The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Careful What You Wish For

There I was staring up through a forest, sunlight barely squeezing through thick branches, leaves closing in on me. I closed my eyes and thought back, back to a time when life was simpler, before the forest, before I learned the secret of growing Brugmansia. 

Audrey lll making her way up to the second story of my house.

That’s right, I did it, I successfully grew Brugmansia.  We have been successful to the point of scary, perhaps.  She – yes, she -- has grown so big she has taken over a small portion of my yard, making it difficult to climb the back stairs over my garage. I have named her Audrey III. 

Audrey lll just after I first planted her.

Gone are the days of watching a spindly, anemic Brugmansia die miserably at the end of the season.  Now I have Audrey III, who blocks out the sun, and who I also believe is planning to ingest me.

What is the secret? What did I do different? I read that Brugmansia like to be sheltered from the wind, so I planted Audrey III in the quiet walkway between my house and my garage.  Lo and behold, she is now a heck of a lot bigger than I am, and still growing.

I water her regularly, but I haven’t really fed her yet, although I have a feeling she will ask me to any day now. 

She also has yet to bloom, but this may also be a good thing.

Get Off My Vine

Birdhouse gourds are gourds that are shaped like enormous pears. After they are dried, you can cut a hole in the lower portion, stick a perch under it, and hang it in a tree. 

Some birds, if they squint their eyes and lower their expectations a little, find that they make good homes.

I plant these gourds every year.  Some years are successful; other years, the gourds all succumb to mildew and die.

One thing I consistently notice, even though I have read gardening articles that try to say otherwise, is that if several gourds set on a vine, the one that starts to develop first goes on to be a big strong gourd, while all the other gourds on the vine wither and die.

It’s kind of like the baby spiders that eat each other until there is only one left.  I think that happens, doesn’t it? 

So I have learned that if I want more than one gourd, I have to grow more than one vine. 

As for the baby spiders, they’re on their own.  

Determinate vs. Indeterminate

The beginning of this summer hasn’t been great.  I tore my MCL, I came down with an evil flu which, three weeks later, still inhabits my body in the form of a sore throat and an unrelenting cough.

I threw my back out coughing, so now I limp around, coughing, with my head turned at unnatural angle. I am...pathetic.

My husband purchased most of the tomato plants in my veggie garden, and most of them are growing quite nicely.  Except for eleven of them.  Most of which are Early Girls. 

They look weird. They are short, stunted and hunched.  Sort of  like me, come to think of it. They are loaded with fruit. The loaded part is great, but they appear to have stopped growing. What is going on with these plants?  

I leaned painfully down, head cocked to the side, and read the tag. I saw one little word that bummed what little stone I had left:  “Determinate.”

So, what we have are tomato plants that will stay small and die shortly after the majority of their fruit ripens.  Instead of the INDETERMINATE TOMATOES that I normally plant, also known as vining tomatoes.

(Indeterminate) vining tomatoes grow and fruit happily and bountifully until the first frost kills ‘em. They regularly outgrow their containers and get so big that they appear to be reaching out to devour one of my dogs.

Who would ever buy one of those stunted, hunchy, gimpy tomato plants?

It turns out there is a place for determinate tomatoes. They are fine for containers.  They require very little staking, stay small, and produce a high yield. Then they croak, and tomato season ends two months earlier than necessary.  

If you want to piss off your garden-obsessive wife, then by all means, buy these whimpy little determinate tomatoes for her monster vegetable garden. Then, wait to read the tag until it’s too late to buy more tomatoes….