Hang On Little Tomato; A Peek Inside the Greenhouse.

Those tomato seedlings from spring, of which most were given away, are now a tomato jungle in the greenhouse.  Here's part of it.

You may wish to listen to Pink Martini's Hang On Little Tomato as we continue.

Sun Sweet has produced about twenty tomatoes so far.  New to me this year, it's similar to Sun Gold.

Some of the plants have reached the rafters. They'll just have to lean over.  As it is, I'll have to climb a ladder to get to the tomatoes up there.  Perhaps I should have chosen determinate varieties but most of the heirloom varieties are indeterminate and I thought, "how high could they get?" They really like the warm evenings in the greenhouse.

We ate the first Early Girl a couple of weeks ago and now she has lots of green fruit.  These two are already bigger than a baseball.

Higher up.

Here's a tip. If you're going to apply organic fertlilzer, it's best to try and get it below the surface of the soil like the package says.  Thinking that the surface of the soil is still pretty loose and that the swirling of water will mix it is o.k.and it works but if you're growing tomatoes inside, do be prepared for a week or so of a foul smelling greenhouse. Don't ask me how I know but morning coffee was on the back porch again for  a while. (Patio table and chairs still full of plants in pots.)

Who knew it would be such fun having these inside.  Outdoors, they sort of got ignored until the sight of red fruit caught my eye.  Inside they're more in your face every day.

Okay, enough about the tomato jungle in the laboratory.  Out in the Danger Gardenette, a flash of yellow caught my eye.  Opuntia blooms!  

 Such  happy and bright colors to start the new week. 

Visiting Tsugawa Nursery for the First Time

News Flash!  

We just shared the first tomato from the greenhouse.  It was a Sungold and probably picked a day too soon but it tasted marvelous!  Of course there were tiny tomato plants at McLendon hardware so covered with red cherry tomatoes that one could barely see the leaves (how do they do that?) so cheating was an option. At $4.00 for the 4" pot  that must have had at least a pint and a half of fruit, it would have been not a bad deal.  Really, these plants looked very sad but the fruit was amazing.  There was a whole shelving unit of them and tomatoes were falling all over the ground beneath.  Sorry for the digression.  Really excited about that first tomato. Three Early Girls are also starting to turn red.  Very fun.  As my blogging pal Jean (Dotty Plants Greenhouse Journal) says, "Gardening is cheaper than therapy -- and you get tomatoes!"

Tsugawa Nursery, in Woodland is visible from Interstate five.  When driving from Tacoma to Portland, the sign on the side of the freeway means that we're almost in Portland and lots of fabulous nurseries too excited to get to P town to stop but curiosity always elicits a promise to stop on the way back.  On the way back it's often past closing and if not, plant lust has been sated for a while and the plant mobile is full of treasures. Urged on by posts by Evan (The Practical Plant Geek) and Loree (Danger Garden.) I finally decided on a recent trip to Oregon that we'd leave early and make time to visit Tsugawa.  It was a good decision!  Here's a little of what I saw on our fast walk through the nursery:

From the road, it looks nice enough but I wasn't prepared for how large and well-stocked the nursery is.

The great conifer selection goes on and on.

Oh, and you get to park in a lot across the street and peruse a discount center the size of a small nursery. Lots of temptations!

Taylor's Gold Tip Pine seems to be following me around but I must remind myself that I don't really have space for a pine.  They tend not to like growing in the dark beneath a bunch of other foliage. Funny thing that.

Shrubs for any situation. 

Meanwhile, back in the conifer section the cones of Abies koreana 'Silberperle' were looking very sweet.

Abies koreana 'Silberlocke' is so tempting but they grow into trees for which I've no space.  How long do you think I could keep it fairly small in a pot?

Rhododendrons everywhere.  Don't remember the name of this one but isn't the yellow and orange combination gorgeous?  A background of ceanothus blooms doesn't hurt either.

Delicious!

And deserving of a second look. 

A little tropicalismo.

Opuntia 'Santa Rita Tubac' is so handsome with it's purple pads which are, unfortunately, covered with glochids.

Okay folks, what is it with just about every nursery carrying citrus plants that have to live inside during the winter?  I'm not faulting the industry, just wondering if this a new trend?

 The main indoor area is full of wonders.

Setcreasea dies to the ground in cold weather but in a mild winter like the one we just had, it resprouts.

Many beautiful begonias but these two were especially interesting. 

Begonia 'Elephant Ear' almost came home with me but there are already enough of begonias in the Outlaw collection!

 Pretty fuchsia.  The humming birds were urging me to buy more.

So what's the big thing about pot being legal in Washington?  These have been available in nurseries for years!  This is the only kind of pot that excites me. (okay, that's a lie, I also like plain terra cotta)

Is there a color, besides true blue, that isn't represented by a petunia?

Bonsai.

A whole building devoted to water gardens.

Water lettuce anyone? 

No fish in this large pond?   There were small koi for sale in a room behind the yellow wall.

More water.

Cute benches!

More annual fun!

This gravel path is flanked by hoop houses each containing great stuff.  Two are full of rhododendrons, a couple overflowing with veggies, etc.  This is not a nursery that one can easily breeze through.  

There was a Japanese Maple area, another devoted to fruit trees, yet another to shade and flowering trees.  This is a full service nursery with very little stuff and lots of great plants!  I won't drive by so quickly again!

Meanwhile, Out in the Laboratory...

Time to update the greenhouse experiments but first, I'm delighted to once again have Cardiocrinum giganteum in bloom in my garden!  It takes them a few years from the time the bublets from the parent plant are planted in the ground until they bloom.

The begonia experiment which you can read about here is coming along nicely.  So far, the grocery store begonias are holding their own; in fact, they have some of the largest foliage so far.  The Blackmore and Langdons are looking healthy and the tubers from Brecks, having been planted later are a bit smaller.  However the Brecks and Fred Meyer hanging varieties (started in the baskets and hanging above these are farther along.  Higher equals warmer and more sun so maybe that's the reason.

The ones that are farthest along are those that I've saved from year to year in their pots.  This wins for the largest leaves (over a foot long) is this pink American Hybrid from Wells Medina about 10 years ago.  Two thirds of them have been potted up into the terra cotta pots where they'll spend the rest of the summer.  The thing emerging from the ground at the bottom of the picture is Amorphophallus konjac which I'd forgotten about.  Must label those pots better.

Speaking of begonias with large (and furry) leaves, Begonia 'San Miguel' 

Begonia aff. Sizemorea from Vietnam came home with me from a March plant sale.  I left it and a couple of other begonias outside. The others didn't mind but this guy decided to loose it's one leaf.  It much prefers life inside the greenhouse and has produced  prodigious  new growth.

The tomatoes started from seed have now been transplanted from four inch pots into one gallon pots and will soon go into five gallon pots.

From this

To this

They're scattered around everrywhere!

From a packet of random heritage varieties came this pretty variegated plant. 

The two plants that I got in one gallon pots at the hardware store are in five gallon pots and have green fruit on them.  This is Early Girl.  Sungold has a a fruit that is almost ready to pick!   

Citrus have set fruit.  

Interesting but the plants aren't that great looking in pots, the bloom time is fairly brief and it's a lot of work for a few lemons or tangerines.  Do you grow citrus inside?

The tropical pitcher plants are putting out more pitchers and leaves so they must be happy.

These both have botanical names but their tags didn't mention them and I'm too lazy to look them up right now.

Solanum pseudocapsicum or Jerusalem Cherry that came home around December.  I thought it would be sort of a seasonal interest thing that would go to the compost heap but it kept growing, is now blooming and making more fruit to adorn itself.  

Some of the older dried fruits fell on the soil beneath and they're sprouting. Maybe I'll grow these on and give them away next Christmas.  Sounds like too much to fuss with right now.

Sedum morganianum or Burro's Tail Sedum is blooming. 

So is the grocery store gardenia.

While there's lots more fun stuff out there, you're probably bored by now so  I'll end with a couple of Neoregelias that came from the Rare Plant Research open house earlier this month. 

Happy gardening!