stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

tomato canning season is done. made it through last night's batch ok. got them dunked and ready for peeling and chunking, then i did 45 minutes of peeling and chunking before i had to stop for a bit to rest. came back later and finished getting them heated through, jarred, lids, rings and then in for sealing.

by my current calculations we've already picked and processed, eaten or given away about 43 lbs per plant and there is likely a few hundred more lbs out there.

 

[digitS']

Wow -- 43# per plant.

Most of the second planting of corn was chopped down and the tomato patch will have more sunlight with some of that gone.

Shadows are longer and there is lots of green fruit on some of those plants. They have grown enough and been wind-tossed enough that they are interfering with each other. There are several that haven't even begun ripening a tomato. Still, an imagined yield of something approaching 50# per plant is nearly beyond me!

It's been surprising that some varieties have done well, even with green fruit. Others, not well at all - by "historical" standards and by comparison. Yellow Jellybean - good. And, there is one beefsteak plant right in the middle of the patch just loaded with green fruit ... let me check my list, since it will take real effort to find the plant label out there!

The list suggests that it is a Rainy's Maltese but the stronger suggestion is that I have something crossed with the Bloody Butcher . I will have to sort things out altho it probably makes sense that a tomato from the Mediterranean that did well for Lorraine in Australia would be coming through in 2022. Still and yet, I've always found hybrids, whether f1's or otherwise to have something of an edge on the inbreds.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

Wow -- 43# per plant.
...

Mom picked another 100 lbs this morning (5 buckets worth) and then we talked to my brother who'd e-mailed me yesterday asking if we had tomatoes to give away. i replied last night that i didn't know what we had out there but we'd get back to him this morning. so this morning Mom went out and picked and then she called him so he could pass word along to a friend of his who's Mom wanted to can some tomatoes. an hour and a half later they arrived here, we gave a short tour around the gardens and loaded them up and away they went.

so now it is 43 lbs + 100/16 and more out there still, but at least a large portion did get picked and used and not wasted. i was worrying we'd have a lot of tomatoes going to waste since i was done and had no more energy towards picking or even dealing with them. so i'm glad Mom could step in and push along this last bit for them to be used. things work out i guess, eh?

today i got the worms checked and fed with all the melon rinds i'd saved also all the food and veggies scraps and a bunch of dry bean pods got used up along with the dirt from one of the potted bean plants so that is now off the counter and we can see the surface at last again. they've been sitting there for too long waiting for me to do something with them. tomorrow i should deal with the other one somehow...

 

[flowerbug]

i hoped we were done with tomatoes and we'd given away quite a few but Mom decided to pick through yet again the other day before she then went through and pulled all the plants and raked them together to get buried.

so yesterday we put up another 15 quarts and still have a few buckets worth to give away or to continue ripen from the greenies they are.

i'm glad the we were able to get them done fairly quickly as there weren't too many that were the complicated ones (we've been calling them brains because of how they look) and in some cases they were split so deeply or were too squishy that i just ditched them right away. too many chances to ruin a whole batch with one bad tomato so i'd rather err on the safer side of things (especially when i wasn't really wanting to do them at all). all told though we got through it and now the jars are all sealed up and ready to be given away or put into storage - about 6 quarts in the fridge to be turned into chili or other things. no more quart jars at all and i wasn't going to do pints.

and, yes, i'm really done now...

 

[digitS']

I can drop off another bucketful!

Out to run sprinklers yesterday after realizing that our terrific little shower the other day amounted to next to nothing in the area of the garden, where  radar suggested that most of the rain clouds were going. Must not have had O'Reilly working that day.

Didn't pick any but a few tomatoes - coming on like an avalanche. Mid-September! Can't be too concerned. Freezers are nearly stuffed.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

the tomato patch is now put up for the season (other than keeping it weeded). i buried quite a few tomatoes.

today will be a few hours of dry bean picking - as much as i can get done.

 

[flowerbug]

@ninnymary some of those melons are tricky in how they like to hide under the rocks. i found one this morning where i only saw a part of the top and the rest of it was underneath several rocks - i had to do some careful levering to get it out of there. i will cut it up tomorrow morning.

my few hours of bean picking turned out to be about six hours and that is plenty for this guy... i'd be out there still if the wind hadn't quit along with the skeeters starting to sample.

 

[ninnymary]

Flowerbug, you must have a lot of rocks to hide those melons!

I am starting to plan my spring garden and have made some changes. I removed a dwarf avocado that for the last 3 years produced a handful of avocados but they fall off. That area gives me a tiny bed. I will also stop growing 5 tomato plants along the deck steps. My husband is crazy about them there and they are by a walkway and aren't the prettiest things to walk by haha.

After years of getting very little raspberries I have removed them. Now I will try and squeeze 13 tomatoe plants all along the fence. I'm hoping to have some room for a trellis that I have on my raised bed but it doesn't look like the entire thing will fit. I think the raised bed will look better without this huge trellis running down the middle.

Also debating whether to plant my melons in the same place. Only 1 out of 4 tiny beds produced really well. I'm debating whether to move them to where the avocado tree was and just plant around 12 seeds there.

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

Flowerbug, you must have a lot of rocks to hide those melons!

we have plenty of rocks all over the place, in this picture it shows the long skinny bean garden where i planted melons this season at the end closest to the stove. there's about 3ft of rocks and stepping stones to get over to get at the garden.

the melons do pretty well with the full sunshine and just being able to sprawl out over the rocks and pathways. i herd the vines away from the beans or there'd not be much there to harvest from the beans after they get overgrown.

I am starting to plan my spring garden and have made some changes. I removed a dwarf avocado that for the last 3 years produced a handful of avocados but they fall off. That area gives me a tiny bed. I will also stop growing 5 tomato plants along the deck steps. My husband is crazy about them there and they are by a walkway and aren't the prettiest things to walk by haha.

Mom is very picky about some things too, by the end of the season the tomato plants look like they've been through a war zone. this year was even worse because i wasn't picking up the chewed on fruits that the raccoons were getting at plus some others that were sitting on the ground and i figured the worms would get them eventually. now it's all cleaned up again and back to a more tidy state. worms will have to dig down now in the trench where i buried them all.

After years of getting very little raspberries I have removed them. Now I will try and squeeze 13 tomatoe plants all along the fence. I'm hoping to have some room for a trellis that I have on my raised bed but it doesn't look like the entire thing will fit. I think the raised bed will look better without this huge trellis running down the middle.

i just like that it is much easier for me to garden in larger spaces without complications or other things getting in the way.

Also debating whether to plant my melons in the same place. Only 1 out of 4 tiny beds produced really well. I'm debating whether to move them to where the avocado tree was and just plant around 12 seeds there.

sunlight and enough moisture seem to be the parts that make the most difference. when i pick melons i can usually tell by how watery they are if they formed when we'd gotten a lot of rain. we have a few last melons that are forming and getting ripe now but i never know how they're going to finish up - between the powdery mildew and cooler temperatures i often can get edible melons towards the end of the season but they're not at all like the ones we get when prime melon season is here.

the two i cut up this morning the first one that was hidden in the rocks was watery and over ripe. barely edible but i kept some of it to eat as i hate to throw anything away. the 2nd one was more green and much better flavor.

hope your garden plans work out well for next year! i have to figure out where to put the melons next year too.

 

[flowerbug]

today i had other plans (garden club meeting) and so when Mom mentioned this morning that she was going to do more tomatoes i said that she was on her own because i had things to get ready and also needed to take care of a few other things besides...

she decided she wanted to do tomato juice for a change. so i got the food mill out and showed her how it fit together and came apart and since the handle broke off it worked pretty well by wedging it down in a large plastic food storage container i had on hand.

i did have to get involved more than i'd have liked but they got done - i had to do some smashing and quality control (looking for things she didn't see).

7 & 1/2 quarts of tomato juice. good job Mom!

we're still out of quart jars so we have some plastic containers and going to freeze these. somehow. dunno how she's going to make room in the freezer... not going to watch...