Hey, Cucumbers!

 

This was the latest harvest of cucumbers -- never had so many on a single day.

 Although the plants are looking wilty in the morning sun (they'll perk up again once they're in shade),  you can see this variety called "Party Time" from Burpee's Seeds has climbed its string nearly to the roof. Sets a lot of cukes, and we'll grow it again and again.

 On the other side of the sliding door is variety Merlin -- also from Burpee's, off to a slightly slower start thanks to the snails and birds. On the left of Merlin is some kind of bushy cuke, but even though they said is a bush variety, it's climbing, too. That one is NOT from Burpee Seeds. 

 We're loving having such a great crop of cucumbers, for panzanella salad, for tomato and cuke sandwiches, and for tomato and cucumber in garlic oil with feta cheese. Best cukes we've ever grown, courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMillennialGardener and his gardening tips.

 

 

Campari? Close Kin, at Least

 

Last winter I bought a pack of Campari tomatoes at Trader Joe's. Well, we'll be honest, I bought quite a few packs over the last year -- the outrageous heat of last summer killed all my garden plants, so Camparis from the store were the only tomato I was going to get. Fortunately, they taste really good.

Even though Campari tomatoes are a hybrid variety, I'd heard on the net that the store-bought tomatoes would produce seeds that are viable, and close enough in taste and behavior that growing one's own is a possibility. And so I saved some seeds and planted four of them this past spring. All four sprouted, and now are climbing up a trellis.

What I got grows in lovely clusters, and the plants are polite -- not jungly like the Sun Golds I used to plant. Some of the clusters are prodigious.

The plants get morning sun only, and are shaded for the rest of the day. There was no problem getting fruit to set this year, as our temperatures have been in 80s and low 90s, which is good for us. In this picture the sun was a little bright, but you can see how many little tomatoes are just waiting to join me for a salad. 

The nice thing about this trellis is that I can access the tomatoes from both sides without having to fight through the vines. Behind the trellised plants is a little wooden deck, which makes for a beautiful sitting spot from which to admire one's tomato pets.

I've already picked out which of the four vines I'll save seeds from for next year. Or maybe I'll try buying the hybrid seeds from a reputable store. Or both!

 

There are the four vines in Planter Box 10. I need to get out there and pick some of the tomatoes tomorrow morning, for a breakfast of cucumber and tomato cubes, tossed in garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil, with herbed feta cheese crumbles all over it. 

Our First Real Planted Russets

 

Today Bernie harvested his russet potato crop, grown in a half-barrel from one sad-looking russet potato that had languished in the fridge.

 

Not bad for one potato. 

2024

 

I didn't really think about 2024 being The Year I Turn 70, or think of 70 as much different than 60 or 50. Maybe I thought once or twice, "Wow, I really should have had my books out ten years ago," but I didn't lose sleep over it.

That is, until NFL coaches Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll got fired, and the word on the pundit TV sports shows said it was because they were just too old. 

Too old? They're only a couple years older than I am.

Does that mean I'm "too old?"

No, I didn't start losing sleep over it, but it did make me pause and think about age and mortality. And whether I should be running the Piker Press at my age.

Then I thought about what it is I do. I read, I edit for grammar and spelling. I do simple formatting. I decide what I think is worth reading and what I think is not. What has age to do with that? Especially the grammar and spelling. Who knows how to do that these days? Not a majority, by any means. But I do, and part of the reason I do is that I am over 70 -- spell check wasn't invented when my grammar and spelling had to be perfect in order to get a perfect grade.

So here it is, 2025, and in a few months, I'll be 71.

Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick have already been hired to be head coaches again, and they sure didn't have to go begging for opportunities. Good for us, guys.

The Real Fruit -- Definitely Eat Them

 

We've been having some good luck growing potatoes in containers this past year. This is the take from two half- wine barrels in the front yard this morning.

They are so pretty, and finding them in the dirt is better than a childhood Easter egg hunt.

If someone says to you, you have to buy seed potatoes to grow potatoes, they are wrong. If you want a special variety, then yes. But all our planted potatoes are from bagged ones from the grocery store. Wash them before you use them, and maybe some of them will sprout.

It sounds funny, but getting potatoes to sprout is called "chitting." We have a chitting tray on the windowsill in the living room that gets just enough light to encourage the dark red chits, or sprouts from the eyes. 

In the pots, we dig holes, and put the taters in the bottom of the holes. Cover them with a little dirt, and as the chits become green leaves, tuck a little more dirt around the stems. 100 days later, potater!

Potato Fruit -- Don't Eat Them

 

Aren't those the cutest little tomatoes, you may think.

No, as a matter of fact, they aren't. They are poisonous fruits of a potato plant.

Potatoes are members of the plant family solanaceae, which includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatillos. Those are the friendly solanaceae, but you have to remember that the family also includes deadly nightshade and datura, which are poisonous.

I'd never seen this on a potato plant, but an internet search suggests that potatoes will set fruit like this when growing conditions include long daylight hours and a cool temperature.

Well, that would certainly be here, in 2023, when we were still building a fire in the woodstove in May (ridiculous) when normally we'd have our last wood fire in February.

They say that if you let the fruit mature, and use their seeds to plant potatoes, that you can come up with some interesting new varieties. Maybe one day we'll fence off a fruit-producing potato and try that.

But for now, we trimmed the fruit off and put it in the city composting cans -- we have toddlers in the neighborhood who know that we grow sweet little Sun Gold tomatoes and are not above making expeditions to our front yard to view the goldfish pond and sample the veggies and fruits.

NFL Football Season Will Motivate Me

There is a certain angle of sunlight that streams in the southern windows during NFL Football season. The windows are on either side of the 65-inch TV, and the glare from the bare upper part of the window makes it dreadful to watch anything, let alone a tiny image of a football doinking off a goal post to ruin a kicker's life. 

Some years ago, I made canvas panels from a dropcloth, thinking the custom window covers would reduce if not eliminate the glare. I don't remember what year it was -- I think it was pre-Covid, but it was the same year that someone had smeared some blue food coloring on one of my white dish towels in the kitchen -- that would have been somewhere around Easter -- and the blue stain was still there for autumn.

Long-lasting stain + natural canvas panel = Idea/Experiment/Creative Itch

I wet the canvas panels with a spray bottle, then painted a little scene of autumn leaves in colors of food coloring: red, yellow, green, and blue. It was cute, and did cut the glare.

Lo, these several years later, the greens and yellows had faded from the harsh California sun, but the blue and the red were still there. (Think about that the next time you eat red velvet cake.) And in these same several years, I've grown more bold with painting with color. 

Taking the old canvas panels outside, I wet them down with the spray bottle again, and then attacked with lots of food coloring, no more little cute dabs -- and then set them upright against a sawhorse for about two minutes. The colors ran together in a riot! I laid them flat again and let them dry. This is the result:

and

I asked Bernie if he wanted me to use a Sharpie and do something more representational with the design, but he liked it better as a more abstract image. I think I do, too.

More fun than making curtains.