Weekly Update 7/13/20

Hey, hey, guys! I hope everyone has been well since last we spoke? Things are well here!

My wife, Maria, and I are really getting into the swing of this whole baby thing. Maybe we just got lucky with him – but he is an incredibly chill and laid back dude!

Grayson is his name, and napping/eating is his game! He’s only three weeks old and is already sleeping through the night, usually only waking up once between 2am and 4am to be changed and fed. We are so grateful for that! Everyone tells me that his sleep schedule will change as he gets older, but for now we are absolutely loving it!

Being a dad really is the best thing ever. It makes coming home from the day job so much better! All the troubles in the world melt away when I see his face.

On to the garden!

How many peppers do you see?

I’m not quite sure what I expected – but I am constantly surprised at how fast these peppers are growing! Were you surprised the first time you grew peppers at how quickly they grew? Leave me a comment and let me know!

The watermelon sprouts are *finally* starting to do something! I feel like they just sat there for about two weeks or so. The middle plant has added a new leaf every day to day and a half.

The Cherokee purple tomato plant has exploded in fruit! However, the other one…

Is struggling a little bit. Oh no!

There are also little white bumps up and down the stem! It looks like little tomato acne. Super wild looking. (side note: plants are freaking weird!) After doing a little digging around, I’ve come up with two ideas as to what the problem is:

1. The plant was exposed to herbicide. When I first started growing this plant, it was located along a fence line adjacent to my neighbors field. After coming home from the hospital with our son (isn’t he so freaking cute?) I noticed that all the grass along my fence was dead. And then this happened…so…that’s fun. Apparently these herbicides can act much like the plants own hormone, called auxin, resulting in not only curled leaves but bumpy stems.
2. I’m simply over watering the plant. Kinda ironic considering I was under watering my raised bed…

So, my plan of attack is as follows: to reduce my watering schedule for the tomato plants. I was watering every other day because they are in containers (5 gallon buckets to be exact). While the top 2 inches or so of the soil was dry, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that down deeper the soil was very much still wet.

Aaaaaaand if that doesn’t work, well, I’m not sure what we can do besides wait and see if the herbicide wears off?

Have you experienced this before? Did your plant ever produce fruit?

Moving on to what has been the main subject of these weekly updates, or so it feels: the zucchini plant!

Quite the explosion in leaf growth, huh?! How freaking cool! AND we’re working on our second round of blooms. Hopefully that means we’ll start producing fruit here soon!

I am so impressed with how a simple change can make a plant explode with growth.

The rest of the garden

As for the other plants, they are slowly trucking along. The kale and peas are growing slowly but steadily. I planted a peter pan summer squash early last week and it has finally sprouted up. Radishes are coming up and starting to take off!