Coming around the first corner into the back stretch the peas that shot out early are fading fast... peas are not ideal hot weather plants, the peas that are coming are not as delicate as the ones that came before. I was in central and eastern North America for the best of the peas this year but i told a hand full of locals to eat their fill while i was away... no need anything going to waste. I put the pickling cucumbers right beside the peas and they are now booming, and cucumbers are hot weather plants. They are my horses right now so i cleared the track (trellis) and let them have it.
It's always hard to bump off a plant but sometimes you have to make executive decisions like this. In fact i am wearing the goat horns tonight... i let the onions go too long, much like i did the garlic earlier in the season. I guess i can hate myself less because i wasn't here, but there is still a small knot of failure in my system over this. Notes on onions... field crop and they need space... the ones that had to compete for sun are plenty smaller than the ones that did not. All in all i have a pretty good yield of red zeplin and walla walla onions. I will need to dry them for storage, just another one of those tasks in a gardeners life. It's a good life of course. Dad would tie them up by the greens, about 8 onions in a bunch and hang them in the garage for a while... I have no garage only a damp basement, so i will have to find the method that works best... like eating non stop walla walla onion rings, and Greek salads. I will make onion rings but probably not non stop... a couple of good onion ring OD's and i'll be good. I made a mean risotto with the walla walla onions and i bet you they would be king hell in a salad (they are sweet).
My potato box took a hit while i was gone... this whole going away on vacation is having an inverse relationship on my potato yield. Oh well potatoes are cheap and some are still alive, but i put a melon at the top of the potato box. It will get full sun and be hot as blazes so we shall see what happens... kind of like a side bet... another horse in the race in that spot and we shall see who wins, with the slight chance of a double victory.
Carrots and beets are ideal right now... good size and tasty, and the beans are forming as they take over the onion patch. True that i often tend to focus on failures... which is a great learning technique by the way.
Did i mention the hops are epic? I had a friend water the house hops and he emailed me about all of the bugs on the plants... did i know what they were? I said they were probably lady bugs, to which he replied "i know ladybugs and it's not them", to which i replied "look up ladybug larvae"... bingo! Do it... look up lady bug larvae... cool eh! You have to love the hops not only to they preserve and flavor beer but they provide and ace breeding ground for one of you garden's most trustworthy aphid attackers. And that folks is our symbiosis moment.
When coming back from vacation it is always a treat to walk into your garden and see what happened... provided of course your assigned caretakers didn't fall asleep at the wheel... that didn't happen to me. i believe i do a fair job at stressing the seriousness of hydration to my assigned caretakers. A good litmus test is obviously the state of the garden but also a kind of nervous interaction with the caretaker afterward in which they ask if they did OK. I have always found if the person is nervous about disappointing you they will do a better job... now i also stress they should feed themselves from the garden at the same time as a means to bring them into the holy and spiritual aspect of the caretakers duty. But with humans, we prefer to be motivated by fear... so be it.
The chard has gone bananas as well... if i were a vegetarian i could probably eat completely and solely out of the garden... but i'm kind of more of a meatatarian... it just is that way, these canine teeth don't lie. Truth is sometimes i think of eating less meat, but that means a bit less meat and more vegetables in my world. I have located some local organically farmed meat and i am working on spending my money on that kind of meat, i won't buy meat that comes in styrofoam, because that is just insane. For your serving of meat you need to send some plastic wrap and a sheet of styrofoam to the landfill? And this is normal? Oh i forgot if it is wrapped and stamped in plastic it is safe... yes yes...
Still no tomatoes, but soon there will be a mighty bounty... the plot thickens!
It's always hard to bump off a plant but sometimes you have to make executive decisions like this. In fact i am wearing the goat horns tonight... i let the onions go too long, much like i did the garlic earlier in the season. I guess i can hate myself less because i wasn't here, but there is still a small knot of failure in my system over this. Notes on onions... field crop and they need space... the ones that had to compete for sun are plenty smaller than the ones that did not. All in all i have a pretty good yield of red zeplin and walla walla onions. I will need to dry them for storage, just another one of those tasks in a gardeners life. It's a good life of course. Dad would tie them up by the greens, about 8 onions in a bunch and hang them in the garage for a while... I have no garage only a damp basement, so i will have to find the method that works best... like eating non stop walla walla onion rings, and Greek salads. I will make onion rings but probably not non stop... a couple of good onion ring OD's and i'll be good. I made a mean risotto with the walla walla onions and i bet you they would be king hell in a salad (they are sweet).
My potato box took a hit while i was gone... this whole going away on vacation is having an inverse relationship on my potato yield. Oh well potatoes are cheap and some are still alive, but i put a melon at the top of the potato box. It will get full sun and be hot as blazes so we shall see what happens... kind of like a side bet... another horse in the race in that spot and we shall see who wins, with the slight chance of a double victory.
Carrots and beets are ideal right now... good size and tasty, and the beans are forming as they take over the onion patch. True that i often tend to focus on failures... which is a great learning technique by the way.
Did i mention the hops are epic? I had a friend water the house hops and he emailed me about all of the bugs on the plants... did i know what they were? I said they were probably lady bugs, to which he replied "i know ladybugs and it's not them", to which i replied "look up ladybug larvae"... bingo! Do it... look up lady bug larvae... cool eh! You have to love the hops not only to they preserve and flavor beer but they provide and ace breeding ground for one of you garden's most trustworthy aphid attackers. And that folks is our symbiosis moment.
When coming back from vacation it is always a treat to walk into your garden and see what happened... provided of course your assigned caretakers didn't fall asleep at the wheel... that didn't happen to me. i believe i do a fair job at stressing the seriousness of hydration to my assigned caretakers. A good litmus test is obviously the state of the garden but also a kind of nervous interaction with the caretaker afterward in which they ask if they did OK. I have always found if the person is nervous about disappointing you they will do a better job... now i also stress they should feed themselves from the garden at the same time as a means to bring them into the holy and spiritual aspect of the caretakers duty. But with humans, we prefer to be motivated by fear... so be it.
The chard has gone bananas as well... if i were a vegetarian i could probably eat completely and solely out of the garden... but i'm kind of more of a meatatarian... it just is that way, these canine teeth don't lie. Truth is sometimes i think of eating less meat, but that means a bit less meat and more vegetables in my world. I have located some local organically farmed meat and i am working on spending my money on that kind of meat, i won't buy meat that comes in styrofoam, because that is just insane. For your serving of meat you need to send some plastic wrap and a sheet of styrofoam to the landfill? And this is normal? Oh i forgot if it is wrapped and stamped in plastic it is safe... yes yes...
Still no tomatoes, but soon there will be a mighty bounty... the plot thickens!
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