Final Count

Here we are at the end of the year and well past the last freeze. So how did Mark's 98 square foot garden do?

I stopped counting on the gross pounds from tomatoes after a leaf fungus took over the tomatoes. What I deducted was that the yellow pear tomato is not very hearty when it comes to resisting fungus and so it was sort of the host plant and helped it move to other tomato plants. The sixty days of over 100 degree days weakened most plants making them more susceptible to the fungus. In August I finally decided to cut the plants back down to stalks and see what happens. I had nothing to loose. They bounced back and if I had done it a month sooner we would have had a second tomato crop. My tomato lesson is this, no yellow pears taste bad, too many and no one likes them. Arkansas Traveller was OK in the beginning but too much square footage for a plant that produced so few tomatoes. Same thing for the Celebrity. The cherry tomatoes were fine. So I will probably plant one cherry tomato and a couple of porters next year for tomatoes.

The bell peppers did very well, too but they needed more sun so they need to move beds. The orange bell peppers were not hearty enough to do again but the reds and greens did well.

Eggplant did OK but I don't know what to do with them so they are out. The bush beans did pretty good but for the footage needed not enough. Sara, our dog, liked them a lot. She would walk by see one hanging down and bite it off. So I might plant one or two just for her.

The big winner was the basil and oregano. The basil actually helped bring the bees that pollinated the other plants. Before they were not coming around until the basil bloomed. We harvested and processed about 12 20oz jars of organic sweet basil and 3 of the same for oregano.

Overall we more than paid for the expense to start and maintain the garden. With the tweaks that we plan on making next year should be a more fruitful harvest.

I am thinking about creating a couple of grapevine style racks for the tomatoes. since our sun exposure is limited and from a specific angle this will help get all parts of the plant good exposure. It will also help with ventilation.

Hungry Hungry Caterpillar

It's a game.

They eat my tomatoes, I squish them.

The caterpillars lose in the end.

My garden is beautiful

What color are your tomatoes? This is not a twist on the job hunting book but a real question. Before I embarked on this adventure to grow a garden my tomatoes were red, only red. That's because they came from the grocery store where only ripe fruit and usually a limited variety are available.

Now 450 tomatoes and 28 pounds later, I now have a new view on tomato colors. Not only are there a wide variety of colors, color can be telling of the ripeness, the health and variety of the tomato.

The variety makes for a beautiful array of colors. Add in orange, red and green bell peppers and a finally healthy eggplant and you engage the full beauty of the garden. I know that my perception is a narrow one that only I could appreciate. Even without this finite appreciation photos can do well to illustrate my views.

The Palapa Standard

As we ducked our heads, at least me, to exit the plane onto the outdoor stair our view was filled with a wonderful blue sky pocked with little puffy white clouds. No rain in sight, we thought it might. As it turns out it had rained the week prior, all day every day, so the Cozumelans were as happy to see the sun as we were.

To the hotel, a fairly easy trip. The island is like a flat pancake with low jungle surrounded by some of the best scuba and snorkeling reefs in the world. The west side of the island has very calm waters so the reefs are large and very close to shore.

Our first priority was to get into and then out of our room. Off to the beach and more importantly the palapa that awaited. What is a palapa? Think of an eight foot wide umbrella made with local thatch with a tree trunk as a post. These had little tables around the trunk, with blue ceramic tile tops that we assumed were for our XX to sit on. We tested and confirmed this assumption many times.

So this brings up the name of this post, The Palapa Standard. We decided that an essential element to choosing a hotel was if they had palapas. Our first trip, where they had palapas, helped us to see the unrelized value. Palapas allows you to be in the sun or out of the sun and essentially stay on the beach and enjoy the view all day.

Our view was to Palaya del Carmen and Tulum, just far enough away so they appeared as a tiny line on the horizon there but not there. At night the glow off the clouds gave away their true location.

First Harvest

Wow! Two weeks into harvest and we have pulled over 240 units (tomatoes, peppers, squash, basil (pkg), bell peppers and beans from the garden. It adds up to almost 20 pounds! At no time in my imaging of what it would be like to fulfill this plan did I consider this scope. It's only a 100 sq ft garden and only 75% is actually being used for production.

Through a member of our church we have found a way to bring about 80% of our harvest to Safe Place. We learned that the families are able to cook for themselves there. But expensive veggies and herbs are tough to purchase, so our litle bit works out. The next step is to find others who have more than they can use from their garden and to bring it to bear to help others.

I have been keeping very detailed data on harvest from each plant. My goal is to learn about which plants provide the most yeild from the resources they take up and the return on my annual investment. In other words, what it takes every year to raise a crop. That way when it comes to put a garden in somewhere else to possibly help others to grow their own crop we can recommend plants that offer the greatest return on the investment.

Other news from the garden. The squash were just not doing well. So instead of having soil nutrients pulled out into dying plants I pulled them. The eggplant has come back from the ant/aphid invasion and about doubled in size. The tomatoes got a fungus from all the rain. I cut out all the infected leaves, but did not treat with fungicide. I chose to wait and see if the plants would handle it better on their own. They did and started to sprout new leaves where I had cut out.

That's about all for this week. I'll try to post some photos later this week.

Apparently squash plants have a nasty moth that likes to lay their eggs in the stem of the plant where their larva later eat out the core of the stem making the squash plants do all sorts of things other than produce healthy fruit. This also works as a definition of my squash plants.

Being a first time squash gardener, I asked someone else and they told me the above and then what to do about it now. Dig out the worm then bury the part of the stem you cut open. Not a surgeon so I am going with plan b, go back in time and throw row cover over the top of it for the first six weeks to keep the moth from getting to the plant. A valuable lesson learned for this fall.

I am going to keep the squash plants around because they are still trying to make squash just not as vigorously as they normally would.

We have a squash thief in our midst. Racoons, armadillos, birds? No, it's little sister. I caught her with my biggest squash from the garden between her paws chomping away. I guess I cant blame her.

I took it away and then she browsed back through the garden like a restaurant salad bar and grabbed another one. She got that one all the way down before I noticed.

Dang. Now I have to put an anit-dog fence up around the squash. Nothing fancy only tall enough to make the easy snack grapping difficult. Bad girl, good taste.

Fishing Trip

We went for a quick trip down to Corpus Christi to visit my mom and try to do some flounder gigging. We had an education in what is needed and decided that next time we will bring fishing gear to fish during the day and then gig at night if it works out.

It was still a lot of fun, wading the Laguna Madre near Packery Channel. We also went over to see one of Kara's work friends who had three sisters in the Babes on the Bay fishing tournament. A beer and cooled off then as we headed out to go gig for flounder the storm rolled in and ended our dream for the big one. So the only fish Brett got to gig were dead and he ate one of those. You will have to ask him about it.

On the way back we visited the "big tree" on Goose Island.

State of the Garden

The garden overall is doing well. Each tomato plant in my garden is a different variety and each one has a very different growth pattern. Amazing what adaptation can do considering these are all the same plant.

I saw some tiny toothpick sized beans yesterday, so we will have green beans soon. I am not sure if these are one time harvest or multiple. I guess we will find out.

The big winner are the basil plants. They are now larger than the bell peppers and dont look like they will slow down. I've been pinching off the flowers. Someone told me that they should never be allowed to bloom.

I started my harvest log. Already I have taken a pound of squash from the garden and about $5 worth of basil. I will structure the log so I can track the week when they are taken, how many, weight and any special notes.

What happens to unwanted SWAG

So what happens to the left over SWAG (free stuff from conventions)? Gnome bowling. An idea inspired from not enough sleep and an imagination with too long of a leash.




Special thanks to Travelocity's marketing department and the guys on aisle 300 who gave away the red balls.

The days grow warmer the birds sing again,
Spring approaches with a promise.
The earth is prepared and seeds are sown,
hope begins with the first signs of life.

We are committed now to the earth,
hope for rain, just enough and not too much.
Hope for sun, just enough and not too much,
the long and anxious wait begins.

Flowers and bees dance fruit shows,
Nature's oldest promise has been kept.
Anticipation is upon all those who till,
the harvest of our labor is near.

Here is tomato 001. Not a secret agent tomato, just the first one.

The garden is coming around, I've added tomato cages. The beans are starting to come up strong and the squash are doing well. I learned that bugs don't like oregano or thyme, but they do like bell peppers and basil. Working on a solution to fight them organically. I have an little ants that have made their home around the roots of the eggplant. Not sure if this is some sort of natural partnership but they dont seem to be doing anything bad to the plant. Anyone knows, please let me know.


This is Sara, she is my garden pal. She keeps a look out for bugs, frogs, lizards and pretty much anthing that will fit in her mouth and not bite back.