growing cherry tomatoes in Portland

Garden Update, August 2024

Dear Liza,

We are getting near the end of summer, but our weather is still warm and I’m not ready to give up my free salads yet, so we picked up 12 new starts at the Portland Nursery and put them in a week ago.

You can see them here, the short new ones among the tall, spindly older ones.

For now, I am only harvesting from the old ones, and pulling them out when they have done all they can do. In a week or so, the new ones will be ready.

In the meantime, I have another zucchini (this makes five, I think) almost ready to come home and get pan fried with lots of garlic and topped with parmesean.

The tomatoes have started bearing, turning red, and generally running amok. I keep having to re-tie their supports and say encouraging things. The neighbors are enjoying second hand fruit!

And, of course, Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, and getting their second wind. We now have about a dozen blooms and buds.

School is starting next week, but summer isn’t over yet!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update July 2024

Dear Liza,

My veggie garden grew like crazy while we were visiting you! Auntie Bridgett kept it watered and weeded and Mother Nature did the rest.

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are as tall as I am and have a couple dozen blooms. The bright yellow blossoms are fat and ruffled and almost as big as our dinner plates. I cut some to decorate our table and left some others for the bees.

And speaking of bees, they have been busy pollinating my zucchinis! We picked one, cooked and ate it before I remembered to take a picture of it. But I did paint a picture of the dinner for my garden journal! The corn on the cob was from the Hollywood farmer’s market and the chicken meatballs were from Trader Joe’s.
Yummy!

And last but not least, my tomatoes are beginning to think about, maybe, someday, getting ripe soon. The Chocolate Cherry tomato plant is slowly getting red!

And that’s all the news from my plot at the Blair Community Gardrn.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update, June 2024

Dear Liza,

Wouldn’t you know it, just as I am coming to visit you for a few weeks, my garden is getting into high gear! Fortunately, Auntie Bridgett will be staying in town, so she can water and harvest.

The 24 lettuce starts I out in have all done well, giving us enough lettuce to have big salads every day. I only pick a few leaves from each plant every few days, so they just keep making more!

The Black Beauty zucchini plants are coming up, and may be bearing baby Zukes by the time I get back.

Our three cherry tomato plants, (Chocolate Cherry, Sweet Millions and Isis Candy) have doubled in size, and the Chocolate Cherry has three blossoms!

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are two feet high and very fat and bunchy. They are going to give us some big blooms later in the summer.

And, of course, the lavender is big and blooming, smelling fabulous, and trying to take over the joint.

I hope Auntie Bridgett will enjoy watching the garden grow as much as I do, and share our harvest with our lovely neighbors!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Catch-Up

Dear Liza,

Our trip to Los Angeles was sad, wonderful, and busy. It also kept me away from my veggie garden for a whole week! Auntie Bridgett did a wonderful job keeping everything watered through some of our hottest weather, and boy, did the plants appreciate it!

Here was my pumpkin growing ladder set up just before I left. Healthy, right?

And here it is now, as tall as the ladder I have for it to climb on, and using its little tendrils out to anything available for support, including the nearby tomato plants. You can see the tiny yellow tomato blossoms trapped by the pumpkin tendrils. These plants mean business.

The zucchinis are growing too, and the cucumber even has a blossom on it. Since cucumbers aren’t squash, their blossoms are very different from zukes and pumpkins.

The tomatoes are now officially taller than me and ripening up nicely. We had a half dozen on our salad last night. Fresh veg!! Hooray!!

Going to be eating well this summer!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Chasing Summer

Dear Liza,

My veggie garden got a late start this year because of a cold, wet spring, including a snowfall on April 11. But now that it has gotten started, I am having trouble keeping up! This week’s heat wave has been upping the ante.

I planted my pumpkins by a ladder so they can climb up instead of spreading out and taking up a lot of space. They are now almost up to the second rung, and I have tied them to encourage their progress.

The oak leaf lettuce starts I planted in March have given us dozens of salads over the months, but are starting to bolt and go to seed in the hot weather. I pulled them up and managed to harvest several days worth of lettuce before tossing the stalks out. I even used some of it in a batch of pesto, since I was short on basil.

My five cherry tomato plants have gotten almost as tall as me, and have formed a lacy vertical screen that gives my garden some dappled afternoon shade during these hot days.

I have stopped watering the tomatoes, since there is a lot of fruit set, and today I was rewarded two tiny, perfect, ripening tomatoes! Stay tuned for lots more!

Auntie Bridgett’s sunflowers are short, as we planned, but are still making neat blooms! These are called Pompoms.

I have sewn a few more rows of peppery arugula lettuce and some Danvers carrots, making sure to go over every morning and give them water.

I will be chasing summer until fall. Should be a fun ride.

Love,

Grandma Judy