Oregon Tree Hugger

That is how cold it suddenly got last night. What is left of the warm-weather crop was not very happy about it. The end is coming very soon. Click on the image for a larger view.

Click on any image for a larger view and a slideshow of all images. This year was so bad for tomatoes that I got ONE chocolate cherry tomato. This is the same variety I ate barrels of last year, and this year I ended up with one. The original bush was snapped off about a [...]

9′ 8″ … this is how tall my daughter’s sunflower now is. It was about 2 inches tall when we bought it at the Lane County Extension plant sale in the spring for a quarter, and now it towers over my fence at over 10 feet off the ground. (The top of the garden bed [...]

While trying to stake up my fallen Lemon Boy tomato plant, I dropped one of the wood sticks and broke the stem on a very large, nearly ripe tomato. (As you can imagine, I was pretty mad because I have been waiting a LONG TIME to get anything ripe out there.) I cursed at myself [...]

This is the first year I have grown cauliflower, but I love eating it (especially with onion dip HA). I had no idea what to get but this was called Amazing Cauliflower so I couldn’t go wrong … right? The first head matured and was cut today, and it really is quite amazing. The taste [...]

So I have two "members" in my little CSA now who pick up weekly boxes. It’s helping to fund the garden for us to eat, which sort of helps me to mentally justify the expense of it all. (If you think about it, a small addition to the garden is allowing me to have enough [...]

The sun finally peeked through for a few hours on Friday evening, and I swear the plants took it as an opportunity to double in size. Those vile mosquitoes also took it as a reason to break out of hibernation — after only an hour of sun, one landed on my arm (and was immediately [...]

Another week, more cold weather. I think the purple leaves in the tomatillos are a symptom of the cold, as I had the same problem with my tomato seedlings earlier in the season. (Colder temperatures prevent tomatoes from taking up phosphorus from the soil, so if you see the leaves or stems start to turn [...]

The plants can’t seem to figure out what month it is, thanks to the weather. One day it’s hot and one of my broccoli plants bolted into pretty flowers, the next it’s cool and the radishes and cauliflower are happy but the melons keeled over and died. Click on any picture to see the gallery.

The key to avoiding problems at harvest time is preventative strawberry pruning in the spring.