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Archive for 'Tomatoes'

Canning season

I’ve been so busy canning lately. It’s that time of the year. Besides peach jam last week, this week I bought a bunch of tomatoes at the farm stand because I don’t have enough of my own yet, sadly. All those tomatoes turned into 10 jars of catsup and one pitcher of

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wang wong

Miserable Misty

Poor thing. She just hates everyone and everything right now. I’m trying to coddle her as much as I can, to not add to her stress. The current theory with what killed Mary is an overrun of a common bacteria that lives in their respiratory tract, and that can be caused by stress. The vet

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wang wong

Productive weekend

We had a really productive weekend here on the homestead. I got my tomato vines ripped out and I’m glad the sheep like green tomatoes is all I’m saying. We spent most of the weekend pulling trees out from where they were cut for the addition and running them on the sawmill to come

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Sweet Pea Experiments

My sweet peas were getting so tall that I decided they just had to go outside already, because there’s no way to keep a vining plant under lights, I think. Why did I start these so early? I’ve never grown them before, and the package said they like cool weather, so cool weather they are

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wang wong

Tomatoes

I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I had ordered a bunch of heirloom tomato seeds from Tomato Fest last month. I bought their short season collection, hoping for an earlier harvest that I got last year. But anyway, in his book, he talks about planting his seed in the first of April, and he’s in California, yet I started mine the first of March? I did, though. I think I’m going to try those water surround things from Gardener’s Supply, too, to see if I can get them outside mid-April. So the seedlings are already pushing up the tops on the clear covers, growing madly. I used some old plastic silverware for markers, because I really want to keep track of the varieties of these guys. I planted four each of six varieties, and it looks like all but two germinated. Here we go!

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Killing frost

A pretty day, but the Marlow Harvest festival and a desperately needed shopping trip kept us out of the garden until very late. The shopping trip did provide us with a decent bulb planter. Damn this fancy Japan/Taiwan engineered bent metal. It’s a cup on a stick, 1/8 inch Penna. steel, welded in Bangor, Maine.

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wang wong

First Frost

The first freeze of the season is promised for tonight, and Lisa is away, so much running around. I put blankets on the tomatoes, peppers and basil. Unfortunately the tomatoes looked like they’d already taken frost damage. I potted up the two coleus that had made it through the spring’s cold weather. They are gorgeous, and Lisa wants to try to make cuttings for next year. The Hawaiian stick, the amaryllis and the peace lily came in. I don’t think the peace lily will make it through the winter, but the other two seem to have adapted to out somewhat irregular pattern of care. Finally I harvested the one remaining basil plant out in the main window boxes, and grabbed a meals worth of honey mushrooms. (There are many more, but it was getting dark, and we hadn’t actually tried them yet.) The basil replaced the black trumpets in the dryer.

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Taking a break

Whew, it’s hot out there. I am not, however, complaining. We’ve had so much rain (almost 8 inches so far this month alone) that I haven’t been able to really do much in the garden, so I’ll take hot over hot and raining any day. We went out into the garden pretty early this morning,

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Considering Compost

I got out after work tonight and turned compost piles. It was way too hot over the weekend to do then. I moved the last of the stuff from the old middle bin over to top up the new bin I turned ten days ago. It looks like we’ll have two full bins ready to

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wang wong

A Picture-free Entry

Lisa’s out of town, and the weather continues hot but no longer totally oppressive. I watered the potatoes and mushrooms, then finished replacing the zone 7 sprinklers with dripperline. I got about 50 feet up on the upper center bed as well, but it needs another run. I was getting hungry so I quit at

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wang wong