Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The willow is too close to the house.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

In after Baud. Damn.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

This really is a full service blog.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

This fight is for everything.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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64Comments

  4. 4.

    Phyllis

    I think our bell pepper plants have some kind of blight. I picked several Saturday and chopped the bad parts off. Was able to save a good bit of each one, but the plants have stopped flowering. I haz a sad.

    On the upside, the tomato plants are full and many are beginning to ripen. Woo hoo!

  5. 5.

    Lab Partner

    There’s no need for sexing up the pic with dog leg. Really John, I expected better. Just for that I am going to boycott your blog for a couple of minutes. Or so.

  10. 10.

    QuaintIrene

    eah. My gardening “assistant” got in the picture.

    Your sous-gardener.

    You’re killing me, Cole. Here in NJ, I’ll be lucky if I see ripe cherry tomatoes by the end of July.

  12. 12.

    Jackie

    Help please: We can always get broccoli heads that look like the one in the picture. Problem is that the next day the damn things have bolted and we have flowers. Same with cauliflower. How do you get them to mature into full heads? Is this a climate thing? I’m in SW Ohio.

  15. 15.

    feebog

    Ha, I laugh at your puny garden. We have been pullin zukes, crookneck and summer squash out for almost a month now. Also, green beans, lettuce, arugala, dill, basil and cucumbers. The early girl tomatos are almost ready, as are a couple of varities of grape and cherry tomatos. Planted on April 1st. We have had a cool but sunny spring in SoCal, perfect for growing. Also, having a japanese gardner living in your guest house helps.

  17. 17.

    jibeaux

    Well, my tomato plants seem to have the early blight and something is absolutely FEASTING on my pepper leaves — I have bought some sort of natural insect repellent but probably too late — so it’s good to see someone having some success. I am trying tomatillos this year, which seem to be doing well, and should get some squash and cukes pretty soon.

  18. 18.

    wvng

    Living in a frost pocket, we are sadly a good 3 weeks behind John. As for feebog, laugh now So Cal boy, but what will you do when the water is all gone?

  19. 19.

    mr. whipple

    We’ve got about 70 pepper plants in the garden, but unfortunately they aren’t doing well. Seems like every day it’s rain, rain and more rain. Freaking bugs and mold.

    The only thing thriving is lettuce.

  21. 21.

    Kim

    Hmm… that might be a Clapton reference, but given John’s musical preference, could just as easily be this.

  22. 22.

    Chat Noir

    Love dawg foot in the picture!

    Our herbs are doing excellently. The husband unit made homemade pesto last night from the 3 week old basil plant. Yum!

    Also, too, we have a chives plant that is 4 or 5 years old. We dump it in the fall and pull it right back out in the spring. It’s huge.

  25. 25.

    chopper

    i’m pissed about my tomatos. two of my big beefs started growing out of control. i started getting excited, lots of flowers starting out. then i realized something was wrong, cause that many tomatos would add up to like 300 pounds. started looking at the fruit clusters and realized the douchebags sold me cherries instead.

    hey, i got nothing against cherry tomatos. my wife hates em tho, i’ll have to trade em with someone else. i was really looking forward to growing that cultivar of beefsteaks this year.

    should at least be prolific.

  26. 26.

    Jennifer

    @Jackie:
    Brocolli is a cool season crop. I doubt John will get to harvest his; it will bolt in the heat long before reaching maturity (would love to be wrong about this John but I’m probably right). Here in our neck of the woods (Arkansas) brocolli needs to be planted in mid-February to early March if you expect to get a crop. That’s the only hope of getting at least a 60 day growing season before temps hit the mid-80s and higher, which brocolli DOES NOT LIKE.

  27. 27.

    cat48

    Thank you for the garden pictures. I miss having a large garden. It’s fun to watch them grow. I’m stuck w/container gardening right now.

  28. 28.

    HRA

    I have 2 large patio tomato plants, 1 pepper and 1 jalapeno that have been producing for 2 weeks and I live in WNY. Cukes are growing nicely in a square garden bin I bought at Wegmans. I found 1/2 price onions and garlic at Loews and they are well on their way, too.

    I never tried broccoli. The plant is interesting though I doubt it would survive in my yard. We have bunnies.

  29. 29.

    Eric S.

    Being a city boy I don’t have room to grow much. Saturday marked the first week of the summer season for my weekly shares of the Community Shared Agriculture from the local farmers market. This week’s haul: Kale, Chard, Spinach, Green Garlic, Bok Choy, Broccoli, Salad Turnips, Red Lettuce, Oregano.

  30. 30.

    Violet

    Looking good, Mr. Cole! Love Lily’s leg in the photo. Very artistic.

    Fresh broccoli is just the best. Once you’ve had that, you never want to go back to store bought stuff again. Cauliflower too.

  31. 31.

    jibeaux

    I don’t know much about WV summers, but tend to agree that broccoli is past its season. It would definitely be bolting here in NC. But I am pushing my luck with some lettuce, trying to grow it in the shade of my cuke trellis. We’ll see.

  32. 32.

    Tax Analyst

    @Face:

    ZOMG! You’re growing DOG LEGS IN URE GARDEN!

    I understand the nation’s golf courses are in tight competition for new dog legs. John can probably make a fortune offa that.

  34. 34.

    Randy P

    I no longer grow tomatoes. Too much heartbreak seeing the slugs, etc., polishing off the tomato I’d been watching and waiting for. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten a tomato I planted.

    For some reason in a burst of optimism I bought a bunch of vegetable seeds early this spring and started them. All have died except about 4 zucchini plants, which are currently blooming. Soon it will be time for the joys of watching the little zucchinis start growing and then rot on the vine as the bugs get into the stalks.

    Why do I do this again?

  35. 35.

    ellaesther

    I like how you handily included Lily’s leg in the pepper photo, for comparison purposes. “Look at my peppers! Why, they’re almost as big as a small-ish dog’s hind leg!”

  37. 37.

    CatStaff

    RandyP, try some copper stripping around your tomato plant area. Should keep the slugs away from them. You can also try out the old beer in a dish trick if you want to get the slugs all hanging out in one area where you can dispose of them. Kind of gross, but there it is.

  38. 38.

    jibeaux

    @Randy P:

    Don’t give up, a lot of this stuff can be fought. Slugs, for example — put out a shallow dish of PBR or other cheap beer. Return the next morning to gaze in horror at the sight of nasty, drowned slugs. Repeat.

    Now the blight (fungus-caused) that always seems to get my tomatoes, not much to be done about that. It’s yellowing the leaves right now, if it is just going to keep marching on I’ll probably just pick the tomatoes green. Also, try cherry tomatoes in pots, just make sure to water enough. They seem easier to me, every year when the blight or the splitting (uneven watering) gets my big ones, the cherries seem to come through just fine.

  39. 39.

    bemused

    We’ve had mostly cloudy weather for days & days, cool temps in the 50’s struggling to reach 65 plus rain, rain & more rain. Tomato & other veggie plants are just sitting there not growing a bit waiting for more than an hour of sun every other day, if they don’t rot first.
    oth, the mushrooms are loving it, the lawn is becoming one big mushroom plot. Too bad they are not the edible type.

  40. 40.

    eemom

    I love that Clapton song.

    And that little white footie.

    I have a basil plant in my kitchen window, and that’s as close as I’ll ever get to gardening.

  41. 41.

    Svensker

    @jibeaux:

    Now the blight (fungus-caused) that always seems to get my tomatoes, not much to be done about that. It’s yellowing the leaves right now, if it is just going to keep marching on I’ll probably just pick the tomatoes green.

    We get that every year, too, even tho I move the maters around the garden. Have found that if I start giving the plants compost tea (put some compost in a big bucket then fill with water, use the “tea” to water the plants) that the plants stay healthy long enough to give me a crop. They’re still mortally wounded but they don’t die until almost the end of the season, so it works out OK.

    I’m battling the dang groundhog. He ate ALL the lettuce and spinach, so I got fox urine and sprinkled it around and let the foster boxer doggie go sniff around the burrow. So groundie stayed away from the second batch of lettuce which is starting to get almost big enough to pick…but has now discovered the joys of zucchini leaves. Little bastard. If he’d (probably she) only eat SOME and SHARE I wouldn’t mind at all. But everything right down to the ground does not show foresight on this rodent’s part.

  42. 42.

    Chinn Romney

    @chopper:

    realized the douchebags sold me cherries instead.

    Bummer.

    I used to start from my own seeds, and a couple of times I had something similar happen where the wrong variety appeared.

    In your case the nursery might not be to blame. A customer pulling the plastic tag out and putting it back in the wrong container might be behind it. Lots of clueless folks out there and some of them mill about in nurseries.

  43. 43.

    SIA

    Gardeners – do you wait for your tomatoes to ripen on the vine, and if not, when do you pick them?

    We’re trying diatomaceous earth as a pest control for the garden and pets:

    Pest control
    Diatomite is also used as an insecticide, due to its physico-sorptive properties. The fine powder absorbs lipids from the waxy outer layer of insects’ exoskeletons, causing them to dehydrate[7]. Arthropods die as a result of the water pressure deficiency, based on Fick’s law of diffusion. This also works against gastropods and is commonly employed in gardening to defeat slugs. However, since slugs inhabit humid environments, efficacy is very low. It is sometimes mixed with an attractant or other additives to increase its effectiveness. Medical-grade diatomite is sometimes used to de-worm both animals and humans. It is most commonly used in lieu of boric acid, and can be used to help control and eventually eliminate a cockroach infestation. This material has wide application for insect control in grain storage.[8]

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth#Pest_control

    Also, any Blackberry users, are you having problems with loading this site and also is your screen allowing the comment box to appear?

    That is all.

  47. 47.

    QuaintIrene

    We dump it in the fall and pull it right back out in the spring. It’s huge.

    You can seperate chive plants easily. Get some more plants growing in your garden and also gift family and friends

  49. 49.

    Origuy

    @Svensker:

    If he’d (probably she) only eat SOME and SHARE I wouldn’t mind at all. But everything right down to the ground does not show foresight on this rodent’s part.

    Must be a Republican.

  50. 50.

    Allienne Goddard

    God damn you people to hell. Here I am starving to death, and here you are are with your god-damned home grown food while I’m dying of hunger. You people who are growing food and putting it up on the god-damned Internet while I am dying of starvation are exactly what is wrong with this stupid fucking country. I hope you all burn in the fiery pits of hell, which are likely to be very intensely hot in temperature, or at least one would hope so. Plus, just to make things worse, tomatoes are gross unless you smash the hell out of them with some peppers and maybe a little lime juice. I hate you all.

  52. 52.

    licensed to kill time

    There is nothing more heavenly than a home-grown, sun-ripened, sun-warmed tomato straight off the vine.

    Tomato hornworms are nasty, though. Ugh. My least favoritist part of growing tomatoes. What’s up with that icky red spike on their butt?

  54. 54.

    QuaintIrene

    When I first started gardening, one of the things I learned from sad experience is there is a huge difference between composted and dehydrated cow manure.

  55. 55.

    Katie

    Rather than diatomaceous earth try crumbled up eggshells. They work almost as well. We save them all winter and crumple them around plants.

    I just planted two weeks ago. The joys of living in AK.

  56. 56.

    sputnikgayle

    Ooooh, a gardening thread and I just sat down to read and rest from my chores.

    We’ve used a pyrethrin spray to control insects that chomp on the veggies. It’s made from chrysanthemums. We also plant lots and lots of marigolds throughout our kitchen garden to repel various insects and to promote pollination. We have almost no insect invasions (we use beer pans, the pyrethrin for grasshoppers and blister bugs, the marigolds, dried eggshell, and dried coffee grounds). I am in the garden at least twice a day every day so I think early warning may also be part of our success.

    Here’s another slightly quirky thing we do…and I haven’t researched this for the science so this is purely anecdotal. We’ve done this for the last 16 years in our kitchen garden…we densely plant cucumbers on the outside of the fence surrounding our kitchen garden, all four sides. The vines climb and cover the fencing in just a few weeks. The vines provide shade and attract hummingbirds and dragonflies and possibly (again, no science behind this) repel the pest insects. It also looks very pretty when everything is blooming.

  58. 58.

    SIA

    @mr. whipple: I just read something similar. We are using food grade which is digestible, but one should still avoid inhaling it. SO informs me if we’d used the other kind we’d all be dead. So that’s a good thing. Thanks for the information Mr Whipple.

  61. 61.

    Svensker

    @SIA:

    Gardeners – do you wait for your tomatoes to ripen on the vine, and if not, when do you pick them?

    Yes, yes, yes. They are most delicious when vine ripened. Beyond compare.

    If you’re getting a frost warning and you don’t think you can protect the plants, pick the green tomatoes and wrap each one in newsprint (making sure no soft spots, bugs, worms, etc.). Pack gently into a roomy box and store in a cool dark place. Check periodically (if any are starting to rot, toss them out). The green maters will ripen and taste at least as good as supermarket red cotton balls.

    The only reason to pick a tomato before it ripens (unless you’re facing frost or tremendous hail or something similar) is to make chutney, green tomato pickles or fried green tomatoes. But why not do that at the end of the season?

  62. 62.

    Svensker

    @mr. whipple:

    “All forms of diatomaceous earth are abrasive to the lungs and eyes, so it’s important to use proper personal protection when using this product. If you are working in an enclosed area, such as an attic or crawl space, you should wear a dust mask and goggles.”

    Yes, pretty much like breathing asbestos. The reason D.E. kills things like slugs and crawling insects is the same reason it is dangerous to lungs — it’s an abrasive that cuts holes in tissue.

  64. 64.

    Katie

    @sia
    Eggshells work great on things like slugs and ants. Not so much with things that fly for obvious reasons.

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