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!

Rare Florida Freeze

Well, while I was out of town on business, Florida got hit with a rare freeze-- the likes of which I haven't seen for many years. It got down to the upper 20s in Orlando where I was on business. When we went to leave about 6:30 AM to go to our show, there was ice on the windshield that had to be scraped off.

I'm not sure how cold it got at my place, but I think this area got around freezing. I worried what I would come home to. I knew about the cold weather ahead of time, so I brought in my potted plants before I left. So my veggies came through okay. I was really lucky. I only have one plant that I've found that could turn out to be totally destroyed by the freeze. That's my Chenille Plant:


A tour around my yard found a couple of other plants that seem damaged or stressed. For some reason, the Areca Palm behind the shed seems to have been hit pretty hard, but all my other Arecas are fine:


Also one of my banana trees seems to have been hit pretty hard:


And the other tree seems stressed, as does the (Draecaena?) next to it:


My ferns seem pretty stressed, but I think they'll survive...


...and likewise the Bird of Paradise looks a little stressed, but I think it will be okay:


On the positive side, my Poinsettia continues to bloom.


I'm excited about this! I've never before gotten a poinsettia to bloom again. Now I just need to trim it down and see how it does next year.

Also the bougainvillea by the shed has finally started to really throw some blooms.


It has been a little slower to bloom than the one out in the sun.

The Cape Jasmine is still hanging onto that bud, and won't let it bloom.


My tomato plant keeps going.


I think it's got about five tomatoes on it now.

My mango blooms keep going, too...


...and my eggplant and yellow pepper.


I have a flower coming in on my White Bird of Paradise:


The cauliflower are getting big, too, and need to be split up among more pots.


So I got pretty lucky with the freeze. A lot of people lost a lot of good plants. However I play a sort of "survival of the fittest" type of game in my yard. I refuse to spend too much time protecting and maintaining everything.