Anne Raver referenced this audio clip and transcript about how ‘Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter’ tomatoes came to be in her NY Times story this week. Runs about 8 minutes. Worth a listen
The story behind ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomatoes
Category: Veggies
Life in the veggie garden.
Late June walkaround
Click on images for larger view. Plant IDs from memory. (Don’t hold me to them.)
In an email earlier this week, Hank over at Lake County pointed out that I haven’t posted many garden pictures lately, and he was wondering how things looked. Actually, I’ve taken tons of pictures this season. Pictures of plants I wanted to write about. Pictures I wanted to make points about. Most got downloaded, edited and PhotoShopped. But I just haven’t had time to take them any farther.
So last night I did a quick walkaround and took some long shots just to record the peri-solstice garden and refocus a little on the big picture and not the individual plants (and weeds). While I love individual plants, the long shots make me appreciate the overall feel of the place in ways that I sometimes forget when I’m actually in the space.
The upper garden (below). My lame rock garden is in the center of the lawn. Miscanthis floridulus that blocks the road is about half its mature height. Various shrubs in the border are starting to come along. I like the old saw, “The first year they sleep. The second year they creep. The third year they leap.” But between the rabbits and the deer, I have many second years when it comes to shrubs.
Front bed on the north side of the house. Goatsbeard (Aruncus) along the fence by the driveway. (Wild grape and clematis winds through it.) White valerian flowers float above. Big swath of yellow from evening primrose. Spirea flowers provide a little purple.
Did I make these curves by design (below, left). Maybe. Blind sow gets an acorn every now and then. Alchemilla and lysimachia provide yellows to right of walk. Grays are lambsears (foreground) and artemisia (background). Plume poppy provides bulk behind porch with autumn clematis climbing pole. Adjacent green mass is a tangle of mint and wild asters. I can’t take credit for the borrowed scenery of marsh and woods in the back. This one is really worth clicking on to appreciate. Pergola (right) with bittersweet, spirea (foreground) and Persicaria (background).
Blue bottle bed featuring scotch thistle, burdock, ornamental grasses, verbascum, phlomis, lots more.
The dry bed. Artemisia, verbascums, alliums (some flowering, some old), lots of cacti and succuents — hardy and tender — in pots and troughs.
Veggie garden (yeah, I use a lot of garlic) and water garden (needs some work).
The wet garden. Low spot stays wet most summers. Tradescantia, lysimachia, filipendula, turtlehead, willows, hibiscus, monarda, veronicastrum. It’s pretty plain now, especially since the tradescantia closes up in the evening. But this will be the most spectacular part of the garden before long.
My goal is that someday my garden will look as good as the borrowed scenery I have as a backdrop.
Sunday music: Chris Smither
Finally, some music that might actually have something to do with gardening. In Origin of Species, Chris Smither starts off in the garden and later actually rhymes cabbage.
And here’s No More Love Today, (audio from New Hampshire Public Radio), a song inspired by the call of a New Orleans produce vendor. Be ready for a rhyme with okra. Graham will like this one more, as Smither does more with his feet.
Because in the end no one will sell you what you need.
You can’t buy it off the shelf. You got to grow it from the seed.
Ancient peppers front-paged in WaPo
Washington Post Friday, February 16, 2007; Page A01
Inhabitants of the New World had chili peppers and the makings of taco chips 6,100 years ago, according to new research that examined the bowl-scrapings of people sprinkled throughout Central America and the Amazon basin.
Upcoming questions on the research agenda — and this is not a joke — include: Did they have salsa? When did they get beer?
Gathering seeds
At right is a wood block print of Iris Kaempferi from the cover of an old, undated seed catalog from Yoshinoen-Garden in Tokyo, part of an online exhibit titled Mail Order Gardens exhibit at Cornell University’s Mann Library. Larger image.
I have a pretty rigid rule for winter activities: Order seeds before doing taxes. Do taxes before starting seeds. That’s the only way that I can make sure I get my taxes done on time. It also keeps me from starting my tomatoes too soon.
This year, I decided to really use the Vegetable Varieties website I help out with at work. We’ve got more than 5,000 varieties described there (along with seed sources), and more than 1,500 registered users visiting the site to rate and review what works for them (and what doesn’t).
The process forced me out of my comfort zone. I ordered less from my favorite companies, and I tried a few new ones. We’ll see if the recommendations and reviews offered by other gardeners on that site pay off with a better veggie garden this year.
I’ll paste my variety list below. It doesn’t include a handful of varieties I picked up in behind-the-scenes trading. And I usually by some tomato starts locally, as we’re blessed with greenhouses in the area that know a lot of folks around here are looking for something out of the ordinary.
On the flower front, for the first time in a decade or more, I’m refusing to even open a single perennial catalog. That stack of porn is going to sit unread this winter. Oh, I may break down and look at the pictures should winter linger too long here. But I’m putting a moratorium on plant orders to try to focus a little more on what I’ve already got in the ground.
There are a few morning glories I’m lusting after, so I’ll break down and order a few flower seeds. And I’ve still got my North American Rock Garden Society seed exchange order to place, which will give me a couple dozen more plants to check out. But like the block print above, I’m going with a minimalist approach this season.
Gotta get those flower orders taken care of so that I can move on to taxes.
Here’s this year’s veggie seed list. Any suggestions? Let me know. Or better yet, let everyone know through the Vegetable Varieties website.
Artichoke Imperial Star
Asian greenYukina Savoy
Beans Molly Frazier’s White Cutshort
Beans Cherokee Trail of Tears
Beans Romanette
Beans Jumbo
Beans E-Z Pick
Celery Afina Cutting Celery
Chard Bright Lights
Collards Champion
Cucumber Poona Kheera
Cucumber Suyo Long
Cucumber Northern Pickling
Eggplant Swallow
Kohlrabi Gigante
Leeks Tadorna
Lettuce Cracoviensis
Lettuce Green Deer Tongue
Lettuce black seeded simpson
Mache Verte de Cambrai
Melons Green Nutmeg Muskmelon
Okra Burgundy
Onions Crimson Forest
Pak Choy Mei Qing Choi
Peas Sugar Snap
Pepper Melrose
Pepper bull nose
Pepper Aconcagua
Pepper Hot Paper Lantern
Radishes French Breakfast
Spinach Tyee
Squash Zephyr
Squash Costata Romanesco