Friday, April 25, 2008

Adopt a Crop update: I hope I'm not jinxing myself

(Forgive the hot dog fingers here - I had just finished huffing a 3 mile run and I was hot, ok.)

Guess who ate the first three strawberries of the season three mornings ago on her cereal?

Yeah, it was me.

What? Strawberries weren't the Adopt a Crop crop of choice?

Right.

Ok, so I don't have a photo of the cucumber again. And would you like to know why? Because I can't keep my damn camera charged long enough to accommodate the super long ass time it takes me to ultra focus the digital macro feature TO PERFECTION, that is why.

*Sigh*

So, I had a shot all picked out and focused and perfect and then the camera zips shut like an asshole and the screen reads,

"CHARGE BATTERY PACK"

Terrific.

Anyway!

The good news is that the only thing that died on me this time was the camera battery (which thankfully can be brought back to life with some amount of charging) and the Pickling Cucumbers whom I was trying desperately to photograph to perfection are indeed ALIVE.

WOO!

Triumph!

Well, as of this morning at 7:51am anyway.

Now for the coming clean part to which I alluded during my last update. Specifically, I bought some seedlings during my very fun nursery trip to fill in the garden places devastated by bastard seedling munching bugs and the asshole squirrels.

And, I will admit, one of the seedlings I bought was a Pickling Cucumber - DON'T BE MAD AT ME ,OK?! I mean, I know I promised pickled cucumbers from seed and everything but sometimes those seeds are not big and strong enough or haven't had enough soapy baths to keep the bugs away and they get chewed to sad nubs and die. Then the only thing I can do is plant all the other seeds, hope for the best, rejoice in the one seedling that looks like it *might* live and then race off to the nursery for this tiny seedling's big brother. Which I found, organically grown and uhhverything, and planted in the mound where the previous bug devouring occurred.

I hope no one tells him he's planted in a cucumber graveyard.

And while I was there I obviously bought other plants because, come on already. Rows and towers and rows of organically grown vegetable seedlings are very, very hard to resist even when you aren't sure exactly where they'll go. Meaning, you've accounted for every last bit of space in the garden, going to great lengths by even conducting an internet adoption poll to fill in the last open slots, and are pretty sure there's not, like, any room left for anything else AND YET STILL, you buy some more because they're there and pretty and promise things like midget Cantaloupes.

Come on people, that is awesome.

So, a quick run down of the impulse vegetable seedling shopping I did:

1 Minnesota Midget cantaloupe
1 Pickling cucumber
1 Jalapa jalapeno
6 Rainbow chards (because my seeds got chewed)
6 Sweet basils (because my seeds had a 0% germination rate - losers!)

That's not too bad, right?

Anyway, I'll have photos of these soon enough. And, oh yeah, I planted a Ronde de Italia squash, which I had in my head was an Eight ball squash but is, in fact, not at all. Not that it *really* matters because this beast is already cooking right along and has fruits setting already. SCORE. I will be eating these through summer as long as the evil squash bastards of yore don't show up to demolish my plants.

As far as other crop updates go, the radishes are looking sparse but strong. So, I'm putting all my Hoping for Radishes eggs in their tiny baskets.

The beets look fine, but not really any bigger than they did before. Which is fine as long as they're not being devastated and destroyed by munchers.

The lettuce looks good. Slow, but good. I have about two of the wee plants rolling the dice and setting new leaves like grown-ups. The others are all shrimpy and barely lettuce at all. COME ON FOLKS.

The snap peas look awesome. Sometimes I forget to give them credit for their awesomeness since, in addition to actually growing from seed, they're fucking fast and are already half way up their fences. Good work guys - mama loves you.

The tomatoes are looking and feeling suspiciously fat around the blooms. Which, in normal words, means they are acting like they want to set fruit. Freaks! It's barely warm out! Not that I mind. The sooner the better.

The strawberries are obviously kicking ass and the borage I randomly and haphazardly planted around the strawberries is sort of going nuts, which I just realized this morning.

Am I forgetting anything? I can't remember. But it would appear that I'm in the midst of gardening season and that makes me a happy bitch.

4 comments:

  1. Man Finny, you're going to have a regular farm stand going there!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow. Love the updates. I love your pictures too. Found this link--not sure if you've seen it. http://lifehacker.com/384259/photograph-your-vegetable-garden

    Peace,

    Katy

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  3. I am drooling. And I need a post-weekend update. It is supposed to be 97 here today, so you are officially my garden of peace. When I get too hot and sweaty to consider going outside, instead I will look at your pretty garden and dream of having one similar one day!

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  4. Oh NICE! Congrats on the berries... I think I just saw the first hint of a strawberry bloom (more of a bud) in the back yard yesterday. How long do you usually find it takes to go from a bud just starting to strawberry juice trickling down your chin?

    VERY jealous!

    What all do you do with the borage? That's the one that tastes sort of cucumbery, right?

    Here you're picking strawberries, and we have a frost/snow warning for tonite and tomorrow nite. Looks like I'll be hauling in a bunch of pots and flats. :(

    I way overplanted my radishes, and so tried de-rooted and cleaned radish seedlings in a sandwich with homegrown spinach this weekend - REALLY good!!

    Keep on growing!

    ReplyDelete

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.