Tomatoes Redux

Last year I complained about my sorry tomatoes. ("Trouble with Tomatoes," 3/19/18). This year has been a completely different story. We've been having sweet, red tomatoes for over a month now. As a former Master Gardener getting it right should have been a no-brainer for me, but it's taken me only about 25 years to start geting the hang of vegetable gardening in sw Florida.

I suspect that the main difference was much earlier planting. I also used better potting soil and a bigger pot, and positioned it close enough to the hose that it was easy to water. I bought an "Early Girl" start, and fertilized it with slow-release pellets. At the moment the plant is looking rather sorry, and apart from its last ripening fruits, has just a few flowers. There may be something wrong with it, but more likely, it may have run its course.

 Even though it is resistant to both fusarium and verticillium wilt, "Early Girl" is not listed as particularly well-suited to south Florida by the University of Florida, IFAS. However, it was recommended to me by an experienced gardener here, and I was familiar with it from earlier gardening days in Georgia. So far there's been no damage from birds, but the Grackles show up in force in late winter and spring. I suspect them as the main culprits. Insect activity also picks up with warm, windy and dry spring weather.

"Early Girl" Watercolor and Colored Pencil

Last week I planted 2 more tomato slips, and they already have produced small green tomatoes. It will be interesting to see if they have time to ripen before the weather gets too hot. Ditto for the lettuce and sweet alyssum seeds I planted along the rim of the pots.

I'm doing an online course in colored pencil with Wendy Hollander, organized by Karen Abend. It's just a little task each day, and so far I've been more or less able to keep up, despite a frustrating elbow injury. Along with the colored pencil technique itself, it's also a review of basic drawing skills, which certainly is not wasted on me. I'm very pleased with what I'm learning, if not by what I'm doing. I've got a long way to go with colored pencil, as my tomatoes below show. I was trying different colors for shading, and got much too heavy-handed with the dark sepia in the tomato on the left. In fact, two of the tomatoes look more like apples to me.

"Early Girl" - Colored Pencil

I still need to contact Harry's Tasty Tomatoes (see my 3/19/18 post  ). No matter what seeds I may get from him, I think I will keep "Early Girl" on my list of Florida favorites.

I also have beautiful kale under the Fiddlewood. (I need to do a post on that wonderful plant. It provides just the sort of dappled shade under which so many plants thrive, and is a favorite perch for the few songbirds we get here). I'm picking it young, so I can braise it with plenty of garlic and some broth, and then add it to sauces or stir fries. To my way of thinking, a lot of recipes underestimate the time it takes to cook "greens." That includes baby kale. I just keep checking until I think it is tender, regardless of the cooking time given. I don't mind a bit of crunch in most vegetables, but undercooked greens to me are about as chewable as grass clippings, which doesn't mean they have to be cooked "dead," either. The bigger and older the leaves, the longer they need to cook.

Kale Mix from Burpee

The wonderfully textured and/or crinkled leaves are endlessly fun to draw, as long as I don't grimly attempt to get every little curlicue right. This sketch started out as ink (Pigma Micron #005) and watercolor. I made the mistake of using yellow for the highlights, but that made the leaves look sickly, so I tried to brighten them up with watercolor pencil, which didn't work too well, and colored pencil, which worked better. Some of the varieties are very blue-green, which I didn't capture here.

Elliott's Aster

Elliott's Aster, Aster elliottii, (or now Symphyotrichum elliottii) is still blooming, though not as robustly as a month ago. For me it usually flowers in late fall through early winter, but if spring were not so dry here it probably would keep going for one more season. It is one of my favorite native plants, even if I constantly have to contend with its expansionist tendencies.

I was playing around with the concept of "negative painting" in this loose sketch.

 Though it seeds profusely, in moist or wet soil it spreads enthusiastically by rhizomes to form dense colonies. An individual plant starts out from a basal rosette, which by and large disappears as the plant matures. Plants reach 2and one half to 5 feet tall. Mine never get more than 3 feet tall, probably because they don't get any extra water. (They grow in a section of the yard that stays relatively damp most of the year). Spring is windy and hot here, and my asters go fairly dormant until the rains return in summer, when I have to start pulling them out to contain their spread.

Bottom Part of Plant - Basal Rosette Has Disappeared

 Heads are produced at the ends of stalks and branches. They consist of both ray and disk flowers. The ray flowers are a purplish-lavender. The ray flowers in our plants are quite pale, but can be considerably darker in others.

 Leaves are alternate and lance-shaped, with the widest part near the tip (oblanceolate). They become progressively smaller as you move up the stem. The leaf margins have teeth.


I allow Elliott's aster a little corner of the front yard. Perhaps I should let it take over, but I don't find it that attractive out of bloom - just a thicket of green. However, a colony of Elliott's aster in bloom puts on a real show.

Colony of Elliott's Aster in Bloom- Photo by Jeanette Lee Atkinson

The plant  is named for Stephen Elliott (1771-1830), a fascinating and remarkably accomplished individual. He was born and died in South Carolina, and was educated at Yale. He enjoyed a productive career in the South Carolina legislature, where he was instrumental in passing laws establishing a public school system and a state bank. He was a major influence in the creation of the Medical College of South Carolina, where he lecturerd on natural history and botany.

Like many educated people of his day, he was an avid natural scientist, and corresponded with leading colleagues in both the U.S. and Europe. His  A Study of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia, which appeared  between 1816 and 1824, is considered one of the most important botanical works in the United States. (This biographical information is taken from an article by George Rogers in the South Carolina Encyclopedia, www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/elliott-stephen).

Elliott was so respected that the genus Elliottia was named after him. In Florida alone no fewer than 12 plants have his name as their species epithet. One of the most beautiful, Elliott's love grass, Eragrostis elliottii is shown below.

Elliott's Lovegrass - Jeanette Lee Atkinson

Elliott's aster occurs in moist conditions throughout the southeast and west through Louisiana. It is very popular with pollinators, and it never has suffered from insects or diseases in our yard. It lasts a reasonable time as a cut flower.

Elliott's Aster, Top Part of Plant, Graphite Pencil

Rivina

It's been too windy for the past weeks for comfortable outdoor sketching, but  at least I managed some quickies of rouge plant, Rivina humilis, a delicate understory shrub. I always think of bright green and red as Christmas colors, and this year Rivina delivered. As of Jan. 1, 2019, it is still flowering.

Rivina humilis - in Aquabee 93 lb sketchbook

As the species epithet "humilis" indicates, rouge plant is low-growing. Some of my sources have it reaching 5 feet, but I've never seen one taller than 3 feet. The stem is woody, while the branches can be spreading and almost vine-like. Especially in deep shade, the branches droop over and around surrounding vegetation - as though they were too delicate to support themselves.

My plant is a semi-volunteer, growing in the dappled sun/shade under a medium-sized Simpson's Stopper. It is the offspring of a plant that languished and ultimately died in a nearby pot. It's present spot is pretty good for it in terms of sun and shade, but it is exposed to north winds, which it doesn't like. A week or so back we had 2-3 days of unusually strong sustained winds accompanied by even stronger gusts. The wind in combination with chilly temperatures bleached the edges of many leaves.

Rivina used to be included in the Pokeweed family, Phytolaccaceae, but is now classified in its own family, Petiveriaceae.

It is a very ornamental plant. The leaves are alternate. (New branches arise in the angle between an existing leaf and branch. This new growth can be so compressed, with branching upon branching, that it is next to impossible to tell what is going on with leaf arrangement. At least it is for me).  The leaf has slightly undulating margins and a smooth surface. The leaves are fairly squared off at the base, and pointed at the tips. The petioles can be quite long, and are gently hairy.

The flowers appear along a terminal spike, or raceme. They are only about 5mm in diameter, and lack petals. What looks like petals at first glance is actually 4 sepals, either pink or white. The fruit is a bright red, which has been used for dyes. The berry contains 1 black seed. Flowers and berries  can appear along the same stalkat the same time.

Despite its delicate appearance, Rivina is reasonably tough, growing in hammocks on the backside of the sand dunes, hammocks farther inland, and in disturbed sites. Most Florida natives are equipped to endure long periods of winter drought, but this plant likes a little moisture to look its best. It will flower and fruit in full shade, and doesn't thrive in unmitigated sun.

According to the USDA Plants Database, Rivina is native to Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, New Mexico and Arizona. It also is native to the Caribbean, Central America, and tropical South America. It is widely naturalized in the Pacific islands, including Hawaii and the Galapagos, and has spread to Australia and Asia as well. In some areas it has become an invasive pest.

Rivina is an important food plant for birds, and the berries do not last long in our yard.

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Blooming now: Dune Sunflower, Heliotropium, Blue Porterweed, Scarlet Sage, Pityopsis, Rivina, Blue-eyed Grass, Elliott's Aster, Tickseed, Bacopa, Bidens, Goldenrod, Gaillardia. Non-natives: Emilia, Scarlet Milkweed, Bougainvillaea, Dauben Waterlily, Tina Waterlily, Pentas, Marigolds, Blue Sage, Blue Daze.