Reed's Garden Report(s)

[reed]

Here are my best open flower tomatoes. The first is a Joseph Lofthouse variety. Unfortunately all it's fruits save one green one found their way into canning jars. I removed most of the flowers and stems in hopes of getting the one remaining to ripen good.  The other is Cherokee Purple from my own seeds. Do they always do this and I just didn't know to look for it before? I grew a new supposed to be disease resistant hybrid called Mountain Merit that we liked a lot, I think I might try to cross it to the CP next year. 



steev , I run a pretty routine catch and release for the coons, punctuated by a 22 caliper lobotomy but I let my guard down and suffered the consequences, that won't happen again.  That old house next to the corn patch is just too attractive to them. If it didn't belong to the same people who own my corn patch and if I hadn't been an instigator in protests that defeated a rather Orwellian  zoning ordinance I would complain.  

[philagardener]

Hi reed , your media wasn't loading for me.

[steev]

reed; next to my then-house in Oakland, there was a dump on weird foundation blocks, which was home (under) to a clan of urban raccoons (they worked the night shift); I had a cat who never went far from home, so I was concerned when he wasn't there after work one day, nor was he there the next day; third day, I figured he was gone, but as I was having an after-work beer on the back porch, there was a great scrabbling as he climbed awkwardly up the fence to the porch; turned out all his claws were worn to the quick. He'd been caught under there when the raccoons came home and had hidden under an addition 5" above a slab until he could scrabble his way out. Damned fine cat; lived 19 years and woke me with his death howl when he died on my bed.

[reed]

philagardener ,aw shoot. Wonder whats wrong. Works on my computer without logging in to my image host. I'll check at work today and see it it works there. Maybe I forgot to change the file type or something. I was rather pleased with myself for actually getting clear pictures of the flowers. 

[add] Humm, don't work on this computer, lets try again. Think maybe I lost part of the file path before. 

[philagardener]

  reed , looks real nice now!   Thanks for figuring that out for us!

[reed]

I'v been getting in seeds, drying, freezing, putting up for storage. Got lots of beans and still more to pick. KY Wonder, Ideal Market, Anasazi, Kwintus, Brown and White Greasy, NT 1/2 runner, Fortex and a bunch across the road in the corn patch. I'll just have to sort and compare them to ones still in the packs as I lost my notes and forgot what was what.

Got about ten kinds of tomatoes and plan to trim it down to just five or so in the future. An Ox Heart type that an old lady gave the doctor in the office next to mine, supposed to be a local heirloom, it was very good dark red with little juice and few seeds. Another OX Heart type from Joseph Lofthouse 's  "early season all kinds" similar but larger, it produced abundantly in horrible conditions and has open flowers. A really yummy yellow one with red bottoms also from Joseph's and also open flowers and the "fern leaf" from Joseph. Then my own Cherokee Purple, Pineapple and  "Unusually Productive Rutgers" that showed up a couple years ago and the bigger red and orange currents.  And last are the F2s of disease resistant hybrids Mountain Merit and Plum Regal. That red bottom one has potential to replace pineapple in the future. 

With the weird early summer monsoons and coon attacks I was disappointed in my corn but really shouldn't be. We ate fresh corn from early July through August and another small SE patch is getting ready right now and the F1 generation (in the same season) of some early flour & flint x sweet look like they will mature before frost and having done so with almost zero rain since they were planted. AND I got more seed than I know what to do with. About thirty ears of the flour & flint x sweet crosses, fifteen or so of the su x se random crosses and another twenty or so from the su mix up patch. And then about fifty from the flour & flint mix up patch across the road. Most of my seed ears are from detasseled mothers so even if they were pollinated by the same variety they all have two parents. I figure that should help with diversity. I have a beautiful volunteer plant that is most likely flour x sweet that came up after I planted the small late patch that is taller and greener than they are and with absolutely no rain since it sprouted. I detasseled it and dumped on generous quantities of pollen from Ruby Queen and Silver Choice. It has two beautiful ears forming. I'll dig it up if I have to and put it in the green house. Four coon traps are out all the time but haven't caught one for awhile but see them almost every day on the way to work. 

I thought my runner beans were near total flop but some plants came on pretty good late and it looks like I'll get back a good deal over what I planted. I had red flowers, red & white flowers and pink flowers. I expected to mostly just get brown seeds like Scarlet runner but the pods I picked so far have big black, purple and whitish seeds. A lot more aren't ready yet. 

I got lots of pictures but holding off on posting till I have time to figure out why they are only displaying sometimes. i think it is cause google is restructuring the interface to their photos feature. 

We are supposed to get a little rain later today, right now stars are bright but there is a little lightening to the west. The sun will be up a another 1/2 hour or so so I'm gonna go out and get in as many more of the beans as I can and what ever else needs done, then I hope the lightening moves on in and justifies nap time.  

[flowerweaver]

We use a game camera at the little pond to see what our racoon load is so we know when it's time to set the trap. We just catch and release far from here.

[reed]

Need a load of coons, I can fix ya up, want em dead or alive? We got so many coons it's ridiculous. They are one of the species (nearly all bad) that like what people have done to the natural habitat.

My general philosophy on life is dyed in the wool tree hugging, live and let live, but when it comes to coons it's 180⁰ opposite. For coons it's more of an all out war, take no prisoners, scorched earth, Sherman through Atlanta, this dried up little ridge ain't big enough for both of us kinda thing.  You couldn't release a coon around here without telling another coon to move over, they ain't getting out of my traps alive. Don't tell the shaman.

  

[reed]

Here is the borrowed garden just about a year since I first go permission to use it. 



It is cleaned up and planted with turnips and some old bush bean seeds. I didn't have any more of the radishes so I substituted. maybe the beans will sprout and fix some nitrogen before they freeze. The back corner still has a lot of beans drying down so I'll have to do it separately. I'm sacrificing one row next year to make it easier to keep control of the east (right) fence. It slopes there and has a couple little drainage spots. Despite blocking them with chicken wire at the bottom the coons moved the wire and unknown to me had free movement inside. I had a tomato / weed jungle there that kept me from noticing. I'm keeping a 4' mowed inside perimeter next year so they can't sneak up like that.  

Here is my favorite tomato for the year, maybe ever. I call it Utah Red Bottom, well cause it has red bottoms and it came from Utah. Thanks Joseph Lofthouse. It's flavor is a lot like pineapple but better and it has more firm substance. I know this one is kinda funky looking but I'm lucky to have it as somebody picked all the earlier nicer ones and made salsa out of them, plus I ate some. It's flowers look open to me or at least more so than most others. 

[reed]

Yesterday I planted four kinds lettuce, seven kinds carrots, three radish, arugula, spinach, broccoli raab, chard and some more turnips and diakon radish for cover. Considered peas but changed my mind as I don't have many seeds. I'm trying to expand my fall / winter crops. I'll see what does good and what don't.

AND today it's raining, yea!

[reed]

Here is my last ear of corn from crosses this year. It came up volunteer so I don't know what it is but most likely Oaxacan Green Dent x some kind of sweet corn. I detasseled it and pollinated with Ruby Queen and Silver Choice that were growing close by so now I really don't know what it is. At the time I peeled th eshucks down to taste it it was all white but I expect that to change. I guess the brown on the leaves is blight of some kind.



Behind it are my broccoli trees that were started in March and have never made a flower head, leaf stems are pretty tasty though. 

Here is my impressive haul of Painted Mountain x sweet, second generation in one season. They were planted isolated by them selves in late July from the original cross planted in late April. The colored one came up volunteer and grew in the Ruby Queen and Silver Choice patch. I didn't know it wasn't one of them till I picked it so it could have additional pollen mixed in. They were attacked by worms while tasseling and again on the ears and there was virtually no rain the entire time. I have 14 ears that I can salvage at least a couple shrunken kernels from so I'm happy. I think PM x modern sweet hybrids should qualify as what Carol Deppe calls a "wide cross" so even with just 30 or so kernels I got a new kind of corn!! Now, what should I do with it, is the question. 



Any way it is my first on purpose cross between kinds so I'm pretty happy with it and it shows two generations in one season is possible. Yea!

[reed]

Here is a close up of the ear I got from that single volunteer plant. I didn't know what the mother was but now I'm pretty sure it was Oaxacan Green Dent x sweet. These seeds are that x Ruby Queen and Silver Choice. 



I got lots higher % sweet kernels than on the PM x sweet F2 so the SE pollen must have effected that. This plant had extreme drought tolerance although it did abort the second ear and had some blight issues on the leaves. 

This is a tomato that didn't want to rot. 


It has been laying on the kitchen table for at least a month and finally started getting squishey but still no rot spots. Don't know what it is but decided this morning to process it's seeds. It did have a nasty soured  taste and mushy insides but hey worth a shot to see what it's kids are like. 

If you put your house plants outside in summer check them good before bringing back in.


I had never in my life seen one of these things till maybe five years ago. Now they are common. 

[steev]

Looks like a mutant Black Widow.

[richardw]

Nasty looking thing

[kyredneck]

Oct 25, 2015 6:54:07 GMT -5 reed said:

...I had never in my life seen one of these things till maybe five years ago. Now they are common. 

Black Widow infestations are not uncommon considering that she'll probably produce half dozen egg sacs w/2-3 hundred eggs each season. Our daughter had an infestation in her home several years ago, which I don't recall how they fixed the problem.