Gold in the Garden & Podcast Update

How much does a pirate pay for corn?

A buccaneer!  (A buck an ear.  Get it?)

Harvest time is in full swing in the garden.  The apricots were a success.  That little tree produced about 4 dozen pieces of fruit.  The Santa Rosa plum gave a bounty too.  Excellent.  I don’t  measure and weigh the harvest; so those details simply aren’t tracked and recorded.  The tomatoes (Tigerella and Cour Di Bue pictured) are starting to ripen and carrots are mature enough for pulling.  BUT the big news is that I’m a successful corn producer.  Not a farmer; but, dang it, I was able to harvest my 1st cob last night.  GOAL!  All I wanted was to sample one cob that I had grown.  Now that I’ve met that demand, I need to learn the finer points of freezing corn.  Golden Bantam Yellow Sweet Corn was planted in waves with the hopes of having fresh corn all summer long.

I’ll consider growing pop corn if I learn that it tastes as good or better than my preferred brand – Orville Redenbacher.

 

Podcast Update

Sadly, this “podcast” has come to a sudden end.  The fruit on the Split Leaf Philodendron broke off from the plant on June 29.  The pod-like fruit looks like an elf’s slipper.

Curiosity got to me; so I split the thing open to learn what was going on inside.  Kinda looks like a weird banana.

I’ll be watching for this next June.

Pumpkin Planting Time

Planting pumpkins in June should allow enough time to develop some nice squash to enjoy starting in September.  Today, I planted 4 hills (3 seeds each) of Jarrahdale Pumpkins.  Peat moss, sand, and soil amendment was added to help fluff up the raised bed.  Terroir Seeds description on the package lists 95 – 100 days should be allowed to produce 12 – 20 pound blue-grey fruits with stringless, thick, medium-sweet flesh.  The vines are known to give high yields of pumpkins that are good keepers.  I hope to eat the pumpkins as well as use them for decorations.  Aphids, pill bugs, earwigs, and beetles are expected pests.  Yes.  I’m still looking for toads.

In addition to the pumpkins, 2 more rows of Golden Bantam Corn were planted.  When my new order of Borlotto Solista Beans arrive, they will be planted amongst the corn to help establish a second 3 Sisters bed.  A few more Sugar Baby Watermelons seeds were sown in the melon bed.

Now everything is planted and ready for the summer heat although this weekend there is a chance of rain down here in the valley and snow up in the mountains.

Summer’s Cast of Characters:

• Corn - Golden Bantam
• Squash - Lemon
• Beans - Borlotto Solista
• Pumpkins -Jarrahdale
• Bell Peppers – Red Beauty, Red Marconi, Super Heavyweight
• Watermelon – Malali, Sugar Baby
• Tomatoes – Al Kuffa, Beefsteak, Brown’s Yellow Giant, Heinz, Rutgers, Santa Clara, Tigerella,

There will be onions, carrots, radishes, and French marigolds planted whenever the seeds arrive to act as beneficials for the main crops.

Gardening – More Than Just Plants

Local red tape seems to be getting in the way of school children caring for, harvesting, and enjoying a school vegetable garden.  Nutty.  Some local schools have the garden set up but are blocked from eating what they grow.  The local paper had an article on Sunday delving into the details. When my garden gnomes were in middle school, their science classrooms looked out onto a garden with a greenhouse.  The entire garden area was big but unattended.  It was a shame.  I believe the garden continues to decay but I’m looking into the matter.

What a shame that free meals of junk are readily available to munchkins of all ages – some three times a day, yet they cannot eat a healthy carrot grown in carrot country.  What a shame.

They won’t know how a juicy summer plum forms as it hides in the shelter of a canopy of green leaves.

Plum - Santa Rosa

Or how a juicy ripe strawberry can also be enjoyed by the birds that hunt the bugs that also love the juicy ripe strawberries.  (Can you find the ravaged berry?)

 Strawberries – Sweet Pinky

Or how a juicy peach grows from a hard fuzzy weird looking thing that points straight up from the tree branch.

Peach – O’Henry

The deteriorating middle school garden would be a great site for a weekend garden club to meet.  Perhaps the Senior Center a mile to the south could provide some expert gardening volunteers while sharing with the children.  I don’t think it’s a matter of money here.  It’s a matter of matching up all interested parties to make something good happen again.  Honestly.  I’ll give each student 2 zucchini seeds each if need be.  What a tremendous way to give students lessons in botany, biology, geology, math, art, literature, physical education, and so much more.  I’m of the mind set that there would be much less ADHD diagnosis if a child ate right and had the opportunity to burn off a load of steam.

I would like to know if you have gardens at your local schools – most especially if those schools are in California. You thought our State flower was the California Poppy.  Wrong.  It’s red tape dispensed by the nuttiest group of squirrels ever!  Leave your ideas in a comment following this post or comment on the paper’s website.  In the meantime, I’m going to check out the California School Garden Network.  Is Mrs. Obama in the neighborhood?  I may need her help.

Garden Note:

Two varieties of tomatoes have blossoms forming - Tigerella and Santa Clara Canner.  They haven’t even been put in the ground!

More ‘Maters!

This morning I headed down to the farmers’ market.  The Tomato Lady has a stand with loads of tomato plants for sale that she has grown.  I didn’t see her at her regular station so I walked on down to the gal that sells cut flowers and potted herbs.  Today, she had tomato plants for sale.  Great.  I’ll pick up a variety that I haven’t tried before to supplement my measly seedlings.  I about choked paying $3.25 for one plant!  Heavens.  That’s about the price of a packet that contains about 100 seeds.  Oh well.  I’m tired of the mess inside that starting seeds brings.  It’s the price I have to pay.  The Santa Clara Canner originated in Italy and is a great all round tomato.

After picking up a sack of oranges from a Dinuba citrus farmer, I wandered down to a stand that grows veggies and eggs up in the foothills east of my neighborhood.  A nice bunch of carrots and a bunch of beets had my hands full (I forgot to bring my canvas bag.).  Dang it.  The lettuce was great over at Farmer Tesch’s stand; so I grabbed a nice head of Romaine ($1.50).  I saw stuff at the grocery store that was close to $3 a head that wasn’t fit for pigs.  I don’t have any green lettuce in the garden thanks to the appetites of pill bugs and earwigs.  Now my hands were really full.  Then I spotted the Tomato Lady!  She had moved her stand closer to the sunny side of the street.  Yikes.  She had tons of tomato plants from which to choose.

Her helpful self made photo albums catalog each variety with photos and growing information.  Her plants in paper cups cost only $2.  Did you know:  The Rutgers tomato was introduced in 1934 by Rutgers breeder Lyman Schermerhorn as an ideal locally (New Jersey) well-adapted and improved "General Use" tomato for processing (canning and juicing) as well as fresh market. Rutgers tomato was developed and released in the period between WW I and WW II. 

• Pleasing flavor and taste of the juice
• More uniform sparkling red internal color ripening from center of the tomato outward
• Smooth skin
• Freedom from fruit cracking
• 'Second early' maturity
• Handsome flattened globe shape
• Vigorous healthy foliage to ripen more fruit and reduce sunscald
• Firm thick fleshy fruit walls for its time, though considered extremely soft by today's definition of tomato firmness
• Uniformity true to type in the field

A fellow backyard farmer at work brought in some tomato seedlings for anyone to enjoy.  She hasn’t been able to face the necessary job of thinning her seedlings.  I understand and will separate my choice.  I picked up a Tigerella cup.

Here’s a few things about Tigerella:

• Maturity -59 days
• Type – Heirloom
• Vine – Indeterminate (That means tomatoes all summer long instead of determinate which means all at once.)
• Plant height - 9 feet
• Fruit Weight - 4 oz
• Leaf - Regular leaf
• Color - Bicolor: Primarily red with yellow stripes
• Shape – Globe

Tigerella was developed in England and produces orange and red striped fruit.  We’ll see if this English dandy can hang with the big boys in Bakersfield.  My money is on my favorite, Al Kuffa.  But I hope I’m wrong and every plant is a wild success in the garden.

I headed up the hill to check out Garden Fest.  Everything was just getting underway.  Loads of plants for sale, gardening related booths, and booths not so garden related offered a bunch of stuff.  It looked like there would be a great crowd to help fund the Agriculture Department at Bakersfield College.