Vegies for fun

Mother's free range chickens, being spoiled and lazy, were always hanging around the house waiting for her. (We also spoil mother because she is turning 82 this April). They are not like the normal native chickens we knew from childhood, that leave the roost early in the morning to look for food in the neighborhood. The normal native chickens were always difficult to see by day, and we have to be patient calling them before they come nearer. These days, my mother spoiled hers, and they become my nuisance. So I decided to put some pots on a makeshift bench. This is to at least elevate the newly planted seedlings sent by my friend blogger from Illinois,  hoping the chickens will have some difficulty reaching the leaves. I also planted petunia to pacify the patience of my mother while waiting for the seedlings to bloom. Or else she might forget to water them. Petunias are sure pacifiers, and in different colors as well.


As the petunias grow bigger, i noticed that the areas below the bench is always moist, so i planted six, yes six tomato seedlings from seeds of the table tomatoes. I also got some goat manure compost from the goat house. I am living in the city so Mother and nephew water them every afternoon as we are already in our dry season. And the tomatoes did not disappoint us. The maximum number of fruits per bunch is normally six and they produced that number in many bunches. Everybody is happy, and the petunia is not the pacifier anymore, the tomato is!

 the seedlings from the Suburban gardener (including the 2 photos below). They are rudbeckia and coneflower, the two dianthus survivor is at the back of the tomatoes which i cannot get for the picture.

the makeshift bench to elevate the foreign seedlings

 the lusciously growing organic tomatoes, originally planted as border plants now become the major actors

 you can see a cockscomb in another pot, its other seedlings were eaten by chickens too

 can you see the tomato fruits competing for space, there's a lot of them 

 another pot of impatiens i put outside the tomatoes as borders to deter the chickens

 organic fruits have premium price, and because these are like pets, I consider these very expensive, LOL

they are almost ready for picking and this time they picked already about 2 kg 

 These are my daily harvest during my Holy Week vacation. I got ~30 fruits per day. Mother already had 2 harvests before these and the fruits are bigger than the succeeding ones. For my 3rd harvest, i got much smaller fruits. The biggest i got is ~30g and the smallest ~10g. You can see at the 3rd plate below the much smaller fruits. Now that the temperature is 34C and still going up, i anticipate the tomatoes' faster death. But we really enjoyed the fruits, most especially the harvesting and photographing!

 Since we already have lots of fruits in the refrigerator, we gave most of them as giveaways for  our relatives who attended my niece's thanksgiving party for her graduation in high school with honors. Everybody is amazed at the productive harvest of my tomatoes considering i only have 6 plants. My mother most of all was so amazed, because her plants a bit away from mine did not show the same prolific growth and fruiting. She was wondering what magic i put to my plants, why hers also died earlier. She complained also that she gave the same style of watering to all the plants! I told her what knowledge can do to make a difference. She cannot fathom what i said, she thinks she is more knowledgeable! 

An eggplant on the ground a bit far from the tomatoes, suffered a lot of chicken intrusion, can you see the tattered leaves. This plant is just one of the very few that survived the chickens.

And the petunia originally planted as pacifier for mother, now forgotten because of the show provided by the tomatoes. She almost stays on the terrace most of the time to shoo away the chickens trying to get near the plants. And hopefully, she will not tolerate them coming closer.