Tomatoes!

Yesterday we had some pretty ugly weather move through.  In the pic below, the blue dot is where I live.  See the giant ugly cell to the south?  It was tracking to hit us, but as it got close, it would dissipate or swirl to the south.  It was the weirdest thing.  A blessing to be sure, but weird.  We did get about 1.25 " of rain.  The town of Van, about an hour SE of us got hit by 2 tornadoes, and I read they lost both the elementary, AND the high school.  Not a good way to finish up the school year.  Corsicana (SW of us... had terrible flooding, complete with lots of high water rescues and a couple feet of water on HWY 45!  Crazy.

My tomatoes are doing very nicely.  I took some time to thin out some leaves and tie up the main stems.  I'm no expert, but I do know enough to remove any leaves that are touching the ground or are odd colors.

One side almost done.

 Starting the other side.  Tomatoes need to have air circulation and mine were getting really bushy.  Here is a before:

Too many leaves that block air flow and some can't get any sunshine.  All those have to go.

And the 'after':  

They may look a bit butchered, but they will be better for it. 

 Tomatoes put out suckers that start between the main stem and a leaf.  I try to pinch these out when they are small.  They will grow quite large, and they WILL produce tomatoes, but they also make it hard to manage the plant and they draw strength from the main stem.

That's gotta go.

Here you can see a sucker that I missed when it was small.  It already has some flowers on it so I just tied it up with the rest of the main stems.  It will be fine.  

Just means more tomatoes.

I planted two pepper plants on the North side of the tomato beds.  They are looking a little anemic (So I bade sure to trim the tomato leaves covering them up.) but one has already produced two pretty jalapenos.  These are supposed to be really big, so I'm going to give them some time to grow.

They need to get bigger!

                     I added some more pepper plants that I started from seed into this and other beds.  They are really tiny right now and I'm hoping they will thrive.  I planted a Tam (jalapeno) and a Lemon Drop (another hot variety) at the south end of the tomato bed, three banana peppers in the squash bed, and another Tam and Lemon in the middle bed.  I plan on putting more in there, but I have to deal with a fire ant nest before I play around in there anymore. (ouch).  I had ONE cayenne pepper seed make a little plant and I added it to one of the decorative pots, and a Lemon Drop to another pot.

I have some artichoke starts I want to add to the pond garden but haven't gotten them out there yet.  Maybe tomorrow?