Author Topic: Best Places people on this forum have found to buy Seeds or Perennials? (Read 12467 times)

norma427 · « **Reply #160 on:** September 13, 2010, 07:15:36 AM »

Well, none of the Tomato Hornworms are going to live enough time to turn into a Hawk Moth.

Yesterday morning the first Tomato Hornworm that I had found first on my tomato plants and caged started to develop wasp larvae. By last evening when I took this picture he was already slowing down in eating and had developed more wasp larvae all over his body. This morning he is already starting to dry up from the larvae feeding on him. It still amazes me that it took this long for this Tomato Hornworm to develop the wasp larvae. I kept measuring him and when he was fully extended, the last time I cleaned his cage out he was over 3 ½ inches, before the wasp larvae started to be able seen on him. I guess this is natures way of controlling itself.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #161 on:** September 16, 2010, 11:52:18 AM »

This is a picture of how the two basil cuttings are doing. They seem to be growing, but now the stink bugs are eating the leaves.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #162 on:** September 18, 2010, 05:51:48 PM »

More tomatoes are ready for tomato sauce. Now my heirloom tomatoes are really starting to ripen. I also have regular tomatoes and San Marzanos that are going to be used to make sauce.

Picture below of the different types of tomatoes.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #163 on:** October 18, 2010, 10:56:27 AM »

Frost is soon coming to my area.

I thought I would take a few pictures of the tomato plants before the frost comes. It can be seen on these pictures how the tomato plants are browning more. This year the tomato plants faired well, not like last year when we had so much blight in or area. I look forward to next year in trying different types of tomato plants from the advise of members here on the forum. The tomato plants have many unripened tomatoes. I wonder if anyone knows how to ripen these green tomatoes. I have tried other years to ripen tomatoes from the plants in brown paper bags. The results from that were somewhat mixed. Sometimes the tomatoes did ripen okay and sometimes they didn’t.

Pictures of some of the tomato plants.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #164 on:** October 21, 2010, 10:02:30 AM »

If anyone is interested, I talked to a couple of Amish friends on Tuesday on how to go about getting green tomatoes to transform into red tomatoes, so all the green tomatoes wouldn’t be wasted. They said to wrap each individual tomato in a single piece of newspaper and then place them in a cardboard box, or in a paper bag. Store the tomatoes at a cooler room temperature and monitor the tomatoes. They should ripen this way. I will try this method out and report back what happens.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #165 on:** October 21, 2010, 11:03:29 PM »

I picked some green and half ripe tomatoes today and wrapped them in newspaper, then placed them in a cardboard box. I am going to pick some more green tomatoes this weekend and then wrap them in newspaper and put them in paper bags to see which method might work better.

Pictures below

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #166 on:** October 27, 2010, 09:23:19 PM »

These are a few tomatoes I unwrapped today to see if they are ripening with the newspaper and cardboard box method. They seem to be ripening a little faster than the ones I left outside.

Picture below

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #167 on:** November 14, 2010, 06:59:21 PM »

I am going to finished this thread until next spring. The last of the green tomatoes were red today and the newspapers wrapped around the tomatoes did ripen the green tomatoes. I made another batch of Les’s sauce today with the tomatoes that were in the newspapers.

I really don’t like this time of year, because now I won’t have any more fresh tomatoes, it gets dark early and is getting colder. I finished taking out my tomatoes plants today and also cutting down my perennials. The ground looks barren now. The only thing left in my summer garden is some red onions and some oregano, I didn’t dry. The sun is setting early now, and the cultivator is ready for spring.

Thanks to everyone that posted on this thread.

Pictures below

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #168 on:** November 14, 2010, 07:00:32 PM »

rest of pictures

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #169 on:** April 29, 2011, 11:14:20 AM »

Well, it is finally spring in our area and time to do the gardening again. We had a nasty cold winter. I always look forward to spring. I am growing some tomato plants from seed and will buy some young tomato plants. The oregano plants, chives, and spearmint tea are coming up from last year. I did plant some parsley. I am also soon going to buy some seeds for basil plants. I am not decided on what other herbs to plant, but I have enough time because it usually frosts in our area until sometime around the middle or end of May.

A man that is a customer and a friend of Steve and me at market, does help to raise Alpacas and has a donkey. Steve had asked him if he has some extra poo from them, because he heard that Alpaca poo is great for plants. The man said he did and composts the poo of the Alpaca and donkey poo together. Steve went and picked some up the other week. Steve bought some of the poo to me this past Tuesday. I have now cultivated the Alpaca and donkey poo into the ground, to see how it makes plants grow better this year. Every time I hear about Alpaca poo it makes me laugh because the man that does raise theAlpacas told us how the Alpacas spit and how much it smells bad. The man said the spits rains down all over him. The composted Alpaca and donkey poo doesn’t smell at all. I had recently listened to this commercial for Stanley Steamer on TV. This is the video I think is really funny. The man in the video says did you ever clean up after an Alpaca. The man then says “It was So Awesome”

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJF_mefOWfA&playnext=1&list=PL4407C6D459A7E0F0" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJF_mefOWfA&playnext=1&list=PL4407C6D459A7E0F0</a>

There are also other funny videos on YouTube for Stanley Steamer about Alpacas

I don’t know how my garden will fair this year, but I find gardening interesting. I like to be able to watch the plants grow and then I also have food to eat from the plants. I also have a lot of outside work to get started on besides gardening like painting, fertilizing the yard, fixing up stuff, etc. etc. I already put some grub control on my yard so those darn grubs don’t eat some of my grass again this year and make brown spots. I have cultivated where the tomato plants were last year that got those darn horn worms. Hopefully they don’t come back this year.

Pictures of Alpaca and donkey poo and part of my garden for this year.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #170 on:** April 29, 2011, 11:19:51 AM »

The cuttings of basil I had started at Reply 161 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10535.msg110382.html#msg110382 did make it though the winter and gave me some fresh basil to use over the winter.

one more picture

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #171 on:** May 12, 2011, 09:41:31 PM »

Part of my garden was worked on for awhile today. I planted Paris Island Cos lettuce, cucumbers, Mrs. Howard’s Rosemary, Stevia, Greek Oregano, Valencia peppers, Dill, Lime thyme, Little sun yellow tomatoes, Yellow pear tomatoes, sweet baby girl tomatoes, Super Marzano tomatoes, Black Krim tomatoes, Amish Paste tomatoes, Margherita tomatoes, La Roma II tomatoes and 2 kinds of basil. The seeds I had planted for tomatoes are just starting to shoot. It will probably be about 3 weeks or more until I can plant some of them.

Pictures below

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #172 on:** May 16, 2011, 06:20:54 PM »

This is a picture, in the smaller containers of the different kinds of San Marzano tomatoes and how they are starting to spout much more in the last few days.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #173 on:** May 20, 2011, 08:23:06 AM »

A few more pictures to show how fast the tomato seeds are sprouting even without much sunlight. It has been raining for days in our area, but the tomato plants are now starting to grow more. Even the san marzano tomato plants are really starting to take off.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #174 on:** May 29, 2011, 08:31:30 AM »

Besides the other types of Marzano tomatoes I have planted before, and some of them that I am growing from seed, I bought some more tomato plants yesterday. They were Viva Italian, Amish paste, Jet star (the Washington Boro tomato), Roma, Red Grape, Green Zebra, and Super Helian. I also bought some Gretzel eggplant, English thyme, Senorita jalapenos, basil and a few more plants at our local nursery. The one pepper plant I never saw before, so I also purchased it to see what it will taste like. It was a chocolate pepper. The chocolate pepper isn’t supposed to taste different, I don’t think, but it supposed to turn a chocolate color when ripe.

Pictures below

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #175 on:** May 29, 2011, 08:32:29 AM »

rest of pictures

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #176 on:** June 02, 2011, 11:17:14 PM »

The tomatoes, veggies and herbs are growing.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #177 on:** June 02, 2011, 11:19:20 PM »

Another picture. Don't know why it said on both pictures my file size was too big, when I have posted six pictures in the same post before, using the same thing I did today.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #178 on:** July 03, 2011, 10:21:12 AM »

I took some pictures this morning of how all my tomato plants are doing. I had lots of extra tomato plants I had grown from seed, and just planted a lot of them anywhere (in the sun, shade, or part sun and shade) to see how they would do.

The tomato plants in my small garden are doing the best. They are staked. They are almost 6' tall now. The only tomatoes that have ripened so far are the grape tomatoes and the pear tomatoes.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

Pictures of the tomato plants planted this year.

Norma

norma427 · « **Reply #179 on:** July 03, 2011, 10:21:58 AM »

Norma