Summer Hawaii 2023

[Mark_Thompson]

Some mixed veggies taking off. Some nice pastes setting fruit, my Coyote plant turning into an untrimmed monster. The one pic of the massive truss is @Bower’s Kitten Paws Pink.

Sorry for awful photos, only been able to get out in the middle of the day…

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[karstopography]

“Coyote” is a monster in my garden also. We like the tomato on taste, but there’s a narrow window, mere hours long, to eat them at peak flavor. The skins are so thin they are barely there and tears at the tiniest bit of pressure. I harvest the whole fruit truss rather than try to pick individual fruit. Coyote at peak ripeness has great hard to describe flavor. My one plant is in the corner of my 8’x10’ raised bed and has grown into the all of its neighboring plant’s spaces and now spilled out onto the ground outside the raised bed. It’s the biggest single sprawling plant I have ever grown.

[Mark_Thompson]

Yeah it is all that. I haven’t been eating the fruits, like you said, they rip super easily. Thinking about taking the plant out today.

[Mark_Thompson]

One of @Bower’s babies, Malachite Box, Speckled Roman, Juliet is the first to blush, Thai Pink Egg

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[Mark_Thompson]

Not doing too hot over here. Our sweet sweet drought ended, so now the foliar diseases are coming in hot
I’ve had to cull an Elgin’s Pink, Sam Marzano, and a few others I can’t remember, they hit five feet tall with no fruit set.

Still got some pretty fruits though, and the veggies that aren’t high maintenance primadonnas are thriving.

Malachite Box was my first big ripe slicer, so so good.

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[MissS]

Yikes. Those rains have hit you pretty hard. Is winter your preferred tomato season?

[Mark_Thompson]

Summer is my time. Just a matter of getting lucky with the moisture. It could definitely be worse, been a couple years since we had a really wet summer. I choose to think of it as trials for powdery mildew resistance

[Wildcat82]

Growing tomatoes there has got to be tough with all the fungal issues but, wow, that pineapple looks amazing!

[Mark_Thompson]

There are challenges, but don’t cry too many tears for me, I get to dabble year round with the tomatoes, and the pineapples grow like weeds!

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[Mark_Thompson]

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[bower]

Good to see you won't be starving or dying of boredom at the dinner table, whatever the weather throws at you.
We're having it humid and hot at this point too. I have some full size fruit on the vines but not one ripe yet..
And the humid hot weather has it's griefs for tomato leaves. There are some kind of mites, afaict, that chow on the leaves when plants get tall enough and weather hot enough to be in the zone... And the hot weather diseases. I don't have a management plan that works really. Since the plants are still setting fruit, defoliating the upper canopy is just going to condemn those late sets, and by previous experiment, the outer leaves continue to dry up and go funky when you remove the bad outer layer. The leaves I've been picking off are super dry, and I'm thinking of trying a spray - kelp and soap together? What would you recommend, Mark, morning or evening for spray?

[Mark_Thompson]

Sorry to hear you’re having issues. Copper and Sulfur in rotation are my two old standbys. I usually spray whenever I have the chance, ends up being half in the morning half in the evening just by coincidence.

I’m still wrestling with those Tomato Suck bugs, they are proving to be quite stubborn. Definitely testing my resolve to keep everything organic

[bower]

I’m still wrestling with those Tomato Suck bugs, they are proving to be quite stubborn. Definitely testing my resolve to keep everything organic

It's the strangest thing with pests, but every time I try to control em, nature comes along and teaches me a lesson. The natural controls are there in the environment, and if you don't do anything to mess them up, they kick into gear with a bit of lag time that calls for patience.
Parasitoid wasps, for example, have a lag time for getting a big enough population to deal with exponentially multiplying pests. They are present in low numbers until the opportunity arises to multiply upon their prey. But it takes a couple of weeks at least, for them to have the desired effect.
I recall I had a pest I believe "wooly aphid" turn up on some wild cherries around the garden years ago. I had seen big infestations elsewhere and was very alarmed. I spent hours if not days picking these things off. The next year the same thing happened and I did the same. And then the third year when they came around I happened to be too sick to do anything about it... Two weeks later they were gone. All cleaned up, without effort.
So this is where laziness plus the organic inclination seems a really good fit for me.
Two weeks seems to be a typical lag time in my garden.
OTOH if you get a pest that is out of control and there's no beneficial around to effectively control it, seems like pest problems can go on for years. Mites and blueberry thrips or something of that nature, have really multiplied around the garden here and no one seems to be in charge of that, as yet. So I've been trying to diversify the habitat some more, in hopes that will be enough. I could do more, but lazy limited...
Not easy being organic. It can be lossy, I just don't know if it is any worse than getting into a spraying cycle where the beneficials are being knocked back as well.

Edited to add: I just looked up the suck bug and they do spray with the same chemicals used against lygus bugs and other bugs - wanted to mention that I met some very cool beneficials that eat lygus and similar when I grew oats and other grains. Damsel bugs were way more numerous on the oats than any pests. (I didn't know who was who at the time and had to look em all up). They also turned up on barley and wheat patches. They eat the eggs and young of several grain pests. Maybe planting some grain patches would help, if the pest bug becomes persistent in your garden.

[Mark_Thompson]

Things are looking pretty alright. Culling some of the plants that aren't setting fruit, saving seeds from some that did. Got enough to make sauce to freeze, so making three different colors of sauce. Yellow/Green, Pink/Red, and Black. Turns out really well.

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[PlainJane]

Wow, corn looks great!

[GoDawgs]

@Mark_Thompson, have you tried any of the seeds sold by U of Hawaii's Agricultural Diagnostic Service Center?

https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/seed/seeds.asp#eggplant

I see they have some beans that are root knot nematode resistant and some peppers that are RKN tolerant. I might have to try some of their other stuff next spring when they're restocked. No postage for orders containing only Home Garden Packets (no ounces or lbs) and just a $1.50 handling fee. Most HGPs are $1.50 a pack!

[Mark_Thompson]

@GoDawgs Yeah they are great for a lot of things. I grow their chinese peas every year, the corn above is #9 yellow and silver.

Their tomatoes are mostly determinate so I don’t grow them. The one indeterminate is called N-63 and the flavor is so bad that’s it’s a punchline for my friend and I.

@pepperhead212 is growing an eggplant this year too.

Ordering is fun because you fill out a paper form and mail a check, like we’re living in 1972 or something.

[GoDawgs]

Thanks for that info, Mark. I'm growing their Poamoho eggplant this year. After finding it in the Southern Exposure seed catalog over the winter and ordering it. Then I followed the bread crumb trail online using the info about UH and Dr. Tanaka in So. Exposure's blurb and ended up at the seed list.

It didn't really have a good trial this spring with that herbicide problem in the potting soil so it will get another go next year.

[Mark_Thompson]

We had about twenty in attendance up at my friend's place. Some tasting was done, some drinking was done, then BLT dinner with about 9 varieties of fruit, three of lettuce, four bread choices, and three mayo options.
Dessert was tomato sorbet and green tomato chocolate cake. We are being strongly encouraged to make it an annual thing.

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[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Whatta Spread!

The Gotch