Wanted: Dead or Alive

So the traps are set.  No hangman's noose, no firing squad, all it took was some pie tins and beer.

And as our garden becomes a haven of death, I said to Barry, "I bet there aren't even any slugs.  They are supposed to come out at night.  I don't see a one."  And just as my conscience was clearing Barry found this cute/ugly little dude on a plastic container in the garden.

Guilt is back on the table.

Hole-y Slugs, Batman!

So my plants are growing by leaps and bounds what with all the rainfall this spring.  And then I see this...

  So I put an all call out to my Facebook friends.  And three folks stepped up:  Helen, Todd and Shannon.  The word on the street is SLUGS.  Who knew?  I think of slugs creeping along my sidewalk leaving a slimy, shimmering gick.  Come to find out they will also crawl all over your plants, mostly at night leaving chaos and mayhem behind them.  Ok well, maybe not chaos and mayhem but definitely holes in my beloved greens.  Come to find out they not only love my green leafy plants but beer.  Or at least the yeast in the beer.  One of the top things recommended by several sites and the previously mentioned Shannon was setting out pie tins of cheap beer in your garden.  The tins will attract the slugs and they will dive right in.  Sadly, they will drown. I'm trying not to be squeamish as they will no longer pester my plants.  There seems to be some controversy whether the beer should be stale or fresh.  I think I'll go with fresh first time around.  I mean... it is their final meal.

So wish me luck tomorrow as I endeavour to take my slugs out on the town and get them drunk as skunks.

What Happens When You Can't Find A Strawberry Planter

This is crazy, right?  It seems like you could find a strawberry planter at every Tom, Dick, and Home Depot garden center during the spring.  Yet I have been on this quest for the last 3 years with no avail.  But we would not be thwarted!  We made our own.  Quick, easy and fun.  And the side benefit?  Sophia feels a real ownership in these strawberries and takes care of them like her children.  The excitement of a new red, ripe strawberry is felt through the entire household.

So here we go.  First, buy three sizes of sand pals (this was surprisingly tricky and I had to go to several stores).  It was also a little difficult to convince Sophia there were plenty of sand buckets for the beach leftover.
 







Next drill holes in said buckets.  Make sure the holes are decent size as drainage is important.  We also put in some little white patio rocks in the bottom to help with drainage.

Fill with potting soil.  We added some Leaf Grow.  Leaf Gro is the butter of the gardening world.  Barry always says, "Mo butter, Mo better."  Same goes with Leaf Gro.  When filling the bottom larger

 
bucket, fill it about 3/4 full then set in the medium sized bucket.  Now you can fill the rest of the bucket up with soil.

Now the fun part.  You take the strawberries out of their market
pack container and loosen the roots.  You stuff, and I mean stuff, them into the the sides between the two buckets.  When you get them in there put a little more soil along the sides to fill in any gaps.  We put in 3 plants around the big, bottom bucket.  You repeat this with the medium sized bucket but put in 2 plants.  When you place the smallest bucket, plant only one strawberry plant in there.

Tah Dah!  You now have a colorful strawberry planter for your deck or stoop.  It took 3 buckets, a few rocks, a small bag of potting soil, and 6 strawberry plants.

Your final act is to water and pick your strawberries as the spring days pass by.

The Miss America Pageant of Tomatoes

So going into this years tomato buying, Barry and I have done a little research and were schooled by said delightful staff at Thorne Farm.  We now know the difference between indeterminate and determinate tomatoes.  Indeterminate will vine and keep producing fruit for as long as you keep picking but determinate have a definite growing time period and are more bush like.  We knew we wanted more indeterminate because vining tomatoes fit better in the square foot gardening plan as they will grow up and not out.

 

We know we have space for 12 plants.  This should give us enough for us to eat, share and can.  This is a bit of a guessing game for us and we tend to overdo things (Remember my husband’s motto:  Bigger Is Better).  With that said, we want to make sure we’ve bought the prettiest most talented tomatoes.  The contestants are…

Maraglobe Select:  They will produce in 72 days, which is pretty fast for a tomato.  It is determinate but we have loved these in the past.  They are sweet with not many seeds, which is a huge plus for me.  Seeds gross me out.  I think it stems from someone once telling me that if you swallowed a watermelon seed, it would sprout in your stomach.  Ummmm… yuck.

Green Zebra:  Also a 72 day-er. It meets our indeterminate needs. I am not as big a fan (I mean… they’re green) but Barry loves them.  They also give a nice color splash to your tomato salads.

German Striped:  Ah, the love of my tomato life.  These 78 days to maturity beasts are delicious.  They have in the past taken a HUGE amount of space in our garden but now that we are using our new vocabulary-indeterminate, we can vine them upward.  If you haven’t tasted the sweet German Stripe you haven’t lived.

Yellow Lemon:  This is new to the Parker Garden.  We have not canned past Yellow Brandywine tomatoes, we just like them for the color it brings to our culinary presentations.  But the Brandywines always split funny and I’m not crazy about the taste.  So we are trying this type.  Indeterminate but 85 days to maturity.

Mortgage Lifter:  Well, we picked this one because the story behind it was cool.  M.C. Byles who bred these tomatoes took the biggest varieties he could find and bred them.  He sold the plants for a dollar a piece and was able to pay down his mortgage with the money earned.  Way to go M.C.  80 days to maturity, indeterminate.

Late Ripening:  I suspect this isn’t their real name and are under some kind of witness protection program or something.  These are also a test.  They are red, late ripening tomatoes.  You pick them, put them in a cool location and it takes them 2-3 months to ripen.  Yup, winter tomatoes.  I’ll let you know how this all goes or if it is a fairy tale of tomatoes.

  

Early Girl:  We haven’t been super functional yet.  But most of our plants are Early Girls.  65 days, indeterminate, and you have beautiful red tomatoes to eat and can.  This way I get my canning over early. 

Who will be crowned Miss Best Producer or Miss Tastiest?  Only time will tell.

Sheep and Wool Festival Side note:

                                

So I forgot to tell you all about the best $20 bucks we ever spent.  We bought a handmade broom.  It is FANTASTIC!!!!  It was made to be an outdoor broom and it sweeps up everything from our grass clippings to our piles of dirt on my deck from planting to our dried worms from the sidewalk.

Look at the inside of the broom… that’s the secret weapon right there!

The inside bristles are super thick.

I don’t care what Ray Montero, one of this year’s dragees, says.  There is no way you can get this quality broom from Home Depot.  Want the porsche of brooms?  Write Bob Haffly of Lone Oak Brooms, P.O. Box 160, Amberson, PA  17210

Here’s Bob on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwVKrRHDFmg

I Can’t Pull The Wool Over Your Eyes

Ah!  At last one of my favorite days of the year.  The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival http://www.sheepandwool.org/.  Now I’ve posted about this lovely little event in the past but just in an “I went and bought my tomatoes at the Sheep and Wool Festival.  What a geek!” kind of way.  SO this year I’ll give you a little more detail.  This year the lucky dragees were some dear friends and my cousin Rebekah and her husband, Kyle.  Dragees, sadly, usually end up carrying a child, a pack of tomatoes and/or a Hulk size lemonade.

I’m going to digress this time and just tell you about our wonderful day and what you should do when you visit the Festival next year.   In the next couple days I’ll post about the tomatoes that will be joining us this year.

Your first stop will be the Thorne Farm stand www.thornefarm.com.

Their tomato plants are divine and they are so helpful and knowledgeable.  An added bonus?  I see they have a blog as well, which I will be checking out. And you may want to as well http://www.thornefarm.blogspot.com/ . They are the reason so many unsuspecting friends and family have been waiting in line with us to get into a sheep and wool festival. 

It will be a hot one so the only logical solution?  A lemonade.  A huge lemonade.  A lemonade that won’t even fit in the cup holders of your stroller.  There is something wonderful about a lemony drink with crystallized sugar in the bottom.

Next, you stop at the lamb concession stand even though it is only 10:30 a.m.  You stop because it is so yummy and you’ve seen the lines at noon before.  You stop even though a few feet away are live sheep smelling the cooking juices of their brethren.  You don’t care.

And because you have no shame, after your little luncheon you do walk through the sheep barns.  You will ooh and aah over the tiny little lambs as well as marvel over how soft yet oily their wool is.  You will watch your cousin commune with the sheep because, after all, you both are from Michigan and it is expected that you have some knowledge of sheep husbandry.

Finally, you will have had enough of bra-less women, wool skeins, the sun beating down on you and will want to get back to your home to start planning where all the tomatoes will go.  Your child will beg you for an ice cream, which if the most fitting end to a lovely morning.