Tomatoes

I found this year to be very slow growing my tomatoes because of the weather going from 1 extreme to another(getting so hot and dry to so cool and damp). My tomatoes have been doing alot better then most in my area mainly because I gave my tomatoe plants alot of water in the early evening just before sunrise so it was cooler and no chance of the plants wilting from the moister/heat combination. Over the past 4 weeks they have gone from 1.5 feet tall to being almost 4.5 feet tall for some of the plants. Also to keep the plants healthier and a chnace to bloom more tomatoes then you expected is to trim them down on occassion. By trimming I mean any branches with leaves that are starting to wilt cut them off close to the main stem and any branches even if thier lush and green if they don't have any flower pods or sections coming off of them that may flower take them off too(usually these branches are in the mid to lower section on the main shaft). Another good thing to do is on the main stem if any of the branches that have flowers on them have a little leaf coming in between the main shaft of the plant and that blooming branch, pinch that little leaf off so it doesn't bloom into an extra branch thats not needed(it will only produce a leafy branch but no tomatoes) and the section I mean is the V section between the main shaft and the branch sprouting out from it, that little green leafy stem is called a sucker because it takes away some of the nutrients for your tomatoes to bloom even more. Follow all these steps and your plants will thrive like mine are even in these wierd weather conditions. You can see in my main picture from July my tomatoe plants along the bottom were barely growing up to the tomatoe rings I set them in, but now thier huge and I have so many tomatoes that it will be another good year for my family and friends to get free tomatoes. Oh one last thing, make sure when following any of these steps to try your best not to bump the flowers or little stems that will flower to hard because they may fall off and thats where your tomatoes bloom from. I'll post a new picture of my tomatoe plants once I get my camera back.

Growing Peas

I found growing Sugar snap peas to be 1 of the easiest to grow. I 1st planted the seeds in Mid-May and about 10 days later they were starting to sprout little plants. Always plant pea seed or row of seeds next to a wired fencing or bury some strong thick straight branches or even old lumber straight up and down inbetween a few areas along the row(s) where the peas will grow up from and use regular twine or string to make your own growing ladder(sort of speak) for the peas to grow up(make sure when you wrap the twine/string that each row is tight as these plants get very tall and when the peas start to form the vines get heavy. I've had to keep adding on to mine because I did not make my growing ladder tall enough(my pea plants are now over 7 feet tall getting close to 8 feet with 100's of pods ready to be picked and eaten). The only thing other then a nice sunny area to grow is that they need plenty of water so what I do is if it doesn't rain for a day I'll give them a good watering(just enough to give the roots a good drink). Also don't worry as they grow how thin the bottom of the vine is and how much thicker the rest of the vines are higher up because they have what you can call grabbers(little feelers that grow out from the vines) that grab onto fencing or anything they can to support the plants hieght and keep it growing upwards climbing your fencing a stringed up sections. I'll post a picture and hopefully it comes out clear enough, if not I'll take another and post it for you. In this picture if you look to the far right hand side you can see my pea plants and if you look closely you can see where I've had to keep adding more pieces onto my make shift fencing to keep up with how tall they grew. Also in the picture you can see 4 yellow stakes(leg end pieces from some old metal shelving I had) with twine wrapped through it, thats my regular peas that don't get as tall as the sugar snap peas. Every white flower you can see turns into a pea pod eventually.