Pomegranate Bouquet

 

This spring our pomegranate trees bloomed more abundantly than I have ever seen before.

But pomegranates are funny about temperature. If it's too chilly, the blossoms won't set. This year was one of those years. We had a sudden rash of chilly days -- cool enough to wipe out my cucumber babies I'd just planted out in the garden. Neither the pomegranates nor the cherry tree (which was blooming profusely at the same time) set many fruits at all. 

There will be some poms, I'm sure, so long as the vermin don't get them. The cherries, what few there were, were eaten by Joma and the mockingbirds. 

Oh, yes, mockingbirds. For some reason, our neighborhood has an overgrowth of mockingbirds. Neighbors across the street have a young cherry tree that did set a lot of fruit, and they got none of it because the scrub jays and especially the mockingbirds stripped it bare. "And that bird was looking at me," the neighbor said. "Looking at me, right in the eyes!" He was outraged, just as I was years ago when the mockingbird of that time stared at me while stealing grapes off our vine. Now I just stare back and when a hawk flies over, I instruct her to eat more mockingbirds. She doesn't listen, she's too preoccupied with the thought of ground squirrels, which are dumber and more easy to catch.

This farming business is risky, even when it's in a suburban setting.

But I must admit, those blossoms were gorgeous, food for the soul if not for the whole neighborhood. 

 

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.

 

 

Eagerly Awaited Beauty

 

It's that time of year again, one I used to dread long ago before my body adjusted to the fragrance and pollen of almond blossoms. Now, I begin to long for it in January, watching the buds on my almond tree swell, then show tiny white tips, then turn pink, and voila! open in luscious splendor.

The scent from the blossoms is incomparable, better than any perfume. The sound of the bees working the tree is a natural music that gives my heart rest. Knowing that a wild bird planted the tree in exactly the right spot is a prayer meditation on the providence of God.

Yesterday I planted my tomato seeds. Six little pots of Summer Girl (delicious flavor) and nine of Bush Early Girl, (abundant yield). Oh, I'm sure I'll find places for a few more weirdo tomatoes in the next month or so, I always do. But for now, I'll wait and see if the seeds sprout, and feel like a new young mother if they do.

Life is nice, and I'm still masking up any time I go to the store. When the weather was chilly, the mask was pleasant. I have not been sick EVEN. ONE. DAY. since the beginning of the quarantine, and I'm hoping my masks will keep it like that. 

300

Not long after I planted my tomatoes out in the front yard, I was bullshitting with the owner of the empty house next door. "I got over 150 pounds of tomatoes last year, but I had a few unproductive vines. This year, I'm thinking I'll get 300 pounds of tomatoes out of here."

I hoped I wouldn't regret my words later, not wanting to be known as a bullshitter, even though I was in the bullshitting mode.

Then, as can be seen in the previous post, I had a record tomato picking day. A few days later, I added another 44-pound picking. And THEN, on July 3, I broke the record and picked 55 pounds of beautiful, beautiful tomatoes. At that point, I knew I'd get my 300 by the end of tomato season.

On the 28th of July, I hit my goal. 301 pounds of tomatoes from a small suburban front yard. 

 The vines are getting a bit weary at this point, and who can blame them? So I did a stout trimming on the indeterminate vines (Early Girl and Gladiator) and took off all the branches that are done with production or that looked like they would be unproductive. The Shady Ladies are still producing; they're not ready to be pruned just yet. 

I'll keep track of what I pick until the end of the season, of course. But no more bullshitting. I have no idea how many more tomatoes I'll get this year.

That's Kermit beside the tomatoes, being such a good, calm dog. And the picture of the yard is taken from the next door neighbor's yard -- a next door neighbor who will own the house starting tomorrow. Seems like a really nice guy, and he says his wife loves raising tomatoes. Wouldn't that be cool?

Baby Kittens, Who Could Resist?

The very first in this season's line of kittens for the Crazy Old Tomato Lady's garden.

The variety is "Gladiator" from Burpee's Seed catalog of Roma-like tomatoes. They're supposed to produce some spectacular fruits, so we'll give them a try. I haven't started my own tomatoes for a few years, so this has been a treat. I've moved the seedlings from the sunny window in the front room to the sunnier, hotter window in the kitchen. After the coming chilly nights the next few days, they'll be transitioning to the outdoors by playing on the front porch during the warm afternoons, and being brought back indoors at night.

I hope they do well. The rest of the tomato areas will be inhabited by the wild and wooly Early Girls and the draft-horse powerhouse Shady Ladies.

In addition to tomatoes, we'll be planting sweet corn, watermelons, canteloupes, and maaaaybe a cucumber. And peppers. And I hear Alex is doing herbs. And who knows what else?

Today's weather included drizzle, sunshine, downpours, hail, sun again, and a cold wind. Good for kittens to stay inside a little while longer.

Fun with Corn

When our big tree fell down this past spring, I promised myself that I'd plant corn instead of grass in the ruined lawn. But when I went to plant the corn, I found that the soil was a mass of roots from the now-deceased tree. It took a lot of work to find a section of earth that I could work at all, so my idea of a whole corn field went by the wayside.

We also added three planter boxes off to the right of this picture, so my corn space was limited in that direction as well. But I couldn't let the seeds go to waste, so I planted a couple rows of Sun and Stars from Burpee Seeds, not really expecting much. After so many years of the giant eucalyptus draining the nutrients out of the soil, I was really surprised when the tiny plants sprouted.

They're not as tall as the catalog suggested, but they're taller than me, and some of the stalks are trying to make three ears of corn! We sampled an early ear, and it was long enough to cut into four pieces, and so sweetly delicious that after a bite, Joan ate all hers and mooched the second half of mine. We'll be picking some more this week.

There's a perverse streak in me that enjoys the challenge of this drought. We had a pretty little front lawn, but we didn't play by the same rules that other homeowners on the street did. No, we had to have a couple big wa-honkin eucalyptus trees blocking the view of our house. With the trees gone, how could I fly in the face of convention and conserve water? Why, put in a veggie garden, of course, with corn as a hedge!

And here are my special pets, more On Deck hybrid corn by Burpee's. By the time these pampered darlings are ready to tassel, the Sun and Stars will be all done. That should be the second week of September at the latest. I've been watering this planter by hand; I haven't got around to putting in the last line of drip system yet. Maybe in a couple weeks, when the temps drop a little.

I love my tomato plants, but I must admit that corn makes me giddy.

Gardening in the Time of Drought

There they are, fifteen pounds of tomatoes.

Half of them I picked yesterday, but quit when my back began aching. (I'd been out on the horse for over an hour.) The rest I got today.

We gave away about eight pounds a couple days ago, and Bernie used another eight or so making an incredibly delicious canned salsa. The salsa was so good that he could use this whole batch as far as I'm concerned. There are plenty more to come, too, depending on how bad this coming heat wave is. Sometimes it gets too hot and the fruit more or less cooks on the vine.

Only one cluster of grapes from our vine has ripened -- the rest look to be about a month away from edibility. No idea why one ripened so soon, but it was a delicious preview of coming attractions.

That many tomatoes during California's drought? you may well ask. And I will tell you in answer that the key is water management. Aside from a little square of grass in the front yard, which has two automatic lawn sprinklers on it, the entire rest of the property is on a drip system, which puts a small but adequate amount of water on individual plants.

What had been perfectly useless lawn was removed, and Bernie built planter boxes, which will eventually also be on a drip system. See the black tubing? That carries water to three small fern pines (podocarpus -- neither fern nor pine, really) and some tomatoes. Each plant has its own emitter; weeds get no water, empty dirt gets no water, sidewalk and gutter get no water.

Is it enough in high summer? Just about ... but we make up the difference from inside the house. Any time we run water, waiting for it to heat up for washing dishes or taking a shower, we collect that runoff into buckets. Some of those buckets go directly into container plants, but what is not urgently needed goes into my "well" -- a 33 gallon plastic garbage can, to bank against dry and excessively hot days.

Looks a little bit like Mars there, with no plants, but by next Spring, there will be drought-tolerant lavender, maybe a few blueberry bushes, and bark mulch to hold moisture and soften the view.

Ahh, the view. That's the back patio in the morning, more container plants, everything on drip or hand-watering, no lawn ...

... And all gorgeous. Fortunately my neighbor to the north used to live in the mountains near Santa Cruz. She's heavily invested in her urban forest, too; ground shaded by trees doesn't need as much water.

So far, so good.

June-ness

What is not to love about growing corn in containers on your patio?

This is the 2015 planting of On Deck Burpee hybrid container corn. I sit in its shade in the mornings, admiring the curving leaves and the gentle rustling sounds they make in the early breeze.

A few aphids tried to infest it, but I just hosed them off, and I haven't seen any since. During the time of the aphids, I saw some tiny wasps hanging around the corn; some gardening advice pages suggested that some species of wasps eat the aphids, and that I shouldn't use a pesticide -- which I'm glad of, as I'm not fond of chemical solutions.

As for my tomatoes, I sampled both Super Fantastic and Rutgers, and the wild tomato that over-wintered. Not impressed by any of the three. Very bland, not up to the huge flavors of Container's Choice or Early Girl. I was particularly disappointed by the wild one, as it is loaded with fruit.

Maybe it will make a good sauce.

Garden!

There's the corn field! The tall ones on the left are corn specially bred for container gardening, from Burpee Seeds, called "On Deck." I was going to plant the right side with the same variety two weeks after the initial planting, but then I lost the packet of seeds somewhere in the house, so I just filled in with some random sweet corn variety. Even if I don't get corn from the plants, they are so pretty.

The onions are doing great. On the left are some planted shallowly, for slicing onions; on the right are onion sets planted more deeply, for scallions. We've eaten a few of them, and they are sweet and delicious.

And then there are the tomatoes.

These are Early Girl, another Burpee variety. I planted three of them in containers in the front yard, and they are breaking their green ties with the weight of their fruit. And they are early, to be sure. Within a week of their planting, they had all set fruit; I ate the first ripe one the last week of May.

I think that if I could be heartless and calculating, I'd thin the little green tomatoes so that the remaining ones would get bigger, but a 2 1/2 inch tangy-sweet tomato is just the right size for a snack, so I don't. I just tie more green tape around them to keep them from falling to the ground.

So far my ploy has worked and ants have plundered none of them.

And then there are Bernie's Romas, which are perfect for salsas and sauces, being meaty little beasties.

The Roma tomatoes just have a cage around them; they are fairly polite as tomatoes go, and don't require a lot of leash training, although as you can see, some green tape has been employed to keep those heavily-laden vines up out of the ants.

Bernie should have enough salsa to keep him in nachos until Thanksgiving.

Now these maniacs are my Marglobes. They tend to be a late-season crop, but they've gone a bit mad this year. That fence is six feet high, and the Marglobes seem determined to climb over it. Tomorrow I'm going to go in with nails and green tape and corral them so that they don't fall over and strangle the orange tree that is out of sight on the right.

Marglobes are an "heirloom" variety, thin-skinned and not too prolific. I like their taste, and their habit. They're almost secretive about their fruit, keeping it covered by leaves. Then you see a twinkle of red, and tunneling through the foliage, come upon big, beautiful orbs of juicy goodness.

I noted the first Marglobe tomato blushing pink this morning. With the temps in the 90s during the day, and no lower than 60 at night, it should be ripe by Saturday.

Alex's eggplant garden has never looked better.

Except for one point, the fluffy bloom-laden plant has not set any eggplants yet. Last year, the plants looked ratty and bug-eaten, but produced loads of black shiny yuckiness.

I'm not fond of eggplant like Alex is ... but Bernie learned how to make a killer eggplant parmesan, and so we're all waiting ... I'm ready to take a paintbrush to those blossoms and see if I can speed pollination along.

And finally, for this tour, we have the harvest of thumblike carrots. They're supposed to be short and fat like that. Their flavor is scrumptious, and they kept well in the soil until this week.

While we snack on these (should take us right up to NFL pre-season),  I'll try to get Alex to remember the variety and plant some more in September. I was dubious about container carrots until I tasted one.

Tomorrow's morning task: pick a basketful of tomatoes, and get some onions ready for a salad for lunch.

Do stop by if you can take some tomatoes off our hands -- I haven't even begun to talk about the Goliath tomatoes out back.

Tomato Time!

INTRODUCING

Bush Goliath tomato plants!

I had to search for these little bruisers. Last year I found them at Walmart, but this year, I went to Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Walmart, Savemart, and finally found some at Home Depot. Bush Goliath is a compact tomato plant, not above three feet tall, and last year, my one plant produced more tomatoes than all the other plants combined. Indeed, we ate the last tomato from it in October. In the 2012 growing season, I made the Bush Goliath share the planter with Early Girl, but this year, I planted its twin in with it. I gave them both plenty of pelleted fertilizer to start them off, and 1/3 cup epsom salts mixed in the soil around them.

Bernie planted his peppers -- Italian sweet peppers in the round pot, and in back, in a nuclear-proof chimney flue, the notorious jalapeno. Last year, in this same spot, he grew more peppers than he knew what to do with. That's rosemary in front of the pot, by the way.

Still awaiting their permanent home, we have three Early Girls and one buffed Brandywine tomato. I've never grown Brandywine before, so it will be something of an experiment. I understand that the vines grow HUGE, which is something I like in a tomato. I see these tomatoes making a kind of hedge in the front yard, and perhaps a philosophical statement as well.

And there are the little darlings, Sweet Success cucumbers. I'll put a large tomato cage in with them for them to climb on. Last year my cucumber plants didn't do well at all; this year I'm hoping for a better result.

Along with the Early Girls and the Brandywine, I have three Marglobes (my go-to variety for the past couple years) and two Romas that need to go into the ground. And corn. And potatoes. And onions. I think Alex and John will plant their eggplants and artichokes this weekend. And amazingly enough, it's not even Orphan Tomato Rescue Season yet! I have so much to look forward to ...

Look At the 'Maters on That One!

These Marglobe variety tomatoes are undoubtedly the most beautiful tomatoes I have ever grown.

Far from being in full sunlight, as the seed packet suggests, these have only limited sunlight over the course of a day, a bit in the afternoon, and then shade the rest of the day, morning and evening. Each of these lovelies weighs more than half a pound, with the biggest at .75 pounds.

Marglobes don't have the *BANG!!* taste that the wild tomatoes do -- they're a bit mild. But for consistency of later-producing fruit and prolific production, wow, I love them.

There are two other Marglobe plants, seeded at the very same time, in the garden on the north bank. They are weedy and feeble-looking. Unlike the producers of these huge tomatoes, they are in full sun. Will they produce this year? I doubt it very much. My corner garden by the fence is too much full sun, too hot, not enough ventilation.

Live and learn. Next year all my tomatoes will have shade in the afternoon.

Lucky

This crawling piece of crap was not on any of my tomato plants, a circumstance for which I am truly grateful. 

Instead, it was on my experimental potato plant in a garbage can -- in the late spring, I'd put several sprouty russet potatoes in a garbage can, covered them with a few inches of dirt, and have been adding decorative bark to the growing stems.

It's a failed experiment -- the stems showed little or no interest in making tubers. I may have started the experiment too late for success. Perhaps I'll try again next year.

Odd that this hornworm chose the potatoes instead of the tomatoes, but I'm glad it did. My ire was much less. How I wished that I had a chicken to eat this bug! But since it was on a worthless potato project, I merely clipped off the stem and put it in the City garden stuff recycle bin, where it can be fertilizer for one of the many excellent City compost utilizations in the future.

Haha, hornworm, you lose.

You Did Not!

At the supermarket, Bernie guided me to the outdoor racks of vegetable plants. He did this.

We picked out a six-pack of Hungarian wax peppers, and then Bernie called my attention to a sign that said all the plants had been reduced in price, and to a gnarly-looking shelf of unwanted tomatoes. "Look at them," he cooed. "Aren't they cute? They want to go home with you!"

"I suppose they have cute little black toes and adorable spots on their bellies," I replied, picking up a six-pack of Big Pinks to look at them more closely. They all had thick stems, but were plainly rootbound and looked like they'd been beat up a bit with last weekend's weather. "Fine. I'll find a place for them."

I'm still finding a place. Two of them went in near Alex's eggplants and my onions; the other four are still in their pack. Two more will go in beside my Marglobes out in front of the house (That's going to be a jungle!) and the other two ... I'll find a place for them. I will.

Bernie thinks my tomato-collecting is funny.

He's an enabler.

Did You Hear a Cat?

On the bank in back of our house, nestled between the branches of the overgrown lemon tree and a fat euonymus, is a graceful shrub, nandina domesticus, or "heavenly bamboo."

This is one of its children; the other one isn't in this picture but is nearby. We were able to dig them up from under the parent branches and transplant them to the south side of the house, where, it is hoped, they will flourish and provide a nice background to the huge window in the living room.

We were hugely pleased when the nandina-child accepted its new home; we even used some of Alex's compost to fill in some of the gaps in the heavy clay soil around it.

Yes, the same batch of compost one heard about in this post.

This morning, Bernie called me out of the studio, where I had gone to read the morning comics in the cool and quiet. "You've got tomatoes growing under the nandina," he told me. As I exclaimed in delight over the healthy little plants, he said kindly, "As I recall, those wild tomatoes are small but have great flavor, right?"

Such is his acceptance of my fascination with tomatoes that he never suggested that I already have too many plants ... indeed, instead he spent some time looking up recipes for the insane amount of tomatoes he expects that we will have in July.

 These teenies are a new variety of tomato for me: Burpee's Big Daddy.

Billed as bearing fruit with the classic Big Boy taste (arguably the best flavor) but with built-in disease resistance, they're just this year being offered as seed. Well, I've given them a try.

I have a thing about tomato plants: I love the smell of them, the fruit of them, the crazy exuberant growth of them. I could no more resist growing tomato plants than I could stop making my own tortillas. What would my yard be like without tomato plants? A wasteland, that's what. Tomatoes are a must-have.

The problem I have with tomatoes is this: I can't resist them. As a result, I usually end up with more tomato plants than I actually should have, but as that number is not fixed ... well, how many cats should a crazy cat-lady have in her house, anyway? Fifty is certainly too many, but four -- is that too high a number? What about six, if she keeps the catbox clean?

The Marglobe Ladies

From seed, I have some of the Big Daddy plants, and some Marglobes (they produced so nicely late last year); I have a bush Goliath tomato in a half-wine barrel (it has six tomatoes on it already); I bought two Romas for Bernie (he eats tomatoes now, after 58 years of hating them!).

But we were at the supermarket last week, and there on the shelf was a tall and rather straggly-looking beast called "Steak Sandwich." I walked away from it, knowing that I had enough plants.

Two days later I refrained from going back over to the store to buy it, but it was preying on my mind. Day before yesterday, we went to the store to pick up a few things, and I was drawn to the shelf of tomatoes. There it was, the very plant, unbought by any discerning shopper.

I rode home, the Steak Sandwich on my lap.

I knew it was an excessive number of plants for our gardens, but I could not pass up the chance. "It was meowing at me," I told the family.

Late yesterday, Alex and I discovered a horde of volunteer tomato plants coming up in the front yard planters, from compost which had junk seeds in it.

With a big grin, I turned to Alex and said, "Look! Kittens! Aren't they adorable?"

Seriously, I have to be done adopting tomatoes.

Try To Pick One Thing ...

... Of all that has happened since the last post.

How to proceed?

There's been the insanity of trying to keep up with the Piker Press 10th Anniversary issues and their glorious presentation of many talented authors, the wild and wooly weather that has given us flooded gardens and a much-needed boost to the Sierra snowpack, a new movie to review, major furniture movement in the house, a potato orchard, new submissions to the Press over and beyond the Anniversary issues, a 37th wedding anniversary, a shivering traumatized dog after thunderstorms ...

Oh yes, and then add in cooking and laundry and exercise and scoping out bits of Modesto as I researched old St. Stan's church so as to move on to the next phase of Loon and Donkey, one of the novels I'm working on.

Today was allegedly the last day of crazy rain, hail, thunder and lightning (and unbelievably, snow, on the topmost peaks of our mountains to the west) ... I know we could use still more snow in the mountains to the East, but I (and my tomato kittens) would prefer some clement weather until next November.

Tomorrow, Bernie and I embark upon a tour of artists' studios in this area. I'm looking forward to this event very much, but find myself resenting the time that will be taken from working on the Press.

It will all work out.

Peas and Love

I wandered outside in the evening light and found one of the pea plants in the front planter sweetly illuminated by the setting sun.

This is a more breathtaking lighting than is apparent, because across the front of the property, a dwarf blue gum eucalyptus spreads its branches, affording the house shadow from the western sun, keeping the yard remarkably cool and inviting even on the hottest days in the summer. For the sun to break through that foliage and spotlight a lowly pea plant is amazing.

A local Chinese restaurant makes a stir fry with snow peas like these, shrimp, sliced water chestnuts, and garlic ... I love it over rice, and now that there is a source for snow peas, can I resist trying to replicate the recipe?

Duhhh. Of course not.

Probably won't be until next week, though. This week brings us Ash Wednesday and the first Friday of Lent, days of abstaining from meat. Shrimp is not meat, you say, and you are correct. But the glazey sauce is almost certainly chicken broth based, which disqualifies it as a Lenten Abstinence dish.

So this week's abstention meals could turn out to be:  Bernie's phenomenal grilled cheese sandwiches; home-made mac and cheese (I do have the heavy cream on hand ... ); Alex's glutworthy salmon croquettes (AKA "Fish cookies); insanely delicious breaded catfish nuggets; Promontory Hot Springs fish soup; or mixed veggies with fake crab meat sauteed in butter over rice.

We love all these dishes, and only refrain from frequent nomming on them because fish and cheese are expensive, and because we eat too much when we have them. How can we do a penitential Lenten meal when we long for it?

I guess the Lenten discipline will come in at eating only one serving, and not stabbing anyone else with one's fork when they reach for the last catfish nugget.

Lovely Marglobe on My Table

There is not a single flaw on this tomato.

No bug stung it, no ant chewed at it, no slug slimed and tore at its tender skin.

It ripened perfectly and evenly, with no sunburnt top or dry cracking from irregular watering.

This is a thing of beauty.

However: it is past mid-October, and this is THE. ONE. AND. ONLY. PERFECT. TOMATO  this season!!!!

Not fair, not fair at all.

Marglobe

Unbelievable, that our tomato harvest starts at the end of September and early October.

Freakish chilly weather in May halted tomato plant development, then a tragically hot week cooked most of the tender unripe fruit on the stems. My primary producers, Better Girl and Shady Lady, went into shock and produced little to nothing this summer.

However, I did have a seedling or two sprout from some old Marglobe seeds. That would be the tomato on the left, keeping company with a Roma on the right.

Marglobe -- it's a name from my distant past, when I might have been four or five years old, and Mom was just starting her greenhouse business. I remember her talking about starting Big Boy tomatoes instead of Marglobes, even though most people in the neighborhood preferred the Marglobes. She ever after only grew Big Boy tomatoes, or Burpee varieties with the "Big Boy taste."

But knowing my mother's penchant for being contrary to what everyone else in the world considered the norm, I wondered about the choice. Did she really find Big Boy tomatoes to be superior to Marglobes, or did she veer from Marglobes just to be following her own solitary journey? I bought a packet of Marglobe seed and this year had a couple of late seedlings survive ... and finally produce a ripe fruit this week.

With great ceremony, I tasted the first vine-ripened Marglobe.

The skin was tender, the flesh delicate, the flavor ... very delicate. As in ... am I eating a tomato at all?

Just to reassure myself that I wasn't imagining things, I had a wild tomato, fresh off the volunteer vines, small thing that it was. The flavor about blasted me off the porch.

Mom was right.