Cicada

Sitting near the top of bamboo stake supporting "Moneymaker" tomatoes. Quite a handsome beast, and isn't doing any damage.

My ears are so buggered I can't really hear these guys anymore.

Branch garden in Observatory

Spent this last weekend in Observatory (Cape Town) and helped my youngest son not to waste time and to set up a container garden sooner rather than later.

He already had quite a few containers going, so it was a matter of installing some drip irrigation and supplementing things.

Herbs round a shrub of some sort.

Hot Chili pepper.

The obligatory Felicia - running to seed, but doing well.

Mint.

Two Roma tomato containers, and one of Basil.

Spare container, and one of spring onions.

All of the bits and pieces were obtained at the Starke Ayres Garden Centre, Rosebank, pretty close to where he lives.

I'll see if he can provide updates.

Tomatoes not in tyres

This is the set up between the outside room and eastern wall bordering the railway line. Planted in black bags full of compost, and fed by drip irrigation. A few cloves of garlic in each bag, but not yet any basil. I might transplant a few seedlings of this from their tyre, where they're flourishing.

On the right are mixed youngberry/booysenberry, doing reasonably well, even though they get about 30 minutes of sun a day, when it's briefly overhead on the north east axis of the wall.

Reaching eagerly for their trellis system.

Every other bag is - I think/hope - a small tomato called "Little Wonder", which did really well here last year. The balance are larger types of tomato, but they took so long to sprout I re-sowed, and there's a bit of confusion.

The other varieties I tried last year struggled along, getting mildew and aphids and what not. Maybe a function of air circulation and humidity? It was really windy last night, yet only one plant in this row was blown over.

These are all grown from seed, and for the second year have taken a lot longer to get going than I would expect. Being a 1.5 metre wide passageway running north east, the black bags tend to be shaded while the wall they're growing against gets full sun until about 13h30, so maybe the soil temperature in early spring is too low for proper germination. These plants are all quite small in comparison to the seedlings planted out into tyres, and the ones in the northern end haven't yet cleared the top of their bags.

In a way, this is an ideal use for otherwise wasted space, so I need to discover what will work.

Update 2015/11/03:

Have transplanted basil seedlings from the tyre garden into most of the bags.

Update 2015/11/12:

Still no aphids, and I've done nothing special. Maybe the garlic I planted last year, which is getting quite large by now?

Update 2016/02/09:

Still no aphids, lots of cherry tomatoes:

Basil

Pretty much 100% germination rate. Also planted with tomatoes, but those are not as advanced as this batch, presumably because of shading effect. Will have to thin these out - fortunately they transplant well.

Update 2015/11/15:

Update 2015/11/18:

Update 2015/11/22:

Update 2015/11/27:

Update 2016/02/29:

Tomatoes in a tyre

Planted out a six pack of Roma seedlings about three weeks back.

They're doing very well - nipped out lower leaves, and first lot of flowers. No signs of aphids yet. These tomatoes are supposedly determinate, so won't get too tall. The three plants in this tyre are behaving like triplets - identical in size and development. The stems are quite thick, and easily survived some quite strong winds. There's Pick & Pay garlic planted in the tyre behind this, and basil in the one in the foreground as well as directly in all the tomato tyres.

The other batch of Roma is more asymmetric - one died (something ate through the stem), one is smallish, and the other is about this size. They're in a more shaded area.

Early this week planted out twelve Moneymaker seedlings - four batches of three plants. Also looking healthy but still quite small. The seedlings were comparatively tall and sturdy, which gave the opportunity of planting them nice and deep. Supposedly indeterminate, so will need better scaffolding and more attention to tying them up.

Thicker and taller bamboo poles for these - the vines will climb like crazy.

Update 2015/10/30:

Moneymaker.

Roma.

Update 2015/11/11:

Roma. Three in a tyre is too many...

Moneymaker, lining up to go straight up to the top of the stakes.

Update 2015/11/15:

Roma.

Moneymaker, with Basil and other Roma in the background. All of them are producing lots of flowers.

Update 2015/11/19:

Flowers on Roma setting into fruit...

Update 2015/11/22:

Doing wonderfully - they're now the tallest things in the garden. Lots of fruit setting, and very sturdy green stems.

Update 2015/11/27:

Tomato trellis

I started getting all complicated trying to work out how to set up a tomato trellis that wouldn't serve as a convenient ladder over our back wall, which faces onto a railway line and sees reasonable pedestrian traffic, including, sometimes, burglar/scavengers. Anything made out of timber such as brandring might be leant over to provide an easy exit path.


The solution was to provide a human unsupportive framework of light bamboo stakes cable tied to black plastic binding string suspended from the eaves above the rear wall of our outside room.

The top part of the structure - only a few cross stakes. It's easy enough to add more as required according to what the tomato vines want to do.

The bottom part - more cross stakes at a lower level. To keep things manageable, the bottom of the strings are tied to wheel weight ingots diverted from my reloading activities.

Tomatoes are slow off the mark, and I'm not sure what the problem is. Had the same issues last season.