August 16, 2015 post here. August 19, 2014 post here. August 10, 2014 post here. August 18, 2013 post here.
It’s been relatively hot and sunny this week. We had a few 80-ish degree days and the garden is loving it.
Friday’s harvest being inspected by the boy cat:
In the box (L-R) — Oregon Spring tomatoes, Taxi, Sun Gold, Marketmore cucumbers, Lemon cucumber. A Tromboncino zucchini is in the foreground.
The Tromboncino plant is still going strong, with lots of fruit in process. For size reference, the netting squares are 8″:
As I mentioned in the last post, we recently cleaned up the bottom of the tomato plants (on the left, below). Peppers are in the center. Basil on the right:
In 2015 we did the first “tomato tasting” on August 12. We’re a little ways away still. Hopefully it will happen within the next 10 days. Most of the tomatoes are now starting to color up.
The Tigerellas:
Taxis (which need to be cleaned up):
Sun Gold and Yellow Pear:
The peppers are ripening too:
The Serranos are going bonkers:
The basil looks good, mostly. It seems to benefit from aggressive pruning — I think it knows fall is right around the corner:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
It’s been more than two weeks since the last post, but then, I started this post on the 6th and today is the 8th, so you can kinda see how it’s been going around here…
Previous Update post here. August 2, 2015 post here. August 3, 2014 post here. August 4, 2013 post here.
The 2013 post includes the “search favorite” picture: “Girl Cat With Bags Of Green Stuff”:
The girl cat is not impressed.
…complete with a caption referencing the 2012 Olympics — “McKayla Is Not Impressed”.
Also — “Green Stuff” wasn’t legal in Washington state at that time, which I’m sure contributed to the popularity of the photo.
The garden is finally now producing. We had a smallish midweek harvest:
The Oregon Spring are far and away the best and earliest producers this year:
The Taxis are sharing a box with the Oregon Spring. They’re “next”:
The “overview” picture. Shortly after this photo we cleaned wonky leaves out of the bottom of the tomato plants. Next week’s picture will look very different:
Note the basil on the far right of the overview picture — we’ve been trimming it back far more aggressively this year and it seems to like it. A closeup:
I feel like we could trim the basil twice a week at this point and it would just grow faster. Maybe we’ve been “doing it wrong” all along.
The Yellow Pear tomatoes are starting to ripen (bottom right) — pictured with Sun Golds:
The Paul Robeson are rocking. I have high hopes that they’ll taste good:
Bell Peppers of some sort in the foreground. So far not many have been “bored”. We’ll see:
The cucumbers are now producing 2-3 fruits every couple of days:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
Previous post here. July 26, 2015 post here. July 27, 2014 post here. July 28, 2013 post here.
A quote from the 2015 post:
2013 total weight to date: 24.6 pounds
2014 total weight to date: 22.3 pounds
2015 total weight to date: 56.4 pounds
I believe we’re at less than ten pounds of produce so far this year. My guess is that 2015 was the “sunny and hot” outlier, and that 2016 is the “cool and cloudy” outlier… The weather this week is supposed to be sunny and warm, so hopefully the yield will start to look a little more normal soon.
I think the pictures this week are similar to last week’s — only a few peppers are really starting to show color.
The overview:
The “Marketmore” cucumbers:
The “bit of color” — Gypsy peppers:
“Verde” Tomatillos — the fruits are starting to fill the husks:
Basil and Marigolds:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
Previous post here. July 19, 2015 post here. July 27, 2014 post here. July 21, 2013 post here.
We’ve been thinning out some of the Tromboncino zucchini with the idea that the plant only has a finite amount of energy to pour into fruits.
A photo of a few small zucchini and the first cucumber:
I tried to bend the Tromboncino over the top of the 8′ trellis. I’ve done it in previous years. This time I bent a little too hard, and the plant now has a 90 degree angle turn at the top. Hopefully it won’t die above that point:
Some of the basil became part of a pizza Margherita:
63% hydration, 3% oil. Last year’s frozen “assorted tomatoes” as sauce.
The Basil plants pose with Marigolds. Peppers back left, cucumbers back right:
The Taxi are getting close:
The Tomatillos continue to produce huge husks:
The Jersey Knight asparagus and strawberries now have a fence between them and the weeds. The strawberries came with the house. They were in a bad location, so we moved them. They’re loving the new place it seems:
An overview. Tomatoes on the left. Peppers front center. Basil on the right. Zucchini back left. Tomatillos back center. Cucumbers back right:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
Previous post here. June 28, 2015 post here. June 28, 2014 post here. June 23, 2013 post here.
Looking at last year.. we’re well behind. For comparison, in 2015 the zucchini was already over the top of the 8′ trellis. It’s not 5′ tall yet this time.
Today has been one of the nicest, sunniest days we’ve had in a while. There are supposed to be at least a few more nice days coming up. I doubt we’ll equal last year’s overall production, but the improved weather should help pick things up.
A few of the plants are doing at least ok. The Oregon Spring are first on the scene, as usual:
The Tromboncino are growing. Hopefully we’ll be able to start harvesting in a week or so:
Standing next to the cucumbers, looking north at tomato plants:
The flowers in the whiskey barrels are doing well. The nasturtiums have completely overrun their container:
The tomatillos have lots of flowers too:
The boy cat hanging out in the shade:
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
Previous post here. June 14, 2015 post here. June 21, 2014 post here. June 16, 2013 post here.
The weather lately has been all over the place. Looking at last year, overall we’re a little “behind”.
An overview:
[Tomatoes on the left, peppers in the front, basil on the right. The tall plants in the back center are tomatillos.]
It’s not super easy to see, but the Serranos (front right, rear right, center left) have gotten much much taller than everything else in this box:
Something ate a hole in one of the Gypsy peppers this week. I suspect earwigs again. In addition, a few other peppers had their leaves chewed on. As a remedy attempt I dosed a very few grains of Sluggo Plus at the bottom of each pepper plant. Normally I wouldn’t use that around veggies but I’m sort of out of answers. In any event, it was only 2-3 grains per plant.
Onward — We paired Taxi and Oregon Spring tomatoes again. They’re doing great:
They’re of comparable size and they’re both very early. No reason to mess with what works.
The cucumber plants are almost to the size where they can be threaded through the netting:
In the meantime, the cucumbers are sort of flopping everywhere.
Finally, we didn’t wind up with two Tromboncino this year. The smaller plants in the picture below are lemon cucumbers. Assuming that the cucumbers are allowed enough space to climb the trellis I think it’ll be fine. The sun came out from behind the clouds just as I took this photo:
More sun would be appreciated.
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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.
Back in the early 80’s TSR (the D&D people) published minigames. A minigame would come in a small plastic case with dice, a short rulebook, and a small map:
For scale: An over-exposed nickel on the left
If you look closely at the top of the picture you’ll see the hole used to hang the game for display and sale. It’s a clever all-in-one package.
We played a lot of Revolt on Antares way back when. (It was published in 1981.) It’s a fun (if oversimplified) war game in the style of Axis and Allies. Little chits represent troops. You make little stacks of chits, move them around the hex map, and use them to attack other little stacks of chits/troops. Here’s a mid-game picture:
Note that same nickel, now up at the top of the photo.
The symbols on the map represent terrain features and resources. If you squint really hard at the light blue chit on the brown island at the bottom center you’ll see that it says: “Hovercraft”, and, “2-8”. That troop unit has 2 attack and 8 movement. “Laser Tanks” are 6-4. “Jump Troops” are 3-5 (and can ignore rough terrain). And so on.
I gave up my original copy for lost years ago. I got the bug to play it again, so I bought a copy online. Naturally it was at that point my own copy resurfaced in an old D&D box.
Then I mostly forgot about the whole thing for a while. Periodically I’d see the game the closet and want to give it a go, but I didn’t get around to playing until very recently. I invited a buddy over and we tried out the most popular of the old scenarios.
The scenario calls for the “Terrans” to fight the “Rebels”. The Terran player starts out at a numerical disadvantage but gets more reinforcements over the course of the game. The game lasts ten turns, and the object is to control the most resource nodes and capitol cities at the end.
I believe that when I was younger my opponent and I would set up on opposite sides of the map and be tactical about it. Unaware of the finer points of these strategies, my buddy and I both set up in the center of the map and got into a giant slugfest.
The fight went back and forth. He was massing for another assault when I loaded a nuclear bomb onto a hovercraft… and directed the hovercraft into his two biggest stacks of troops.
And that was that.
It may be that if we played a few more times then some real strategy would kick in. Our strategies basically consisted of making the biggest piles of force we could and using those to smash smaller enemy forces.
I think we had fun with it.
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In a related note: Shopping for games used to be a lot easier, but a bit of a crapshoot at the same time. If the game was by TSR or Avalon Hill then you were likely spending your money wisely, though without online reviews there was always an element of- “You pay your money and you takes your chances.” Still, the minigames were a cheap gamble, in contrast to some of today’s $60+ games..
The summer garden harvest will be starting soon, so we’re readying for the needed freezer space by preparing dinners like this one:
Roma tomato sauce (with oregano, salt, and garlic), peppers, pancetta, and bunch onions all from the freezer. The crust was augmented with porcini powder and minced roasted tomotoes. The “white” is a light dusting of mozzarella.
FlatbreadGarden 