Friday, August 19, 2011

Feel Good Friday- Sparkling's Booty



It's time for Feel Good Friday and it's time for you to participate!  Grab the button on the right, go to your blog and write about what made you feel good this week and then come here and leave a comment so we can find you!

So this week is all about my booty.

No, not that booty.

Booty of the garden variety.  As in lots of things my garden is producing right now.  These pictures are from the last week or so, not just one day, but things are looking pretty good out there right now!
CORN!!  I've got corn!  Someone said it looked like "professional" corn!
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A few missing rows, but mostly not bad.

My sunflowers look great and then it's time for them to keel over so the seeds can form and dry.  They look awful when they are keeling over.  This was just before this one breathed it's last day of glory.
That tall sunflower there has got to be more than 8 feet tall.  The one on the right that is bending over was 8 feet and I am certain this one is taller.  And I kind of like the smaller flower on something so tall.  It's not screaming about what a giant it is. 

Well, I tend to grow tomatoes that might be considered in appropriate in some parts.  I think of that appendage there as a nose, while you may see it as a little man part.  Whatever.    I keep saving seeds from a particular type of tomato that I grow and I called them my "Secret Disaster Tomatoes" because each generation is different from the first and there could be a real mess if I'm not careful.  It's all sciency and involves words like hybridization and cross pollination and purity and whatever.  Psshhht I say.  Just save a seed and plant it!  The key is to make sure no other variety of tomato is nearby so there isn't cross pollination.  But I haven't always been good about that, so I don't even know what I've created.
The main characteristic of the Secret Disaster Tomato is that it was once a Brandywine and therefore is more square and pink.  See the bigger kind here?  Those are my Secret Disasters.  The little one is an organic Roma that is new to me this year.
One of the traits (see, I can be sciency!) that I do not like in my Secret Disasters is the cracking you see here.  They are fine to eat, but look ugly.  I saved seeds last year from the ONE tomato in my whole crop that did not crack, but alas, some are cracking this year.  yes, I understand that the parent tomato may not resemble the offspring tomato because of cross pollination and yes, I know about Punnet squares and genes and recessive genes.  But I like to be ignorant in the garden.  It gives me so much more to complain about! 
I'm a stickler for trying to make things work, so I just can't stop saving seeds and replanting the next year.  I think this year's crop did well, compared to last year's.  Not a lot of blemishing (see, I can talk gardeny too!) and they are relatively all the same.  Here you can see the pinkish color compared to the orangey red (I'm so cool I can speak arty!)  of the Romas.

I put this on in, because this is that zinnia that was destroyed by slugs.  While her counterparts have all made taller stalks with one or two flowers, this little sucker bushed out and is blooming like you read about.  Hmmm, maybe I should use my not so sciency brain and save the seeds from this one?  But I'm not sure if that means the next generation would all be one color only.  Yeah, I will have to save some!
Here, I wanted to show you my newest tomato plants.  I planted these really late, in buckets, because I want to see if they will still ripen, once I bring them into the greenhouse and it gets cold.  They are just about to flower.  I have no idea which type these are.  Secret Disasters, most likely, and possibly "mortgage lifter" which are ENORMOUS. 

I would like to think that this is the year I will begin canning.  I suddenly had a lot of green beans.  I hate canned green beans, so why would I take a risk with canning and can them, of all things?  I know that freezing them directly is not good, so I read about how to blanch them for freezing.  So, I took this batch, did what all of the websites agreed you should do, and put them in the freezer when I was done.  Hopefully we will have good green beans later.  I plan to do this more because I've planted more beans and expect more until it freezes in the fall.

This is the biggest experiment of all.  These are watermelon plants that I didn't even start until August.  I know that is purely ludicrous because we can't even get watermelons very easily in the parts when we start them on time.  But, the greenhouse gets SO HOT right now, I thought these would love the heat and maybe still grow.  They are about to flower, and I think I might have to put them out for a few days to make sure they get pollinated.  But then I theorize that with the insane heat and lot of water, I will still get watermelons.

Sometimes, I think about what I think is fine to do in the garden, despite all of the "rules" that I read about, and I wonder if I am really D-U-M-B or if all of that writing is just the result of  what some people experience some of the time.  Like, I don't usually tell people what they HAVE to do in the garden because really, I break just about every rule and have decent results.  Maybe it's magic.  Maybe I'm on to something.  Who knows. 

But now I have a greenhouse to further my insane forays in the world of gardening and making my lists of dos and don'ts.  

And some day, you'll read about me and my famous gardening techniques.  They will be filed under what not to do in the garden.  How one gardener poisoned herself with her Secret Disaster tomatoes.

Anyway, these pictures made me feel good this week.  What made you happy?  Go write about it and get back here and post a comment so we can share in your happiness!

5 comments:

  1. I am impressed with your gardening skills. I just don't have the patience or consistency to garden!

    http://musingsandmeanderings-mlp.blogspot.com/2011/08/feel-good-friday-august-19-2011.html

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  2. This is so stinking impressive! I love that you have all of that awesome food in your garden. You are my hero!

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  3. Wow! Those are awesome pictures of your garden! Way to go! I have a question for you since you seem to be a garden expert: why does my sweet basil tate like bitter licorice? Is it because I am waiting to long to use it, even though I have been doing a good job of pinching off the flowers? Too much water? Not enough?

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  4. I don't garden mainly because I'm a doofus when it comes to growing things. I have a black thumb, but I do so enjoy the fruits of the earth, especially tomatoes. And your tomatoes or maters as we call them down here in the tomato capital of the world, look gorgeous.

    Here in Florida, this man was successful with some cross pollination experiments and he called his tomato the UglyRipe tomato. They are a bit ugly, but they are delicious. The other tomato growers are hopping mad that he's created this beautiful tomato.

    So keep on with your tomato experimentation, you never know what you might come up with.

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  5. Oh, and the thing that made me happy this week, is my sweet, oldest girl rushed sororities and got into her number one choice. So happy for her!

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