Category Archives: Garden

Anything from any garden.

Tomatoes

Garden,

On growing tomatoes, I am not there yet. Last year I had a plant which produced four tomatoes. A ripe one disappeared from the plant, and must have been eaten by a garden visitor. There is one for which I do not remember the fate, and the two harvested ones were unevenly ripe. The plant kept growing and flowering, and I, not knowing better, thought that the lack of tomatoes was due to a lack of bees. And I tried to induce pollination with an electric toothbrush to no avail.
This year I planted two kinds directly into the soil last spring, and purchased some plastic tomato supports. One kind gave exactly one, nice-sized tomato, and the other kind yielded many tomatoes on plants which grew tall, and branched. The first tomatoes were about two inches in diameter, but now in the last week of July, they are little more than one inch.
This producing tomato cultivar, “Money Maker”, is not one which I will plant again, because the tomatoes have a very thick skin. I understand that we can start seeds now to be planted in the fall, I intend to try several kinds of cultivars, to see if they will grow in our back yard under our conditions, and to see if we like any of them!

Key Lime Marmalade

Garden, Kitchen, ,

Because I had a little over 1 pound 8 ounces of key limes from our tree in the back yard, I decided to make some key lime marmalade.

DSC08010  Key limes at various stages of development.   This is the first year that I saw yellow key limes on the tree and on the ground.  I thought they must be ripe, and a quick online check revealed that ripe key limes are indeed yellow.

So I found some online sources, and followed directions for what looked like the most efficient method, which did not involve peeling the white pith off of the limes.   DSC07994 I sliced them, food, processed them, and soaked them in the requisite amount of water overnight, and brought the lime slices and water to a boil, after which I added the proper amount of heated sugar.  and boiled some more.

DSC08002 Here is my recipe from food.com.

DSC08000   I oven sterilized the jars in a 220 degree Fahrenheit oven, and boiled the lids. because they were lined with a rubber-like material.

DSC07995 Sterilizing the jars.  I left them right side up.

DSC07998  I boiled the lids with their soft plastic or rubberized liners.

DSC08005  After the least straight forward part, putting the lids on the jars, here are some refrigerator marmalades.   All told, it took me about four plus hours to make five and a half small jars :

  • 1 hour  Prepare the fruit
  • 1 hour  Clean the jars
  • 1 hour  Tend the boiling and congealing fruit
  • 1 hour  Sterilize and fill the jars

 

August Garden, Compost Eighteen Days Later

Garden, Weeds,

Here is the rotatable composter on August 8.

DSC07401

DSC07545Here is the same compost, plus a little more, eighteen days later.  You can see that it has settled a lot.

DSC07543 I moved it into a place where the weeds in the unplanted garden are grass.  This indicates a sunnier spot, because grass requires quite a bit of sun.

For this composter, I am trying to implement a hot compost method, where sun is helpful to reduce cooling.  The hot compost method produces faster decomposition, and better kills weed seeds (along with killing some of the beneficial things) than the cool compost method.   The heat is caused by bacteria which function well at a higher temperature, about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.   Since I have not gotten compost from this rotating  composter, yet, I would like to see if I can spur it on!

Another source says to keep your hot compost in the shade, and that the temperature spikes up and cools down to maintain a hotter temperature according to the ability of the special bacteria to grow, we need to give it more material and continue suitable moisture and nitrogen conditions.

One day after doing this, I put my hand into the middle of the compost, and it felt like it was only slightly warmer than body temperature, maybe 100 degrees.  Two days after doing this,  the compost was cool in the morning, so now I will try to increase the compost volume to see if I can improve the growth of the heat producing bacteria.