Land STAKES Alive!

So, finally I got my butt in gear and searched high and low for stakes for the tomato plants. I found some good old metal fence posts in the shed that I've used in previous years to hold my cages up. The next door neighbor had some that she wasn't going to use anymore. Then I made a trip to Lowes and bought a few cheap wooden stakes. I have a few plants that still need to be staked but I've put in some calls and have some Tobacco sticks coming soon so all is well.

I used green flagging tape to tie the tomatoes up and hope it will do alright. It's got some stretch to it, and much like using strips of sheets/pillow cases like I've done in previous years it shouldn't cut into the plants like twine or string would. Oh yeah, the best part is it's cheap!

The Brandywine, Mountain Fresh and Paul Robeson all have grown pretty tall very quickly. The Copia and Gold Medal is also doing well with lots of blooms which I'm excited about because they didn't do well at all last year. By far, the Brandywine seems to be outgrowing everything else and has tons of blooms too.

One issue I need to resolve is the pruning of a Red Birch planted next to the garden. It needs to be limbed up so that the tomatoes that are planted under it get more sun. They are the smallest in the garden. I man-handled the dill problem I had last year and have left only a few patches here and there. I also have some cucumbers that started from seed from last year but I just go out every couple days and make sure they aren't climbing up the cages or trying to grab hold of the tomatoes themselves.

The other bed of tomatoes is doing pretty well too. There's 15 or 16 planted in a different spot over by the fence and I was worried they might not get enough sun but look to be doing alright. The problem over there is I planted them too close to the lines that we hang our laundry on. I may be digging the first row out so that when we hang our laundry out to dry they won't get tomato pollen/green stuff all over them.

The last thing I'd like to mention is that in my compost, some plants sprouted out this spring. They looked like Zucchini so I let them go, but as they grew I started to wonder what they actually were... They have Zucchini leaves, but they were vining like crazy... I've never seen a zucchini plant take over like that. It's taken up the whole compost area. I thought about where I planted things last year and did some research on the net and it seems as though there's a slim chance that the hill of zucchinis I planted last season could have crosspollinated with the Carolina Cross Watermelon that I planted right next to it. That would explain the crazy vines and tendrils. You see, after eating the watermelon last year I put all the excess waste (rinds and seeds) into the compost. The plant has flowers like a zucchini, but the vegetable growing out of the flower is egg shaped with stripes ha.... we'll see what happens.