Score one for the hippies.

Where's that smoke coming from?

So, technically, the Cherokee Purple was tied with the Berkeley Tie Dye tomato for the win, but since I'm the All Powerful Oz around here (remember...) I went with the Berkeley Tie Dye because, well, obviously.

Also, if I put in both plants I might lose the dog in the overgrowth.

Right in the line of fire, there.

Because I don't prune my tomato plants like everyone else in creation. I'm actually starting to feel a little weird about the fact that I don't prune my tomatoes since everyEFFINGone does this.

Do YOU prune your tomatoes? Does it help with yields? Are you able to grow more plants and get the same yields in the same small space?

These are things I need to know, people, if I'm going to ever entertain the idea of pruning my tomatoes.

For now though, no pruning.

I expect 50 lbs of tomatoes per plant and I have The Fear of ruining those yields with flights of fancy called Pruning.

So, yeah, unless you can convince me otherwise, I Shalt Not Prune.

I SHALL, however, rip shit out of my landscaping to make room for just the one tomato because why the hell not, right?

Also, this looks better than before anyway.

So, yeah, gigantic overgrown rosemary bush OUT, hippie tomato IN and the dog takes naps - not bad for an Adopt a Crop update.

Then, maybe later this season this plant will do something productive and I'll be able to provide one of you lucky freaks with a weird little something produced from this weird little plant.

Would you like that weirdness?

Thought so.

Freaks.

Weirdness. It's everywhere.

I'll tell you why this is weird later.

Remember Adopt a Crop? Yeah, me too. I liked it. It was fun.

Maybe it was just the polling or maybe it was the planting of a randomly chosen thing, but when I realized that I'd planted out the whole garden this year without putting in the one random thing that would get us all WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THING later in the year, I got sad.

Well, not *sad*, but just kinda felt lame about it.

But since I'm the All Powerful Oz around here (and by "here" I mean, "this blog"), I've decided to do Adopt a Crop this year, but just a little different so that I don't have to rip something out of the garden just to satisfy my urge to grow something weird.

Weird can grow elsewhere in my yard, I just know it. And, really, weird grows ALL OVER my damn yard, so it won't be that weird anyway.

If weird falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a weird sound?

OK, I've gotten off track.

This year's Adopt a Crop weirdness is of the tomato variety. Weird in the sense that these varieties from which you are about to choose are not all Standard Red Beefsteak Tomato varieties.

No, some are fucked up colors and - here's the weird part - they're not going in the vegetable garden. I'm just going to jam them in the yard.

Don't you love it? Weird tomato growing - it's the best.

Hopefully.

Hopefully it's not just weird. I'd love to ship off some weird byproduct of the weird tomatoes grown in the weird place later this year to one of you weird fuckers rather than just sit here and go, well, that was weird and move on with my life.

Has this gotten weird?

I don't think I can use that word anymore.

Choose your weird *shiver* tomato: (See the types here)

Which weirdo tomato should I grow?
	Berkeley Tie Dye (Freakshow bi-color that's probably high right now)
	Cherokee Purple (Psycho looks like a bruise)
	Copia (Is it orange? Is it red? Only the crazies know for sure.)
	Caspian Pink (It's pink. That's not right.)
	Neves Azorean Red (It's from the Azores. 'Nuff said.)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Vote for your favorite variety by Friday and I'll plant your choice this weekend in the...uh...*odd* place in my yard. Then we'll just see what happens with that...uh...*strangeness*.


Meanwhile, speaking of oddities (FYI: not all of these are garden related, so if that's all you're here for, you're free to go)...

Poppies growing randomly just right next to the beehive. Probably because that's where Jada dumps.

Someone sunk a ship in my cocktail. (Gin and Titonic - get it? HAR.)

We ripped out our wall thinking our pipes were leaking when IN FACT they were just NOT PROPERLY INSTALLED. HA HA FUCKING HA. Argh.

Already got an artichoke on the plants. Is that weird? Maybe not.

I daresay the weirdness does not need explanation. I hope the tomatoes are in good hands.

So go vote already and I'll let you know what's getting planted this weekend before the weekend comes. Or not - that's the weird part!

OK, never again with that word.

Remains of summer [+Adopt a Crop Winner]

I know I'm not the only one who takes a million pictures of shit and then never posts the pictures or talks about them, even if just to say Look at the awesome s'mores that I made in my backyard fireplace.

Good thing I didn't start avoiding sugar until fall.

Because there's definitely some added sugar in these.

Though there may just be more "Added other stuff" since it's more sugar than anything else. You know what I mean.

So, I'm doing a little fall cleaning of the summer photos to show you some of the good shit I shot while it was still warm enough for shorts around the firepit at night and naked butts in the high mountain lakes.

No. I will not be showing you naked butt photos.

Pervs.

This is close though. Go Lake Tahoe Derby Dames!

And here's a high mountain lake.

So, you can pretend I had a naked butt when I took this if you must.

And for those of you who just scrolled down to see who won the Adopt a Crop prize this season - you're in luck - I'm feeling generous and have bolded the winner: Mom Taxi Julie!

Shoot me your mailing address and real name (unless you like mail showing up as Mom Taxi Julie, in which case, right on) to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom and I'll send you some randomness PLUS we get to be seed saving buddies next spring and summer. If you want. I mean, you don't *have* to. But - it'll be cool.

Come oooooooooooooon.

OK, back to the remains of summer.

I took approximately 100 photos of this volunteer sunflower. It was the prettiest. And the volunteeriest.

There were lots of bearding events with the bees and this wasn't even the half of it.

See those dots? Bees. All bees. Like the sky was vibrating. Awesome.

Volunteeriest sunflower some more.

All those wildflowers we saw while hiking in Tahoe. *wolf whistle*

Remember Kauai?

Yeah. Me too.

Oh, how I remember.

And then we had a bunch of BBQs.

Which double as dog parties. Obviously.

I'm sure there are a few photos I'm leaving out, but you get it - summer around here was short, sweet and we are lucky that we don't weigh a metric ton due to the eating frenzy.

So, with that, let's all give Fall a big hello while hoping it doesn't end up in our hair.

*Shiver*

Adopt a Crop Update: Team Cuke Officially Effed. Rematch in 2012.

It's officially over, Adopt a Croppers - Team Melons has won out by a pitiful pathetic margin over the pitiful and pathetic cucumbers.

These two crops this year - they wicked sucked. Though the melons only marginally less so than the cucumbers.

I'm cute, but we didn't measure for cuteness.

Final tally:
Cucumbers - 3.97 lbs
Melons - Something vaguely over 4.84 lbs
Total - 8.81

Yeah, this year was not a good one for the cucurbit family in NorCal.

Unless you like to cuddle tiny melons. In which case, this was your year.

How not good, you ask? Well, run your eyes over last year's totals:
Cucumbers -  17.8 lbs
Melons - 68.63 lbs
Total - 86.43 lbs

Wow - a 77.62 lb difference. Yikes and LAME.

Though, the melons are still technically in the ground with one softball sized fruit lingering on its withering vines, so who knows, the melons may crest the big five pound hurdle before all's told. Hooray.

A watermelon the size of a tomato. Yeah - well done, watermelons. Pfft.

So, with Adopt a Crop done and the garden coming down in stages, there's only one thing left to do - send a random garden-type prize unrelated to the mostly failed Adopted Crop to some random and marginally lucky commenter. That could be you!

You could be marginally lucky and the recipient of some random things!

Hooray? Yeah - hooray - because this year the randomness is also accompanied by Be My Seed Saving Buddyness.

What thuh?

Yeah, because I've decided that this year's finally the year in which I save seeds from the garden to plant next year so I can be all full circle-y, the Adopt a Crop winner will receive a sampling of seeds saved from this year's garden via the methods I've shared/will be sharing in my quest to undertake my 100th hobby: seed saving.

Also, probably some jam, pickles, relish, salsa, tomatoes or other preserved item from my garden and pillagings and probably some other random shit, too. It might even be garden related. Though it won't be anything derived from this year's watermelon or cucumber crops. Sorry.

Because we've eaten them all. Because there were only, like, three.

Sound good? Great.  

Leave a comment here by 10/15/11 and I'll announce the winner shortly thereafter and then send out the prize. 

FYI to you potential winners: If I announce you as the winner and you don't claim your shit, I'm giving it to someone else. And that person might not be randomly chosen. They may just be someone I like a lot or someone who posts a picture of a cute dog or my neighbor who's never even seen the blog.

Oh I am just drunk with the power of If You Don't Like It, Then Suck It right now. Phew!

But on a less bitchy note - I have a post coming very soon detailing these seed saving exploits, including how I'm going to set up the Cucumber VS Watermelons rematch in 2012.


Look forward to iiiiiiiiit.

Who's to say who's effed and who's not? Clearly, not me.

I should really be posting a tutorial for lip balm right now, I know.

It's just that the whole lip balm situation really revolves around my desire to berate the lip balm recipe havers of the Internet for putting up the most annoyingly vague and useless recipes and I can't very well do effective berating if I, myself, am not posting a useful not-vague recipe myself.

I think you'd agree.

Anyway, while I'm not vague or useless (quiet, you), I am sometimes forgetful. In the sense that I forgot the handwritten recipe I hand wrote for myself as I was mixing up this batch of lip balm (and then remixing it and remelting it and, well, you'll see when I write it up) up in Tahoe and so I can't give you the recipe right now.

Although I *could* give you the rant against the dim hippies who wrote up all the useless and vague lip balm recipes on the Internet right now. Because that part comes real easy. As you know.

So, instead of wrapping my rant around a fabulously NOT-vague or useless recipe for a lip balm you *might* use -- Melons.

More specifically - an update on the Adopt a Crop Team Melons vs Team Cucumbers situation.

Remember how I was all, "Oh Team Melons, you're totally effed" and shit, like back in July?

Who's effed now?

Er...that proclamation may have been premature.

I mean, not that one melon, even one that can grow from this:

I'm adorable.

to this:

I'm obscene.

in one week can break the cucumbers' lead or anything, but when the melons do that meanwhile the cucumbers do this:

Wait? We're cucumber plants? We'd forgotten. We were busy being pathetic losers.

it's safe to say, at least, that Team Melons is not as effed as they seemed to be back in July.

Though, it's true that I've harvested approximately 2 lbs of cucumbers so far and 0 lbs of watermelons, I'm fairly certain that the melon you see plumping up on the vine up there weighs more than 2 lbs and that cucumber plant you see rapidly shitting the bed up there is going to produce about five more minutes' worth of cucumbers before it shrivels up and gives me the finger once and for all.

So any greatness the cucumbers might have enjoyed a month ago might be wiped away in one felled twisting of a watermelon from the vine in a month or so.

OR that watermelon may meet an untimely death at the hands of a nasty creature (this happens sometimes even in the depths of suburbia where we happen to live. We call these happenings "raccoons" and I don't want to talk about it.) and Team Cucumbers could be back firmly holding the lead.

A pathetic 2 lb lead that does not put pickles in the jar, so to speak.

In the sense that it hasn't put any pickles in the jar yet. Because I canned pickles on vacation and they shriveled up into depressing little brown turds in the jar because I *might* have miscalculated our actual elevation and then I *might* have over processed them according to elevation instructions for, like, the Swiss Alps or something.

My pickles came out looking like shits floating in a jar, people, it was sad.

So, yeah, no pickles yet. And only 2 lbs of cucumbers. And 0 lbs of watermelons. And cucumber plants that look about as pathetic as you can imagine while still, somehow, remaining vaguely alive. And one watermelon plant that still hasn't produced a single viable fruit and barely any leaves.

But at least we have the craziest volunteer sunflowers ever.

12 feet tall. Who knew sunflowers could get 12 feet tall? I did not.

This bee got light headed flying to reach it.

The zoom was all the way extended to get this shot.

So, yeah, the drama continues in the garden. Melons staging a comeback, cucumbers quietly dying a tragic crispy brown death, sunflowers towering over the garden like some sort of otherworldly being where I can't prune them to make a stunning bouquet and tomatoes doing what tomatoes always do in the garden.

Go fucking bonkers.

I think if I were to really think hard about who's effed around here, I'd probably say it was me. Or the canner. Because we're both going to have to get really effing busy if we want to keep up.

It's not the worst problem to have. 

Adopt a Crop: Choose sides

Let me admit something to you, my gardeny friends, when I ordered seeds this year, I got greedy. I ordered everything I wanted and didn't leave a bare patch anywhere for guessing.

Cilantro, Thai Basil, Sugar Baby Watermelon, Lettuces, Random Carrot, French Beans, Banana Peppers, Pickling Cucumbers, Snack Pack Watermelon, Big Leaf Basil

This is good because it means I probably won't fall too far afoul of my own rules not to go buying every fucking thing I see at the nursery once spring arrives, but there's the bad side, too.

The side that says that there's no room now for a crop to be chosen and adopted by you guys.

Back to the good side, though - I have guilt. Like, I like doing Adopt a Crop and forcing you all to follow really closely some chosen crop and then at the end of the season I give away something preserved from that crop. 

I like that - it's fun and it reminds me to do a contest every now and again so that you'll come back here and love me. Plus, it gives me a reason for all my gardenblahblahblah that's sanctioned by you, ya big freaks.

So, even though I don't have an empty plot for you to fill with one of four choices given to you in pollster format like years past - thanks to guilt and my own desire to keep this thing up - I do have a way for you to get in on the garden good and early and maybe work up a good violent competition amongst each other.

Because there's nothing I love more than senseless violence inspired by vegetables. Is that even a thing? Well, now it is. I'm starting the vegetable wars.

Instead of choosing a crop to Adopt, you get to choose a team to win. What the hell am I talking about?

Yes, let's see here...

You choose your allegiance based on which crop you think will produce the most poundage.

I like long walks on the beach in my thong Speedo.

I like playing volleyball on the beach in my thong v-string.

And it'll look easy, based on last year's tallies, but this year there are a few things to take into consideration:

1. I'm growing two types of high-yield cucumbers, both of which are larger than last year's "mini" variety
2. Both of these watermelons are virgins in my beds (sex-ay), so I have no idea how productive, huge, small, lively or pest-ridden they may become, so their outcome is unsure. They're also both small varieties and I may not even be able to germinate them properly.
3. These seeds will all be direct sown, so no cheating and buying seedlings if their seeds croak. Given last season's touchy start with the melon seeds, this could be a deciding factor.
4. Both crops seem to have some deep seated desire to go to the beach, so they may both vanish from the garden as soon as the weather warms up.

So, given those random nuggets which are likely of no use to you whatsoever because I know you just want to pick sides and get to kicking each other in the face...go!

Pick yer team
	Team Cucumber
	Team Melons
Free polls from Pollhost.com

You'll have lots of time for sucker punching and eye gouging before the seeds even go in the ground, so just go ahead and bust out your best shit talking now.

Depending on the weather, the amount of work we get done on the beds and the installation of the bees (more soon), these seeds could go in the ground any time between the middle of March (our last frost date is 3/1, suckahs) and the beginning of May.

Lord help us all if I don't get to plant until May, though, because that will mean that we've had another unseasonably cool spring and I am coming out of my skin with WHEN CAN I PLANT MY GARDEN ALREADY tantrums, which will be ugly - at the very least.

At which point I will likely pick a team to root for just so that I can have an opponent to punch in the face. FYI: I fight dirty.

Adopt a Crop update: And, we're done. +Prizes & Gloating!

I am just realizing that after all my threatening about overloading your eyeballs with gardenblahblahblah, I actually haven't been that crazy on the subject this year. Probably because we've had, like, the coolest (in terms of temperature rather than general awesomeness) summer in 40 years and the garden was a little lackluster.

Or so I thought.

Tomato butt cheeks. Because I'm 10 years old and super mature.

See, you remember that I track the garden haul, right? Where I put everything that comes out of the garden onto my fancy scale and then write down the weights and track them all anal like in my spreadsheet so that I can know all kinds of random garden facts that make me feel like a big man when I'm cruising Whole Foods and can look a tomato in the eye and be like, "Hello tomato, at my house you'd cost me $.21 and taste twice as good so I'm going to pass on you and go fight some Russian woman for the last bag of barley." (Which totally happened, by the way, and I won in the end because the Whole Foods clerk took pity on me and rooted around until he found another bag lurking somewhere in The Back. Nice.)

The BIG potato haul: 2 lbs 2 oz. WOO. At least they're pretty.

Know what else is a true story? The fact that this year, it only cost me $.21 a pound to grow our own produce. That's it - less than a shiny hot quarter (do quarters get hot? It's unknowable.) for a pound of local and organic produce. And, that's $.12 less than it cost me, per pound, to grow last year's garden.

Are you dying to see 2009's garden fight 2010's garden? I don't even know why I ask because, obviously...

2009 vs 2010
Gardening costs: $91.34 vs $56.26= -$35.08: 2010 wins!
Total produce value: $1,130.34  vs $1,003.19 = -$127.15: 2009 wins!
Cost per pound to produce: $0.33 vs $0.21= -$0.12: 2010 wins!
Total pounds: 273.98 vs 264.31 = -9.67: 2009 wins!
Total pounds of tomatoes: 208.25 vs 147.4 = - 60.81: 2009 wins!

So, to sum that up in a way that makes some sense for normal people; I spent less putting the garden in this year which YAY, and despite a very cool summer and one less tomato plant, I only produced 9 fewer pounds of produce and reduced my overall cost per pound by $.12. And wouldn't you like to know that it DID NOT cost me $64 to grow a damn tomato. Just saying.

This was a cucumber plant I gave to our neighbors which grew BACK over to my side of the fence. Cute.

 Also, I learned that regardless of the variety, most any standard tomato plant I put in will give me around 50 pounds of tomatoes and by cutting back to 3 tomato plants this year, I sort of fucked myself in the total poundage category because that's a big deficit to make up. Thankfully, we grew some heavy weird watermelons and came in just 9 pounds shy of last year.

So, yay, the garden actually DID do well and DID NOT have a lackluster year even though it rained until fucking June of all things.

Because, had it been warm and sunny in May, as I'm accustomed to, the other alien creature in my garden might have had a chance to reach maturity before I unceremoniously ripped it from the garden on Saturday.

And now the aliens are in my house guarding my kitchen window from unwanted visitors.

People, the garden is done for. I ran six miles Saturday morning and upon finishing my run, immediately headed out back to take down the garden for the season.

Nigh - night, garden.

Yep. Sure did. And then I sat on my couch, drank a bottle of wine and screamed at my TV until it screamed back, "THE GIANTS ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!!"

I can make the TV do my bidding if I just scream loud enough. I'm sure of it.

Anyway, the garden came out and I am here to report on my findings, give some lucky Adopt a Cropper a prize just for commenting and probably gloat a little.

Let's face it, I'm not modest. And I really like dispelling the myth that growing an organic garden is some sort of expensive heroic impossible effort.

It is not. Even though I like to act all dramatic like it is.

Findings:

One garden does not equal one wheelbarrow.

Spiny evil fruits have spiny evil vines.

Bubba will eat anything.

There was a lot more shit out there to harvest than I thought. Which explains the dirty bucket I pulled in at the last minute.

I now have a lot of work to do in the kitchen.

My findings aren't all earth shattering. In fact, probably none of them are, but I was pretty stoked to bring in some final tomatoes and I really like the one with the prominent ass cheeks. I think I'll save him for last.

For prizes, then.

If you remember, I usually give away an Adopt a Crop prize made, appropriately, from the Adopted Crop. Like the pickle chips and arugula pesto and such. Yeah, well, the jelly melons aren't ripe (even the one Bubba ate so willingly was still a little north of ripe) and I'm not sure what I'd make from them anyway that would stand a chance of shipping anywhere in the world, so I'm not holding true to the theme.

You're going to have to come to peace with this on your own.

However, I AM going to give a garden prize to a random commenter and it will be a collection of preserved things from my garden. There will probably be pickles, a jam of some kind and then maybe something strange or unexpected. All I can say for sure is that they'll be edible and will not have any component of African Horned Cucumber Jelly Melon.

You can thank me later on that one.

SO! Leave a comment by 11/15/10 and I'll randomly choose someone to get a random box of preserves from my garden. Random!

Oh, and if you're curious about the flavor of the spiny melon that tried to kill me when I tore it from the garden (for real. I have wounds.), it does in fact taste a bit like banana and citrus. I imagine I'd like it if it were to ripen fully and not try to slit my wrists when I harvested it. Though I may never know because I doubt I'll try growing it again. It was too mean.

But what will I grow next year? Well, I already have some thoughts but nothing concrete because, of course, there's the requisite mulling of seed catalogs during the cold winter months which I must do in earnest so that I can choose some equally ridiculous things for next year's garden as I sit pining away for fresh tomatoes and fantasizing about a warm summer garden while I wear all my biggest and ugliest clothes.

I'm pretty sure this is how all these bizarre heirloom vegetable varieties stay in circulation. I mean, no one's going to the nursery all hot for African Horned Cucumber Jelly Melon starts in April, after all. No, weird shit like that only sounds fun and good when it's cold and crappy outside and when you haven't laid eyes on fresh melons for months. So when you see something like that looks like a medieval weapon but turns out to be a "banana-citrus like" melon - you jump on it like a muther. WOO! I will have this bizarre thing! No, I don't know how it grows and I don't care! Woo!

You know what I mean.

Now that I know this about myself (because I am a prime example of how shit like this happens), I am going to try to train my eyes on the tomato and bean pages so that, in the event of a Weird Alert, all I end up with is a foot long red bean or zebra stripped tomato. Anything, really, as long as it's not covered in spikes. I don't need that in my life.

So, yeah. The garden is done. The fava beans have been planted to overwinter. I've broken down most of the final harvest. The final numbers show that we had a pretty good season produce-wise and I'm looking to give away some preserves.

You know what to do.