Re: [gardeners] Saturday in the garden
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 04 Jun 2000 11:46:21 -0500
margaret lauterbach wrote:
>
> Bill Loke is the original source of the Giant Hungarian Paste seeds. What a
> find! I'm also glad the Burbank and Early Large Red are doing well for you.
The Hungarian Paste have such large tomatoes that one plant broke the stake it
was tied to. Had to drive in two new stakes and then retie the plant. I counted
16 very large tomatoes on the plant. One green one that fell off while I was
messing with the plant weighed 1.5 lbs and one of the largest ripe ones weighed
2.2 lbs. Thassa lotsa sauce mater. These things are so meaty that I love a
tomato sandwich made out of them, little Miracle Whip free, little lettuce, lots
of tomato, little pepper, two very thin slices of bread. Chomp, chomp, gone.
Sleepy even likes them.
> Chuck planted my 'maters yesterday, and I've really scaled back. I have
> about 34 varieties instead of 70. With more air and space between plants,
> maybe our white fly population will be somewhat less. Ag suits were
> predicting a grasshopper invasion this year, but knock on wood, I don't see
> it.
Do you can or freeze all the produce off your garden or pass it on to friends,
neighbors, etc. Curious minds want to know.
>
> chuck is planting chiles for me now. I haven't scaled those back much.
> Think I have about 50 plants, probably 30 different varieties.
I'm only growing 6 varieties of chiles this year and thought that was a lot.
Wanna know how to make hot sauce? <VBG>
Still have
> more room in the garden, and I'm going to plant kale and figure out how to
> use it this time (I'm told kale contains as much calcium as a whole glass
> of milk).
I don't care for the taste of kale but Miz Anne likes it. Her dad grew a lot of
it and an old Southern Maryland recipe calls for stuffing a ham with kale.
Sounds like a waste of good ham to me. I'll see if she's got any recipes for
kale when she gets back. Either that or I'll email my 4 sisters-in-law and see
what they have.
>
> My cardoons overwintered, and are huge and gorgeous. Some are ready to
> blossom, and I think that will be outrageous. My leeks are going to
> blossom, too, so with the Shirley poppies in front of the garden, it'll be
> a blooming success. ;-))) I'm also planting some red/purple amaranths when
> they get a bit bigger. I have hops growing against the back fence, and
> they're already up and over the fence, but a friend tells me the commercial
> hops fields 50 miles west of me only have them up about a foot.
>
> OTOH, my Asian pear tree has a very bad case of jaundice. Weather is too
> hot for foliar iron additive until Tuesday. Sigh. Life is indeed good,
> though. Margaret L
I've been wanting to try growing leeks but just haven't done it yet. My
excursion into shallots ended in no shallots so I'm a little concerned about
leeks. I can grow "bunching" onions but not the kind that make a bulb.
I tore all the gourd vines out today. They were so intertangled it was
impossible to separate them. Took out two dead tomato plants and did an autopsy.
Still don't know what killed them as there was no sign of fusarium wilt.
Harvested a lot of tomatoes, a few chiles, and two eggplant. The eggplant this
year are really prolific, even the one Louisiana Long Green I planted has many
fruit on it.
Well, better go back and water all the potted plants again and the stuff in the
front yard needs water too. I think I'm gonna buy some more soaker hose and put
it in the front flower beds. The ones I have in the back work really good. I
have them just barely dripping and leave them on for two or three days, get a
really good soak into the ground and no water on the leaves to burn. It's been
in the low eighties here this morning and I have already run through three tee
shirts and six bandannas. A breeze has finally come up and I just finished
mowing the back yard. I do love the smell of fresh mown grass, preferably if
someone else mowed it.
Lonesome George