This is the first year I tried Cherokee Purple tomatoes and I must say I'm impressed. Great taste!
Posted on 05/09/2014 10:16:25 AM PDT by rightly_dividing
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“No storm here, one lightening flash after the rain stopped.”
There must be a continental divide or something between your house and my house. Prissy was jumping at every loud thunder blast and lightning was evident.
This was the first actual rain since I got the rain gauge and guess what? There was no water in it - the clear plastic where it fits in the bottom has a crack in the side. I couldn’t tell it until I brought it in and held it at the sink and poured water in there, and out the water came. I’ve put it in a sack to take back to Lowes. Of course, I didn’t keep the sales ticket for a rain gauge or the box it was in. I expect they will take it back since it’s useless for me. I’ll wait until Monday to take it back since the stores will be crowded with people over the weekend. Rats, I don’t know how much rain I got.
Has anyone ever tried ‘planting by the signs’?
Garlic usually doesn’t like the heat. I HAVE planted it this late before and when it’s ‘done’ save and replant those cloves in Oct/Nov.
YMMV.
I would plant ‘warm climate’ garlic though. I get mine from sites listed through gourmetgarlicgardens.com This company has been really great: http://www.foreveryongfarms.com/index.html
I had pretty close to 100% germination from them in the 3lbs of garlic I ordered. Very pleased with them and IIRC your climate is a bit warmer than mine even. These ‘creole’ type varieties prefer a warmer winter anyways.
YMMV. I’ve planted out grocery store elephant garlic and had really great luck too.
Hope you planted it good and deep. Then just keep filling the trench/hole until level with surrounding ground. Don’t cut or do anything to it the first two years. The third year you may have a few that you can harvest early but only once then let it grow to a bush again. Cut it or mow it in late fall when it dies down. The fourth year you will have sprigs to harvest in the spring but then let it grow to bush again. Then each year there will be more and more sprigs to harvest. But each year only harvest once or twice then let grow to bush.
Farmers market for good tomatoes. BTW Even when all I had was a balcony I always had a large pot with a Beefmaster tomato growing in it. A four or five gallon pot with one plant could keep you in eating tomatoes for the summer if you take care of it. And they are heirloom so you can save the seeds and replant the next year.
I cant just sit here playing with the radar features all night. It is about my bye bye time to say “Good night, Gracie”
I am by myself in this house (if we don't count Prissy) and my computer takes me anywhere I want to go - to you, to everyone on this thread, and to Bandera to talk to Bandera friend and my son who lives in London. When my computer doesn't work, I'm headed right then to Santa Claus computer guy on Dallas street.
I think back to my extensive years at a few universities and how easy it would have been to find information I had to dig out of the library in those days. Hours upon hours I spent at libraries. I learned how to read a page fast by looking at the center of the page and training my eyes to see the whole field left and right and scanning until I found what I was searching for. Now, I just put selected words in search and up it comes. Children in school these days have no idea what we went through to get knowledge in days before computers.
Let's say we lose power for years. Children would have to go back to actual writing and have to read books to get information. That would be major culture shock.
When son, Wayne, was in high school in advanced courses, he said he needed to read faster. We took him to Houston to a speed reading class that met at night - I can't remember how long we did that, but I understood his need for fast reading. His SAT scores were so high, he was put in MENSA at Rice University.
He lives in London and sent me beautiful pink roses flowers today for Mother's Day. Along with the flowers, the florist delivered a box of individually wrapped big fudge three dimensional squares with nuts and they are the finest I ever ate. There has to be a million calories in each square. Each square is large so eating one takes a while.
His film work right now is a series of three documentaries about psychotic psychopath killers. Since he is only filming in England, these killers were/are there. Think about that - they are nuts in England and going to kill people BUT HAVE NO GUN. For that reason alone, the series will be interesting to see what these killers used to kill their victims. I feel sure kitchen knives are one method and there was a push there not many months gone by, where the government thought about a law to not allow anyone in that country to take a kitchen knife outside the house.
“Chainsaw weighed 2.3 lbs yesterday. She was 9 weeks old on Tuesday.”
That’s the best name for a dog I ever heard. Fantastic.
“I have my Sun Gold cherries flowering already...”
Pardon my ignorance, but are those regular cherries and due to the name, are they yellow instead of red? And, your about page doesn’t give your state, so where do you live and do regular cherries produce where you live? I would grow cherries in a heart beat if they would grow in southeast Texas. I was thinking they were a cold state crop but since I’m learning, I could be really wrong.
“Has anyone ever tried ‘planting by the signs’?”
sockmonkey does.
I had a friend with a male pit bull named Kitty.
This is the first year I tried Cherokee Purple tomatoes and I must say I'm impressed. Great taste!
Your pictured veggies are so fine. I hope I get to a stage where I can have that many veggies at one time.
How does it feel to muff your big chance in Grow Business RD???
She had a tough beginning. We picked her up from her owner when she was eight hours old. She was hypothermic, unresponsive and purplish pink. I carried her around in my sweatshirt for three days, and after that things started looking up. Whenever anybody in the family has a tough beginning, we give them a warrior’s name, hoping that they’re imbued with that fighting spirit. So far so good! (I’m gonna tell everybody that it’s her prison name heh heh heh.)
I'm really pleased with this year's crop so far. No major bug problems yet (knock on wood ) but it's still early in the season. I must admit though, I have been applying Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) regularly. I haven't waited until I actually saw horn worms like I usually do.
“60 days. An heirloom lettuce that dates to the 1850’s. It makes small cabbage-like green heads, only 3-4” across. Very tasty, a winner for classy markets!”
It's slow to bolt and there were many customer comments and they are all good plus saying the lettuce is crisp and sweet which is what I want. A package of 250 seeds is $1.50. I ordered three packages as I'm serious about this lettuce - I'll freeze the seed packets. I'll plant them in the wood long planter on the ground when I get the seed. With it being small and excellent rate of germination, I'll try to grow it in the house in winter under the grow lamp.
I have the Cherry Punch tomato seed for containers that have 30% more vitamin C and 40% more lycopene than the average garden tomato, to also try to grow in winter under the grow lamp. If I could have tomatoes and lettuce in winter, it would be a winner.
greeneyes is my model for growing plants inside in winter and she suggested the Tom Thumb to get me small lettuce heads now. She has been an inspiration for my efforts to grow food plants, along with Johnny (who tells me everything that can go wrong).
>
Because of all the mistakes I made. The University of Life is a harsh school, and sometimes, the tuition is dear.
/johnny
JRF, thanks for always being willing to share your hard won knowledge.
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