Gone Feral In Idaho

 We picked this little guy up at the new Whole Foods for this years Thanksgiving pumpkin cheesecake. We cut it in half and scooped out the seeds and strings and will bake it in foil overnight at 200 for 8 hrs. The rest of the pie will be made Wednesday night. 

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...

this is a fully photo documented tute on how to make your own self-watering container for large plants. hopefully this one will support two pumpkin plants.  we also make smaller 5 gal bucket versions with only one "well". step one, find a suitable container: drill multiple holes with a large bit in 4 inch PVC tubing, we used two 7-inch pieces. the length and width will depend on the overall size of the container. here's what the "wells" will look like in place. the holes are to allow water from outside the wells to permeate inside the two columns of potting soil. next, drill a bunch of holes in an old lid from a container cut to fit on top of the wells in side the container.  this is for the platform base that the wells sit under.  the wells will go in the two circles with x's in them. drill holes very near to those circles so that you can zip-tie the wells on to them. also drill holes near to the top edges of the wells for this purpose.   here is the bin...

So, I had a nice hop to my step after making homemade breakfast burrito's with Kyle and then eating mine while sippin' some coffee and checking the 'tubes when Rot snuck up on me again with a post of my most recent photos.  Day made, right there.  We ran errands which included yet again MORE rebar for props and a stop at the local veggie stand for corn stalk bundles.  While paying for the corn stalks I got way ballsier than I anticipated and straight out asked the guy if he'd give me a discount on pumpkins in bulk.  He first offered me 10 for $40, but if I get 20 he'd really "make it worth my time".   I have no idea what that means, but he'll be there in the afternoon so we can make the deal.  I'll update with the results.  I hope I score big!