Exploding Cabbage and Horned Tomatoes

I've been out and about in the garden between rain storms, quickly harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers and anything else worth gathering that is at the end of its cycle. With all of the dry weather, then the sudden and intense rain I expected some of the tomatoes to explode, but cabbage?

Roland came in this morning to inform me that one of the Filderkraut cabbages has a huge split in it. I went out to have a look and sure enough, the cabbage had cracked around the middle. It is one of the larger heads and needed harvesting anyway, but I was waiting to see how big it would get. I guess it suffered from too much water all at once. The last shower was that one thin mint that did it in (for those of you who aren't familiar with that phrase, it comes out of the last scene of the Monty Python movie, Meaning of Life, where a restaurant patron eats until he explodes from one thin mint).

On top of exploding crops, the other weirdness has been the occasional horned tomato. I'm not 100% sure as to what has caused it, but every once in a while I find a tomato with a single horn protruding out, usually near the top by the stem. I've done a little research and the closest thing I could come up with is a problem called Catfacing. This problem is from cultural conditions where the fruits are misshapen with bulges, crevices, scars or holes at the blossom ends. Catfacing is caused by anything that damages the fruit as it begins to develop within the flower. This includes heat, dry soil, excessive nitrogen, and especially, cold temperatures. We've certainly have suffered from a combination of heat, dry soil and cold temperatures. I've been careful with the nitrogen levels this year, where too much nitrogen also tends to inhibit fruit production.

Several of the heirloom varieties suffered from blossom end rot. Heirloom varieties tend to be more succeptable to that problem than many of the newer hybridized types. I gave them a shot of Epsom salts this summer, hoping to avoid that issue, but with all of the extreme dry weather, it's been difficult to keep up with a consistent watering schedule which is also a contributing factor. Unfortunately, getting irrigation to the beds in the parking strip requires dragging a long hose over, which is a bit of a bother. I did like my set up with the plastic bottles as reservoirs which avoided overhead watering that could cause a host of fungal conditions on tomatoes. Each plant got at least 2 liters of water each watering.

Tomatoes can be so picky! I need a greenhouse. Really.

When Cold Frames Aren't

When Roland built a cold frame out of recycled windows over one of the raised beds I was thrilled with the fact that I would have a place to harden off veg starts in early spring and germinate some more throughout the season.

I even prepared for warmer weather by cracking open the doors enough to vent out any hot air. We had beautiful starts of cucumbers, beans and other veg and even some ornamental plants coming up. Roland spent a bit of time planting and labeling the pots. Then one morning, when checking on things, the pots were bare soil!

Yep, something decided to munch down everything nestled in 4 inch nursery pots we had cultivated. Gone. This discovery prompted one of the few times that I wished I had a shotgun. But then I would have to sit up all night into dawn to catch the marauder, and I wasn't about to do that. Only gardeners who grow giant pumpkins do that. And that's on the East Coast.

You'd think our lazy, well fed mogs who love to lie around in there during the day would have been on guard, earning their keep. Of course any number of urban wildlife could have helped themselves: raccoons, opossums (highly unlikely) or squirrels. Much too much pest for a domestic feline to handle, of course. Since the doors were open just a couple of inches, I'm guessing a rodent of some sort or a herd of snails had their feast. What I should have done was close the thing up each night and then vent it during the day. What's interesting is that none of the outside crops got mowed down like that. Phooey!

So, instead I just shut the doors and ignored it all in a sort of denial that gardeners get when they know they've been outmaneuvered, sort of like that farmer in Shawn the Sheep cartoons. But that decision would also come back to bite me. After a cold, wet June we finally got some hot weather starting July 5th. Great, only that I underestimated how much heat nursery pots can take. I finally looked inside the cold frame on a hot summer day and noticed that a flat of empty nursery pots stored inside had turned into a Salvador Dali still life. I now have a flat of melty-pots. I guess you could also say that they were divinely inspired by the ghost of George Ohr. Instead of the "Mad Potter of Biloxi," I could become the "Mad Gardener of Ballard." Mad is the operative term here.

Note to self, #6 plastic melts in a cold frame turned hot house.

Finally, A Veg Book That Has Everything!

OK, I'll admit it. I'm a bookaholic. My shopping list on Amazon is 5 pages long. It's so easy to do that one-click shopping thing! I've collected quite a pile of garden books from the convenience of my computer. Sometimes though, I am incredibly underwhelmed when the book arrives and it doesn't meet my expectations even though I've read the customer reviews that have mostly been favorable. Now I only hit the "buy" button if the book has the "see inside" function. That function has saved me from selecting something that will ultimately be a waste of money.

Every once in a while I find a real gem of a garden book that will end up with bent corners and dirt stains on the pages. My latest find is the newly published book, "What's Wrong With My Vegetable Garden? 100% Organic Solutions for All Your Vegetables from Artichokes to Zucchini" (why publishers have to have such long tag lines in titles is a mystery to me), co-written by Botanist David Deardorff and Garden Coach, Kathryn Wadsworth (Timber Press). This book is so well organized and cross-referenced that it requires only 249 pages, and that includes the index. It's a terse and pithy veg database in a paperback form.

The book starts out with how it is organized (like you can't figure that out yourself with this one) and the best way to use it.The introduction also contains information on recognizing cultural problems in the garden such as adverse water, soil, light and temperature conditions and how to best avoid issues from the get go. Further divided into three main sections, the first section addresses many of the common vegetable species planted in the garden. These pages are outlined in green so you know where this section starts and ends. The next section divides common plant problems by crop family. The final section guides the reader as to what general  proactive organic solutions work for common problems like wildlife helping themselves to your crops, row covers and blasting bugs with the hose.

What sets this book apart is the cross-referencing within each section. You never have to hunt for the information. Simply look up the veg you're interested in, read the general information required to grow it and, if you need help diagnosing a problem, there's a page number located under the title that directs you to that information. When you get to that page, there's a chart on symptoms, diagnosis and solutions. In addition, the solution column further directs you to detailed information.

This book was definitely written by filers (they do have their uses). The information is concisely laid out in colorful charts and even though the photos are small, they are very clear. This book offers nearly infallible means of diagnosing and treating plant problems. If you could only buy one veg garden book, then this is the one you should get. I think that the many other veg books sitting on my shelf will start gathering dust now that I've discovered this great reference.