State of the Garden: 2/18/13

The garden is still going pretty well. We had some pretty cold weather last night (I think we got down to around 37 degrees), but the plants seem to have survived just fine. My bean plants have the first flowers showing...

Including my Scarlet Runner bean plant...

I planted some radishes, and they are doing well. The front row were pre-germinated. The back row was planted as seeds. However they seem to be growing at an almost identical rate.

I had a Better Bush tomato ripening on the vine, and something ate it.

Today I found the critter had been back, and had now removed the rest of the tomato from the vine...

...and then started in on the other tomato that was ripening.

I noticed that it was able to determine which side of the tomato was ripe, and only eats on that side. So it reached into the tomato cage and at the ripe side of the tomato, ignoring the green side exposed to the outside of the cage.

So whatever is eating the tomatoes is able to get its head between the bars of the cage, which are probably only 2 inches apart. I had assumed that it was my resident opossum, which I believe is still around, since I can see from the new mulch that I laid down that something is still going under my shed.

I've watched my opossum go under there before, so I know that's his usual route under there. However I also know that he is a big boy, so it's surprising that he'd be able to get his head through the bars of that tomato cage. Of course, it's always possible it could be a rat or mouse. Who knows? I just hope it doesn't continue to be a problem. Especially since I have a yellow pear tomato plant with about a dozen tomatoes growing on it at all different stages of development.

My grapevine is hanging in there, but has something weird going on with it. It seems to be dying close to the ground, but the vining arms are doing fine.

The leaves near the base are turning brown and falling off...

...yet this vining tendril is bright green and healthy in appearance.

Weird. And I saw this guy on one of my bean plants. I don't know whether he's good or bad.

I've noticed that my bean plants have some drying and wrinkling of the leaves on some edges. I'm not sure what is causing it. I'm speculating it could be the warmer weather we've been having, as it seems I'm at the end of the growing season for beans and peas.

My jalapeno continues to grow. Part of me wishes my snacking critter would try snacking on this!

I have two tiny little bell peppers started...

And my passion flower vine continues to bloom like crazy, but no fruit have taken.

My strawberries are still going well. I have a dozen or more now, with the first two beginning to show a little ripening.

My mango tree is showing signs of something snacking on it as well. A lot of the leaves are looking eaten up.

But it has mangoes growing! The strange thing is that our warm weather seems to have caused a couple of blooming spurts. So while I have fruit growing up on top of my tree (where the tree bloomed about a month ago)...

I have fresh blooms coming in down below...

So there's a lot of activity going on in the garden. Now if I can just figure out what to do about the midnight snacker that's eating my tomatoes!