It is raining again - meaning there is no need to haul the hose around. Looking at the 25 day forecast on Accuweather, rain is a frequent theme....but 90 degree temperatures are nearly absent. What great news for gardeners.

Exactly 30 minutes ago, the first draft of my upcoming tomato book was sent on its way to my editor at Storey Publishing. Wow - so many emotions - joy, relief, tinge of let-down, anticipation, anxiety - but mostly, relief. This means that the half days (give or take a few hours) spent on the book since October are mine again....and this means more gardening time. Which is important, because...

....healthy tomato and pepper and eggplant plants growing in nice weather are rapidly approaching the unruly state. There hasn't been any topping yet, but plenty of tipping. And it is still June! Tomorrow begins a more detailed look at what is growing, what needs addressing, and the beginnings of plans for photography for the book (which is likely to occur in the July 15-25 time frame). 

Looking ahead, I eagerly await harvesting produce, refining the book (likely to be lots of to and fro communication between Storey, Sara and me), anticipating some trips and a vacation, and pondering books to come (for which I've already got a few ideas). 

....right now a Bells Kalamazoo Stout with my wife Sue seems like a perfectly appropriate way to celebrate the completion of the first draft of my book. Time to take another sip!

Yesterday's blog post was a series of pictures of my pepper plants. Tomatoes take top billing in most gardens, with peppers often playing second fiddle - they are certainly underrated, in my opinion. Peppers thrive in containers, grow quickly and yield heavily. They come in a rainbow of colors, sizes, shapes and range from candy-sweet to nearly inedibly hot. They are far less fussy when it comes to diseases or critter attacks. They are also very easy for seed saving and preserving (we just pop the hot ones whole into freezer bags, and cut the sweet ones into bite sized pieces...and those go into freezer bags as well). Thin slices of peppers also dehydrate well and make the best paprika I've ever had, once ground.

I always have a few projects taking place in my pepper plantings. Because of the need of this year's garden to focus on tomatoes (due to book photography), I've actually planted less peppers than usual....but all of my projects are represented. My work creating stable new varieties from the  hybrid Blue Jay (aka Islander) continues, represented with new named bell shaped varieties White Gold (which ripens cream to yellow), Royal Purple (chartreuse to dark purple to red), Amethyst (cream to lavender to red - like the hybrid itself), Fire Opal (cream to lavender to yellow), and Candy Corn (cream to orange red). I also continue to work on a good stable non-hybrid version of a Stokes hybrid Chocolate Bell.

I love the longer shaped sweet peppers, the Italian types, such as Cubanelle, Corno di Toro and Marconi (the latter two come in both red and yellow when ripe versions, starting off as green). Turning to hot peppers, work continues on separating a mix of new colored Anaheim types that a friend sent me (they originally came from the Chile Pepper Institute), Eclipse, Sunrise and Sunset. I always include a few of my favorite colorful hot types, such as Pretty Purple, Vietnamese Multicolor, Fish and my own creations, Lollipops and Gemstone.

Finally, the small pot ornamental hot pepper work is represented this  year, but at a far lower level than last year. I am working on two distinct types - the taller, dark foliaged, round fruited cluster type that goes from black purple to dark red (Black Pearl family and its variations), and the line that Gemstone was selected from, which are smaller, bushier plants that can have green through dark purple foliage and peppers of all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes. This year I am trying to nail down one I wish to call Bouquet - green foliaged, pale lavender blossoms, and slender purple peppers that ripen through to orange, then finally red. The bees certainly help me in this ornamental pepper project, as they've done the pollen mixing that led to so many variations.

This morning seemed like a good time to snap a few pictures of the 5 gallon grow bag peppers. Fruit set is proceeding well, and some early colors are starting to show themselves. I hope to avoid the main issue of last year - inattention to the peppers lead to skipping sufficient tying, leading to breakage - I also got some insect damage and fruit rot. I have a bit more time this summer to attend to them in a more disciplined manner.

On to the pictures - the legend is below.

Top row:  Amethyst (from 2011), Amethyst (from 2012), Bulgarian Carrot
next:  Candy Corn, Chocolate Bell, Cubanelle
then:  Etna, Fire Opal, Garden Sunshine
And:  Golden Marconi, Kalman Hungarian, Long Red Cayenne
then:  Oda, Orange Bell, Pinata
And:  Pretty Purple, Red Belgium, Red Corno di Toro
then: Royal Purple (crossed with a hot pepper), Royal Purple (as it should be), Sunrise
Finally:  Sunset, then two eggplant - Skinny  Twilight, and Snow Globe

Question:  What crop loves lows in the 60s, highs in the 80s, and occasional rain?
Answer:  Tomatoes!

I spent the last two mornings up close and personal with my tomato plants, adding stakes to the Dwarf bags, removing lower foliage, and tying/securing so that they are vertical. I was delighted at the fruit set - there are green tomatoes everywhere. The blossom end rot that plagued some of the early sets seems to be easing now that temps are moderate and I can keep a steady supply of water on the plants.

It all looks pretty good to me - the healthy far outweighs the unhealthy/dead or dying plants here and there. See below - here are a few pictures showing where things are today, early summer, as June draws to a close.

Top row:  L to R - two views of the big garden, one of the deck with small pot indeterminates
Second row: deck, and two views of the driveway garden
Third row: two more views of the driveway garden, dwarf Yukon Quest
Fourth row: Yukon Quest flower cluster, dwarf Tennessee Suited, Lemon Drop cluster
Final row:  early generation dwarfs Leggy, Kiwi and Dwarf Chocolate Drops

Pretty cool, hey!

OK...back to the book....

I went back through my blog posts of last year (they are certainly useful to me as a running garden diary)....and was surprised to learn that the groundhog pest showed up last year on May 21....and here we are, on June 22 - and no groundhog. I will probably end up jinxing things (some years ago, I boasted to a friend that I had never experienced hail damage. Later that day we had severe thunderstorms with destructive hail. Will I ever learn to not tempt fate?). 

In fact, so far this season, there have been no deer attacks (the water scarecrows are repaying the investment handsomely), no ground hogs, no rabbits, no bird issues, no squirrel issues....no hornworms yet, or tomato fruit worms....just a few few aphids, flea beetles, and Japanese Beetles. Disease is occurring, but is not widespread. Blossom End Rot - sure, there is some - and a bit of blossom drop. But in general, so far, so good!

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It is nice to get a bit of rain...haven't needed to water today. Sad to add the following tomatoes to the "2013 disaster due to disease"  list - Golden Queen and Abraham Lincoln (both in large pots, bleached, fresh mix...Fusarium Wilt...go figure), Golden Queen growing in the big garden (Fusarium - not as surprised to see it happen in there)....Inglehard's Yellow Cherry and Purple Russian (both part of the extreme prune small grow bag indeterminate set) - not sure about those two, perhaps Bacterial Wilt. A few of the Dwarfs are struggling (the worst two being Deaton's Dwarf and Dwarf Purple Heart), but are still with me. 

All peppers and eggplant are thriving - in fact, the first eggplant will be picked within the next few days.

A typical day this spring (actually, today is the first day of summer!)....the cat and dog alarm clocks do their thing - coffee and breakfast.  Then a walk through the garden - more often than not, followed by a good thorough watering, adjustment of the various plants in pots and grow bags, and any remedial tying of the vines and removal of bad lower foliage.  Occasional pangs of depression as this plant or that tells me of its struggles with disease.  Then some sort of update to the season documentation - using the hand held recorder, camera or taking some video shots.  

Lunch....then an afternoon of writing. Since the first draft of the manuscript is due on June 30, the routine will change somewhat for the afternoon, and become more about responding to requests for corrections, additions and other edits.  For the month of July, it will also become all about being on watch for ripe fruit - photography - seed saving, processing, cooking.

That is the routine that I am living at the moment, and will likely last through mid August. After that, it will be more around book editing, tying up loose ends, a visit to my mother and brother and his family in Florida....Trips to Iowa for the SSE tomato tasting and Monticello for a few tomato lectures and meetings...then, looking forward to a get away to the Outer Banks in October.  And taking a big deep sigh, having moved through a really packed spring and summer.  

That's as far as I can look ahead - but hoping of course that ideas for books 2, 3, etc come to fruition - which will set up future daily routines!

And about those eggplant...

Of course, my gardens focus on tomatoes. Each year I am reminded, however, of the calming consistency and general trouble-free nature of the peppers and eggplants. Tomatoes seem to end up being attacked on all fronts, but the other solanum family members grow happily in their pots, are pretty much untroubled by disease, and provide reliable harvests and plenty of interest.  The main problem is ensuring that the brittle branches of peppers don't break off with the weight of the harvest to come, which takes some vigilance and plenty of sisal twine. 

Below you can see how thing are proceeding on the pepper front this year to date.

Tropical Storm Andrea made them all fall down. They were getting too tall and top-heavy for 2 gallon grow bags....so I took them all on a little trip.  See the travelogue, below! 

This morning was really productive; I did snap a video of where things started, and will take one tomorrow to show where things ended up....stay tuned, I hope to post them soon.  But I am getting ahead of myself....these endless days of temps in the mid 80s are just perfect for both tomato health and fruit set. The long range forecast looks quite good as well...the longer we can stay out of the searing mid 90s, the better!

The tomatoes in the big garden are catching on but still far behind those growing in the driveway containers (a testament to how heat-happy root zones of tomato plants are). It seemed to be time for a boost, so I started my morning by giving all of the plants there a nice drink of soluble fertilizer (Miracle Gro tomato food; it is pale red stuff, rather than the typical blue stuff). After that, I grabbed the big spool of sisal twine and give each plant the next tie, so that they are growing vertically up the stakes.

Next came dealing with the small pot indeterminate tomatoes in the driveway, becoming sufficiently large and top-heavy that all future wind gusts would create chaos. My solution was to turn the deck into an extension of the driveway; all plants were moved to either the deck, against some shrubs close to the driveway (the boxwoods make great support), and a few others relocated to behind the driveway garden. The plants are now all much better supported as they load up with tomatoes. Watch for before and after video clips, probably on Tuesday night.

I then went through all of the dwarf tomatoes and ensured that they were adequately tied to the stakes, and also removed quite a bit of lower, diseased foliage. Finally, it was time to feed everything else in driveway pots - so all eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes received a good drink of fertilizer. There's still much to do, but I called it a day (for gardening work) at lunch, and returned to finishing the first draft of the book text for the afternoon. It is nearly done (and actually there isn't much time to finish it; it is due at the end of June).

Tomorrow I hope to replant some tomatoes that are not faring as well as I hoped, and a few straggler peppers; I will then return to the big, dirt garden and work on the bean row that got washed out a few weeks ago (Andrea!) - then prepare the former lettuce row for summer squash and cukes. Which reminds me....the lettuce is all gone, which makes us sad. It was doing great, but around the first week of June, mass bolting was triggered by the temperatures. It was great while it lasted - so we are left with lots of beets (not ready yet), and some greens.

I love the Sundays that I am invited to join Niki Jabbour's weekly radio garden show.  You can listen in (I will be on at 11:30 EST)  by clicking the Listen Live link at this website.  The topic will be tomatoes, of course!  Niki is the author of a wonderful gardening book, The Yearround Vegetable Garden - found here. Once I get a chance to breathe, I will do a book review on my blog.

Following the rather disruptive storm of a few days ago, things are coming back into order. I've decided to relocate many of the small pot indeterminates to our back deck so that they have some support. The peppers, eggplant and dwarf tomatoes are all readjusted and vertical. In general, things are looking quite good....a few tomato plants are worrying as disease starts to appear here and there. I will provide a full report soon....but so far, I've lost no eggplant (and all look great), one pepper (viral disease of some sort, to be replaced), and have a few tomatoes on the critical list.  I hope to settle in replacements tomorrow, where I have them. There is also an incorrect Bisignano #2 out there growing (looks more like a Roma type), but that can be replaced as well. 

OK...catch you on the radio soon!

And Happy Fathers Day!  My wife made me a delicious breakfast (blueberry/blackberry Dutch Baby), and Caitlin, Sue and I will be heading out for dinner tonight.  In between you can find me in the garden!