Yakityak Talks Back

Tally hoe

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 26 May 2012 23:35:00 +0000

As a matter of record keeping, I want to note that I fed the following plants on Friday May 25th with EB Stone’s organic vegetable food:

Sunflowers
Blueberries (was that a good idea? Not sure it was the correct food)
Radishes
Cucumbers
The accidental bean plants (I think they’re Italian rose beans)
Patty pan squash
Pumpkins

I don’t know if I ought to feed the kale. But I know I ought to feed the beets and strawberries. Perhaps tomorrow.

And speaking of kale, I need to look up how harvest this stuff. Do I cut down whole plants? Do I just harvest individual leaves that are large, leaving the centers? I will look it up, but if any of my readers have more clues than I have, please let me know.

Oh, and a lemon tree update - it seems ridiculously happy in its new location. It is putting out new leaves like nobody’s business. I’m very happy about that. I anthropomorphize citrus tress... aberrant psychology I know, but whatever. So anyway, I’d feel pretty terrible if I killed one through neglect or bad placement.

Proof that I'm tired.

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:33:00 +0000

My friend Ro pointed out that these are aphids... the same aphids that I dealt with last year. She said that I ought to hose them off with water and spray the plant with cayenne pepper and garlic.

These bugs don’t come off with a hose - not even set on high at close range. But I do remember those things now, so I did my best (they still don’t come off) and sprayed with a mix of cayenne pepper mixed in olive oil and dilute biodegradable dishwashing soap. I remember the concoction I used last year needed the dish soap. I didn’t have time to do the garlic, but I will add it in to the bottle so it will be garlic infused for next time.

Bird netting = people netting

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:24:00 +0000

I thought I would deliver a Public Service Announcement to all gardeners: If one is not careful, bird netting can double as people netting. If you, oh gardening public, do not heed my warning, you too may find yourself out among the sunflower seedlings struggling against bird predation... out there in your muddy clogs and newly ripped t-shirt, singing, “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? Deliver Daniel? Deliver DAA-AA-AA-niel? Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? ... then why am I stuck in this &!#-#@$% %$#*&!^ net?!?!?!”

And speaking of &!#-#@$% %$#*&!^ things, those scaly pests are already attacking my hollyhocks. I suppose I’d figure out what they are and what to do about them.

On why T.S. Eliot is full of hooey

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:07:00 +0000

April is most certainly NOT the cruelest month. No, that honor goes to July or August. April is full of optimism justified. The prospect of marvelous success unrolls before you like a velvet carpet of green. The seeds spring up (yes, perhaps violently, but nothing compared to the carnage of later months) under their own power feeding off the stored nutrients in the cotyledon. As long as you put down Sluggo or beer traps, they’re too small to attract the notice of most pests. Rodents don’t care about them until they’re much larger. Aphids wait until plants have got a good vascular system to attack.

It’s too soon to find out that you planted the wrong variety for your climate, or that you chose vegetables impossible to grow in your location. You won’t realize you’ve got root maggots for at least a few more weeks if not longer. It’s too soon to realize that months of excessively heavy fog beyond even what’s normal for your area has caused the content of 90% of your beds to give up the ghost while handing the keys to the fungal kingdom on their way out. In April the spring storms sweep the sky clear and the cobalt blue expanse overhead whispers promises and love songs.

If only it stayed April for a little while longer. The treachery of summer lies just around the corner.

I came back from a weekend away to find the garden in order. I know that wouldn’t happen in July. In July I would have come home to a catastrophic die-off due to an onslaught of something from the insect world, or rodents would have spent the 48 hours recreating Toronto’s underground PATH in my yard. But it’s April, so all is dandy. I even had some sunflower sprouts to crow about. I keep seeing ladybugs and ladybug larvae, and can’t decide if that’s wonderful because they’re good to have in the garden, or an ominous sign because they love to eat aphids and their presence indicates a food source. But it’s only April so I’m an optimist... for now.

Peas, please! And radishes, too!

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:20:00 +0000

I’ve got sprouts! And that’s a very nice thing given how grueling this week turned out. I’m very excited, and it strikes me that germination occurred much more rapidly than last year. I have to think that’s due to duration of higher soil temperature and sun angle. No matter how mild the weather may seem, shorter days = shorter days and you can’t circumvent that short of using grow lights. And I’m not that desperate for sprouts.

Vegetable and Herb Fracas-see

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:53:00 +0000

We finished up setting out the garden for the summer today. I’m still nursing the head-cold, but at least I know I did my vitamin D duty. The weather’s supposed to turn foggy again tomorrow, so I’m glad we got stuff in the ground while the weather was nice for humans.

I decided to make a small herb bed. I have had herbs planted outside my kitchen door for the past year and a half, but they aren’t doing so well in that location. I thought perhaps they’d do better if they were with the rest of the garden and therefore got regular care. I chose French thyme because I use thyme quite a bit in my cooking, and evidently the French variety is not nearly as picky about it’s living quarters as the other varieties. Who knew? And I went with a kind of basil that is new to me: African basil. According to the guys at Sloat, this type of basil makes a respectable culinary basil and it is perennial in our climate and it isn’t nearly as fussy and heat-requiring as regular basil is. (Any plant that needs heat should go over the ridge behind our house and discuss their needs there, because I can’t help them. I learned that lesson last year and I’m not making the mistake twice.) And I planted regular old culinary sage because I really like sage and I am bummed I let my last plant die. I also put an oregano in a pot nearby. I’m a bit phlegmatic about it because I learned years ago that you absolutely MUST check oregano plants right there in the store before you buy because in a single batch of plants there will be some with loads of aroma/flavor and some with absolutely none and I couldn’t find a really good one when I went. (It could also be that I went when I had a head-cold and my sense of smell is still affected). I have a good oregano plant around my kitchen door but I need to find a way to get it consistently looked after because it’s suffering over there.

I finally did right by our long-suffering dwarf Meyer lemon tree. We took it out of it’s pot (it was a very large pot but the poor tree was still root bound) and found a good full-sun yet still sheltered place for it in the front yard by the driveway. That tree has lived through thick and thin despite our neglect. It stopped producing lemons awhile ago, but perhaps if it is in a good location and can settle in well it will stay happy enough to produce again.

We put in a small bed of parsley because we do use a lot of it in cooking and it’s also the lousiest bed in the garden sun-wise and it’s hard to know what else to do with it. Next to that we put in a bed of purple carrots - we loved those last year. And the beets went in a bed between the carrots and the strawberries. I went with the Bulls Blood beets again - they grew brilliantly last year and I want some “sure things”. If I have good success with the garden this year maybe I’ll get fancier beets for the next go around.

I read up on garlic and a number of sources said that it’s best grown interplanted - it chases away certain kinds of vermin and it’s happier that way, anyway. So I interplanted it with the peas - peas are nitrogen fixers so the soil oughtn’t to get too depleted that way. These are the bulbs that I pulled last year and stored in the fridge. Many had started sprouting. I’m not so sure they’re going to result in great garlic heads, but I thought since I went to the trouble I’d give them a try. The reason I wonder about them is that I don’t know their source - they were here when I bought the house. Lots of books and online sources say “don’t plant supermarket garlic” because it could carry diseases or be treated to prevent sprouting... and I wouldn’t put it past the previous owners to do just that. But on the other hand, these are sprouting like crazy and they do look healthy and they’ve already been in the ground here. So what the hey, and if the garlic fails there are at least peas in the bed.

One smaller bed next to the blueberries just got flowers this year - two California natives. One is Baby Blue Eyes, a very pretty annual, and the 'Rose Chiffon' variety of California Poppy. I only have four plants in there, I may want to get more. On the other hand, they’re native - maybe they’ll do well and spread around?

In the really big bed between the kale and the peas we mixed it up with interplanted Purple Dragon carrots and Watermelon Radishes. These are all seeds from last year - it will be interesting to see if there’s a drop in germination rate. The birds seem to like them just the same - I need to get some floating row covers in for those beds.

Finally... the reason for this blog entry’s name... I put a brawl in the little triangular bed in the very corner of the garden. You see, I planted English lavender and French lavender right next to each other, and I expect loud inebriated arguments coming from that quarter in very short order. Something about the vulgarity of fish and chips and how beer is infinitely better than some foppish chichi wine.

And, now for the hard part... maintaining it all! I hope the bad bugs take a vacation and the good bugs come hang out at my place. (I hope that I’ve stacked my deck a bit better than last year by planting certain kinds of flowers, and I’ll be buying nematodes prophylactically later this week.) Here’s to an uneventful summer!

So much for keeping my promises

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:31:00 +0000

My lingering head-cold did not keep me out of the garden today. I was able to get quite a bit done with the excellent assistance of Mr. Yak. I’ve sort of stuck to my guns about dialing back the garden this year... well, not really. A few things were brought to my attention that I didn’t consider when I made my goals list in the last post:

Strawberries grow ridiculously well here with very little effort. Our problem has been in the past that they were not planted in mounds and they were put too closely together, so they got gross and mildewy and magotty... all the while producing buckets of strawberries we were too skeeved out to touch. Our solution: dig out the old strawberry bed, move one bed over (larger) and plant fewer plants on bonafide hills. We shall see! It’s a relatively new day-neutral variety developed up at UC Davis - Diamonte.
Likewise, the cukes did brilliantly, producing “sneaker” cukes that I’d miss under the leaves that would wind up larger than Shaquille O’Neal’s feet. In fact, two of the plants over-wintered despite my neglect, so we kept them and planted more. Two varieties, in fact. One is the cleverly named “Homemade Pickles” variety, while the other is an interesting type - “Lemon” that looks for all the world like a lemon but supposedly tastes like an apple you can eat right off the vine.
Evidently we MUST GROW PUMPKINS, even if we can’t. I upped my odds of success by choosing a miniature variety (“Baby Bear”) and planting it in the sunniest spot I could find in the garden. I didn’t want to devote an entire bed to failure so I co-planted it with another squash, this time of the summer variety - “Sunburst” patty pan squash.

I did plant two things from seed straight into the ground. (Actually, I put them in paper pots because I wanted to put down some mulch.) One is a row of mammoth Russian sunflowers - I took seeds from my flowerhead that grew so huge last year and double planted them - two per paper pot. I also used seeds from last year’s purchase for Burpeanna Early shelling peas. Yay for me - those two were on my “It’s not insane to plant these” list.

I also planted some dino kale (Toscano) in the same bed as the sunflowers, on the west side of them. They wouldn’t get morning sun anyway due to the shed.

And of course the blueberries are here from last year - they’re perennial and should last decades. Unbeknownst to me they’ve been quietly producing berries despite my neglect.

What’s left?

I have a large quantity of garlic to plant dug up from last year.
Beets
Carrots?
Radishes?

And I have one really large bed I’ve yet to think of what to do with... perhaps one of the above crops... perhaps something else entirely.

And then there are the ornamentals that attract beneficial insects, but I will save that for a later post. There’s only so much a girl with a head-cold can do.

Setting some goals

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:13:00 +0000

Passover is over and my birthday is done. Summer is around the corner, and it is helpful to me to map out some goals. Due to travel plans and also the sense that I need to pace myself, I have decided to not sign up for summer classes. It is also true that with a little forethought I have been known to get a great deal done even without the architecture of deadlines imposed by an academic setting. And I’d rather be working at home around my kids.

I’m going to break things down into categories - this will be a long post. I am going to include things I don’t normally touch on in this site - my ‘real’ work - because I don’t keep a blog on my professional website, and I don’t want to start. This is basically a housekeeping post mainly for me - on the order of something I would have kept in my written journals that I used to write before I lived a life where small booklets of scribbles get hopelessly lost when you want them most. I can’t misplace a blog post. So I’m really writing this mostly for me, not an audience.

Goals: yarn

I don’t consider most of my fiber arts goals to be all that weighty, but this year is a little different. There are two projects that have personal significance, and I want to make sure I at least attempt them even if they are not ultimately successful. But I’ll include it all here... the weighty and the trivial, in order of time pressure, if any:

Finish a button scarf for a cold weather trip I’m taking this summer
Make fingerless mitts for at least me and the girls for the same trip
Make the Moss Fern Wrap for myself in the specified yarn in the Azalea color (I already have the yarn). I have made this pattern up before in a much heavier yarn for my grandmother. It was the last thing I made for her before she died. My mother now has the shawl, and it is a lovely but casual shawl due to the weight of the yarn I used. I’d like to make it up in laceweight as specified so that I can wear it to my daughter’s bat mitzvah next year. My grandmother taught me to crochet, I made this one for her... it would be like she was there with me. Well, as best as one can do when someone has died. And my husband picked out the color, Azalea, and azaleas were my grandfather’s favorite plant - he would spend many hours in the garden tending to his. So even better. This is a doable project - I know it having done it before, the only danger is in starting too late. I have until next June.
I’d like to take a stab at weaving my daugther’s tallis for her bat mitzvah. It’s an ambitious project in some ways, but not totally insane, either, as tallises are about as simple a garment as one could make. It’s a rectangle with the top demarcated. I used to weave on a large rigid heddle loom, but I gave that away to another fiber artist as it was unwieldy and I found the feel of the heddles unpleasant. I have an old 4 shaft Glimakra table loom that has been converted to a floor loom that I have never used. So this project is insane in that I will need to learn how to sley and use a totally unfamiliar loom. But if I can get over that first hurdle, it shouldn’t be a horrible ride because a tallis is so simple in structure. My deadline for this is sometime next March so that I have time for other options if this fails.
Finish off the yarn projects I’ve started and keep my yarn intake down to roughly match my output. I do NOT want a yarn stash. I have a fabric stash that burdens me. I don’t want the same misery in yarn.

Goals: garden
Last year I bit off more than I could chew. I planted too many high maintenance things. This year I’m already keeping it much more simple - I’ve grown nothing from seed. This weekend is set to be glorious. My goal is to get the garden mulched properly - paper mulch underneath and bark mulch above it, and mostly planted. I am planting at least the following:

shelling peas
beets
carrots
sunflowers
kale
lots of low maintenance ornamentals

And my gardening goals are:

check water three times a week, more if it’s hot and dry
weed every two weeks

Goals: art
And this... this is the sort of thing I take seriously. I’ve saved the best for last, really. Aside from the two items for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, these are far and away my highest priority:

Submit to at least 3 shows over the summer

Do at least 2 series of prints over the summer, at least one of which I want to be drypoint with watercoloring. I want to gain independence in some aspects of printmaking, and I now have the means to do it.

Fire my kiln at least twice - once for bisque and once for glaze. More would be even better. Not only does this keep my “hand in the clay” over the summer, it furthers my goal of becoming a more autonomous master of my own projects - not depending on other people’s expertise and equipment.

Draft and execute a “Save the date” postcard and figure out how to get it mass printed according to my specs.

If I have time, I have a few calligraphic and illumination projects I’d like to do for personal reasons. But this is lowest priority.

Try to get over my antipathy toward oil painting. I have yet to make my peace with this, and I suspect it’s important that I do.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:13:00 +0000

It’s the beginning of February. By this time last year, I had already started up seeds for the garden. This year, I haven’t even bought seeds yet much less gotten seed pots together and potting soil. I learned some things last year about planting too early. And I also learned a harder lesson about putting too much pressure on myself. Looking back at the last 12 months I see a lot of stress-related health problems. The lion’s share of that have to do with a house move and my grandmother’s death, but I didn’t exactly help myself by piling on artificial obligations. I bit off more than I can chew, garden-wise and else-wise.

Once I got sick last summer I was no longer able to tend the garden, and even going out there to look at the overgrown mess made me hyperventilate with anxiety. In fact, it’s still a mess out there. Cleaning it up is on my to-do... but not high on my to-do. This winter hasn’t been easy health-wise, either.

So this year, I’m going to limit what I plant to things that have done well last year despite my neglect, and what everyone who lives here plants successfully. No cantaloupe. No tomatoes. No pumpkins. No bell peppers or eggplant.

What did well in my garden last year?

Shelling peas
zucchini
cucumber
fava beans (until the birds ate them)
sunflowers
strawberries
alliums (garlic, onion)
carrots
beets
radishes

What plants are planted in large quantities in this area?

broccoli/cauliflower
kale
cabbage
spinach
salad greens
chards
herbs

So, there’s the list I’ll be picking from. I have 12 beds, some larger than others, some better situated than others. My goal is to have care-free annual flowers in at least 4 beds, maybe more. So I am going to limit my seed/plant purchases to 8 items or less. I’m still going to keep it fun - if there’s an oddly colored variety out there, I’m doing it. If there’s a goofy version, I’m doing it. But I’m doing it smaller this year. This is supposed to be fun, not overwhelming.

Here is the list of things on my “must have” list:

shelling peas
beets
carrots
sunflowers

It’s only 4 items long! Go me! I think I’ll do something in the cauliflower family - perhaps Romanesco, the fractal member of the family that still makes up a great Carnabeet Frita. And I still have all those garlic cloves in the fridge - I need to check if it’s okay to plant them in springtime or if I blew it and needed to plant them in the autumn. But whatever. That’s my mantra this growing season: whatever.

Grandma, I miss you

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:50:00 +0000

It's been years since I crocheted. And just as long since I knit. Once I got pregnant, I found I just couldn't do it any more. First of all, my hands can't take the repetitive motion of knitting... my fingers get very tired. Something about my finger joints changed permanently due to pregnancy. Crochet is a little better since much of the movement comes from the wrist. But the real problem is that I am multitasking too much already, and I can't keep track of where I am in a pattern. I used to be able to memorize a pattern's structure at the drop of a hat... but now that I am spread too thin it takes me much longer to incorporate the pattern into my mind. What used to be easy is now laborious, and I crochet and knit for pleasure, not to make myself miserable. So I have quite a yarn stash that is aging rather ungracefully in my garage.

I did crochet a shawl for my grandmother about three years ago. I am very glad I did it, even though I don't think she ever wore it. My grandmother passed away a year ago last December, and the gesture meant far more than the practicality of it.

In the last few weeks I've been bitten by the bug again. I learned to knit in graduate school, but I learned to crochet at my grandmother's knee when I was very young - I must have been around 6. I like the drape and stretch of knitted clothes, so I always considered crochet inferior which is why I learned to knit later in life. But there has been a real crochet renaissance as of late and the patterns have become increasingly sophisticated. Crochet is much more natural for me due to when I learned it, and I always feel like my grandmother is at my elbow when I am crocheting. I miss her terribly. So in these dark days of winter I have picked up the hook again and started a shawl for myself. My mother took the shawl I gave to my grandmother, so I must make myself one anew.

I am making myself the cover shawl from the Leisure Arts book Wonderful Wearable Wraps. Of course I am not crocheting to gauge because I can't be bothered figuring it out, and the wrap is done from the bottom up so it really doesn't matter. I am using cheap yarn, mostly because anything I'm really going to use must be machine washable these days - Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Oxford Grey. One skein will take you pretty far, which is nice. With the stash I've got, I don't really feel comfortable spending a fortune on a "break the ice" project like this.

After years of avoiding the place I signed up for Ravelry. But I'm not wet behind the ears. I'll be lucky if I finish the shawl, and even luckier if I start and finish anything else having to do with yarn in 2012. I've finally made my peace with half-finished projects and unrealized aspirations. I get enough other things done in my "real life" that I can let myself pretend for a little while that I will actually complete a yarn project. And I won't beat myself up too badly if I don't. I've gotten here (after decades of self-flagellation) not through being wonderfully insightful and grounded or even through good quality therapy, but via the realization that if I don't adopt this attitude, I cannot have my grandmother at my elbow any more.

Feeling dehydrated

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:12:00 +0000

I have a lot of zucchini. A lot of LARGE zucchini. I’ve made enormous loaves of zucchini bread, sauted it, baked it, you name it. But I still have a lot of zucchini. A good friend of mine suggested that I buy a dehydrator because they’re a lot of fun in general, and they do make lots of zucchini go away in the form of zucchini chips. So I looked at the reviews, and I bit. Based on the reviews I bought a Nesco FD-60 SnackMaster (at Overstock, way cheaper). I figured if it lay legitimate claim to the SnackMaster title, I’d be happy.

It comes with 4 trays and a fruit roll-up maker insert for one tray. But if I’m in dehydrator heaven I can buy additional trays up to a total of 12 and more roll-up inserts. Many people say it’s cheaper to just go ahead and buy a second dehydrator rather than the extra trays, but I don’t want to give up the counter space nor run two heaters when I really only need to run one. Seems like you save up front but lose later.

It arrived today. I’m pretty handy, but still, I’d never laid eyes on a dehydrator before. Omigosh, just thinking of any of my female relatives even considering the notion gives me the giggles. And my local friends? Much the same. Well, maybe Miriam might. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I looked through the packet that came with it. Seems pretty straightforward - use the fruit roll tray for pureed fruit combos to make roll-ups. Use a special screen (purchased separately) to make some of the stickier dried fruits. And for everything else, just lay slices on the trays that come with the dehydrator. Cleanup in the sink or dishwasher. Some vegetables the pamphlet recommended blanching, and others peeling. I don’t remember which at the moment, but the online recommendation list is at this link.

I thought the recommendations for zucchini chips were kind of lack luster. So I looked elsewhere online specifically for recipes. I found this recipe for zucchini chips and it really appealed to me, so decided to go with that. The entire set-up, start to finish, took 10 minutes. If they come out at all decent, I could get into this. It’s like the crockpot - you do a little hand waving and 6 hours later (or in this case, more likely 12) you get a lot of magic.

I found that the 4 trays took one larger zucchini sliced thin (about 1/8”) with very little space to spare. That amount of zucchini would make 3 - 4 mid-sized loaves of zucchini bread. So this is definitely more efficient. I sliced the big guy up, threw it into a large metal bowl and mixed it with an indeterminate but fairly scanty amount of champagne wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. I lay the zucchini in the tray one-layer deep, no overlap, and put the laden tray on top of the cutting boards so that the seasoning didn’t get all over the place. I used garlic salt and onion powder. Based on info from another website elsewhere I went fairly light on the seasoning - that website mentioned that all dehydrated items shrink, therefore concentrating the flavors. I thought about adding other flavors but decided to go simple for the first time. I stacked the trays up on the base, put the top on, plugged it all in and set the heat to 135°F. I mean really? Slice, mix, dump, season. I almost feel guilty because it was so easy and fast. Maybe it’ll taste terrible and I won’t feel so guilty.

I live in a humid climate, so I expect it to take the maximum amount of time. If all goes well, tomorrow morning ought to be zucchini chips time. And in the meantime, my whole house smells glorious. I may need to dry roses in this thing.

Sunflowering

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:40:00 +0000

So I read the “Sunflower” chapter in the Burpee Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener book and it said to cut the flower head leaving a two-foot stalk attached once the back of the flower starts to turn brown. I was supposed to hang it up in a dry airy place until the seeds were completely dry. But when I got that monstrous head down, I realized that 1) bugs were making nests in the dying leaves, 2) a patch of the seeds looked decidedly moldy, and 3) the seeds were falling out with a simple shake or touch. So instead, I took out all the seeds that were not moldy and put them in a colander. I left the rest of the head and seeds outside - maybe the birds will want them. If not, I’ll chuck it. I brought the colander inside and carefully picked though the seeds, removing all remains of the flower petals. I spread them in a lipped tray and put it next to a sunny window to dry out thoroughly. I hope to eat some and save some seeds for next year. What a lot of seeds a single large sunflower head can produce! The colander was 2/3rds of the way full.

I also want to mark this day on my calendar because I took most of the garlic bulblets I dried over the summer and put it in the refrigerator. In two weeks I can plant that out. I have more than I need, so if anyone local would like some garlic for planting please let me know. Speaking of extras for give away, I inadvertently bought two packets of Black Spanish Round Radish so if anyone wants to try out some of those seeds, let me know. Both garlic and radish can be grown in containers, so if you only have a small space, these are actually good ones to try.

And in the final note about extras... that tip on knocking off the flowers from pollinated zucchini has resulted in a ridiculous bumper crop of zucchini. It’s so out of control that I bought a dehydrator to make zucchini chips, and I am seriously thinking about buying this book: 101 Things To Do With Zucchini. I have an uncle who would say that title sounds porn-y.

Notes - preparing for fall

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:34:00 +0000

I had to throw sluggo on the ground as the kale, spinach and broccoli are being eaten to bits.

I’m now surfing the Burpee website for some new seeds for fall/winter crops. But I keep running into interesting things I’d like to plant next year. Among them:

The Marina di Chioggia squash which looks positively demented, but is evidently good eating. Both plusses in my book.
The Orn Large Bottle Gourd which would be mature next fall, just in time for my bird-obsessed son to make birdhouses. Perhaps that could be a birthday party idea for him.
The Uchiki Kuri Organic Pumpkin, just because.

Meanwhile, I think I will order the following:

Spanish Black Radish it looks interesting and is a good winter crop.
Picklebush Cucumbers because I just might be able to get one more crop in, and then I have to talk Uncle Yak into pickling them. He’s very good at pickling, and he has my grandfather’s old pickle crocks.
Golden Beets because I much prefer working with golden beets since I don’t have to wear gloves. It’s what I wanted to plant last spring, but Mr. Yak wanted red ones.
Chioggia Beets because I’m a sucker for anything with stripes. I suspect they will bleed everything to red though when cooked. Only one way to find out!

I will probably plant more favas, and I may give peas a chance, too, just because.

Moving on

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 03:24:00 +0000

I’ve been getting organized for the academic year, and realized that with 3 kids in elementary school I will be living in my car every afternoon weekday until 6 pm until next June. Between that and work, I will have to be very much on top of things to pull off a fall/winter garden. And I’d like to, if only because I can’t bear the thought of a garden full of weeds. But this means I must catch up, and catch up quickly.

Which leads me to my confession. Remember those nematodes? I never put them out. I just let the garden maggots do their thing for much of the summer while I did mine. However I did store the nematodes properly in my refrigerator and they will keep that way for several months, so they ought to still be viable. (But yes, local friends, if you have been over and served food at my house, those asparagus and mushrooms were cheek by jowl with the sealed nematode container. You’re still here, reading this, so you don’t need to worry.) Today, I mixed them up according to the package directions, which involved 5 quarts of vermiculate and 2 quarts of water, and distributed them throughout my garden. I was able to be much more thorough in some areas and not so thorough in others, but I am hoping that since they are alive and in the animal kingdom they will distribute themselves as they see fit. Each bed got at least a few dollops of nematode mix, most got quite a bit and nicely distributed. While I was delivering nematodes I discovered that I do have one rather disheveled looking eggplant attempting to make a go of life.

But it is not all good news, of course. You get the down low here, not some sanitized version of my life that is designed to make you feel inadequate. I noted that there are a large number of unripe tomatoes. This sounds good, but I know I’ve had a large number of unripe tomatoes for some time, and I never get any ripe ones. I suspect they are getting eaten. Eaten by some diabolical creature on a personal mission to make my gardening life miserable. And the hollyhocks that I planted are infested. It looks pathognomonic for... something. The sort of situation where someone with more experience than I would look at the photo and say, “Ahhh, of course! You have X!” All I have to say for myself is that I’m learning to take some very atmospheric glamor shots of vermin.

I also went to Pacifica Garden’s Veggie Starts Sale. I bought some dino kale, spinach and broccoli seedlings. These are a good deal, because each 4” container contains multiple seedlings, which you can plant out individually. I got an entire row of spinach from one 4” pot, and 5 kale and 5 broccoli from each of their respective pots. For locals, there is one more day for the sale next Saturday 10 - 2, but they are starting to run out of some things. Not only did I buy some seedlings, I got some valuable information.

The only beans that will grow over winter here are favas. I can try others, but they were doubtful of much success.
It’s a good idea to grow favas on any area I’m not planting a harvestable crop. They keep the weed population down, and they are good for the soil.
It’s also a poor prognosis for peas or carrots over winter, despite what the USDA agricultural zone says.
The problem I was having with pumpkins and zucchini and end-rot is NOT a calcium deficiency. We live in such a humid climate that the fading flowers necrose and the dying tissue rots and the bacteria and fungus involved in the breakdown process spreads. The solution is to plant farther apart to promote air flow and to knock off all flowers once it is clear that a fruit is forming.
Things that are good to grow in winter here: beets, radishes, kale, broccoli, lettuces, collard greens, bunching onions, garlic, spinach, chard. And favas of course.

I ripped out the last of the straggling peas and collected a small handful of the very last pods of the year, and planted the kale and the broccoli in its place (Bed H). I thought about digging under the pea plant carcasses, but frankly I was too tired to do any such thing. So it went into the compost. I put the spinach in the bed where the fava beans had been (Bed G). While I was at it, I harvested a couple more cucumbers and 3 decent zucchini. I put down a thin layer of redwood compost as mulch, with the intention to do something more robust later. While I was doing all this, I had an epiphany. The paper mulch I tried earlier in the year would probably work much better as a weed barrier if I put another conventional mulch on top of it, like bark or redwood compost, etc. I felt like an idiot standing there realizing the obvious and feeling that most days I have more hair than wit.

The aftermath

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 01:24:00 +0000

This has not been an easy summer. I was on antibiotics for 6 weeks, and they were the sort of antibiotics that precluded sun exposure. I even got sunburned through my clothing. And my dog died. The last thing on my mind was the garden, and it showed. Today Mr. Yak and I deforested the place. I'm afraid I needed a permit to pull some of those weeds out of the bean bed, they were that big. I had to remove all of the fava beans as well.

I made a note that I fed the zucchini, eggplant and cucumbers on July 10th. Sometime between then and the end of the month, I went outside and found that every single fava bean had been surgically removed from its pod. Every single one, and there had been thousands. We’d had a huge crop, and that was after I’d successfully dealt with the aphids with a concoction made up of diluted dish soap, olive oil, cayenne pepper and crushed garlic (strained through cheesecloth - otherwise it clogs the nozzle of the sprayer, ask me how I know). I’m guessing the culprits were birds. I was seriously bummed.

We got a nice crop out of the shelling peas, but they’ve kind of spent their wad and I pulled up nearly 2/3rds of them that were mostly dead. A few are still eking out a living at the tips of their vines, but I’m not sure they’ll produce anything substantial. It’s probably time to replant a new crop. And about that person who printed on the package that the peas don’t need support? That person’s nuts. I’m glad we had the pea fences up - the ones on the ground rotted and generally got into trouble and made nuisances of themselves.

The favas probably could have used a different type of support than I had. They were so overwhelmingly huge that the pea fences did little for them. I think poles with ties would have been better, since favas don’t have tendrils to hook themselves up into things. Now that the favas are gone, I am wondering if the other beans that were shadowed by them will grow bigger - the Italian rose beans are actually producing, but the plants are too small to amount to much.

I’ve got tomatoes, but they’re rotting before they ripen. I am not sure if it’s due to predation, disease or malnutrition. I’ve been too overwhelmed to investigate. The zucchini and pumpkins are putting out enormous quantities of fruits that rot before the ripen, from the flower end back. I read that this means calcium deficiency somewhere. Tomorrow I will go to the hardware store to see if I can buy a soil amender for it.

It’s not all bad news, though. I pulled up the rest of the carrots I had planted. The purple dragon carrots were an unqualified success. The beets are also doing well, although I only pulled up a few of these. And the surprise of the garden is the cucumbers... The plants are not growing huge, but they sure are putting out some huge cucumbers. I pulled 6 large fellows off today, and I guess we’re just going to eat them sliced. They’re kind of too huge to pickle.

And then, there are the things I just don’t know how to evaluate. The eggplants are small and shrubby looking, but suddenly a few of them are full of flowers. And the big russian sunflowers that I planted just for fun, well, one enormous flower has bloomed and gone, it’s ponderous head drooping down to face the ground. The birds seem to be leaving it alone. Do I just leave it like that and hope that I can get the seeds when it’s well and truly spent?

Overall, I planted too closely. And I wasn’t able to pay attention to problems from early summer onward, so I haven’t been able to troubleshoot the zucchini, pumpkins and tomatoes. I think the fava business happened overnight - I’m not sure I’d have been able to prevent that even had I been on top of it. I am guessing I need bird netting - I may try that on a small section next time around.

I think I will let the beds I cleared lie fallow for a month or two, make the attempt to fix the zucchini/pumpkin problem and the tomato problem, harvest what I can from what I’ve got already in the ground, mulch like crazy and then go with a sparse planting of winter crops.

At the end of the day, the prettiest butterfly landed on the lounge chair. I took it as a good omen, and a reminder that my troubles are minor in the grand scheme of things.

All heck breaks loose

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:17:00 +0000

I haven’t been in the garden for health reasons. Long story short, I got a MRSA skin infection on my face. My guess is that I followed my allergist’s/hematologist’s advice too excessively when they told me to use Neosporin when I have nosebleeds. Since my worst allergy season is now and I’m a bleeder, I’ve been using it a lot. That and the fact that I’ve run myself into the ground has resulted in a prime breeding ground for Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus. It’s been scary, but I think I’m on the mend. I know I need some R&R, so this morning I headed back into the garden. I didn’t entirely like what I’ve seen.

My fava beans are enormous and have taken over their bed. I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of pods. That is good. What isn’t good is what I found on the tips of a few of the bean plants. So far, it appears isolated. I sprayed it with a bit of diluted dish soap, but I’m not sure what else to do. My husband says “It can’t be aphids! They’re the wrong color!” But I say they are. There’s even a ladybug prowling about. Any ideas what to do? And want to settle the dispute while you’re at it? At the moment the problem seems isolated to a few tips.
My pumpkins are also taking over. That is good. But when I picked up the leaves to look at the baby pumpkins that had been there, most of them are rotted, eaten down to the stem. Is that insect damage? Gastropod damage? Mammalian damage? And will the pumpkins that are now off the bed and forming in the rocks fare better than those that were formed on bare dirt?
One of the sunflowers has a flower forming on it. No caveats, that is good.

We ate carrots and shelling peas from the garden while I was sick, and despite our earlier experience with woody carrots, these were sweet and crunchy, if not as beautiful as they show in the seed catalog. That too has no caveats. That is good.

But what to do about the first two? I have no idea. I would welcome your thoughts.

The key to everything

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 28 May 2011 03:06:00 +0000

I started out the year right even if plenty is going wrong. I made up a diagram in Adobe Illustrator that laid out the garden beds, and assigned labels to them. Then I made a Microsoft Word document that was the precursor to this blog. In that document I have a table that lists what went where in that diagram:

- A: Mammoth Organic Sunflowers
- B: Pumpkin - Big Max and Golden Mammoth
- C: Strawberries
- D: Black Beauty Eggplants
- E: Organic Sweet California Wonder Bell Peppers
- F: Black Krim Organic and Mortgage Lifter Tomatoes
- G: Italian Rose Beans
- H: Burpeeana Early Peas
- I: Purple Dragon Carrots
- J: Banana Cantaloupe Melon/Sweet N Early Cantaloupe hybrid
- K: Garlic
- L: Zucchini

Well. A lot has changed since then. In fact, D, F, G, H, I, J, K and L are not as listed. Most of those changes are because things didn’t work out as planned.

D: Well, I planted Black Beauty eggplants in peat pots. They sprouted, but I probably needed to water them twice a day to keep them as wet as they needed to be to be strong. Then I planted them out too early and the hail and slugs nixed the 3 that were left. I wound up buying a 6 pack from OSH and planting those instead. And the bed is half inhabited by onions planted by the people who owned the house before me. I am not sure what to do with them... I will let them flower and die down, I guess. Then I’ll pull ‘em. I may try to save seed just for the halibut.

F: Tomatoes. Well it’s been a wheelin’ and dealin’ time in the tomato patch. I can’t even remember what I planted from my own seed vs. what I bought and put in the ground. I do know what Dave gave me because I labeled them clearly. The things that Dave didn’t give me are all either Mortgage Lifter or Black Krim varieties. Mortgage Lifter is resistant to both Verticulum and Fusarium wilt, Black Krim is only resistant to Fusarium. I am hoping this is totally irrelevant information despite the fact that one tomato plant just up and died, totally wilted to the ground for no obvious reason, and two more look a bit wilty despite adequate watering. It would really bum me out given the number of solanaceous crops I’ve got growing. At the far end of this bed I also planted the two spinaches from Dave.

G: Well, I did a whole lot more than just Italian Rose Beans. Baby Yak brought home kidney bean seedlings from school and I felt like I had to plant them out. And I planted an entire mess of fava beans that I grew from seed. The last have entirely dominated the area. I also planted two broccolis from Dave at the far end. And there’s a load of parsley from the previous owners. I transplanted some of that to just outside my kitchen door, but I don’t have the heart to rip out what’s left just yet. Maybe after the kitchen parsley area is better established I’ll feel differently.

H: The Burpeeana Early peas I grew from seed did well, but it seemed like a pretty meager number, so I bought a dozen Caseload seedlings to supplement. They are now all growing vigorously, and I don’t really know where the Burpeeana ends and the Caseloads begin. I also planted the lettuce from Dave down by the end, and two hollyhocks, just because I love them.

I: Purple Dragon carrots are indeed planted in this bed, but about half the bed is also Bulls Blood beets. I’m terrified to pull these up despite the fact that I think they’re ready. I’m hoping to dress the soil tomorrow with nematodes so that I don’t have to do the horrified maggot dance.

J: The cantaloupe did miserably - actually all but one died. That one is eking out a living in the corner, and I just decided to supplement with a Jenny Lind variety. The rest of the bed is planted with Burpless cukes, but they’re not much better off than the dead cantaloupes.

K: Garlic was an honest appellation for this bed up until last week. It had all died down, and now it’s time to plant something new since I pulled the garlic. I decided on two different varieties of blueberry on the suggestion of my friend Miyuki. The two varieties idea was given to me by the guy at Sloat Gardens... he said you need two to get a better yield due to cross-pollination.

L: This bed is mostly zucchini, but I had forgotten about a bunch of carrot seedlings I had started in seed pots so I squeezed them in here. I put those in the ground along the edge of this bed closest to K. I now think the direct sown carrots do better, but I didn’t know what the heck I was doing so I was experimenting with both transplanted and direct sown to see which fared better. Radishes are being grown (with maggots) in a triangular bed that is right up against this bed but separated by a row of bricks.

So that’s a fairly comprehensive State of the Garden.

Pumpkin iron...

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Thu, 26 May 2011 20:15:00 +0000

I suppose it’s as good a time as any for a recap of the whole garden.

Starting with Bed A: Mammoth Sunflowers. I have 3 growing after much tribulation. (I have come to realize that the problem was planting seeds in peat pots that dry out too quickly. Reusable plastic pots are better.) The center one is huge because it was the sole survivor of the 1st round. One of the other two is largely shaded by this one, so I am not sure how it will fare.

Bed B: Pumpkins. I am genuinely shocked to find that those guys (Big Max and Golden Mammoth) are doing well. There are flowers, and lo and behold, even wee little pumpkins on those vines. Those vines are as thick as my big toe and as hairy as Mr. Yak’s big toe. They’re a crawlin’ through my garden growling... “Yo cut worms... wanna piece of me NOW?”

Bed C: Strawberries. There are berries in droves, but it’s a matter of getting to them before the birds do. But if I have to share my food, I don’t mind sharing it with finches and other songbirds.

Bed D: Onions and eggplants. Well the onions have been on the verge of flowering for about 3 weeks now. It could be any day. By the size of the flower heads, I am expecting major drama when they open. The eggplants seem to be hanging in there. Unlike their evidently more finicky sisters to their left, they have doubled or even tripled in size since I planted them. That’s not exactly spectacular, but at least it isn’t dead, or “I wish I were dead.”

Bed E: Oh my lord what an uptight bunch of prissies we have in this bed. I planted California Wonder peppers in this bed and you’d think I’d done something gauche, like plant them in Oregon or Nevada or something. They are just sitting there, doing nothing. They’re not getting bigger. They’re not even dying. Nothing. And yes I’ve fed them and watered them. Losers.

Bed F: Tomatoes. I have no idea which ones are which anymore, and one just up and died on me overnight for no obvious reason. But the others have been doing pretty well, and are mostly much larger than when I put them in the ground.

Bed G: Beans. Note to self, favas are ridiculous. Seriously, I have Mount Fava Bean growing in this bed. I planted Italian Rose and kidneys in the same bed and those poor guys don’t stand a chance against these favas. And you know what? Favas don’t really grow like other beans do. They have these thick stalks that say “Support? Shapport. Shaddup already.” No tendrils no nuthin’. I do have beans on those scrawny Italian rose plants, though. I think I’ll just let them dry on the vine for now.

Bed H: Shelling peas! I love peas. And my pea plants are producing. In fact, I need to go pick them before they become starchy.

Okay I don’t have time to do the whole garden. I will have to do part deux.

Mine's bigger'n yours

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:46:00 +0000

So this weekend we harvested our first carrot. We felt much trepidation due to our last go round with root maggots. It turns out that our purple dragon carrots did not suffer the same fate. Good thing, too. Maggoty purple dragon carrots conjure up images of zombie vegetable dinosaurs, and I don’t need any more cast members for my nightmares.

We were rather excited to cut this up and try it out. And doesn’t it look cool! It was marketed as purple on the outside with the color bleeding in to the center, with an orange core. Our sample had the purple limited to just the surface, and it was really quite on the red side of purple. Sad to say, the carrot looked better than it tasted. Yes, it was large, but it was also woody. I know guys have a hard time (see what I did there?) understanding that this is ever a bad thing, but when it comes to carrots, woody is bad. One silver lining is that this does confirm what Dave was saying about inconsistent watering. The Burpee Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener book says woody tasteless carrots are usually the result of inconsistent soil conditions. (That is a fabulous book, by the way. NAYY.)

I wonder if that also explains my tasteless jokes? Carrots in bad taste, and that taste bad. And I know... this is a Mother Carey’s Chicken. If the strain of gardening is already bringing me to bawdy carrot jokes, ’tis an ill wind a-blowin’.

All set for garlic, I think

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sun, 22 May 2011 18:22:00 +0000

When Guru Dave took his Grand Tour of My Garden, he told me that the garlic that had been planted in bed K had been there more than one growing season, and would not likely produce any garlic of cooking value. But he said it was not a total loss. I could let the greens wither about 2/3rds of the way, pull the bulbs (which would most likely be small and useless for cooking), dry them, refrigerate them for two weeks and plant them again. That second planting ought to produce decent bulbs.

So I waited. And by yesterday, those bulbs were all 2/3rds of the way withered and lying down. So I pulled them all, and got a huge heap of garlic... and none of the bulbs were over an inch across. I spent a lot of time getting off the muck and the dirt by brushing them gently with my fingers. I had left some in the ground too long. But even with those losses, I am up to my ears in mini garlic. I noticed that some of the greens had a bit of orange to them - I think this means I should not plant them in the same bed next time. In fact, I think I will wait until the traditional planting time for garlic, which is mid-to-late fall, to replant these.

I tied up the garlic in bundles and hung them off of brooms and mops on an unused garage door rail, because everywhere I read up on garlic it says to dry them suspended in a cool darker location with good air circulation. So now my garage smells like Gilroy and looks like a Garlic Coma movie set.

Does anyone want any garlic sets? I’ve got more than I can use.

The Nematode Song

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 21 May 2011 19:49:00 +0000

The Nematode Song
... to the Underdog theme song tune

When maggots in your beds appear
and slugs don’t go for your cheap beer,
and bugs frighten all who see or hear
the cry goes up both far and near
for Nematodes! Nematodes! Nematodes! Nematodes!

Raaaather squiggly, small and ugly
Yet they eat things even more unlovely,
Nematodes! Nematodes!

When in your garden weevils breed
and on your veggies beetles feed
the gnats beget with blinding speed
we’ll fix it all with roundworm greed
go Nematodes! Nematodes! Nematodes! Nematodes!

Raaaather squiggly, small and ugly
Yet they eat things even more unlovely,
Nematodes! Nematodes!

Words of the wise

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Sat, 21 May 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Guru Dave wrote back to me promptly. And this is what he said...

Inconsistent watering causes cracking and splitting at the surface of root vegetables. The flesh around those cracks becomes unhealthy, and Mother Nature sends in her “recyclers” to clean up the problem, in much the way that maggots can be used for wound care. This problem becomes even more likely the larger the roots grow or if the roots are grown in conditions that do not allow wounds to heal (i.e. high clay content in the soil that promotes anaerobic bacterial growth). Healthy plants don’t attract maggots, any more than healthy mammals do. So the take away points are:

Keep the soil consistently moist around root vegetables.
Don’t let root vegetables get too large.
Make sure the clay content in your soil is not too high.

See? I told you he was a font of insight and information. So, now what? Can I save my radishes? The answer is maybe. Dave also sent me a link to a page on root maggots: Planet Natural's root maggot page

I read through that page, and saw that they recommended floating row covers to prevent the fly infestation in the first place... closing the barn door after the horse is gone in my case. But then... then I started to read about beneficial nematodes.

Now. Full disclosure here. I used to be a veterinarian. Heretofore my job has been to kill these suckers. (And boy are they good at sucking.) When I think of nematodes, my head fills with images of Ascaris suum, the disgusting 15+ inch-long roundworm of pigs. Or the even grodier Dirofilaria immitis, commonly known as Heartworm, which causes untold misery and death to cute fat soft yummy puppies the world over. Up until now, I’ve been a total nematode jihadist.

But I’m going to have to change my tune. Steinernema feltiae is a mensch among nematodes. Dude, you wouldn’t BELIEVE the things these roundworms eat! Fleas! Fungus gnats! Black vine weevils! White grubs! Root maggots! Slugs! And over 230 other garden pests! And you know what? They leave dogs, pigs and people alone! Reading this made me want to burst out into song.

Which is exactly what I did, after placing the order for 7 million little nematodes to come to my house.

Guru Dave

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Thu, 19 May 2011 01:03:00 +0000

Doesn’t the moniker “Guru Dave” conjure up a Hollywood image of a serene swami with a creme jeweled turban with a red plume jutting out of the front, like a slightly loopy quail? Now that I’ve thought that up, I’m almost sad it has no relation to reality.

But a guru Dave is. He is the guy who installed our AV system and did a masterful job of it, and left the house in cleaner and better condition than when he found it. We got his name from our neighbor where Guru Dave also did a masterful AV job. So if you want an AV guy in the SF Bay Area, you want Dave.

While Dave was working in my house he discovered my seedlings. Maybe it was the entrancing aroma of moldy seedlings that got his attention. Or maybe it was their spindly stretching for greater amounts of sun that flagged him down. Or maybe it was that I had them all lined up against the sliding glass door and it was impossible not to trip over them. Anyway, he saw my seedlings and he took pity.

It turns out that Dave has an enormous garden in a microclimate not that different than my own. He has decades of gardening experience, AND he has a greenhouse. (I wonder if he has a garden gnome?) Anyway, he took a tour of my garden and told me what he thought would do well and what he thought would “laugh at me”. Evidently most of my garden finds me hilarious. Small comfort to know I amuse plants.

After Dave stopped laughing, he generously gave me 10 seedlings for plants that should do well where I live. 2 broccoli, 2 spinach, 2 zucchini, 2 lettuce and 2 of his prized personal line of tomatoes that he has tested in our less-than-tomato-friendly environment and found to be prolific. I planted out most of those on April 25th. As far as I can tell, his plants seem to be doing quite well despite my care. He also gave me some tips which I wrote down, including the grand idea of growing greenbeans along the back fence and the merits of greenhouses. I can’t act on all of them at the moment, but the seeds are sown.

Anyway, so that’s Guru Dave. And I think I’m going to email him a photo of my maggoty radishes and ask if it’s time to cry yet. I cut a radish open and it wasn’t nearly the horrifying spectacle that I was anticipating. It looked relatively civilized, although there were a few bug holes around the edges.

Hmm. No, you're probably not ok.

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:39:00 +0000

After speaking to Mr. Yak and getting Ro’s comment, I decided that the odds of those white wiggly things being ‘friends’ were rather slim. So I went back outside and pulled up another radish. This time, I had my camera at the ready, turned on and set to manual focus so that I could easily get the documentation I wanted while I was still on my first scream.

And there you have it.

That can’t be good. If I have the nerve (or I talk Mr. Yak into it) I will cut one open, camera again at the ready, and show the world what is inside those radishes. And now I must wonder... are my other root vegetables... beets and carrots... going to have these things, too? I do not like them, Sam I am.

Regardless, I think it’s time I put in a call to Guru Dave. Which means I probably ought to introduce him in the blog.

OMG are you ok???

noreply@blogger.com (Yakityak) — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:28:00 +0000

So, the last 3 days have been unseasonably weird, weather-wise. We had rain and lots of it. Yes rain, people! In May? Not supposed to happen in California. And even MORE not supposed to happen? Hail. Yes, you read that right, HAIL. How?!? Why?!? Is it global warming?!? No, I say it is not. It is not global warming, because I firmly believe that THEY’RE OUT TO GET ME AND IT ONLY HAILED IN MAY BECAUSE *THEY* DON’T WANT ME TO HAVE A GARDEN. Clearly I need a garden gnome for protection. I’m going to look into that.

Phew. Now that I got that off my chest, I feel better. Sort of.

So anyway, I’ve been stuck inside for a bit. (Not that this affects me any.) And it’s finally drying out and sunny, so I went outside for a look-see. And you’ll never guess what I looked-saw. Ginormous radishes is what I saw. Ginormous radishes that are bolting. So I yanked two out of the ground and got out my camera, because they were covered with these white teeny tiny maggoty things, and I was all, “OMG are you ok???”

And that is my question for you, dear reader. Are they okay? I included a photo of my maggoty friends. Are those just grubs? I always think of grubs being bigger than that, which is why I’m thrown off. Once I rinsed off the dirt and the bugs, the radishes looked more reasonable. Except they’re the size of a racquetball and white. But I was kind of expecting that since that is what Burpee said they ought to be. I’m wondering if I left them in the ground too long. There are some cracks in the radishes, but not a ton. Any thoughts on that, too?