Gone Feral In Idaho

I've found that I really drag my feet on a new post if I don't have any of my own photos. I've been meaning to address the garden plans for this year and I don't have any examples of what I consider a reason to grow. I might be a jerk, but when we plan on growing something, my rule is that if it is good and easily procured at the store (cheap) but difficult to grow, we don't grow it. Brassicas are on that list due to my awful attempts at dealing with aphids. Brussels sprouts were a huge space waster considering they were covered with aphids with all but non-organic pesticides. Should I eat the store bought ones? That is a great question, but not one for now. I had a n interesting talk with a pathologist that will only eat organically grown meat, just to avoid those nasty neurological wasting diseases we've heard about in the past. I digress. My goal this year is to continue my delicate new love affair with the tomato. I am a born tomato hater. They are full of ...

We harvested the first two of our rouge vif d'etampes pumpkins. The vines had been badly eaten by squash beetles and were drying up. We finally started getting cucumbers and zucchinis. These are heirloom sweet zukes, deliketesse cukes, and another I don't remember the name (good thing we write this stuff down).  Some salsa peppers, strawberries, black cherry toms, a super steak sandwich tom, and some of our burned sweet peppers. None of our sweet pepper plants are doing well. They are producing well, but all the fruits are getting burned in our intense sunlight.  Here we have jalapenos and sweet cherry 100 hybrids. The sweet cherry plants have not done well this year.  Hope for the future- the Christmas pole Lima beans are starting to produce.  This year's melon, and early Minnesota variety are starting out well.  Rosa Bianca eggplant is ripening. The thorn less Triple Crown Blackberry plants got trimmed back. The new lat...

A loosing battle with severe environmental allergies has sapped my get up and go, including my blogging. Luckily I have been taking photos, so I'll try to drag my but to do a garden update post. beware: rabid dog the quinalt strawberries are doing really well in their third year brandywine transplanted with homemade wall of waters tomatillo, looking great the pondtainer got some new plants, I will add some native plants as soon as I figure out what to plant gratuitous pic of the dog and corkscrew rush ground cherry random tomato bloom last, but not least, the first tomato of the year is a black krim.

It is that time of year again.  The seed catalogs are arriving in the mail!  And believe it or not, I am already planning on the next summer's gardens.  I tried growing the tomato Black Krim: Yes, a "black" tomato.  I wrote that I tried, because, well I mislabeled all of our tomato seedlings and my two plants didn't get put in the right spot resulting in about only two ripe tomatoes.  Let me tell you something.  I don't care for tomatoes.  I'd rather look at dead bodies than take a bite out of a whole tomato.  I love ketchup, salsa, spaghetti sauce, bruschetta, etc... but I've never been a fan of the BLT, I always order hamburgers without that pale mealy slice, and in last years, my only interest was in making sauces and bruschetta.  Let me tell you, those two Black Krims were really tasty.  They had a much richer flavor that needed no salt.  the dark flesh was enchanting.  This year I plan to grow three ki...

Sad flower, hanging head in shame:) I've become a terrible garden blogger.  With is being September and all, I am really busy with my other blog about the Halloween yard display or rather haunt.  Things in the gardens are doing fine.  The sunflowers have produced some massive seed heads, although I will probably not grow the Burpee Super Snacks because they had a big problem with toppling over (that may be my fault).  The mammoth variety seemed to be stronger although the heads drooped. We harvested a bazillion tomatoes this weekend, one massive zucchini, some peppers, crooknecks, and a couple a cukes.  The zucchini ended up getting gutted of seeds and made as a sort of meatloaf holder.  We had a bunch of game meat from K's folks that he is trying to power through.  I must say it was quite tasty.  Sadie had a taste test for herself the last time he made massive zucchini loaf boats, actually she devoured most of one that he...

Here is Harvest Monday ( really late ): J for New Mexico Big Jim.  He was really tasty in a breakfast burrito. Eggplant, what we call squish, a zucchini, and two- count them two cukes! The Squish and cukes already accounted for, let me add a ton of paste tomatoes, a few beefsteaks, a bucket (almost) of cherry tomatoes, and one sunflower head full of Burpee Super Snack seeds.  YUM!

This week's haul included cherry, Roma, Super San Marzano, and Super Steak hybrid tomatoes, a bunch of jalapeños, and a Flavorburst Hybrid sweet pepper.  It looks like we will be getting a ton of salsa peppers soon as well as a bunch more eggplants.  Of course there are gazillions of green tomatoes still on the vines.  The low tonight is 38 degrees Fahrenheit, I hope it warms up a bit.  

We visited Ethan and Marybeth yesterday and got to take a peek at Ethan's garden. He has Roma, cherry and super steak hybrid tomatoes, a Brussels sprout, basil beans fall broccoli, fall peas, and corn in this full-packed garden.  We enjoyed some fresh bruschetta, really enjoyed it with garden tomatoes and herbs.  

Let's see, we have cherry, roma, Super San Marzano, and beefsteak tomatoes, cucumbers, a giant zucchini, a sweet bell pepper, and a Giant Marconi pepper, two crooknecks, and a strawberry.   I heart Kyle. I used these guts that were ripening on the sill with others and spent three hours making tomato sauce for eggplant parmesan that we'll prepare later.  With these guys below: I'll post some pics of the dish when it's done and we've reviewed it.  With us luck!

The cherry tomatoes are officially in full swing.  Our space saving square foot garden makes for some interesting picking though; I've had to become a bit of a contortionist to get the ripe ones way inside the raised bed.   Pickling cucumbers: Supersteak Hybrids: Squash,cucumber, and Jalapeños: Get this, we got potatoes!  The fingerling potatoes in the stackable boxes produced without ever blooming.  The leaves started to yellow and dry and we figured better now than never for harvest, so we gently scooped out peat and soon found this: We dug and harvested and removed levels, and dug some more.  We ultimately ended up with over 2 lbs of red fingerling potatoes: Finally we got Super San Marzanos, two Black Krim, and whatever romas we are growing: