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Posted on 11/04/2011 5:08:00 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. I hope all of you are doing well this first week in November. Daylight Saving Time officially ends in the U.S. and Canada, at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 6th, when clocks are moved back one hour. We have had some nice weather with lows in the mid to high 30’s and up into the mid 60’s for highs the last couple of days. Forecasts are calling for lows in the 40’s with Highs in the low 70’s for the next week.
I hope all your Fall gardens are prospering.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
Well, if they can grow Vidalia Onions in Georgia, I don’t know why they wouldn’t do well in FL.
I’ve gardened in CA, TX, WA, and WI, so i know nothing about FL.
Red Devil's Weekly Garden thread on Free Republic. it appears every Friday and be found right here. ;') Also, there are several master gardeners here who dispense their advice generously. Daisyjane69 and Diana in Wisconsin come to mind. I know there are others, but it is still early and I haven't finished my coffee.
Red Devil's Weekly Garden thread on Free Republic. it appears every Friday and be found right here. ;') Also, there are several master gardeners here who dispense their advice generously. Daisyjane69 and Diana in Wisconsin come to mind. I know there are others, but it is still early and I haven't finished my coffee.
4 cups green tomatoes, finely chopped in food processor & drained
1/2 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1-1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
half a pinch of ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until creamy.
Mix together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Add raisins and nuts to dry mixture; add dry ingredients to creamed mixture. Dough will be very stiff. Mix well.
Add drained tomatoes and mix well. Pour into the prepared 9 x 13 inch pan.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean.
Sprinkle the finished cake with confectioners' sugar or frost with your favorite caramel or cream cheese frosting.
My notes: This cake is rich, rich, rich!!! If you frost with cream cheese frosting, as I did, you may want to do it sparingly. I think next time I will do the confectioners' sugar. It took us 3 days to finish off the cake, and I would have to say that it got better each day.
You can vary the degree of chopping the tomatoes according to your personal taste. I chopped mine so finely that they were just short of pureed.
Enjoy!
We received a load of dirt, very rich loam from a guy my husband helped by finishing some concrete. Same guy that brought us a load of manure last spring. He had an old guy with him, and we talked about growing and harvesting strawberries, corn, and raising bees.
Even though we had a light frost, I am still getting some tomatoes from the makeshift green house built with row covers. I have brought in some of the branches for the indoor garden. Dug up a pepper and put in a pot to bring into the house. For now it is doing fine on the patio next to the house.
Still eating plenty of spinach salad, the lettuce is coming a long, but not ready to harvest yet. Garlic is looking good. Have a great weekend and God Bless.
My deepest sympathies. We lost power for 2 hours last week (high winds and tree branches) and I was climbing the walls. It was night and my husband was at work. W/O power, we have no phone, no heat (even though it is gas), no water, etc. I just went to bed and lay there making up a list that I need to buy — more flourescent lanterns — one for each floor of the house. A battery operated radio. Of course a supply of candles and matches (I had those, but didn’t want to use them.) Had plenty of wood for the wood stove, but didn’t want to make a fire, either.
I have 2 generators, but neither is convenient to use. Have to figure out what to do about that. Been saying that for more than 20 years, and we’ve made no progress on it.
The problem with generators is that you cannot use them indoors. Therefore, I have to tackle the puzzle of running the generator on the porch outdoors and how to get the electrical connection that the generator is powering indoors, while keepiing the exhaust fumes out. That is so a freezer or refrigerator or other appliances can be connected to it.
Just as I was writing this, WE Energies called to notify me that the electricity was reconnected and to tell me the cause for the outage. Well, the electricity was reconnected last Sunday night! It’s a good thing that I’m not on a breathing machine!
Anyway, the serviceman and I got into a discoussion on the use and problems of home generators. He suggested that I get an exhaust pipe from an auto store to direct the fumes away from the house. Then my husband (the resident engineer) spoke up and said that if I had an OUTDDOOR 220 plug (dedicated to the generator) that I could plug it in and that it would power much of the house. At least until I ran out of gas.
Add that to my list — an adequate supply of gas to survive a power outage.
This reciipe sounds good, but I have no more green tomatoes, or tomatoes of any kind. Your recipe sounds very much like recipes I have for carrot cake, or zucchini cake. I wonder what other kind of vegetables you could use?
Radish cake? Potato cake? Rutabaga cake? LOL
Varieties of various veggies for Florida. There are three pages you have to click around.
I'm just getting started and trying to figure out what works, where and when. I don't know much, but I'll share what I do.
Tried onions last winter. Now that I think of it, I wonder what happened to them. Have seeds, but no room left in the garden. Never tried shallots. Planted asparagus last winter and about half of them seem to be doing well. From what I've read we're too far south, but I really like asparagus so I thought I would try. I've got sweet basil all over the place, partially to keep down the mosquitos. Onion chives, thyme and oregano all thrive (I'd keep the oregano in containers so it doesn't take over everything). Sage and dill have done okay, but not like the thyme and oregano that grow a lot faster than I can use them.
I really like my hydroponic setup. Compared to growing in the dirt, it's just not even fair. You might be interested in the place on Linebaugh.
I, too, am quite limited on space, so I'm looking for stuff that produces well, and then determining just when to plant it (and, harder for me, when to yank it out). In addition to the tomatoes and peppers, so far I've had good luck with Ichiban eggplant, okra, New Zealand "spinach" (not a big fan, but it grows like a weed and I need greens for the dog food anyway), parsley in semi-shade (again, dogfood), Simpson Black seed lettuce, Southern Curled mustard (yuck, only plant I ever pulled up and composted just because I wouldn't eat it), Kentucky Wonder pole beans, and asparagus beans.
Calabrese (or something like that, seed package is gone) broccoli and Snow Crown cauliflower did okay last winter. I'm planting a lot more of them this year just because they tasted so good. I'm also trying a bunch of different greens this year, a lot of which I've never eaten but are healthy and I know if I grow them I'll eat them. Maybe I'll find something I really like.
I've been putting in some fruits as well. I've learned that we need to be careful with varieties. Different varieties need different amounts of chill hours to produce fruit, and our location just doesn't produce enough of those for a lot of the varieties I've seen in the store.
Think I'll cut down most of the palms in the front yard this winter to make room for some more fruit trees. Oh, and because they suck.
I forgot to tell everyone about freezing corn in the husks. Hubby harvested a huge amount of corn and piled it in the basement kitchen.
After working till midnight shucking and packaging bags of corn, a huge pile was left, and I was out of steam. So I googled freezing corn in the husks.
Yep you can do it - just eat the corn within about 3 months (no problem for us). To use it, I just put two ears in the microwave on 4 and 1/2 minutes, cut off the stem end, grabbed the silk end and shook it like a rally towel. Perfect ear of corn with no silks no fuss and no mess.LOL.
WOW! Thank you so much Darth! I’m in Pinellas, but I’m certain the county disparity is nil.
I’ve heard absolutely great things about hydroponics, and a friend of mine used hydroponics to grow *ahem* a member of the mint family, if you catch my drift. Systems can range from simple to insanely complex, but having liquid cooled several PCs in my day, I’d imagine I can maneuver my way around some pump and tubing hardware.
Interesting bit about the asparagus. I was always under the impression that we could grow pretty much anything, but having seen how poorly certain veggies grew in my future mother-in-law’s garden, I figured I’d stick with FL natives, if at all possible.
I’m marking this post for reference. Thank you so much again, Darth!
Finally got my hands on an old whiskey barrel for my hydroponic setup. Got it all cleaned up and weather proofed. It isn’t water tight, but I think that may be a good thing. I got some very large, thick, contractor trash bags to hold the water. With a twist tie I can keep the bag tight around the water and power lines, hopefully keeping the mosquitoes out. And come cleaning time, I can just replace the bag.
It’s also nice that I can use the extra space inside the barrel to keep my nutrient mixes, measuring container, etc. At some point, I’ll have to work up a shelf in there.
And, since this summer I ran pvc from my rain barrels up front through the yard into a garden valve right next to the whiskey barrel, I’ve now got everything in one handy place.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2799079/posts?page=145#145
Yep getting gas for the generator can be a big problem especially if a wide area is without power. During Katrina my wife and I went two weeks without power. We had a generator but keeping it gassed up turned into a daily adventure for me. The nearest town that had spotty power being restored was 32 miles away. The radio stations were broadcasting when a gas station would get power and how much and when they were expecting a delivery of gas. Some were rationing how much gas you could pump per vehicle. And the lines were long. If I remember right our generator went through 5gal of gas in 8 or 10 hours. Depended on the load we put on it. We had something like 5 5gal gas cans and a number of smaller ones. I tried my best not to get below 2 full 5 gallon gas cans. You also got to remember to get gas for the vehicle also. Wal-Mart was just about the only store selling food. They planned for the storm and had big generator sets brought in at just about all their stores that were not damaged. It think most of their stores have emergency generators to keep their refrigerated and frozen food from spoiling and to keep a few lights on. But the big generators they brought in ran the whole store.
I've got literally hundreds of pounds of green tomatoes and it is getting cooler, so I'm going to have to pick all of them very soon. Up until now, I've been picking them as I need them.
Wow where did you get the whiskey barrel? I would think that eventually the wood would swell up and fix those leaks.
Also been thinking about a generator. My freezer did well for the 48 hours, but because it was full, I was starting to get concerned.
We have a wood stove, so heat was not a problem. I have a cast iron griddle which came in handy for cooking bacon and eggs. We could heat water for dishes and making coffee.
Heard horror stories about people, particularly in CT, that used outdoor grills inside and died from carbon monoxide...one man died from using a lawn mower inside.
My battery operated lanterns and radio saved the day. Because we’ve experienced this several times in the past and because we live in a rural area, we were fairly well prepared...but a generator will be next on the list.
Here’s a tip my neighbors forgot: get a manual operated can opener...they never thought of that!
different pictures!
Same garden.. I post a new set every week!
I finally found one on Craigslist. Actually, I found plenty of them, but they were all either signed by the distiller and made into expensive furniture or sold before I got to them. The one I bought I happened to see about 20min after she posted it.
I figured it might seal up, but maybe not. One of the leaks was bad enough that no water would stay behind it, the water would had to have wicked up the wood (which it probably would have eventually). I kind of like the bag as a liner for cleanup idea anyway.
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