Sandwichspace 13

 A couple of changes in today's effort. Thick sausage patty and the same bread as yesterday, toasted. For cheese I used cream cheese. It was ok 3/10. It beat nothing, but meh. I bet scallion cream cheese would be a bit of an improvement. For eggs I microwaved a handful of spinach, then squeezed out the water. Then a couple eggs, a pinch of salt, a dash of pepper. I have certainly made prettier microwave eggs, but they tasted pretty good, maybe 5/10.

Appearance - I dunno, 5/10. The circular eggs kinda looked weird. Bun looked nice though.

Flavor - 4/10. I mean it was ok, but not very cheesy, the eggs unpleasantly underdone and not very fluffy - kind of surprised at that. I like having microwaved scrambled eggs usually, they are nice and fluffy often. But not this time. Perhaps I'm off my microwaved egg game, have been frying on the stove so often.

Out of bread now. Will have to whip up something new for tomorrow. Also hit up Whole Foods and bought some supplies - smoked gouda, thick sliced cheddar, grass fed sausage patties, Genoa salami, and mortadella. 

GARDEN UPDATE: Kale is coming up nicely!

Garden Intermission

 I planted some kale a few days ago in one of the stone planters by the driveway. Nothing up yet, the seeds may be too old.

I planted spinach and basil in some windowbox planters. We'll see if I get anything before the frost. I will probably plant some more kale. I want to have kale for my breakfast sandwiches.

UPDATE Feb 20, 2025 - Neither the kale nor the spinach and basil grew to harvest. I think the soil the windowbox had in it was kind of trash, so they never flourished. The kale grew a bit, but I think deer chomped on it a bit. I moved some up by the house. They grew ok, but it got really cold before they were big enough to harvest any. I don't think they are dead, maybe they have a headstart on next season.

Getting warm out

Finally getting warm out. A bit before the first frost date, but weather.com suggests we're not gonna have any temps below about 50 in the next few weeks, so I think we're in the clear. I've been hardening off the seedlings for two days now. Yesterday was just for a couple hours, today was most of the day - they seemed happy enough. Last week I planted zucchini.

They're coming up already, woot woot! Winner for first sprouts is Fordhook.

I also planted a few tomatoes outside. Cherokee Purple in front, Black Cherry in the back.

Lots of tomato seedling left to go. Gave away 5 to Jill. May see if the neighbor wants any, I think I promised him a Cherokee Purple.

All of em!

Batch 1

Batch 2

Batch 3

Couple kale plants still left over from last year. I pulled a few that were moldy in the middle. The stems are like 2" across, huuuuge.

Kale

Garlic is looking amazing.

 

I bought some landscape fabric. The weeds in the rock garden can be insane. Going to put out some tomatoes up there, hopefully the deer don't feast on them.

Like 10% done

Got the fabric at the local mom and pop hardware store. They also had strawberries (Honeoye) and long hot peppers (maybe a local Philly thing?? I never find seeds for these.)

Junebearing Strawberries

The Final Buzzer

 Well, it's official, the 2022 season is over. Tuesday morning (11/15) we had a hard frost. We'd had some light ones, but the basil held on, though not flourishing. I did a final pick of basil a couple weeks ago and had some pesto. But this frost turned all the remaining plants to mush. Except kale. KALE DON'T CARE. Actually the dill looked ok, too. Funny, I grew dill but never picked or used any. I brought the oregano inside, along with the peppers.

In the end, I brought in 28 pepper plants on 10/16. The basement seedling tables are packed with peppers now. If I can get them through the winter I will have a huge head start next year.

Peppers for overwintering!

They seem pretty happy with their situation despite the absolutely savage cutting back of the plants and removing all their leaves. But in the last month they have blown up, and they almost all have an explosive growth of new leaves on the remaining sticks.

Kale Stories

 Kale keeps on growing despite several light frosts. Indeed I've harvested it in January before. Right now the kale bed is just starting to come back from the heat of the summer. Apparently it gets a bit too toasty for it in the stone planter. But meanwhile it doesn't mind the heat of the driveway, growing up through cracks in the pavement!

The white stuff is actually the camera flash off a heavy dew, but the contrast between my carefully cultivated plants and the "wild" plant is pretty comical.

Mostly Good News

 First the less than great news. This tomato bed was the second one started. It really is quite a ways behind the first ones. The 2nd and 3rd one in the front both got topped by a giant rat (deer). They still look happy, if a bit runty. I am curious if I'll get much from them.

Front row: A Grappoli D'Invierno, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine. Back row: Cherokee Purple, UNKNOWN!

The strawberries seem happier in their new location and out of the pot, but I'm not seeing a ton of berries. Kale seems to be flourishing, but leaves keep turning brown. I think the rocks get very hot, which neither of these seem to like too much.

Cucumbers are a very weird mix of dying and aggressive growth. The new growth seems pretty healthy. I guess I should prune out the dead/dying leaves. I DO have a large number of flowers.

Zucchini seems very happy here. Harvested 13 lbs already. Does not appear to be slowing down.

BUT seeing the first sign of vine borers. The little brown junk to the right of the strange foam is vine borer sign. If I can overcome my nervousness, I may go bug hunting with an exacto knife, see if I can help this one.

The rampicantes charge to the rescue.

Rampicante close up.

Not certain which pepper this is, likely Big Jim or Anaheim. The pepper is almost as big as the plant. I think this pepper would be happier in a 2 gallon pail. 1 liter of dirt ain't cutting it! I should do an experiment with different sized pots and try and find the sweet spot.

Beans definitely happy. The Black Cherry tomato stuck in the back there seems pretty happy too.

These peppers (type? shrug) got about 10x happier after mulching.

These guys really don't seem to have enough soil. Until a week or so ago, the planter itself was only about half full. And no mulch. Seemed to dry out very quickly, but the plants were still doing pretty well. I filled up the planter with dirt (nothing fancy, just yard dirt). And I mulched with some old leaves and tiny sticks that I cleaned out of the driveway. They seemed happy with this, and I am thinking of hanging some rope from the gutter to use as a crude trellis. 

The basement peppers have been sporadically harvested, but it's getting to be time to do a big harvest. Need to come up with a plan for what to do with them. Might roast on the grill and then freeze. Would be great in soup/omelette/cornbread/whatever throughout the year. Also mulches them with that same leaf/stick litter.

Anaheims baby! The only downside is there are only 5 plants here. I wonder how many peppers I will end up with. I was worried they might be too crowded, but they seem to be doing extremely well. 

The kale in the back is doing so much better than the kale in the stone planter. What's more I think there is almost enough kale to supply my needs in this one patch. Would almost certainly be enough if I had this whole area planted.

The long beans are climbing. I don't know how big they will get.

Tomatoes in the stone beds are doing crazy well. If feel like I should be growing two in each square since they seem VERY crowded, I guess we'll see how they do.

Front: Cherokee Purple, Black Cherry. Back: Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter

Front: Roma, Hungarian. Back: A Grappoli D'Invierno, Beefsteak

Weedin'

 A bountiful kale harvest?

Nah, I just weeded the cucumber patch. Grew kale there last year. I stand by my theory that kale is a weed.

Kale is a Weed

 I love how hardy and resilient kale is! I transplanted maybe 20 volunteers from last year's kale bed and they are taking off. There are even a few in the grass nearby, but they fell prey to the mower. Today I just noticed a huge flowering plant on the other side of the driveway. Yup, more kale. I guess it bolted and is not getting busy trying to make more seeds. If there's one thing I don't need it's more kale seeds, heh.

Progress

 So things have kind of taken off the last few days. I failed to properly harden off the Brandywine tomato I planted the other day and it has since passed away. Sorry lil plant! It may be cold to speak of replacing it so soon, but I have a couple others that fared better. So the #8 spot from my garden layout map will remain Brandywine.

I had another mishap with a Black cherry tomato - the stem snapped in high wind. I don't have too many of them, so it was a disappointment, but I decided to take a chance on it anyway and bury it well above the break point and see if maybe it would survive. It was touch and go the first day, but by the second day it looked pretty good. I think it will make it. But for added confusion I placed it in spot #5 (was labelled Cherokee Purple, I thought I'd put on of those there.

TL - Dead Brandywine, BR - snapped stem Black cherry!

The TL Hungarian is flourishing. A lot of Hungarian starts did really well! 

The zucchini has come up very fast, seems like I was waiting a long time last year for the sprouts to appear. Not so this year. I think it's much warmer than it was last year. I have 6 hills of zucchini. 5 of them were sourced from leftover topsoil, the last was compost that had been sitting for... 5 years? The compost looks much darker. I think once the sprouts get a little bigger I will put down some straw.

Cucumbers are sprouting. Again, pretty fast. Looking good so far.

Cukes

The overwintered peppers are doing a lot better, really bursting out in green leaves. Even have a few flowers already. The old leaves have not dropped off yet, so they do look a little odd.

Peppers planted in a reused 2 liter plastic bottle. I imagine they need a bit more space! These were grown from seed.

The garlic is getting ready to be harvested. I'm not too confident that I'll get very much.

The raspberry bed seems very happy. Although calling it a raspberry bed suggests it was planned and I did any work at all on it. I did not.

The long beans and kale are doing well. All the transplanted kale survived. And the beans are really popping. Covered it all with chicken wire.

These are Spoon Tomatoes. The tomatoes they grow are tiny. More fun than productive.

I need to pick 4-6 tomato plants to put in the driveway bed. Not sure which. Lots to choose from! Will also probably put a few in buckets as well.

Strawberries are flowering as well. Last year I think they were starved for water and they definitely need to be repotted or planted somewhere. The berries they produced were tiny and not tasty. Been generously watering for now as I consider where they might go.

Nice progress!

The weather has been hot and sunny and the plants are loving it. I'm babying them and making sure they have plenty of water. I'm very happy I got those four tomato plants out early, they are really flourishing.

The basil is starting to overgrow it's planter. Now I get to see how well it transplants.

Something ate a few bean plants, so I hopped into action and built them their own fortress.

Rutgers. Getting very bushy. I should probably prune a bit to keep them happy.

Brandywine in back, Cherokee Purple in front. Lots of flowers!

  

Like this!

Strawberries still hanging out in the basement.

Garlic starting to get close to being ready for harvest.

Kale bolted. They did survive the winter.

Most of my peppers look like this. After transplanting they slumped over, then recovered in a day or two, but kept their bad posture.