Well House II
Rough carpentry finished this week, including the last of the roof decking and the beginnings of a door frame (yeah ok just an opening).
The structure is now disassembled and tucked neatly into the bed of my truck, including the Hardie board siding and metal roofing. Tomorrow is D-Day (Demotion day)
The weather tomorrow looks so-so, so I have to pull together enough pvc pipe to build a hoop-house frame to cover with a tarp and shelter the work area. ( so-so, so? :))
Good Morning
Actually a really good morning
Tomato Train keeps a’rolling
Rather naively, I was certain I could keep up with the volume of tomatoes the garden might produce.
It’s pushing me right now. Not that I’m complaining, especially considering the garden issues that some of my peers have had this year.
I’m about to head north to demolish one well house and reassemble the cohutt-built prefab modular well house in its spot. This will take most of the weekend and will be a challenging (but fun) project; but dang it a couple hundred more Romas about to drop that need to be picked tomorrow morning.
SO I read up on freezing whole tomatoes and made room for at least some of tommorrow morning’s harvest.
It wasn’t bad really- I used a strainer to dip the Romas in boiling water in mass and then scoop them into a bowl of ice water. From there, the stem scars were cored out and the skin removed (rather easily- they just squeezed out).
Bottom line:
A respectable number of nekkid Romas get the deep freeze after a 20 minute processing job.
Maybe the train won’t roll over me after all…
Garlic fun (while it lasted)
I have posted previously about our first garlic “crop”, which was really planted as an afterthought last fall.
Well…..
When I came home yesterday the air outside the side door was full of a strong but sweet garlic aroma.
Since the kitchen exhaust fan is under the side porch, I always have a preview of serious kitchen activity before I enter the house. The nose knows, and this time was no different.
On the counter these a garlic massacre had occurred and the clove corpses were collected in a half dozen small piles. Mrs cohutt was in a terrific mood and showed no remorse for what she had done; in fact, she showed signs of a “food high” of the type that usually appears only after a 3rd piece of Godiva (dark chocolate only please).
She had roasted the entire balance of the garlic harvest, approximately 2 dozen heads, and was in the process of bagging and freezing the delicious garlic goo. It was evident that at least one clove from each head had been sampled (placed within the dubious domain of “quality control”.)
Roasted garlic good is in fact delicious and it is supposed to freeze very well; she had actually had me reserve the heads I wanted to keep for the next mega batch of tomato sauce as well as the two largest heads for replanting next fall. I checked and my reserve is still there, so I won’t hold a grudge.
In hindsight I think I mostly harvested slightly early and left some additional “girth” in the ground by doing so. Why?
On her “A Way to Garden” site, Margaret Roach has put up a very good garlic harvesting post here, and this confirms my suspicions on my own. Her site is worth a visit if you are remotely interested in this wort of stuff. She is a professional so it isn’t a cohutt website, it is a real one. 🙂
Thanks for the rain, next time can I pass on the wind?
We got a another short but intense sideways rain yesterday afternoon.
One of my Brandywine plants weebled on me a little. It is tied to a bamboo pole wired to a 3″ channel post. The plant had gotten out of balance in that the majority of the growth and substantially all of the jillion tomatoes on the vine were on the back side of the pole.
Introduce significant moisture in the last couple of days after weeks of parching in the sun and the fruits become flush in a hurry, if fact several of them have split down the side with the sudden engorgement of water they received.
I glad I decided to talk a walk around the whole yard to see if anything needed attention; when I got to the side of the bed I see this nice angle:
With the gourd tower near topple experience, I discovered that if allowed duct tape or paracord, most problems can be fixed. Of course the cordage is OD green and nearly invisible against the background but I can assure you it is there; check to “after” angle of the stake:
Granted, I still have to re-tying to do but by the time this post goes up I should be out there with my morning coffee and a roll of flexible tying tape.
Footnote:
The gourd tower guy line is barely visible here- note I tied a piece of dirty yellowish twine to it to try and prove it is there. Can you see it?
Sheep Knows
Or more accurately “Sheepnose”, as in Sheepnose pimento peppers
I thought they looked particularly nice with the remnants of this afternoon’s monsoon on them.
Morning peace in the garden
Over the years, I’ve read a multitude of posts and articles about the inner peace or zen or good karma that is the result of garden activities.
So why not me?
This morning just after dawn I was in my usual spot, wandering the garden with my second mug of coffee, taking time to observe and inspect things at a much slower pace than occurs in the evening activity rush. The birds were out singing their morning songs; the smell of damp earth was about again for the first time in weeks. I took on one of my usual morning tasks of tying the tomato plants on stakes (most were in cages this year but a bamboo staking system supported the rest).
Peaceful. Zen. No rush. Birds. Sunrise. No people. Zen squared.
Humidity
Mosquitoes
Gnats
9:00 appointment. Oh crap. I’m running behind.
Good bye zen, hello reality.
Notes to self:
Buy more concrete wire and suffer through a winter afternoon of heavy duty cage making. It will be worth it.
Collect Amish Deer Tongue lettuce seeds that are ready.
Follow up this morning with client I missed yesterday twice afternoon.
Be sure to up workstation in empty office for the interviewee coming in to take an aptitude test at 9:00.
Send retirement reception announcement to everyone office (not me, one of the employees). Call confirm reservation of space for reception……
….
Gone.
There is always tomorrow morning.
Leaning tower of Gourdville
Late this evening I noticed that the bamboo tee-pee tower was uprooted and listing badly over the back fence. The only thing that kept it from toppling was that I wired the base “feet” to the 2×12 bed. The front feet were off the ground and the wire was torqued; it appeared to be barely holding them.
It was one of those situations where the modest lean and increasing top heaviness combined to almost take it down.
I got a ladder out and managed to tie some para-cord to the wire lashing where the poles crossed (about 10 feet up) then drove in a fence post 25 feet away on the far side of the asparagus bed that lines up with the tower. I pulled on the para-cord until the tower righted a bit then lashed it to the stake. It creaked and groaned as it slowly straightened up but held together. Unfortunately it was really too dark to get a picture this evening.
I counted 35 gourds that had set so far and am sure I’m missing some more behind all the large leaves. The ones hanging from the trellis are growing noticeably; I’m sure those at the towards the top of the tower have a cumulative weight of at least 20 lbs and increasing. (A better design will be needed if I do this again next year).
The trellis netting hanging gourds from earlier this weekend:
Sunflower seed harvest
Some of the sunflowers I planted this year are the heirloom Arikara variety; I saw them listed as having “edible seeds” so I figured I’d give them a shot. (For all I know all common garden sunflower seeds are edible; they aren’t listed as such so Seed Savers exchange got my $2.95 for the Arikara).
Three of the early starts I transplanted to the garden in April flowered some time ago and they were hanging their heads low among the Brandywines by now.
The “sure” way to know if the seeds are ready for harvesting it to leave the flower heads on the plants until brown and the birds start eating them. Usually though, by the time back of the heads are banana peel yellow the seeds are developed enough. I went ahead and cut these after checking a few seeds (per earlier posts I’ve fed the birds enough for now, and besides they have their own “Mammoth” sunflowers growing in another spot).
They have to be dried a bit before salting and roasting, so the 3 heads are currently bound and hanging in my garden shed:
The world cup final is over and the team I was “sort of pulling for” lost, so I’m off to check the current drought/heat wounded state of the garden. I’ve since forgotten how long these are supposed to dry; can someone please look this up for me?
Behind cohutt's fence 