u/waterytartwithasword

From the Dolphins game but I just saw it and it brings me joy.

Pink Gumdrop has been producing these tiny jellybean/gumball sized tomatoes in excessively hot weeks (over 95) now that we're in the tail end of the season - high heat, rootbound pot, poor/partial pollination = incredibly sweet, tiny, firm, thin-skinned fruit.

Absolutely delicious. This is what they look like at breaker stage, they were all green yesterday and solid orange today, and will be ruby pink in a day or two. They're even sweet right now at orange.

This is what I wish currant tomatoes were like.

Harvested today, perhaps could have done with another few days for main vine tendril to die but I got another SVB (this time on that plant at the apex of the trellis not the crown) and the stem was plenty woody enough. Solid orange with lovely uniform dusting of sugar freckles. She's curing in the garage with a fan. I have another one on the original SVB victim that is two weeks into maturing.

Never again. I was out there fighting for their lives every day. SVB eggs are smaller than you think they are from internet photos. Those containers are getting Sun Gold and Super Sweet 100s next year. The other trellis and containers are is getting vine flowers - a pair of moonflower and cardinal climbers on the trellis side and Jimmy Nardello peppers on the outside, with alyssum all around. I have survived pumpkins by dreaming and planning for a pumpkin-free life.

I am going to grow a cattle panel of tiny honeynut squash and be way less interested in their survival as they won't be such a prominent visual feature.

I am a first-time gardener. This is the garden I built with Claude.

Gardening is fiddly work subject to highly local weather conditions, microclimates, regional and local pest and plant disease pressures, and hyperlocal effects like shade, light and heat reflection from building materials, and water quality.

I started with one tomato plant on a concrete south-facing patio and over time gained confidence in Claude's guidance as it repeatedly succeeded as I added multiple other flower and vegetable varieties. It taught me how to perform rescue surgery on a pumpkin plant after a squash vine borer infestation. The plant has almost completed growing two sugar pumpkins in a challenging setup (containers and vertical trellis).

I grew tomato plants that I realized later (as I learned what questions to ask Claude to get the answers that I needed) should not have succeeded as robustly as they did under Claude's customized fertilizer schedule and support for too-small containers.

I rescued a half-dead gardenia from a 75% off sale rack in a hardware store parking lot, and Claude taught me exactly how to revive it. It is thriving and I have exquisitely perfumed fall blooms.

I also grew peppers and many flower varieties, with the care regimen Claude prescribed.

I bought a grow light to start lettuce and broccoli raab inside for fall transplant. Claude customized my setup for that based on the light's technical specifications. They are all thriving.

I used Claude to generate a hyperlocal heat. shade, and sun diagram of the patio with a slider so I can view it by day and month, based on my exact location and orientation of the patio including ambient heat from the brick wall, the height of my containers, and projected size of plants to enable me to grow plants requiring some shade and lower temps to live (my garden patio is south facing and in near total sun). That artifact also has drag and drop container elements so I could tweak the locations (it is a 12x15 patio requiring a lot of optimization to make best use of it).

As I became more confident and came to really love the physical labor involved, I expanded into advance planning for next year as that requires specific prep tasks in fall and winter, and extensive discussion of best varieties to grow in my specific context. Claude was able to support this process much more efficiently than I'd have been able to do with solo research alone (I do always check his output with review).

I used Claude to create another artifact that is an interactive calendar and task manager by month and week for putting the garden to bed in November, starting native perennials that require winter dormancy to flower in spring, and prompt seedling sowing in the correct week to ensure transplantation on time for each plant's required grow time and temperature constraints.

Over the course of the last three months I have given Claude a range of instructions to qualitatively improve answers and minimize the amount of back and forth challenges and reconsideration required to zero in on a plan. I have learned a lot about how to frame and build my own inquiries/prompts.

I have learned a tremendous amount about gardening from this process, with great yields (literally).

It would have taken me several years of trial and error and learning piecemeal from books and individual humans to get to a similar level of success in such a short time.

What I enjoyed most about this process was using Claude to more fully understand and interact with living physical objects. I frequently uploaded photos to him asking to identify a pest or plant damage and respond appropriately to it (saving many plants and extending harvest time). I uploaded photos of plants in various stages of growth to ask what I was seeing and what it meant (for example, a yellowing femae pumpkin blossom that Claude informed me was being thrown by the heat - he always peeks at the weather conditions on instruction).

Claude walked me through other concerning observations with curative actions using his photo analysis. If he couldn't be specific, he gave a range of possibilities.

Overall I've had a really good time with this process.

Orange on the eldest, a newly fertilized fruit, and a female bloom that almost made it - she was going to open today, but between a heavy rain and the rapid growth of the new one, I'm pretty sure it decided not to do it. Quite withered on top, and definitely never opened. I checked several times and the petals are still firmly sealed shut below.

Two more weeks for pollination, after that not enough time I think.

I learned a lot. Most of all I learned this really isn't worth it if the goal is food.

Hopefully I'll get one or two more going before it's all over.

Plant from seed July 1, first female flower bloomed Aug 3, hand pollinated, here she is today.

All other females on the vine RIP to heat last week but two tiny babies are coming along. Female on second plant hand pollinated a couple days ago. It lost smaller females to heat as well.

My pollination window closes early September for maturity before first frost soooooo idk. Two maybe three weeks left.

This popped up in my Facebook memories from 11 years ago. The young woman followed me around a craft store and eventually asked me what my perfume was because she wanted to get some for her wedding day. She asked how much it cost and when I saw how her face fell when I told her? My heart. I had half a tester bottle with no cap from a swap, so I offered to make her a decant bottle. I made her one decorated (vintage pin and wire ribbon) and two large purse sprays and dropped them off at her work. She had left this beautiful thank you note for me.

It gave me a lovely warm fuzzy to remember today.

I hope she is doing well and is happy and healthy, and got herself a bottle with wedding gift money before it was discontinued!

For tomorrow one of the pumpkins may die. Bad enough that arch 1 honeynuts failed to launch, the unexpected second wave of SVBs got one of the sugar pies. I've scraped it out and irrigated with BT but the gash is pretty deep.

Looking forward to seeing it start to put out more lateral growth, the first month has mostly just been primary vine. I had to do some pruning of the biggest base leaves when they died from a perfect storm of bug pressure and my own ignorance.

Pic 1 is of a flower that looks very small and the ovary seems quite yellow - it will probably open tomorrow and I'll give it a shot but temps here are shooting up to 100 on Tuesday. Pic 2 is a flower that looks healthier to me. Pic 3 is the newest girl on the vines.

4-5 is the sugar pumpkin I hand pollinated last Monday. Seems to be progressing nicely! Definitely going to need a sling soon. Stem is getting really nice and fat and healthy looking. Only other female on Plant 2 is Pic 3, female right on the growing tip. Once she pollinates I'll be topping that vine (it'll be 9-10 feet and all the way over the arch trellis).

Overall both sugar pumpkin plants appear very healthy.

6B. It's a Juliet (I think) if that matters. I pruned branches that have completed production and nice looking fresh suckers popped up immediately. The bottom half of the plant seemed pretty shot. The top half is still flowering and fruiting pretty heavily and looks great, so I don't want to mess that up.

What's the fertilizer protocol for the late summer/fall half of an indeterminate's best life?

It finally started bending over the cage instead of just being 7' tall with the top 3' or so being fully self-supported. I was praying for it to bend so I wouldn't need a ladder.

Sunday, Monday not pictured (hand pollinated when flower opened) Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

It's really neat to watch the nearby foliage respond to it with supportive nestling. I'll make a sling for it over the weekend as that netting isn't going to cut it.

My mind is kind of blown. It was just pollinated on Monday. She's a sugar pumpkim and I'd say 4" long and 3" wide already.

I love how the auntie and uncle branches and leaves are pitching in to hold rhe big baby.

About double the size from yesterday. Planted from seed July 1 so it's young. How long til the pumpkin can be considered safe from miscarriage? Base is turning dark green and she's very supported by two leaf branches that fork under her.

Cone hat in pic 2 was Sunday evening, she opened Monday morning and I hand pollinated her.

Bubble hat is this morning (Tuesday) and she seems to be giving me a thumbs up that she's pollinated. About double in size.

Should know for sure in another couple days!

Plant is 33 days old. I have two in approx 28 gal containers joined by an arch trellis I reinforced with netting on top and an expandable wood trellis on the sides.

Picking off tiny eggs using a footstool, doing BT, hanging traps up like a serial killer hanging Tiny Tree air fresheners in his basement.