A Garden in Pictures, 10/30/10

Finally, we made some progress on the fence and I got some pictures taken! Also, I found an answer to one of my tomato problems! We had a fantastic time at the farmer's market today. I'm sad that it was the last one, but most of the farmers were in a good mood because they're looking forward to sleeping in next Saturday:) Which is to say we had lots of good conversation.

First, the garden. Right now we just have the posts for the fence in...my spouse took off work yesterday to dig the holes and install the posts. He rented a post-hole digger for $12 and we bought some concrete for $16. I wasn't sure about the concrete but he said it was necessary, particularly in the Illinois winters - the ground freezing and thawing tends to push things out of the ground, like our chain link fence. He said it we need to take down the fence, the concrete will come out with the fence posts without too much trouble. I can't remember how much the wood cost right now but I'll see if I can find out. The first photo is the view from the second-story window, the picture on the right is on the ground, looking northeast.



The farmer's market always has a master gardener booth, and I brought this tomato to show them. This is what happened to all of my tomatoes...they looked great when they were green, and as soon as they started to ripen they split and got this cottony/spider-weby looking stuff in the cracks. The master gardeners weren't sure, but they gave me lots of resources. I'm excited to check them out, I'm sure I will make good use of their knowledge next year! I asked my farmer and he said that several of his tomatoes had that happen - it has to do the weather this year, where we had several downpours followed by extreme heat. The tomatoes had too much water and then when exposed to the sun, they grew too quickly. Their outside tomatoes had the same thing happen, but the tomatoes that they had in the hoophouse, where they can control the conditions more easily and the plants are protected a little better, did not have this. I talked to another farmer who lives a little bit further away, who did not have the same problems with his tomatoes this year, and he agreed with our farmer's diagnosis - I think he'd seen it before in previous seasons, but his location was drier so he escaped with many delicious amazing tomatoes this year.

In other news, here is what happens to tomato plants after the first frost.

I was amazed at how different the plant looked! It is totally wilted and shriveled up, and it looked great the night before the frost. I'm going to cut open one of the tomatoes to see how the fruit was affected by the frost. We have several green tomatoes that we were planning to batter and fry, but if the insides of the fruit look anything like the plant I don't think we'll want to use them.