The Carrboro Farmers Market held a tomato-tasting festival/contest last weekend. They had about fifty varieties of tomatoes on hand. The Cherokee Purple won for best slicing tomato, and the Sungold won for best cherry tomato. Those are two of the six that I am growing, and I couldn't be happier with them. My Romas have yet to bloom, the German ( Read more... )

Today we picked six giant Cherokee Purple tomatoes, several handfuls of Sungolds, a dozen Green Zebra tomatoes, about fifteen okra pods, and eight cucumbers. Jason is in pickle heaven. I, on the other hand, am in salsa heaven ( Read more... )

It seems as though a large majority of my posts are me whining and/or complaining about stuff. I'm going to try not to do that so much - or perhaps I will just increase my positive posts. editgirl's Yay/Boo model might work for me ( Read more... )

Okay, so on the 30th, I swore that I had bought my last batch of plants. What I really meant was, last batch for that week. Yesterday, I bought my ACTUAL last batch. (Of plants for the new landscaping. Vegetables and herbs don't count.) editgirl and I went to several nurseries in Durham that both turned out to be great ( Read more... )

I finally got around to potting the vegetable plants that were left when I planted the most recent round on Thursday. Bell peppers still suck. Tomorrow I'm going to dump a bunch of fertilizer out there, and if they don't pick up in a couple of weeks, I'm going to pull them up and let that part of the garden lie fallow for a while ( Read more... )

By 7:30 this morning, I was outside planting shrubs. I remember unlocking the back door as well as the front, because I am paranoid that I'm going to get locked out of the house. I don't recall actually opening the back door, and I pulled the front door shut when I went outside ( Read more... )

Finally. The big pile of dirt in our front yard is gone. It was only delivered last Friday, but it quickly consumed every free minute we had, between my paranoia about the HOA sending around their hired goons and our mutual worry about any drop of rain disintegrating the pile into a big mud slide. Happily, neither of those things has happened, yet ( Read more... )

I am despondent with despair. It turns out that I have no jalapeno plants in my garden at all. I have a serrano plant and an ancho plant. And four habanero plants. I think that I must have pulled the tiny jalapenos when I was weeding last week. Sigh. Now I must buy some. Happily, there's a place on 9th Street that has lots of vegetable plants.

I've planted a variety of seedlings this year. I grew bell peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes (cherry and roma), basil, and cucumbers. I bought swiss chard, broccoli, rhubarb, and habaneros, as well as (ahem) bell peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

( Garden talk )

After a solid four hours of sleep, I've been wandering around the house all morning trying to figure out what I'm going to do today. I've done my usual Saturday morning activities: read the paper, drink two cups of tea (formerly coffee), and watch the Friday night House repeat (one I've never seen). Possibly on tap: prepping the garden patch (very ( Read more... )