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#The garden of earthly HOA violations
gallusrostromegalus · 2 years
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So, New Year, New Garden.
The first garden was named #The Garden Of Earthly HOA Violations
Then I moved to somewhere without the bane of neighborhood snitches and last year's garden was #The Garden At The End Of The Universe
But given the recent state of... Everything, that feels too fatalistic and maybe a bit like tempting fate. So, what should I call the summer 2022 garden?
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libraford · 5 years
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Everyone tells you about the zucchini.
No one tells you about the zucchini advice. Because the minute you plant your wee little zucchini plants, you will be inundated with unsolicited advice on how to handle the massive amounts of zucchini that you don’t have yet. 
I shall now pass this wisdom on to you, so that you may have a list of all the things you might do with large amounts of zucchini- should you be mysteriously gifted with someone else’s unwanted crop. 
Which brings me to bullet point number one:
Give your unwanted crop to someone else. This is a longstanding tradition in suburban areas, where someone wanting to start a garden may have been under the very incorrect assumption that one plant yields one fruit. Well, soccer mom, you are incorrect. Welcome zucchini hell- hope your friends are loyal, and they didn’t make the same mistakes you did. 
Thinly-sliced zucchini will freeze well. 
Matchstick-sliced zucchini will also freeze well. 
Zucchini Bread
for use as a ballast
Sliced and stir-fried
Sliced and steamed with other vegetables
Have you considered giving them to your neighbors?
Make a relish out of shredded zucchini and carrots. Add radish if you’re feeling froggy. 
Grill them in olive oil with balsamic vinegar
Feed them to the chickens and the pigs. 
Stuffed, fried zucchini flowers. 
Do consider bringing your spare zucchinis to queer meet-ups, because it is likely that your queer friends are in need of greens and fiber in their diet. 
wepon
chocolate zucchini cake
pickle them.
Also minced. Minced will freeze well. 
Ratatouille. 
Zucchini Pancakes
Zucchini Brownies
Stuffed zucchini boat
See that fool over there who left his car doors unlocked? I bet he’d love some zucchini. 
Greek Stuffed Zucchini
Under the cover of night, take the seeds of your bountiful zucchini and plant them covertly on the property of your local bigoted politicians. 
Zucchini soups
Zucchini noodles
A lot of y’all are suggesting to compost the zucchinis. This is what you do if you want significantly more zucchinis next year. 
Sauteed with garlic, butter, pepper, and salt
Grated zucchini freezes well also. 
Cheese and zucchini souffle  (cheese souffle plus zucchini minced) 
Vegetable lasagna
Zucchini compote (just slow cook the shit out of it) 
Zucchini quiche
Swaddle your oversized zucchini like a baby and when your neighbor asks to hold the baby, throw it at her and run. 
Zucchini parmesan. 
Zucchini chips
Breaded and fried zucchini
And I’m sure there’s tons more because zucchinis are a versatile starchy vegetable which means that they have endless possibilities. Use your imagination and build your new kingdom on courgettes. Bend them to your will. 
And then eat them. 
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abalisk · 3 years
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Fun fact: If you want to have a constant supply of green onion, just cut what you need off what you get at the store and stick the root in a pot of soil outside where there's plenty of sun. The plant will grow back in full in a few weeks.
This also works for leeks and what's neat is you can clump them all together in the same space and they don't compete!
Do this in various pots and you'll end up with a rotating supply of green onion, so that while one is still growing from a trim, the rest are ready to harvest.
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nongenti-decem · 4 years
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"So, we have the chickens, Alcremie, and the garden of earthly HOA violations has yielded another perfect fae circle."
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uncitedquotes · 5 years
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The Garden of Earthly HOA Violations
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gallusrostromegalus · 3 years
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Hello do you have any recommendations for small (like grape?) beginner tomatoes for someone who lives in Portland (oregon) your tomato post was very informative but I'm not sure how to get started
The Sweet 100′s or Indigo Cherry tomatoes should grow well there! 
Tomato Care Basics:
Tomato does best with full sun (6 or more hours in direct sunlight per day) and regular watering, but don’t water it if it’s dirt is still wet.
Tomato roots are almost as big as the plant is above ground, so make sure your tomato has either a HUGE pot (I used the bigass tubs people use to store christmas decorations or other shit) or is put in the ground.
Make sure to put 2-3 eggshells crunched up real fine under your tomato when you put it in the ground/pot so it has enough calcium, or use a good tomato fertilizer if you think your dirt isn’t that good (Fox Farm makes a great one)
Do not put Baby tomato plant outside until it’s going to be at least 45 Degrees at night.
In the event of a cold snap/Frost, cover tomato with one of those flat sheets you get with bedding sets but nobody freaking uses.  they’re mad good frost insulators.
Baby your tomato while it is young- fertilize before planting, keep up on the water, give it shade if it starts to get crispy, play it mozart or whatever-  right until it develops it’s first flowers. Once the Tomato flowers, neglect and abuse it to the point of injury but not past the point of death.  A tomato is a remarkably sapient plant, and it needs the Fear Of It’s Own Demise in order to get adequately horny and flower enough to set fruit properly. Miss a few waterings.  Let it get sunburnt once. Break off a few leaves on branches that aren’t flowering.  Once the tomato is getting abused to the degree it likes, it will start setting TONS of flowers and shift it’s energy focus from growing plant to making fruit. Yes, Proper Tomato Husbandry involves a certain degree of Sexual Sadomasochism.  Don’t worry, the Tomato likes it.
ADVANCED TOMATO HUSBANDRY:
Get your Tomato some friends- Carrots! Turns out, Planting Tomatoes and Carrots in the same bed/large Bin is great for both plants- Tomatoes benefit from the soil areation and microrhyzal fungi that carrots provide, and carrots get free pest control from the Tomato’s constant chemical warfare.
Yes, tomatoes constantly commit chemical warfare- they excrete toxins to keep off pests (they’re related to deadly nightshade, which is deadly specificially to avoid being eaten by insects and mammals), exude pheromones to attract pollinators, and unleash all kinds of weird shit kill rival plants like weeds or Other Tomatoes.  This is why Tomato plants have such a distinctive musk and why so many people get rashes from handling the plants.
Speaking of, the only thing better for a Tomato than Carrot Friends is A Rival Tomato, because seething hatred is an important part of Balanced Tomato Psychology. Get a second Tomato and put it within 6 feet of the first and the two of them will VIOLENTLY attempt to out-reproduce the other, while also pollinating each other in a sort of horticultural kismesitude. 
You can get even greater rivalry effects by having more tomatoes but: -the effect maxes out at about 5 plants per 100 sq ft, and if you have too many in small area they will for-reall kill each other before they can fruit. -If you do it right, you will have literally dozens of pounds of tomatoes on your hands come august so you better have a plan for that.
The carrots also love when there is a Rival Tomato, esp if all three are in the same bed becuase the carrots are also Proactive Thinkers and tattle to the tomatoes to make them put out even more rival-and-weed killing chemicals, which help protect the carrots and make them grow more vigorously.
if you’ve got deer and rabbits in the area, put a border of Marigolds around the edge of your bed/growing area to discourage them.  If your fruits are still going missing you have either squirrels or kleptomanical neighbors.  Both pests can be solved by blasting them with the hose.
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gallusrostromegalus · 3 years
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If you ever want to do a "Top 10 home gardening tomato cultivars" segment, I'm here for it. (My folks mostly plant Early Girls, but they have a ridiculously short growing season up there. I grow Sweet 100s, because they taste good enough and I gave up on growing anything other than cherries due to bastard squirrels who like to take exactly one bite out of larger tomatoes.)
OH
IT IS NOW TIME TO INFO DUMP
CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED
Ok so the actual thing with tomatoes is there are- checks google- about 10,000 tomato cultivars out there and every single one of them is different, so you should tailor your tomato breeds to what you actually want to do with them.  10K is a lot a breeds to break down, but fortunately, there are ways to Do That:
1. Determinate vs. Indeterminate 
Determinate tomatoes grow to a genetically predetermined size and start fruiting.  Pros: Tends to have a short time between planting and fruiting, don’t get bigger than a certain size if you only have so much space. Cons: Once they’re done fruiting, that’s it. you really only get the one crop out of them.  Also tend to have sad, watered-down flavor.
Indeterminate tomatoes grow as big as the space will let them, and start fruting when they get around to it. Pros: Maximum Plant for minimum investment, which can be like 10x as big as a determinate plant. Will KEEP fruiting until it gets too cold, so if you can get it in a pot you can move inside you could potentially still be harvesting tomatoes after thanksgiving like my MIL was this year.  If you live somewhere warm like SoCal or AZ, you could keep it alive all year. Cons: MUCH longer time between planting and fruiting.  Indeterminate tomates Get there when they get there. Also may be more prone to disease and pests than the more-modified determinate plants.
There are determinate and indeterminate tomatoes in all 5 of the Greater Tomato Archetypes.  Speaking of:
2. The 5 Tomato Archetypes
I’m so good at segues! 
So tomatoes come in 5 basic types, each which is generally better for something culinary than the others.  You CAN substitute different types of tomato but your food generally doesn’t come out as good.
1. Cherry: Cherry tomatoes produce fruits that are about the size of cherries.  Some people put Grape and Saladette tomatoes in here but they are WRONG, both of those belong in the “Round/All-Purpose” group because Cherry tomatoes specifically have thinner skins, more soluable pectin, and more dissolved glutemates, which means they cook VERY differently.  Cherry tomatoes also produce a shitload of fruits at a time and might be some of the heaviest producers.  Tend to be more heat-tolerant. Good For:  Fresh tomato sauces (i.e. takes less than 20 minutes to make), salads, snacking on directly off the vine like you are a small tarsier discovering a hidden bounty of fruit.
Top reccomendations are: -Indigo Cherry or Dwarf Black Krim if you can find it. I always reccomend dark-pigmented tomatoes as I find they have better flavor, pest resistence and UV tolerance. Taste fruity but not over-sweet and Very Tomato-y.  -Sweet 100/Super-Sweet 100/Sweet Millions: All varietals of the same mass-producing Cherry Tomato. Makes absolute buckets of Tomatoes, sweeter and more fruity than the Indigo cherry, good disease resistence and long growing season.
2. Paste: Paste tomatoes are thin-skinned, meaty and soft tomatoes that... well, they make good tomato paste, the basis for all long-cooking tomato sauces and recipies. They tend to be kind of Oblong and sometimes grow in fun extras like lil tomato “dicks” or weird cthulian shapes, but this doesn’t effect the flavor or nutrition There’s a shitload of great varietals in this category, I’ve yet to hear of a Bad Paste Tomato, just Less Excellent ones.   Good For: Long-cooking Tomato-based dishes like: Bolognese, chili, ketchup, BBQ etc.  Also can and freeze well.
Top Reccomendations are: -Amish Paste: MEATY, and well-suited for growing in a variety of conditions.  Paste is smooth and velvety.  Good for Chili, BBQ and Bolognese. -Opalka tomato: Russian Tomato, little more on the acidic side, grows well in places prone to surprise late frosts.  Paste isn’t as smooth but very thick. makes great ketchup. -San Marzano: THE tomato for making Marinara Sauce (also does good bolognese). Sweeter and lighter, with a slightly runnier paste that clings well to pasta. cans and freezes excellently, does well in places with HOT summers.
3. Beef: Beef tomatoes are BIG motherfuckers that kind of take a long time to grow but are very rewarding.  Beef tomatoes are firm, have a very solid meat and are best eaten raw, typically sliced onto a sandwich or seared under a broiler for a NZ Mousetrap. Not only are the fruits big but so are the Plants, so they take a long time to reach maturity and the fruit takes FOREVER to ripen but if you like a sandwich, they can’t be beat.  Also they look hella impressive on instagram. They also tend to be more prone to Blossom End Rot (which is just a calcium deficiency- just make sure to fertilize with some eggshells and don’t over-water them), and despite the size, don’t tolerate cold well. Good for: Slicing on sandwiches, eating raw like you’re biting into the still-beating heart of your nemesis and enjoying that sweet, sweet revenge, searing quickly under a broiler or putting on a Kabob.
Top Reccomendations Are: -Brandywine: Hefty, great fresh tomato flavor, and PINK.  -Big Zac: Goddamn Massive Tomato. A Real Heckin’ Chonker. meatier flavor and lots of firm flesh with few seeds. -Beefmaster: One problem with Beef tomatoes is that a lot of them are heirloom varietals that aren’t as widely available. Of the ones that are easy to get your hands on, Beefmaster is the best, but it lacks the flavor punch of Brandywine or Big Zac, but it’s not a BAD tomato.
4. Round/Early/All-Purpose: The Workhorse of Tomatoes, the Round Tomato does it all- sauces, salsa, sandwiches, salads, and snacks.  But it doesn’t do them quite as well as the other, more specialized tomatoes.  Also, some of these tomatoes have been Over-Worked and bred to fruit early and transport well, at the expense of it’s Flavor.  I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, EARLY GIRL AND BETTER BOY, YOU FLAVORLESS TENNIS BALLS, YOU INSULTS TO THE MIGHTY HOUSE OF NIGHTSHADES. Love yourself, don’t get Early Girl or Better Boy. If your season is too short for anything but the earliest of tomatoes, it may be better to grow Something Else than put all that effort in for Disappointment. That said, there are many types of Round/All-Purpose tomatoes that haven’t been overbred into corporate blandness, and I can reccomend them in good concisence if you’re not totally sure what you want to do with your tomatoes: Good For: Indecisive people, people just learning how to grow plants, using one plant for a variety of purposes, people who are not yet prepared to enter the world of Tomato Opinions. Top reccomendations are: -If you really must have an early-fruiting tomato, the Wayahead is an heirloom that people swear comes in early with good size, flavor and firm structure.  I have not personally tied this varietal but people I trust like it. -Black Krim: GOD-TIER TOMATO. It’s got it all- flavor, high yields, firm structure, pest and disease resistence, fucking purple stripes. Cans Well, Freezes well, seeds well and breeds true. Fuck yes. Other tomatoes fucking WISH they had what this Hot Bitch has. -Invincible is a damn-hard-to-kill tomato that isn’t very large but fruits reliably and preforms well all around.  it also ripens 3 fruits at a time so you’re not constantly overburdened with Tomato.  Probably my top pick for beginners that need an Emotional Support Crop.
5. Fun: This is not, strictly speaking, a traditional type of tomato, but I feel like it’s an important category for people who want to do something different or really enjoy all Tomatoes have to offer. Good For: Trying new things, taunting the garden gods with my hubris, showing off at the garden FB group, discovering new flavors of plant.
Top Reccomendations: -Mr. Stripey:  it has a goofy name, it’s yellow-and-pink striped, and it smells and tastes almost exactly like pineapple, but it doesn’t try to digest you back.  I love it. -Japanese Truffle: Dark Brown tomato that looks like someone tried to make ferro rochers at home and bungled it, and has a LONG maturation time, BUT it’s got a chocolately flavor and even at maturity has green insides which give it this. Lightness?  it’s hard to describe but it’s a fascinating flavor. The plant also is more branched and elegant than most tomatoes. Very different, very cool. -I have not personally tried Cherokee Purple but I have heard good things about it. We’ll see how it does in the garden this year. -Tomatillos and Ground Cherries:  Not actually tomatoes, but closely related. Neat herbaceous sort of flavor, like thyme but to the left.  Also comes in a fun Organic wrapping paper. -Ketchup ‘n’ Fries: a Sweet 100 tomato top grafted onto Kennebec Potato rootstock, so it grows both tomato AND potato!  Grafting was invented prbably about a week after the concept of agriculture was, and consists of taking two or more closely related plants and taping a cutting of oone into a hole in the other until the plants heal together.  Like that one gorilla-dude from Umbrella academy, but without the angst.  You can get them pre-made or attempt to make them at home if you’re feeling adventurous and are OK with potentially killing a bunch of starts while you learn.
Good Luck and Happy Gardening!
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gallusrostromegalus · 3 years
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I made you an image, feel free to use
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F A N T A S T I C.
I shall figure out how to print this and put it on my wall.
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gallusrostromegalus · 4 years
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can you please tell me how you deal with pests in the garden because your plants look soooo healthy and beautifuk. i started gardening this year for the first time (excessively, due to boredome because of quarantine) and i have an amphid INFESTATION that i can't seem to get rid of😩
Ok but you may not like the answer.
These funky lil dudes:
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North American Yellowjackets is a common name refering to two genera of Hornets,  Vespula and Dolichovespula, and these Neon Flying Babes are THE MOST voracious predators of catepillars, aphids, beetle larvae, and other bugs that like to chow on crops and flowers.  There’s an annually reoccuring nest on my house (last year it was 30 ft over the front door, this year I think they’re under the porch) and that hungry-ass colony LOVES my garden and there’s usually a dozen hunting in it during daylight hours.
100% plant-safe, organic, nature-based and highly effective pest control.
Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t aggressive- I can water, weed and harvest with them around and they don’t give a shit about me.  The undeserved rap comes from the unfortunate circumstance of:
1. Yellowjackets are sensitive to the color Yellow it looks like other yellowjackets, and Yellowjackets love hanging out with thier buddies and fucking up rival wasps.
2. Yellowjackets are freaked out by sudden motions, like plants waving in windy conditions or humans waving arms in a panic
3. Yellowjackets release a pungent odor when crushed that causes every other yellow jacket in the are to FREAK because under normal circumstances, a crushed friend means HIVE IS UNDER ATTACK RED ALERT IT’S A FUCKIN BEAR GO GO GO!!
4. Yellowjackets fuckin’ love cooked chicken.  the smell of a bucket of KFC will summon every yellowjacket for half a mile around, instigating a hornet turf war, and when some kid inevitably panics and smashes a wasp, they go from Hype to KILL A BITCH and then someone gets stung in the eyeball.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But as long as you move slowly and aren’t eating a chicken sandwich? they don’t notice you.  Wasp has other, caterpillar-related prioroities.
Oh and to keep up with the really teeny pest like mites, treehoppers, microisopods etc, I also encouraged a shitload of these to hang out: 
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This is the Bold Jumper, the big jumping spider you might see around, which has bonkers good vision and can even see the moon about as well as we can. They’re harmless and adorable and my only complaint about them is that sometimes they want to hand out on my arm and not leave and I’m always worried Im gonna hurt them trying to budge them off.
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gallusrostromegalus · 3 years
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Hello hello! I’m Thriving on your garden posts; any tips for growing radishes? My mom loves them but a lot of the ones I grow end up being kinda skinny and elongated. I’m in NorCal nearish SF and I use Big Pots to give them space...
I’ve never grown radishes but they’re on my list for this year, so I’ll post notes as things develop!  From looking at the seed catalouges though, there are several more carrot-shaped breeds of radish so maybe yours are just reverting to a feral form, like escaped pigs?
Anyone here know about radishes?
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gallusrostromegalus · 4 years
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AH OKAY, I can't have raccoons and shit coming around because they'd eat my geese. Thank you!!
If you need to get rid of a shitload of eggs in one go though, I have a Chocolate Mousse recipie: -9 eggs  -1 Bag chocolate chips -1/4 cup water
-whip eggs on HIGH in a stand mixer or with a friend with a lot of patience and great triceps for 7-9 minutes until they reach a foamy consistency and drip off the beater in a ribbon
-meanwhile, put chocolate chips and water in the biggest microwave-safe bowl you have and microwave in 30-second bursts for a total of 2 minutes, stirring in between, until thoroughly melted and slightly runny.
-pour 1/3 of the whipped eggs into the chocolate, stire to combine, scraping bowl to incoproate all the chocolate.  Add the rest of the eggs to the bowl, being careful not to knock too much of the air out
-Pour into small glasses and refrigerate for six hours.  try not to comsume them all in one go.
-If these are goose eggs, add 1/2 teaspoon cornstartch to the 1/4 cup of water (cold) and mix into a slurry before adding it to the chips, and use either 6 eggs/1 bag of choc chips or 9 eggs/1.5 bags of chips,
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gallusrostromegalus · 4 years
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how would you prevent the plants from outgrowing their containers too quickly? do you repot or prune?
I only HAVE the 10′x10′ porch so I kind of Bonsai them.  The only ones that are going to “outgrow” thier pots are the Squash, which I planned to let go over the edge of the bins and let them vine over the porch.  They get the rootspace they get and thier either thrive or they get replaced with something that will thrive.
or sometimes, they thrive and then I find out they don’t taste good so I take them out anyway.
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gallusrostromegalus · 4 years
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I am so bewildered by the actions of the previous owners of your house - from what I can piece together from the bits and pieces you've mentioned about them, it seems like they were just... very very confused about what any object or appliance is actually supposed to be used for??
Oh what’s happened is that it’s a townhouse, which sort of invite this kind of befuckenry.  It’s expirienced the typical townhouse/joined house lifespan:
Developer, having reccieved some sort of government grant to build low-income family housing, builds a buttload of town houses as cheaply as possible, namely with cheap materials, about 10% smaller than you’d normally make the features of a house and with pretty much no long-term planning
Before the economy was completely fucked, young people would buy houses like this, live in them for a couple years to build up thier credit score/make enough mortgage payments to get a decent down payment built up, then sell it to buy a For Real House
Some of thes owners will engage in Construction projects to boost the value of the townhouse.  Some of them are good (Bless whatever former owner put granite down on the countertops) most suck (whoever cut the unecessary door between my bedroom and the house’s only bathroom, the cask of water heater, and whoever srewed a tv into the chimney)
time, entropy and HOA laziness happens to the surrounding area, leading to For Serious problems that will eventually lead to the neighborhood being bulldozed right as it’s most vulnerable population can finally afford it.
Currently I’m in the early phases of stage 3- the house is sound, overall.  The walls and floors are level and the pipes and ductwork all work and the wiring is definitely up to code, but I’ve got some... weird aesthetic bits in the house and the HOA is five years behind fixing some stuff on the property, while Also threatening to fine me if I go to fix it myself.  Getting a house without an HOA is like finding a fucking Unicorn.
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gallusrostromegalus · 4 years
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hi! my dad has a greenhouse, w/ tomato varieties, spinach, courgettes, peppers and herbs and i told him about your garden and your giant cucumbers. he got the weirdest face, before informing me that cucumbers are Not Gourds, as they're from a different continent to courgettes/zucchinis and don't become a different vegetable after their peak growth. he asked if your giant cucumbers are therefore hollow and if they are not, then what type of cucumber are they? he is tres Intrigued.
these are probably Picking cucumbers, but what i’ve been told is that Cucumbers are best for eating before they actually reach maturity, because one they reach thier determinate length (4-6 in for picking, 8-12 in for slicing) they start to get thicker and pulpier and bitter, so you wait for them to get thier length/turn dark green and pick ‘em then, but I’ve found if they hide from you and get large they still make good sweet relish, which is mostly what I’m using them for.
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gallusrostromegalus · 5 years
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I was up in foco for the last five days for a FUN AND EXCITING series of Doctor’s appointments (Good News: I’m not seriously ill!) and my Beloved Husbeast did a wonderful job moving our new renter and longtime friend Baconweave The Domestic Troll into the basement and also cleaning the entire house.
But
He’s never owned a Live Plant. He also doesn’t really go Outside except under duress. And we just had five days of 100+ heat.
So the garden basically underwent The Dehydration Games for the last week and while I gave everything a good soak tonight tomorrow I go out and remove the fallen from the beds, and maybe sow my Winter vegetables. 
Initial results: The sunflowers, Cosmos, Corn, Pumpkins and Onions all lived.  The Carrots, Borage, Peas and some of the smaller wildflowers may not have made it.  THE LEMON SHRUB fucking doubled in size, put out a bunch of buds and is growing another Tiny Lemon.
Grow! Grow my Citrus Minion! 
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gallusrostromegalus · 5 years
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First harvest of some very nice scallions and the itty-bitty purple carrots and parsnips that got nuked by the heat up top. Gonna make a tiny pot roast with them.
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