that bloomed first still have not shown any signs of fruit and those that bloomed later have signs of fruit.

There you go.  How to identify the male and female flowers.  Hopefully the abundance of the photos will give an ample amount of examples to eliminate any doubt or confusion.

General Updates

Here is a disorganized update of all my planting.

My largest pepper plant.   These guys are slow growers compared to the tomatoes and squash.

Cayenne Pepper

 I thought that I didn't plant enough yellow onion seedlings compared to the white and purple onions so I planted some more.

Onion Seedlings

 You've already seen these onions but I wanted to show off my little fellow garden companion.   He's always out with me keeping me company.

Red and White Onions

 Here is progress on my grape vines.  You can see growth compared to the last pictures.

Niagara White Grape Vine

Mars Seedless Grape Vine

Its alive.   The tree my gardener planted is sprouting out leaves.  Very nice.   I'm so excited that I'll have shade this year.   I'm watering this guy a few times a week since its roots are relatively limited as it just got planted here.

Tree

 Jamaica.  I've shown this to my husband and he tells me that the plant should be more red by now.   So he doubts this is the same Jamaica they grow down in Guerrero, Mexico.  I'm just glad its still alive.  Its just a waiting game to see how it decides to grow.

Jamaica

My herb pot.  The cilantro has sure grown.   I don't know if any of it is parsley.   You can see the basil on the side.

Here is my chamomile.   It looks super cool.   I'm enjoying it because compared to the Oregano and Spearmint flop I had, these are growing along just fine.

Chamomile

Here is the current jungle in my windowsill.   Some observations are the tomatoes are big as is the tomatillo.   The tomatillo likes to flop over.  I'm scratching my head over wether that is normal, but I have plans to harden it off soon and plant outside.

Up in front and center is the eggplant.

Eggplant

These are the Jalapenos and Bell Peppers I planted not too long ago.  They are the sprouting bunch from my post on March 9th.

I used my mini green house again and planted more stuff.
Noticably is the butternut squash at the back and purple tomatillos at the front left, peppers at the right and cilantro in the middle left.   I think the tomatillos need more sun because they are growing a ridiculously long stem to try to reach the sunlight.  So my previous theory about being cover and the humidity and moister having them think they were still underground could be false could be true but it has to do more with light than humidity and moisture of the green house.  So these will be transplanted and moved if they get lucky this weekend.  Plus the squash because those are very fast growers.

What happened to the epazote?  Well here it is.  The plant in the center.  I also have a batch as well in the original grown house planting blocks.  I haven't decided where to put them in the garden but they seem to be pretty hardy as I've read they can tolerate freezing temperatures.   Seeing how they are slow growers I don't want to take my chances and have them permanently in the garden yet and have something happen to them.  

Epazote

Tomato Transplants

Some weeks back I cleaned up a planter I have in the back yard.  I had that gardener pull out a vine which grows extremely fast and flowers pink flowers which the bees absolutely love.   Then I mixed sulfer into the soil and flatted the soil to make it more even making an incline to the way so that water won't flow so much that way.  So here are the fruits of my labor and the planned place for my tomato plants.  The challenge for this planter is that there is a lot of resilient grass and the vine that keep trying to come out.

Planter

I had some tomatoes in cottage cheese containers and some in styrofoam cups.   I hardened them for a few days and seeing how the weather was so beautiful I decided to put them in the garden.   Now I had kind of a duh moment and I forgot to amend the soil with garden soil.   But here they are.  I planted them about two weeks ago but these are the pictures from today.

Better Boy Hybrid

Money Maker Tomato

Money Maker and Beter Boy Hybrid Tomato

On the days where the temperature drops to below 50 F at night I cover them with water gallons of which a cut a hole in the bottom.   They will outgrow those soon so I'm hoping that the weather won't drop below 50 anymore.  I water these most everyday because they are very thirsty plants.   When I first planted them I used Bonnie Herb and Plant Food.  But they are doing quite well.   If I see they are a little sad I just water them and they perk up pretty quick.

Now I only planted six.   There is room for three or four more.   I didn't plant my roma tomatoes out there yet.  They are still in their milk gallons but are pretty big.   They'll be going out soon.   I just didn't want to put them out yet because of the weather and they don't look like they've grown out their container yet but they are about there.

Roma Tomatoes

I researched the size of each tomato.  The better boy hybrid should be a nice big tomato.   The moneymaker tomatoes are a medium size tomatoes and from what I understand are not sold in stores.   Then the roma tomato.   This is also I consider a medium size tomato but is more oval than round.   These can normally be found in the grocery store and are a bit more expensive but to me have a better taste.   That's why I chose these to grow. 

I have more tomatoes in Styrofoam cups with tomatoes but I'm not sure where in the garden I will put them.  So you and I will have to wait to find out.

Honey, why does that read Okra?

The other day I was expressing a concern to my husband about the Jamaica plants that had these little tiny clear balls on the bottom of the leaves.   I sent him some pictures and he said it was potentially some kinda disease.

Tiny Clear Balls

I then showed him the pot making the point that the plant looked fine and it even had a bud on it.

Okra

To this he said to me, "Honey, why does that read Okra?"   I laughed at this and realized that I had mistaken the Okra plant for the Jamaica plant.  They do have certain similarity as the plant has a tine or red here and there.
Being the case that this plant was actually okra, my husband was not the appropriate person to ask about this.   I put away the plant and we continued to talk about other things.   Later that night I researched the okra balls.    Turns out that this is quite normal for okra.  What happens is that a healthy okra plant leaks out sap through the bottom of the leaves and at the stem as well.   The sap then dries and forms these little balls.  But many people had this same question I did.   Some even thought they were eggs of some sort of pest.  So that was my okra adventure.  

Here is a picture of the okra bud I mentioned.

Okra Bud

Time to put the Squash in the Ground

I've been delaying this as much as I possibly could but after I made a discovering on my squash plants I decided this would no longer be a good idea.  Yes its possible we could still have a freeze but it is unlikely.  So I will take my chances.

I found flower buds on the squash plant.  Yup and some bloomed already.  Can you believe it?  So given this, the squash might take the shock of a transplant even harder with fruit on it but it can no longer stay in the pots they're in.   They're just too small.
So first is first here is how the plants looked a week ago.

Outdoor Pot Garden Squash/Corn 3/10

These are buds I discovered on Monday (3/14).   The nice part about these picture are the close ups.   It gives it a jungle appearance and you can see the stems of the squash.   They are spiny.   So be careful when handling them.   They can poke you.   It doesn't seriously hurt but who likes to get poked.

Squash Bud

Squash Bud with Vines

Squash Bud

Squash Vines Holding on to corn Leaves

 I noticed that the squash also grow small curly vines.   This immediately made me think of Cinderellas carriage and how it came from a pumpkin.  Also its interesting how the buds are mostly at the base of the plant.   That means that their blooms are not very visible.  They hide under the leaves.

Squash Blossom

Squash Blossom

Squash Blossom

The squash blossoms seem to come out then shrivel up right away.   I think its because these plants are very thirsty and they need plenty of water.   I'm not very good about watering them early in the morning so the plan is to water them at night and give them another soak in the day if they need it.   Especially now that I put them out in the ground.   Besides I read that you don't want to water them in the morning when the flowers are blooming because it will affect their pollination.  I'll write more about that at the end.   The above open blossoms are those pictured after a transplant where I gave them a good soak the evening before with a bit of the Bonnie's Herb and Vegetable Plant Food.

Transplanted Squash

Transplanted Squash and Corn

Transplanted Squash and Corn

I found that the squash did not have very deep roots.   It seemed to be okay with its small planting space.   The corn though was dying to get out of the pot.   It was getting close to lining the bottom of the pot with roots.   I pulled a few of them loose so that they could grow into the new soil.

Lets cross our fingers that they do well in their new spot with the soil.   I plan to water them every day for a week or two so that they don't take them move so badly.   Then I'll probably go back to watering them every other day.  If I see that they take the sun hard, I'm ready to cover them up to provide them with a bit of shade and rest from the sun.

The squash blossoms are very interesting because it turns out that there are male and female flowers on the same plant.   The female flowers will have a small fruit like shape at the base where as the male flowers will have a simple base.  Both a male and a female flower have to be available on the same day so that they can pollinate and the female flowers can form fruit.  I'm studying the flowers as they are coming out and when I can identify each with certainty, I will post some pictures and let you know.