Fresh off the vine:
I had not inspected the tomatoes since Tuesday when I watered (we’ve been in a dry spell here, which started approximately the minute I planted the willow tree), and on about four of my plants a full third of the plant had been defoliated by hookworms. Taylor and I just sat on the ground for about 45 minutes and picked a dozen of the bastards. I don’t want to use BT if I don’t have to, so I’m just going to be on these worms like ugly on an ape for a few days. Fuckers.
They worked QUICK, too. It was seriously only about 48 hours. A few of them were three to four inches long and as wide as a sharpie.
Shell
If nobody happened to plant tomatoes that year, you wondered what the heck would they eat then?
jharp
I’ve had a hell of time trying to grow cilantro and finally asked a friend at my farmers market.
I was told it is a cool/cold weather plant and doesn’t like long days in the sun.
Anyone?
I live in central Indiana and it’s been beastly hot this summer.
opiejeanne
That was one of my jobs as a kid, picking the tomato hornworms off the tomato plants. If they’re the same things we had, do not get stuck by that nasty thorn on their ass. tomato hornworm
opiejeanne
@Shell: Tobacco.
jl
What are maters? Is that some folkloric W By God Va food? Like ramps?
Davebo
I’m pulling up my two tomato plants from the garden this weekend. Seems they stopped producing when the daily highs hit 300 degrees.
TenguPhule
@jharp:
Cool and humid. Plant will dry out fast and die otherwise.
Davebo
Guy Clark was the greatest. Only two things that money can’t buy and that’s true love and home grown tomatoes…
raven
Ours are going nuts right now!
Catherine D.
@jharp: Voluntarily growing cilantro? Ptui, ptui, ptui! As for climate, my CSA farmer Bob grows it in any temperature.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: And paw paws.
Gin & Tonic
@jharp: If you spray the cilantro with Roundup, you won’t have to worry about it anymore.
jl
Hookworms? In the tomatoes? Typically, they are in people.
Is Cole referring to the delightful Tomato Hornworm? AKA Manduca quinquemaculata?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduca_quinquemaculata
Cole is correct, you do need to stay on top of those. Cole needs a couple of chickens or ducks out there.
When I was a lad, walking to school and back uphill both ways in the snow, barefoot, we had ‘outside’ chickens that more or less regularly policed the vegetable patch.
But you still had to watch every day. If the ‘outside’ chickens were loafing, then we’d lead the ducks from their pond over and watch the slaughter (I was an evil child).
Adam L Silverman
@Catherine D.:
Confederate States of America?
Shell
True, alas. Too many daytime temps over 90, nightime over 75 and the flowers wont set fruit. But once things cool down a bit theyll be back on the job.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for reminding me. Cole promised pawpaws. I’ll remember to request pawpawpix next time he posts something in his yard.
jl
@opiejeanne: I think each different plant is blessed with its own special hornworm.
TenguPhule
@jl:
See what genesplicing has wrought!
Catherine D.
@Adam L Silverman: CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. Big thing especially here in the People’s Republic of Ithaca.
raven
@Catherine D.: Athens too.
Olivia
Until 3 years ago, I had never seen a Japanese beetle in central Minnesota. Last year there were so many that they stripped a 25 foot Linden tree bare and then went to work on the flowers and vegetables. You couldn’t go out in the yard without getting them in your hair and they would fly into the house every time you opened a door. This year the whole neighborhood is putting up traps in the yards and they work great. No poison, just a pheromone in a plastic bag. They fall in and can’t climb back out.
Yarrow
I think they’re hornworms, like everyone else has been saying. If they only ate that much in 48 hours then count yourself lucky. I’ve had them decimate a plant overnight. Fuckers.
jl
@jl: Man I need to check before I type stuff. Wiki says, yes, the tomato hornworm goes to town on pretty much everything, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, tobacco. But tobacco has its own special hornworm.
HinTN
@jharp: Plant it in the autumn.
MomSense
@Catherine D.: @raven:
I gave up my CSA share because there was too much kohlrabi and other things that weren’t what I wanted. It’s easier for me to just shop at the farmer’s market.
Shell
Pretty much everything in the nightshade family.
HinTN
@Olivia: Except the trap attracts them far more than mother nature meant to do. It took us years to recover from one year of traps.
p.a.
Yeah cilantro just bolts in hot weather. (Took my trump-like intellect 3 seasons before I gave up and looked up the info.) The seeds, however, will successfully germinate and root on a pane of glass.
raven
@MomSense: Yea, I don’t mess with it either.
Adam L Silverman
@Catherine D.: The spinach shall rise again!
NotMax
People really, truly did laugh at this joke at the Ziegfeld Follies in the early 20th century.
Q: Why is an old maid like a frozen t’mater?
A: ‘Cause it’s hard to mate her!
Adam L Silverman
@Olivia: They all have these little cameras and then they go and play golf.//
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Non-PC warning first.
Old-ish joke. The scene, a press conference after a busload of Japanese tourists has been hijacked and robbed.
Reporter to police chief: You sound unusually confident you’ll be able to catch the criminals who did this.
Police chief: Yeah, we’ve got 5000 photos of them.
Aleta
@jl: They come from the same family as taters.
opiejeanne
@jl: Whut? You asked what they eat if there are no tomato plants. They eat tobacco plants.
mayim
@Catherine D.:
Also very common here in Maine. In fact, I know of three CSAs that deliver to places within a five minute walk of work. And that’s in addition to a co-op {heavily organic} grocery store, a farm-to-table restaurant with produce market, and two farmers’ markets in the same radius. No lack of veggies here ;-)
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: When I was in St. Andrews, one summer when the weather was nice (lasted about 15 minutes that year…), we decided to take the aikido class outside since we were working on weapon’s forms and training and didn’t need the mats. So you’ve got a group of students – primarily from parts of Britain and Ireland with a couple of folks from other European countries – outside in a park in St. Andrews in keikogis and hakama working on weapons and the Japanese tourists come walking by. In either golf outfits or kilts. And everyone of them had a camera.
jl
@opiejeanne: I gave wrong info and corrected myself. You experts who say they eat tobacco are correct.
opiejeanne
@jl: Oh, never mind.
opiejeanne
@jl: Thanks.
seaboogie
@jl: That’s it! John, ducks are your answer! You’ve already got a seasonal “pond”, you’d have delicious rich eggs, and they’d probably bond with your critters (maybe not Rosie) if you got them as ducklings. Tamara can give you pointers!
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Trying to picture a Japanese tourist of that time pronouncing the word kilt.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: I think this was in 94. As soon as they’d arrive they’d go and get fitted for highland wear, both formal and casual. And then get new golf outfits. Then wander around dressed either for golf or for a Braveheart convention.
NotMax
@seaboogie
Felicitous natal anniversary day.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Imagine sporran was a tongue twister, too.
jl
@seaboogie: If ducks are not Thruston or Rosie safe, Cole can nuke up to geese. The neighbors will all over poor Cole, and he’ll have plenty of Cole disaster geese stories.
I think someone can just USPS some baby ducks or geese overnight. Just planting a seed here.
NotMax
@jl
Future front page post.
“Okay, you f*ckers, I’ll take down the autoplay ad. Now STOP SENDING THE GODDAM DUCKS!”
:)
Catherine D.
@MomSense:
I used to split a share with my next door neighbor, but she’s out of town. Now I have a personal share where I can reject odious things like beets and cilantro.
Before my neighbor left, we used to share a fruit CSA. That allowed me to buy cherries in bulk, and I hauled flats of sweet and sour cherries home on the bus. Two little boys got on the bus and asked me what was in the boxes. My heart just broke that they didn’t recognize cherries, and I told them to grab some. One of the little guys came back later to ask if he could have some more. Heart broke some more – didn’t have bags/boxes to send them home with more fruit.
Now my heart breaks again because the shitgibbon’s USDA has changed SNAP access at farmer’s markets by changing all the rules for payment. I just want to screan!
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
Those tomatoes look tasty! It’s so hard to grow tomatoes here. Such brief windows in the weather. We had a break from the heat with the return of the much needed monsoons but the heat is back with a vengeance today. It was 106 when I got off work at 5pm.
Shana
There’s a book called “The $64 Tomato” about trying to grow a garden. Funny because it’s true.
When we moved into our house in October 1992 we planted about 200 tulip bulbs. The next spring we got one tulip because the squirrels and the deer ate them all over the winter. We tried a vegetable garden the next spring, but between the deer, fox, raccoons, squirrels, etc. we got nothing. Now I just go to farmer’s markets. Much cheaper and better quality. Sigh.
jeffreyw
We raised a good crop of those.
dexwood
@jharp:
I’m not a fan of cilantro, but my wife is. I toss seeds into a raised bed in October. Kale, lettuce, spinach, too. I cover with an agricultural cloth, then pretty much ignore it, some watering as needed. Most years, I’m picking cilantro for tacos and salad greens by mid-February when I bump up the watering. The cilantro always bolts by early April. Central New Mexico is my location.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t remember Japanese tourists in Highland garb being a thing that I noticed when I was in Scotland, but that was back in ’88…things may have changed between that time and yours…
Booger
Hey John–be sure to leave at least one hornworm for the braconid wasps. They lay eggs on the hornworm which then feed on it and make more wasps to eat more hornworms. If you take all the hornworms away, you lose the wasps. It’s also really satisfying to see the worms suffer a horrible death.
Adam K
Save a bunch a them maters fer sauce, have yerself some real special ghetti!
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@NotMax: Especially if you say it with the Highland rolling rrrrrr’s
rikyrah
The tomatoes look great, Cole.???
EricNNY
Bt is an organic solution to your worm problems, have no fear. Totally safe.
JAM
I have to use bt because otherwise the fruitworms eat holes through every halfway ripe tomato.
if you’re worried about other butterfly caterpillars, my experience is that they seem to stick with their preferred flowers and don’t stray onto the tomato plants. Only caterpillars that eat the tomato plants are harmed by it.
Olivia
@HinTN: Mother nature never intended for Japanese beetles to be in Minnesota. They are an invasive pest from Japan and all their predators apparently stayed in Japan.