Category: Garden

Posted on

Double Determinates

Who doesn’t love a home-grown tomato? Well, I’ve met people who don’t, but I personally think they’re not people but rather some type of The Omen devil-spawn, and no one can change my mind. I am fully prepared to debate this.

So to increase my production of delicious produce and repel demons at the same time, I planted a second row of determinate tomatoes this year, bringing the total to 18, and to compliment the 12 indeterminate tomatoes on the trellis, and the volunteers that pop up throughout the gardens, and the two extra I put in a pot on the deck. I really like tomatoes.

So standby for a selection of seductive solanums! (AKA, tomato porn):

Here’s a glorious picture!
And another!
And another!

On a more informational note, this was the first time I tried broiling the tomatoes for sauce. The standard blanching/skinning/de-seeding applies, but the flesh is then slightly browned before being added to the pot. I also included a full mirepoix this time too.

Before the stick blender
And after

I think the broiling somehow also brightened the red color, as my sauces are usually more muted, so bonus. I’ll definitely be taking this approach again.

I usually prefer rigatoni or radiotori for red sauce, but I tried bucatini this time

And I won’t have to wait long. In one week’s time, the bowl has filled again. Pizza sauce next!

–Simon

Posted on

CatsKills

I want to shoot neighborhood cats sooooo bad.

Rewind.

Okay, so I just don’t want cats on my property.  I find this to be a very reasonable request.  Yet, in the internet debate over cats being allowed to roam unrestricted outside, the arguments against this practice focus on the dangers posed to the cats themselves, which is still a self-centered argument, even if it’s on the against side.  It overlooks what should be the prime reason: it’s rude to other people.

Even if letting your cat outside wasn’t inherently dangerous, it’s still pissing and shitting in my vegetable garden and digging things up.  It’s being destructive to my property and hobbies, and potentially passing infectious diseases into the produce I eat.  Under no condition would a rational person consider this okay.

And yet – there they are.

And it turns out that the problem was worse than I thought, revealed to me after my garden camera install.

…And that’s just one day.

But I’ve ranted about roaming cats before.  No need to go through that futile discussion again.  Instead, I decided to find a preventative measure that was more likely than changing a cat owner’s behavior.

Although there are other animals I wish to deter, like this skunk

…and some of the squirrel population (but it was fun to talk to them through the camera).

Instead, I invested in a motion-activated ultrasonic alarm.  I had limited expectations, but I haven’t caught any more cats on camera in the two days since I installed it!  So I bought two more.  It seems feasible that I can at last create a cat-free perimeter.  The 3rd one I’ll run at a higher frequency and see if that does anything to the squirrels.  That’d be a double win after last year’s tomato patch decimation.

And the camera worked for one of its intended purposes.  I love it when a plan comes together.

–Simon

Posted on

Winter Carrots

As I mentioned last month, I am on a gardening quest to extend the growing season.

Phenology 2022

In so doing, I’ve cataloged these extended growing times through observation and failure, have been largely successful overall.

Bastard deer couldn’t even finish a whole carrot.

I also mentioned Bambi, amusing in that it was these rampaging ravenous ruminates that forced my winter carrot harvest – probably the last of my phenologic experiments of the prior year.  The goal was to dig them up at the beginning of March, at which point I would then plant onions and radishes in the newly-vacant and opened earth, just before the carrots started growing again and converting their sugar.  If that were successful, I would have closed the gap entirely on the fallow period.

Still, I was close.  I just need to…address the wildlife situation.

And make more stock!

–Simon