Well, in the ongoing Battle: Dirt Sack Vs. The Evil Blight, I may have to give The Dirt Sack some credit. I’d say it is putting out as many tomatoes and takes up hardly any ground space. I’ve pulled several romas off of it and dozens of the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. Was it worth the added expense and extra watering? I don’t think so. As soon as I take it down, I will respond to the recall. It really was a terribly made piece of equipment. That said, I do think that there is a lot of potential for upside down tomatoes.
Meanwhile The Evil Blight does seem to finally be striking at least one of the plants on the ground. I have found a few romas that were squishy without ever ripening, and many of the leaves are starting to turn yellow as seen below. I’ve cut the what-appears-to-be-blighted parts back and thrown them away. I’m giving the tomatoes another week and a half. Then I think their numbers will be up.
I keep wondering when the green beans will be done. I am letting a couple of the plants go to seed in hopes of not having to buy seed next year. The rest of the plants are still putting out plenty of beans for a side dish every few days, so we’ll just keep eating them until they are done.
Meanwhile, the leeks keep on growing extremely slowly. The biggest are about thumbs-width, depending on the size of the thumb. They still have another month and a half before I was planning on eating them, but man do they crawl along. Someday I would like to have an entire bed of just leeks, though. Whether they will justify taking up a row in such a small garden is yet to be determined.
The brussels sprouts are absolutely fascinating. The one big one has gotten HUGE while the smaller ones have stayed, well, small. I’m not expectings many spouts from the three smallest ones; they simply have not grown that many axial leaves. I think that despite being spaced fairly far apart, the two largest ones got such a leap on the smaller ones that the smaller ones just got crowded out.
What I find SO fascinating, though, is WHERE the sprouts come from! Why they appear at the base of the leaves is a total mystery to me.
Wrapping it up, the purple sprouting broccoli is trucking along slowly in the front yard. While I think they could do with more direct sunlight, this is actually about the size that I was hoping the cabbage would be. Provided they don’t get frozen out, we’ll have fresh broccoli come March.
Ten By Ten 