From faithful commentor Marvel:
It’s been one of those best of times/worst of times kind of weeks, garden-wise. Stuff’s ripening and threatening to rot on the vine if I don’t get my, um, rump, in gear and DO SOMETHING! So, I’ve been harvesting and eating, picking and pickling, forging and freezing, scooping up great armloads and canning — ANYTHING to save all that lovely over-abunance from the compost pile.
We’ve been plucking plenty of tomatoes and putting up a lot of red sauce, but for reasons unknown, I’ve lost about a quarter of the tomatoes to blossom end rot…but not the usual scenario — most plants have produced lovely fruit with only an occasional BER ‘mata mixed in. Watering’s been fine and I t-h-i-n-k the soils’s OK (given the metric ton of god, non-BER stuff out there). Ah, sweet mysteries of life…
The summer’s been warm and wonderful in the Willamette Valley and I think I may have put my Fall/Winter garden in a little too early this year: the spinach, kale, cauliflower & cabbage (etc.) is pretty close to ripe — looks like we may be warming our hands over hearty soups & stews in shirtsleeves, whilst watching the leaves turn this year.
***********
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
JW
Maybe I’ll get a couple of tomatoes and some summer squash. Gods! If I were a jealous sort, I’d be jealous of you.
R-Jud
I am well jealous of your tomatoes, Marvel. I have enough yellow zucchini/summer squash to feed an army, tons of peas and green beans, kale and rainbow chard galore. I have high hopes for the purple broccoli and purple majesty potatoes, and the bramley apples are nearly ripe.
However, my tomato plants flowered but never set fruit. It gets too chilly here at night in Blighty.
I also have a metric fuck-ton of nasturtiums. We’ve been eating leaves and flowers in salads, but some are starting to set seed. Anyone here ever pickled the seeds and eaten them like capers? I am told this is A Thing.
SuperHrefna
I’ve left my garden behind in NY while I visit my family in the UK for a few weeks. When I left I was having to pick my tomatoes green and ripen them up on the windowsill, otherwise the deer were using my earthboxes as large salad bars. It is so dispiriting to find bites taken out of all your Brandywines. Windowsill ripened tomatoes still beat the pants off store bought but I have been known to snarl at tiny innocent fawns stepping out of the woods towards my veg garden.
Here in Kent my father’s garden is lovely, but the real attraction is the hedgerow bordering the fields behind the houses – so far I’ve picked wild cherries ( tiny tasty things the size of a blueberry), wild plums, apples and blackberries. There are feral apricots in there too, Kent truly is the garden of England. I made a totally yummy hedgerow crumble the other day, and I’m tempted to go on another country walk today, well red with carrier bags I can fill with wild growing goodies.
JPL
Marvel, Your garden is beautiful and I join those who are envious. This was the first year that I tried cantaloupes with little success because of the rain in the south.
c u n d gulag
My parents were avid gardeners. Since we moved from Queens to Upstate NY in the summer of ’69, we ALWAYS had a large garden, which I dug-up and mulched, and both parent’s were devoted to.
When I moved to NC back in 2000, my aged parents gave up on our garden, and started just growing tomato’s and cuke’s on the porch.
I moved back in early 2009, and we continued doing that, with pretty good results.
After my father passed away early last year, my Mom and I kept up that tradition.
This year, with her health not being great, she decided, for the first time ever, to not even grow tomato’s and cuke’s on the deck.
Instead, we decided we’d go to our local farm.
However, this year, in Upstate NY, for whatever reason, tomato prices are out of control – $2.49 A F’IN POUND!!!
I doubt if I’ll be making any sauce this year, or any pickles – since the price of cuke’s is almost as high. They want$0.99 cents a pound for Kirby’s!
And they don’t even look that great!
ZOINKS!!!
So, based on our economic condition, we buy a few tomato’s a week.
We, I, have to – since my ALL-TIME favorite sandwich, is ripe-tomato/any-kind-of-bread&whatever-kind-of-cheese/salt&pepper/AND TONS OF MAYO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the season for fresh local tomato’s, is short, and I want to “milk” the fresh, ripe tomato’s for all they’re sandwich-worth!
I can make a great sauce out of whole canned tomato’s. Not as great as fresh. But, still pretty damn good.
If the price of tomato’s doesn’t go down, and if we stay in this old house, I suppose we’ll think about growing tomato’s on the porch again next year.
I mean, $2.49 a pound?
Gimme a f’in break!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Being poor, really sucks.
SuperHrefna
@c u n d gulag: it’s crazy isn’t it? A few weeks ago I fell for a couple of fat farmers market tomatoes in Long Island and they cost me $6. Yes, they were delicious, but insanely expensive. It makes me even more grumpy about the adorable, spindly legged, tomato munching Bambis that poke their noses out of the woods.
J.
Nice tomatoes! I Marvel at your bounty. So jealous. We had another garden fail this year. Maybe I have a black thumb. We bought one of those containers for our deck — with tomatoes and peppers and herbs. Herbs are doing okay, but got less than a dozen cherry tomatoes and zero peppers. Sigh.
OzarkHillbilly
Tomatoes have finally succumbed to the fungal rot. I may get another dozen or 2, but that will be it. It’s OK, I really don’t know how much I put up, but the pantry overflows with canned tomas y peppers, Italian diced tomas, plain diced tomas, toma sauce, Italian toma sauce, and probably something else I have forgotten. Not to mention the 75-100 #s I have frozen to make sauces out of later.
Beans: the Purple Kings are just about done (my inability to pick in the 95-100 degree heat after working in it did not help). Again, got plenty put up, and the Blue Lake are still producing.
The hot peppers are still doing well and I am going to have to can some more tomorrow, and the sweet peppers continue to mock me by looking healthy and yet only giving me one or 2 a week.
Lastly, I finally have some squash setting fruit. One zuchinni, one patty pan. At least I won’t be skunked.
Schlemizel
The County adjuster came by this week & surveyed the only sunny section of our yard. They will submit an offer to us for the damage they will be doing over the next couple of years to our flower beds. This should include the loss of two mature cherry trees so I am expecting a fairly good sized offer. After that we are going to have to dig up dozens of lilies, iris’, sedem, primrose and peonies. At the moment we have not decided if we should rip up a big chunk of yard & transplant everything or try to dry and store the things that can be. We have many large trees in the yard & no place other than the very front that gets much sun light at all. Lilies we have tried in other spots in the yard have not done well but the thought of trying to nurse bulbs and rhizomes through 2 years of basement dwelling is scary to me.
This is the first year since leaving FLorida that we have not had a vegetable garden. That shade is not idea for food plants. But I have to admit not standing over a boiling canning kettle in the August heat has been OK by me. I’m sure I’ll miss the results but not just now.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh, and that picture of the garden? I know it’s a fake. I mean, where are the weeds??? It looks too good to be real. ;-)
geg6
We had stuffed peppers with some lovely red peppers from our garden last night. Loads of green and reds and banana peppers are still coming in. The beans are done but we have to remember what we did because we seemed to get exactly the amount we wanted out of them and had just enough to blanch and freeze. Our tomatoes aren’t a failure, but it’s not been our best year. So far, only about a dozen jars have been put up. We had a huge crop of cukes, but they are done now and we have about forty jars of bread and butter pickles, sweet relish and spicy dill relish. Zucchini have, as always, been plentiful. We’re getting some late raspberries and the apple trees are bending over with the weight of their fruit. Pear trees are looking good, too. And the beets are looking almost ready. All in all, a fairly good season.
Meanwhile, I’m kinda sitting here in shock. I’ve watched the Pirates absolutely blow away the Cardinals two nights in a row and move into sole possession of first place. Today they go for the sweep. I didn’t think this was possible. They broke my heart in 1992 and I, formerly a huge fan who slept in a parking lot in Baltimore and bailed a friend out of jail there during the ’79 World Series, wrote them off. But the last two seasons, and especially this one, have made me start to believe again. Apparently the Nuttings are serious about being MLB owners, a characteristic that every owner of the team for the last thirty years has not had.
c u n d gulag
@geg6:
Best of luck to you, and the other Pirates fans!!!
They’re not my favorite team – the Yanks are.
But I’ve always had a soft spot for the Pirates ever since I was a kid and saw the GREAT Clemente at Shea!
MAN, what a player!
WHAT AN ARM!!!
I’ll root for your team to make the Playoffs. What a LONG draught!!!
But if the Yanks don’t make it, or are out of the Playoffs, I’m sorry to say, I’ll be rooting for the Dodgers. Because Don Mattingly was one of my favorite ballplayers of all time, and he never won a WS as a player. I’d LOOOOOOOVE to see him win one as a Manager.
After them, I’ll root for the Pirates.
And, if the Yanks aren’t in the WS, I’ll root for either team over the Tigers.
But, I won’t complain too loudly if they do win. Jim Leyland should have won a WS when he was the Pirates Manager – they were a really, really good team back in the early 90’s. And though he finally won with the Marlins, I wouldn’t be overly depressed if the Tigers won.
Best of luck!!!
rikyrah
The pictures are amazing. I enjoy this thread every week specifically for the pictures
Suffern ACE
Test. Yes. A test message.
geg6
@c u n d gulag:
When the Leyland era ended here, that was the last straw for me. And it was the start of the long slide to loserdom for the Bucs. The owners, all incompetent, used the team as a cash cow with no regard for winning. They made money off that beautiful ball park and tv rights and revenue sharing and didn’t need to worry about the quality of the product. And it wasn’t as if the low payroll or small market could be blamed when other small market teams with low payrolls seemed to get talented team players and make the playoffs and even the Series. We’ve been badly served by the team owners over the years but the Nuttings seem to really want a winning team. At least, so far. We’ll see. Too many disappointments to not be wary.
jnfr
We’re having chili rellenos again with our own ancho peppers. They’ve grown really well this year. And we’ve had enough anaheims to cover our usual pepper needs in various dishes.
But yesterday I brought in the fifth big basket of tomatoes this summer. We’ve never had so many. And only one of our two little raised beds is in tomatoes this year. They’re beautiful but we really don’t need so many of them.
Schlemizel
@geg6:
Good luck with your new first basemen – it will be interesting to see if he was just a flash in the pan, a malingerer or what.
Svensker
@R-Jud:
My mom used to do it. Don’t know her recipe — but I bet an old Mrs. Beeton will have a recipe if you can’t find one on the internet. I like to eat the seeds raw, out in the garden. VERY peppery.
Nasturtiums are about the only “vegetable” we’re able to grow that the raccoons don’t destroy. But we do have a volunteer big squash of some sort in the tiny front plot. The infant squashes seem to wither and die soon after they set but I had the brilliant notion last night to use the tons of (mostly) male squash blossoms for fritters. So our first home harvest, except for the nasturtiums! Delicious with some farmers’ market corn and maters. True taste of summer.
jo6pac
Going outside right now to harvest the first of the tomatoes for sauce, it been one the coolest summers in history in my part of the Central Valley in Calli. The big ranches are have the same harvesting problems. Then I need to get the greenhouse ready and the garden for fall and winter. Fava beans in the main garden and salad stuff in the greenhouse.
Auntie Beak
Blossom end rot is ultimately caused by calcium deficiency. Calcium becomes unavailable to plants below a certain pH. So, your soil may be simply too acidic. Blossom end rot can also be caused by uneven watering; for example, a deluge followed by two dry weeks. Quick fix? Dissolve 2 tbsp. Epsom salts (found at the local drug store) into 2 gallons of water and water into your plants thoroughly, like a half gallon per plant.
Kay S
Any pix of your flower gardens, folks? Some of us would love that!
carbon dated
Beautiful, Marvel. Well done.
chopper
tomatoes are finally starting to come in, but that’s cause i put em in in july (that’s when i moved in).
luckily, this is southern california so who gives a shit. one plant in particular is goin’ nuts, and we’ll have at least a month more of nice hot weather before i start topping it to force the rest of the blossoms into fruiting.
rikyrah
Downton Abbey’s Season 4 Trailer Reveals Lady Mary’s Grief
By K.C. Blumm
08/31/2013 at 04:20 PM EDT
The fourth season of Downton Abbey won’t be on the air in the U.S. until next year, but fans of the British drama can get a tantalizing glimpse of what the lies ahead for the Crawley family in a new one-minute trailer.
As Lady Mary continues to mourn the loss of her husband, Matthew, who died in a car accident at the end of the last season, her grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, tells her: “You have a straightforward choice, you must choose either death or life.”
But moving on isn’t easy.
What follows is a montage of romantic moments for Downton’s other upstairs and downstairs residents, more tears from Lady Mary – who’s consoled by steadfast Carson the butler – trouble for former jailbird Bates and Anna and some new love interests for widowed Tom Branson, Lady Rose and maybe even Mary.
http://youtu.be/_g6xg8gKxEk
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20730686,00.html
Stella B.
My tomatoes sickened and died which I have never had happen. I have 8 pints of pasta sauce and 15 pints of tomatoes and maybe enough tomatoes left to run the canner one more time. Im going to put the vines out of their misery just as soon as the weather cools off a tad.
tybee
@Schlemizel:
save the cherry logs for grilling & smoking.
a nice, light and sweet smoke for delicate tidbits.
Stella B.
@J.: those pre-planted containers look cute, but they’re doomed to fail. Tomatoes are biiiiig plants and need plenty of root room to produce. They can be grown quite successfully in containers, though. Try this: http://www.earthtainer.org/
Mnemosyne
@J.:
My brother had huge success with one of those goofy Topsy-Turvy tomato growers. He tried not to fuss with it too much — just gave it light, a lot of water, trimmed it as needed, and Miracle-Gro every other week or so. It grew into a gigantic bush and he’s not sure what he’s going to do with all of the tomatoes.
His coworker bought the same thing but did fuss around too much (too much Miracle Gro, etc.) and ended up killing his plant, so it’s not guaranteed. But it does seem to be a pretty good “set it and forget it” system.
rikyrah
New Neighbor’s Agenda: White Power Takeover
By JOHN ELIGON
Published: August 29, 2013
The bearded man with thinning, gray-and-bleach-blond hair flapping down his neck first appeared in this tiny agricultural town last year, quietly and inconspicuously roaming the crackly dirt roads.
Nettie Ketterling thought nothing of it when he came into her bar to charge his cellphone in an outlet beneath the mounted head of a mule deer. To Kenneth Zimmerman, the man was just another customer, bringing his blue Dodge Durango in for repairs. Bobby Harper did not blink when the man appeared in front of his house and asked him if he had any land to sell. And the mayor, Ryan Schock, was simply extending a civic courtesy when he swung by the man’s house to introduce himself.
Their new neighbor, they thought, was just another person looking to get closer to the lucrative oil fields in western North Dakota known as the Bakken.
But all that changed last week.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Bismarck Tribune revealed that the man, Paul Craig Cobb, 61, has been buying up property in this town of 24 people in an effort to transform it into a colony for white supremacists.
In the past two years, Mr. Cobb, a longtime proselytizer for white supremacy who is wanted in Canada on charges of promoting hatred, has bought a dozen plots of land in Leith (pronounced Leeth) and has sold or transferred ownership of some of them to a couple of like-minded white nationalists.
He is using Craigslist and white power message boards to entice others in the movement to take refuge in Leith, about two hours southwest of Bismarck. On one board, he detailed his vision for the community — an enclave where residents fly “racialist” banners, where they are able to import enough “responsible hard core” white nationalists to take control of the town government, where “leftist journalists or antis” who “come and try to make trouble” will face arrest.
The revelations have riveted this community and the surrounding area, drawing a range of reactions from disgust to disbelief to curiosity.
“If that man wanted to live in Leith and be a good neighbor and be decent and not push his thoughts on the people, then he could live there,” said Arlene Wells, 82, a farmer and local historian. “But to come in and want to change everything and be the big dog — no. I don’t like bulldogs.”
It is all people are talking about, in bars and in their homes, at funerals and at church. They are poking around on the Web to read Mr. Cobb’s positions for themselves. A stream of cars creep through the streets where horses occasionally trot, their passengers hoping to catch a glimpse of some action or take a peek at Mr. Cobb’s peeling, two-story clapboard home. Sheriff’s cars, too, are making more rounds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/white-supremacists-plan-angers-a-north-dakota-town.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
rikyrah
August 30, 2013 1:15 PM
Quinn’s Collapse
By Ed Kilgore
It’s increasingly likely that the last good day for Christine Quinn’s mayoral campaign was Monday, when she received the last of her endorsements from New York’s “big three” daily newspapers. A Quinnipiac poll on Wednesday showed her falling far behind Bill de Blasio and getting trounced in any plausible runoff. Now comes a New York Times/Siena poll showing her dropping into third place and suffering a calamitous decline in favorability.
Like the Q-poll, the new survey shows Bill de Blasio surging into a lead, albeit with 32%, which is a ways from the 40% needed to avoid a runoff. But Quinn’s odds of making or surviving a runoff are now unmistakably fading. While her viable rivals are enjoying strong favorable/unfavorable ratios (de Blasio at 53/16 and Bill Thompson at 53/16) among likely primary voters, Quinn is now underwater at 39/45. She’s doing a little bit better than Anthony Weiner (24/66), but that’s not saying much. And she has little “cushion” for improvement, since only 15% of voters say they don’t know enough about her to have an opinion (25% of respondents don’t know much about de Blasio, and 30% say the same about Thompson).
Primaries are difficult to poll or predict, but it’s beginning to look like either a de Blasio/Thompson runoff or a de Blasio win outright. Best I can tell, Quinn’s close identification with Michael Bloomberg, for which she has been pounded by her opponents, has been her achilles heel. But for whatever reason, too many New York Democrats just don’t like her at precisely the wrong time in her political career.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_08/quinns_collapse046666.php
opiejeanne
I live just outside Seattle, about 12 miles east.
The zucchinis are just getting revved up; last night we grilled one and it was delicious with a little salt and butter.
The corn is just now on the edge of ripeness; we picked the first two ears, rubbed olive oil on them, wrapped them in foil and cooked them on the grill too. I am eyeing the rest of the small stand of corn and hoping it’s not all ripe at once despite half being planted two weeks after the first batch.
We have no kitchen currently; the contractors said maybe late October to mid November but things are falling into place so nicely that we might be done by mid October. Fingers crossed. I need to borrow a kitchen from my daughter or one of the neighbors to roast beets for salads, and tomatillos for salsa verde.
The tomatillo bed (all volunteers this year) is loaded with fruit. We will be roasting them and making salsa before long.
Carrots, cukes, beets, and lettuce (we’re not far from Seattle) are all doing nicely right now. We have sugar snap peas coming up again for the fall, and I cut back the kale thinking it was finished but we didn’t remove the stalks from the pots where they were growing and now I have a lot of beautiful baby kale leaves.
Tomatoes are just now ripening and we will be swamped in a few more days. We’ve been eating the cherry tomatoes for several weeks but now the Super Fantastic tomatoes are starting to ripen and they are big and gorgeous and delicious. Had some in a roast beef sandwich for lunch. The Brandywine inside the greenhouse has produced a couple of nice ripe fruits, but nothing to get excited about. Mr Stripey has two small green tomatoes on it, after being pampered all spring and summer inside the greenhouse, and Early Girl doesn’t need the greenhouse so next year she goes outside.
Unfortunately, I have a mild allergy to tomatoes and now it’s starting to kick up. The roof of my mouth is covered with blisters, a phenomenon that only happens when I eat tomatoes too many days in a row, and I’ve been eating them for weeks now.
opiejeanne
@Schlemizel: Why are they taking your sunny spot? Widening the road?