Weekly Garden Thread - August 19-25, 2023 [National Potato Day Edition]

August 19, 2023 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Diana in Wisconsin]

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[TheConservativeParty]

Ya, the folks are doing OK. Growing their last mum crop now. Mom turned 84 today (she was here today for home made birthday cake) and my dad is 87. Mums are usually sold out the first week of October.

😅

[tob2]

Sounds absolutely delicious!

[tob2]

Potatoes, one of my favorite vegetables. I love the blue /purple ones. They have the same potato taste and texture and are great for diabetics!

[tob2]

Things are growing as well as can be, considering the higher than normal temperatures. Tomato plants now loaded with blossoms because the temperatures now dropped to a level more suitable for blossom development. Green beans are producing prolifically. I have been eating them straight from the plant because they taste so good. Already planning next year’s garden. Maybe I’ll try potatoes.

[Pollard]

While grabbing all the tomatoes showing any signs of ripening this morning, I found something interesting.

That tomato in the middle is off one of the same Chadwick Cherry plants as those globe shaped tomatoes that surround it. All the others on the same cluster are globe shaped but as you can see by the two to the right, they have the same mottling effect as far as how they're ripening.

Did a couple of different plants cross yet it only affected this one tomato for shape and one cluster for ripening color pattern?

If a tomato ripens indoors, are the seeds just as viable as if it ripened on the vine?

I would imagine so. I'm thinking about saving seeds to see what happens next year. When I save seeds from this one or these three, I'll try a bite to see how it compares to the rest.

These are the same plants that shoot out a sucker from the main stem with no branch armpit involved or the main stem splits into 4-5 unidentifiable shoots. Not sure what's going on here and/or at Baker Creek where the seeds came from but it's interesting if nothing else.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

We always bought Mums from them and other things from your sister as well. Always top quality. Glad to hear they’re well. My Mom will be 86 in September - she is the Energizer Bunny - and is hard to keep up with! :)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“Already planning next year’s garden. Maybe I’ll try potatoes.”

They are one of the easiest things to grow, and you can usually find the purple ones.

This season I was only doing one bed of them, 8x4’ so I just threw them in whole as I could only comfortably space 12 plants in there. I dug some earlier and they were looking good as ‘new potatoes’ but I’m letting them grow larger for now. Probably two more weeks for me before harvest.

It may seem silly, but growing potatoes is SO satisfying; digging up those hills is like panning for GOLD! :)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“Did a couple of different plants cross yet it only affected this one tomato for shape and one cluster for ripening color pattern?”

Probably not. Was this ‘ridged’ tomato up against any of the guide wires you set up? Was is ‘squished’ between others? That can cause this.

“If a tomato ripens indoors, are the seeds just as viable as if it ripened on the vine?”

Yes.*

And, yes. Those were some weird ‘suckers’ on that plant. I wonder if the fast onset of HEAT made them do that? I’ve never seen that before.

*If a tomato falls off the vine and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? ;)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

101 Things to do With a Potato (Book)

One potato, two potato, three potato - four! Introducing the next book in our thriving 101 series, 101 Things to do With a Potato.

Each year, the average American consumes close to 140 pounds of potatoes. With that in mind, nothing seems better than a cookbook featuring one of America's major food staples - the potato! ''Mrs. 101'' Stephanie Ashcraft has ingeniously created simple recipes that take potatoes to a whole new level.

Try a Breakfast Burrito in the morning, sample the Sausage Corn Chowder for lunch, have the Italian Potato Chips as a mid - afternoon snack, for dinner try the Potato Crust Pizza, and then savor the Sweet Potato Cheesecake for dessert! Stephanie Ashcraft, author of the New York Times best - selling 101 Things to do With a Cake Mix, is a full - time mom who has created and collected recipes for years. She also teaches a monthly cooking class for Macey's Little Cooking Theater in Orem and Provo, Utah. She is currently living in Provo, Utah, with her family.

[Bon of Babble]

Thanks - will look it over.

Problem with the figs is they all ripen at once - and I am about to go out of town for a few days (!).

One of my neighbors who also has a lot of figs told me he chops them up and freezes them in freezer bags and they come out just fine - that would give me more time to make jam, etc. - that would make wonderful Christmas gifts for my family.

[Augie]

The odd weather continues here in Central Missouri. Last week was cool and damp then it snapped off hot and humid on Saturday. Yesterday we saw 102°F with 85% humidity. It was unpleasant outside to say the least.

I spent some quality time with the weed whacker (used a full spool of trimmer line) on Saturday. Yesterday I mowed the house yard, the chestnut grove, and Mrs. Augie’s cart paths, then gave the Kubota a badly needed wash job.

I’ve been pondering what I want to plant in my fall garden, then it hit me that I’m going to be away from home for nearly three weeks in September. My benevolent corporate overlords have bestowed upon me a 2nd long-term service award so I’ve got four extra weeks of paid vacation this year. We’ll spend our usual four nights at Lucas Oil Speedway, home for a week, then off to sunny Florida for two weeks. We’ve booked five nights beachfront on Pensacola Beach, then we’re going to wander our way around Big Bend and spend a couple or three nights in Crystal River to do some kayaking. From there we’ll bop over to St. Augustine for four or five days and spend some time visiting #2 Son, his BFF, and two of the grandkids before making our way back to Misery. So... long story short, rather than plant a bunch of stuff I won’t be able to take care of I’m going to start tearing down and cleaning up so I can dig the garden back down to its natural elevation and rebuild it with some nice raised beds.

In the meantime we’ll have BLTs until the last of my poor diseased tomato plants fold up. I’ve been picking pole beans three times a week and giving most of them away. I’ve been pulling a few beets every week - eating a few and giving away a few more. The sweet bell peppers and the carrots are both continuing to amaze me. The birdhouse gourds also did really well this time. I’ve got a couple dozen of them curing in the greenhouse and they are whoppers.

With generally cool weather and lots of rain during August the pasture grasses and late-season legumes have put on quite a bit of new growth. We’re short on round bales due to the dry spring weather so it hit me that I should ask good neighbor Dave if he was interested in getting the square baler out soon and turn my grass into a stack of idiot cubes. Turns out he was planning to do some square baling so there will be goat/sheep hay for the 4H kids over the winter and into spring. I had to feed two of the big round bales earlier in the summer before the rains came so having some high-quality square bales in the barn will be one less thing to worry about going into winter.

[spankalib]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nYHQK1Ltnh4

[spankalib]

Pete, THANKS! I have been trying to remember that pretty little colorful flower I ffilled a bed with once many years ago.

Portulaca!

[Pollard]

I did also have a really weird split on an Early Girl, tip of the main stem split into 6 all at once. Just trimmed it yesterday down to one that looks main-stem-like. Maters gone wild.

Oddity Update: Now that I pulled them out and looked at them all, it looks like the smaller ones were headed towards ridging but would have ripened before getting that big. They have the nearly opposing indentations starting. None were squished or up against twine or anything else or crammed up and the big was was setting on top of the others in the cluster. Nearly tweaked my neck doing a double take when I saw it. Wait, what? Just an oddball but the whole cluster and more on the way are different.

Went out and looked at the plant and there are other green maters on a few other clusters that have two indents forming on opposite sides. However, I've already eaten a lot of red globe shaped cherries off this plant and there are still plenty of those in the green stage. After looking closely at all clusters, I can tell which ones will be normal Chadwick and which ones will be this new thing.

This plant is sitting right next to a Tappy's Heritage aka Tappy's Finest, also open pollinated and those are medium sized tomatoes that may or may not get ridges. Most often, they're kind of blocky and almost have 4-5 sides. When Tappy's do go ridged, it's very non-uniform unlike my odd Chadwick.

Here's my Tappy's. First pic is right next to Chadwick. Has some ridging

This one's the next one over, further away from Chadwick but well within crossbreeding range but is more blocky.

Interwebs pics of Tappy's

Chadwick Cherry, nothing but globes and you can see at the bottom right how they ripen.

Here's the Chadwick my oddities came from but these look like typical globe shaped Chadwick as have most of them including many I've eaten.

Same plant, different cluster and looking like they'll also be ridged and ripen with mottling, two distinct greens here. Chadwick just fades from pale green like above to orange to red with no real streaking/mottling

This plant also had a sucker shoot out the main stem with no branch armpit involved. Said sucker is 12 foot long now.(crappy pic)

I think they did cross but for some reason, not enough to affect all clusters/maters. Tappy's last year didn't ripen with that mottled pattern and neither do the Chadwick.

If they taste good, I'll save some seeds and see what they do next year. Would be nice to end up with nothing but these;

That's the only one like that though. The rest are close to globe shaped yet at the same ripening stage. Will be interesting to see what they taste like. Definitely not a straight up Chadwick though. Chadwick and Tappy's are both red tomatoes and both taste like red tomatoes so....

I took a few pics of my Black Cherry clusters but they didn't come through. My old digital camera has seen better days and I can't get my phone to connect to the PC today. They really took off and a few clusters has 15 or so fruits on them. Probably close to 100 Black Cherry and more than that of the Chadwick/Tappys/whatever. Couple of dozen larger tomatoes too.

September is going to be tomato month for me.(I said that about Aug 2 weeks ago) Seems weird. Guess I've just never grown plants for this long. By Oct, it will be 6 months. Sometimes we get frost in Oct, sometimes not until Nov and even then, not a hard frost. I could get some PVC and cheap plastic and probably keep them going for a while. Christmas tomatoes?

I've had well over 200 green tomatoes out there for over a month and yet haven't been overloaded with tomatoes yet. Dang heat waves. On the other hand, I've eaten 5-10 a day for a few weeks now and have 41 cherries plus a couple big ones sitting on the table. Definitely got my seed cost back and maybe even the $40 compost.

Only got 20 Shisitos so far($40 for raised bed mix) but it would cost me $50 in gas and taken most of a day to go get some because there ain't none around here. We got bell, jalapeno and sometimes serrano and that's it. Gave some to a guy at work who's a bit of a foodie and he'd never heard of them. Next year, I'm growing about 20-30 of them. Did four last year and this year.

[Pollard]

The Seed section of my cloud, including saving seeds.

https://permasteader.route66custom.com/cloud/index.php/s/eqfmjgDwfWwxkbT

All I’m growing is tomatoes, peppers and pole beans which are about the easiest to save seeds from.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

That’s a lot of data! Glad you’re having a good tomato year. I’m swimming in them now, but I’ll be sharing with neighbors and my Mom and some of her friends.

I’m not sick of them, yet. BLTs for supper and some green beans from the garden and cole slaw with a few ‘additions’ from the garden.

So far I have canned Peach Salsa, Peach BBQ Sauce, V-8 and regular Salsa. Today I made a batch of Merlot Blackcap Jelly and another round of Salsa.

Next up later in the week are juicing grapes - I have a TON of the ‘King of the North’ purple and it makes the best juice. I’ll share some of the grapes with the neighbors, too.

I don’t even want to THINK about the FIVE FULL apple trees I’ll have to deal with later!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

If you did not feel it I can’t imagine what it would be! Hope you feel better!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Bon; Organza bags! Buy some green 4"x6" ones from Amazon and put them over the figs to protect them.

They also have little nylon sleeves you can put over plums and tie them to keep insects off the fruit

The Japanese beetles here have subsided and I took the large cover off my plum tree. We did have a lot of Green June bugs which are not much different than a Fig eater beetle.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Compfrey Escaped in Time! I remember when my father grew some of those!

https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/02/how-to-grow-a-compost-garden/

The queen of compost herbs is comfrey (Symphytum officinale), which produces many very large, hairy leaves. Its roots travel deep into the soil, and mine the subsoil for key nutrients like potassium, phosphorus, and calcium. Comfrey grows rather quickly which means leaves can be harvested several times per growing season.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

German Potato Salad! A wonderful Fall dish!