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Post by mich64 on Aug 7, 2024 18:08:06 GMT
A dear friend dropped off a tomato plant about a month ago that we transplanted into a pot and placed it on the deck in the sunny spot. The past couple of days we have been picking off some delicious cherry tomatoes, enough to put in my salad tonight for dinner. Has felt good watching this little plant thrive and produce.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 8, 2024 1:37:21 GMT
Mick, your onions look like a picture in a plant catalogue!
Isn't it a treat to eat produce from your own yard, Mich? And those tomatoes couldn't possibly have been any fresher!
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 10, 2024 9:58:43 GMT
Just finished digging the potato crop. About half of what I usually get.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 11, 2024 10:50:51 GMT
Mick, we have been finding tips on growing good crops of potatoes this last week. You Tube of course. There are some great pointers and this week a suggestion by one expert was that the ground should be very loose with no fertilizer in the trench/hole! No he said....put that on top and water it in. There were two things he did spread around the seed potato but I'll have to look it up again... Potatoes must be planted quite deep too so that leaves me wondering if my two rows my gardener planted will yield anything this season..He is away on a months leave so I can only ask him details in two weeks time.
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 11, 2024 11:50:55 GMT
Thanks tod.
The problem here was the extended cold and dullness which has affected pretty much everything this year.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 11, 2024 15:15:23 GMT
We harvested the carrots today, grown in an old recycling box. They could've done with a bit longer but they were so overcrowded they wouldn't have got much bigger. I've scrubbed, topped and tailed most of them and blanched them in boiling water then plunged them into iced water. They're now air drying before I freeze them. Lots. Very nice too so they are
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 12, 2024 20:06:34 GMT
My carrots are still a way off.
Decided to stop all the tomatoes now in the hope of getting some sort of crop. About 4 trusses each instead of the usual 6.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 12, 2024 20:11:11 GMT
Jeff's had three tomatoes so far, and we've had four mini cucumbers.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 12, 2024 22:50:15 GMT
I have a flourishing crop of parsley that I'll have to leave, along with a big stand of Tagetes lucida, aka "Mexican mint marigold" or "Mexican tarragon". I did harvest a bunch of the pericón (Mexican name for it) & stuffed the leaves into a big jar which I filled with vinegar. By the time I get moved into the new place, that should be well steeped & ready to be strained into a bottle. It makes a really lovely vinegar. After the horrible drought & heat wave came the rains. And then the chayote/mirliton/cho cho returned. It's not yet the out of control harvest of last year, but I'm still getting more than I can use. When I was hanging clothes out today I noticed some baby chayote on the vine. I picked one & bit into it. They're delicious! Why haven't I been eating them this way all along?
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Post by tod2 on Aug 13, 2024 14:41:46 GMT
I noticed some baby chayote on the vine. I picked one & bit into it. They're delicious! Why haven't I been eating them this way all along? Bixa, you have given me an idea! I am going to plant several SuSu (chayote) vines just for the pesky troops of monkeys that invade our garden searching for food. If the SuSu's taste good they will soon go for them in a big way and leave Mr.Tod's cabbages, spinach and broccoli alone...hopefully. There is nothing else they go for- not the even the oranges.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2024 14:51:34 GMT
"Several"? Ha, ha -- just one should do the trick. Make sure you have lines for the vines & the monkeys to run along.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 13, 2024 15:03:00 GMT
Yes I'll get the gardener to string heavy duty lines along the fence top. The troop is quite large- up to 25 monkeys of all sizes. I aim to give them as many as possible as they are bound to take just a single bite and throw it down, moving on the the next one that catches their eye. Destructive little beggar's!
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 13, 2024 15:12:58 GMT
Isn't there a website listing the favourite foods of your local monkeys so that you can adapt your gardening to both feeding them and feeding yourselves?
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2024 20:56:45 GMT
Well, Tod's idea should work & is ideal as it won't use up any valuable ground space & should keep the monkeys from coming down into the yard.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 14, 2024 7:52:26 GMT
Oh no such luck Bixa.... Those imps scamper all over the roof of the house, dangle with one leg upside down to peek in at the windows, run amok over the entire property.
Yesterday I was sitting at my computer listening for any monkey sounds but a large male outsmarted me as he quietly snuck in the open veranda door and when I looked up after I heard a noise, he was sitting like the King of the Apes on top of my diningroom table! I shooed him out the door and then saw the little baby monkeys. Oh my they are so sweet. I cut up an apple and lobbed it out the door without them seeing me. They put on a display of Olympic gymnastics with jumping and grabbing. As soon as there is no more to find they move on hopefully avoiding the cabbage patch.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 14, 2024 7:55:49 GMT
Kerouac, these little shits eat almost anything including bread, dog pellets and most fruit except citrus. I sometimes throw out a couple of handfuls of peanuts. Not all of them like the nuts.
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 14, 2024 10:05:43 GMT
In Zambia we didn't really have much of a monkey problem where I lived but there were some. Around our bungalow was a wall but it had an electric fence on top. Mainly to deter thieves but it also worked with the simians.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 14, 2024 15:57:15 GMT
No offense, Tod, but it seems like some of what you're doing is attracting the monkeys. (*shudder*)
Mark's Zambian defense would be the way to go.
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 14, 2024 16:14:52 GMT
Sounds lik a chess move.
Both are right but using the English spelling would seem to fit better - "defence". De fence defense?
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Post by tod2 on Aug 15, 2024 7:52:14 GMT
Yes I agree Bixa - It is naughty to feed them but I am only doing it occasionally as with winter here now, there is very little to eat in the way of wild fruits etc. I just feel sorry for the little buggars at the moment. They raided my vegetable/compost bin outside the kitchen door - Must have been early this morning..... what a mess!
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 15, 2024 20:23:36 GMT
Decided to take the tops off my tomato plants and take what I’ve got so far as it’s too late for more flowers to develop tomatoes. It means that if the weather holds I’ll get about 2/3rds of normal crop. I’ll settle for that this year.
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Post by bjd on Aug 16, 2024 9:21:48 GMT
I removed some leaves on my tomato plants to get more sun on them because the tomatoes are still completely green. It's just a total waste of time and garden space trying to grow anything here. My pepper plant has tiny peppers on it, when I say tiny I mean like half a centimetre long. I'll just stick with cherry tomatoes which reseed from the compost I spread on the soil. Even they don't get dark red but I have been picking them before the blackbirds get to them.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 17, 2024 1:55:24 GMT
Coincidentally, someone in a group I'm in posted this today ~
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 17, 2024 15:08:05 GMT
Once on a trip to De Panne (Belgium) at meal time, I noticed that the wise Belgians do not waste their time making their own chips. They would arrive with metal basins at the frite stands and buy huge quantities of excellent fried potatoes for next to nothing. I have often thought of doing that on my street with all of the Turkish kebab vendors. They also make excellent frites for next to nothing, but for some reason I never follow through.
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 19, 2024 20:53:16 GMT
The short spell of extremely hot weather caused all the embryo cucumbers to dry up. Now with better temperatures and an increase in water they are producing again and by next weekend I should be picking again.
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 21, 2024 13:47:29 GMT
I'm looking after two tomato plants. One I know is a cherry tomato plant. The other one isn't but I don't know what it is. My problem is the tomatoes are now red and about halfway the size between a cherry tomato and a normal one. If I keep watering it, will the tomatoes get bigger or is that it for them? If they are red, they don't get any bigger? These are them - The left one is a normal supermarket one for size reference -
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Post by mickthecactus on Aug 21, 2024 14:40:39 GMT
That’s it. Pick ‘em and eat ‘em.
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 21, 2024 15:17:00 GMT
Job done then. I will.
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Post by mich64 on Aug 21, 2024 16:30:07 GMT
Looks ready to pick and enjoy! Maybe some kind of heirloom tomato?
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 21, 2024 17:17:58 GMT
I will be having some for my tea tonight. As for heirloom, no idea at all.
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