The wonderful benefit of having 2 cases of tomatoes

[BHU]

I've been wishing for home grown tomatoes but nothing from the garden yet. I have maybe 4 that are starting to ripen but it will take a few days more. Usually by mid August we have more then enough, but not this year. I stopped at Candellas about a wrek ago & the ones they have are greenhouse grown. I bought a few & they were the same as the ones offered in supermarkets. Lousy.

[Clipper]

Just about everyone I know, both here in the South and also in your area have been complaining about how poorly their gardens are growing and the lack of yield compared to years gone by. The only thing that seems to be thriving in my garden is the butternut squash. I am picking a few tomatoes every few days, but the cucumbers that normally thrive and usually produce a yield that I can hardly keep up with are dying off already. They have been covered with blossoms, and have been buzzing with bees all summer, but the blossoms just don't seem to be turning into little cucumbers. It has me puzzled. The bell peppers are the same way. The plants have grown well but the fruit has been a bit sparse compared to past years. They produced plenty of blossoms and peppers but the peppers are smaller than in years past and the skins are tough. Last year we were picking so many cukes and peppers that we were giving them to neighbors and friends. Sadly, this year I have been buying produce to supplement what we are growing in order for Kathy to have all she needs to can and freeze what we normally put up for the winter.

Our "better boy" tomatoes are still producing a few tomatoes with time for them to mature and ripen, but the Beefsteaks that I planted never amounted to anything. The so called beefsteaks produced fruit no bigger than a golf ball and they weren't even worth picking.

I think when we have picked a few more peppers and tomatoes that are on the plants right now, I will probably pull up the plants and till most of the garden with the exception of the butternut squash, and they are doing very well. I see approximately 20 squash growing, and more blossoms just starting to turn to squash. Pretty much the only successful thing I have grown this year. When I weigh the poor yield and the frustration against the hours of ass busting work that went into preparing the plot, planting the plants, as well as the money spent on weed cloth, I am having second thoughts about even bothering to plant a garden next year. I have not gotten the joy and satisfaction this year that I have always enjoyed as a result of growing a vegetable garden. I guess much of the problem is that when I was young I could wrestle the tiller for hours on end, but this year I had to take several days of having it beat me half to death, leaving me half crippled and sore. I don't have the strength or muscle mass anymore to do it.

Bottom line is that old age is kicking my butt and I am not liking the fact that I am no longer physically able to do many of the things that I always enjoyed.

BHU, I hope that your garden perks up and starts producing. It is disappointing when you look at the money and time you put into a garden, and are forced to admit that you are paying over supermarket price for what it yields.

[Clipper]

Gee, after several days of working her butt off canning tomatoes, she finally finished the 50 lbs we bought last Sunday. Today while we were on our way to have dinner with friends, we went by a stand that was selling canning tomatoes by the case. I asked her if we should buy a couple of boxes. I got that raised eyebrow look of scorn, and a smack in the shoulder. haha

[kit]

You can only push it so far, Clipper... then... the backfire!
Enjoy the tomatoes.

[Clipper]

You are one hundred percent correct Kit. She says she doesn't even want to SEE another tomato for at least a week. Thank goodness I put a couple aside for sandwiches, and we still have a limited number from the garden ripening on the window sill for salads.

With the neuropathy pain in her feet our overzealous desire to have lots of good canned tomato products, it turned into a grueling chore for her to get them all processed before they began to be come over ripe. Amazingly out of the entire two cases, there was only one tomato that got squashed and oozed out the bottom of the box. When she went to remove them from the box, she found that they weren't dumped in the box, but rather were neatly layered by hand. Somebody took great pains to insure that the tomatoes remained unbruised when they packed them.

[clarencebunsen]

Sounds like a good vendor to do business with. Maybe only one case next time.

[Clipper]

Haha, yep, definitely only one case next time. If we do two, we will wait until one is processed and out of the way before buying another. Farmer's market downtown today. I will be on the hunt for a decent price for a half a bushel of pickling sized cucumbers. I like the Saturday market better than the Tuesday market. On Tuesday there are not as many people out and about, so there are fewer vendors. Saturday the selection is always wide, and a person can find anything from veggies, to eggs, locally grown pork and sausage, home churned butter, honey, eggs, breads and baked goods. One vendor sells home made sour dough bread that is out of this world. I always buy a loaf. It makes great toast.

[Deleted]

Oh no I think Kathy is going to be busy again with a half a bushel of pickling sized cucumbers.

I bought a small jar of dill pickles made by McClures. Horrible product. Blah! I must send an email to the company.

[Clipper]

Well with a half bushel of cucumbers, half will go for sliced bread and butter, and the other will be dill spears. We have a slice-o-matic slicer that is like a mandolin with a lever that shuffles the cucumber over the blade, preserving a person's digits. I will slice the cukes for bread and butter and cut the spears for the dills while she processes and cans them.

[kit]

My mom used to grow her own vegetables including many "pickle plants" and she'd make dill pickles, sweet gherkins, several different relishes, and my favorite... bread-and-butter pickles. I remember she used to pick the cucumbers in the morning and in the afternoon she'd chop, slice, dice, or whatever while she sat at the kitchen table and watched her afternoon soap operas on an old B&W television. Her favorite was "Hawkins Falls'. Anybody remember that?

Then she'd do the pickling, clean and put everything away, then make dinner for when my dad got home from work at 5:30. What a woman she was. Sad to say, there aren't very many gals today that would even know how to do those things (except watch soap operas)... much less take the time to do them. Thankfully there are still some gals like Kathy who know how, and do these things. You're quite fortunate, Clipper.

[Deleted]

[Clipper]

There is no doubt that I am very fortunate to have Kathy Kit. She has certainly been a most precious part of my life for the last 21 years. A good old fashioned gal that is not afraid of work. She is a magnificent cook, keeps our house immaculate, and is the best friend and soulmate that any man could even pray for.

She can't stand to sit still for even a moment most days. By the time she does her busy work all day, doing household chores, cooking, baking, and all the rest, her feet are killing her. She enjoys all of those things. Even after all 6 of the back surgeries, and the ensuing recoveries, she was up and around, doing what she does, but this neuropathy in her feet has laid her low and really caused her to be in misery most of the time.

I can picture your mom sitting at a table doing her canning prep and such while she watched her soaps. My gram on my dad's side did the same thing except she did it in their little kitchen while LISTENING instead of watching her soap. She had an old plastic cased radio on a small shelf over the table and she listened to it just about all day long as she went about her business.

My dad's uncle, my gram's brother, boarded with my grandparents for years. He never married. When supper was over and the rest of the family would retire to the living room to watch tv, he would make pot of tea or open a bottle of Fort Schuyler beer and sit in the kitchen to listen to the ball game on that same radio.

[BHU]

Our garden is about done for this year. I picked the last of the tomatoes & pulled the plants, the yield was nothing to write home about. What was surprising wss the cubanelles did better then the tomatoes though for some reason a few of them rotted on the plant as soon as they started turning red, so I picked them green. I now have a brown paper grocery bag about 3/4 full & I'm waiting for them to turn red. I'll fry up a few & give the rest away. The cucumbers did not do well at all but the zucchini were abundunt & we still have some butternut squash not ready to pick yet & the basil was abundunt. I too am thinking of chucking the garden for next year. I'm just not sure if it's worth the trouble anymore between the planting, weeding, fertilizing & watering. I'm thinking of planting a few tomatoes & peppers in containers & thats it, but we'll see what next year brings.

Clipper, sorry to hear about the health problems your Kathy is having. Hope she feels better.

[Clipper]

We still have a few pepper plants that are producing. Tomatoes are long gone, cucumber vines have withered and died. We have about a dozen and a half butternut squash that are still growing. They are turning color now so I will probably harvest them in the next few weeks.

When those squash have been picked and the last few peppers are cut up and frozen, I will pull all the plants and decide if I want to bother with it next year. It was a horrible year, both yield wise and weed wise. It has been so damned hot and dry here that stuff didn't grow as well as usual, and by watering the garden with a sprinkler in the evening, the weeds grew faster than the veggies.

I have always planted rows far enough apart to run out little cultivator/tiller between the rows to keep the weeds out. This year I thought I would use that weed cloth. I laid down weed cloth between all the rows and up fairly close around the plants. That proved to be a mistake. The weeds came up through it where it overlapped and around the plants. It looks like a jungle out there.

I am getting to a point where I can't wrestle with the big tiller to prep the plot anymore. It beats me to death. We have discussed simply buying bushels of tomatoes, cukes, and peppers when they are in season. By the time I bought the plants, the weed cloth, the fertilizer, calcium supplement for the tomato and pepper plants I could have bought the vegetables at the produce market during the season when they are reasonably priced and saved a lot on my back and on the water bill. My garden has always provided a bountiful harvest, and started out well this year until the overly hot and dry weather came. It has been mid nineties here for a week, and we have had those record breaking hot spells all summer long this year with little rain.

I think maybe there comes a time when our ambition outweighs our physical ability.

Normally I have to mow the lawn every 4 or 5 days. I haven't mowed in almost two weeks and the grass is so dry it crunches when you walk on it.