You’re welcome! I’ve not worked with Cal-Mag, just the Calcium Chloride called “Rot Stop”. Either way, a foliar application is much faster at getting results, as long as you’re careful avoiding high temperature application. According to this reference, you’ll want to adjust the Cal-Mag pH before application. With luck, it’ll already be in that range, but your water may affect its pH.
With root feeding, it will take a lot longer to travel up the stem, into the fruit as Calcium isn’t absorbed very quickly through the roots. I had BER on tomatoes before and the foliar application works wonders at stopping it. There’s no way to know without experimenting if it will help with the cracking.
My tomatoes aren’t ripe yet, so I don’t know if the cracking will appear. It hasn’t been CA hot, but days have been in the 90s with 70s at night. I water every morning. Before planting, I rototilled some dolomitic limestone into the row.
That statement is not entirely true. It is more an opinion than fact. Proper soil health is a complex subject. I’ve taken depleted, barren and unproductive soil and transformed it into healthy, rich soil by careful, selective fertilizing with regular 10-10-10, and managing weeds as cover crops to break the clay, store nutrition and create soil microbial populations. There is zero evidence that non-organic fertilizers harm your health, unless you consume them directly. Organic fertilizers (manure-based, not heat-treated) have been linked to Salmonella and Coliform bacteria outbreaks. If we take narrowly selected data points, we get biased results.
Any fertilizer, improperly used, can be harmful. Understanding the Biology and Chemistry in gardening, horticulture and agriculture is the best way to make sound decisions, and that takes many years of study and field experience.
I haven’t harvested the rhizomes for spice yet. I have a collection of spice gingers and used this one to get Thai Finger Ginger, Boesenbergia rotunda, in a trade.
The other Thai ginger “Galanga” or “Galangal” is a very tall-growing plant, Alpinia galanga. I’ll see if I can get some pictures of it and its flowers. Ginger common names get confusing and blurred, mixed-up, so slogging through the Latin names is often necessary!
Wow, that’s a beautiful bloom! Interesting size of the bloom, and the ratio to the green leaves…
I try ginger in my yard, but it never really grows that well. Ironically, with the warm, humid and wet summer we’ve had, I thought it would have been the year to do better. Instead, all except one of the ginger pieces we put in soil even grew. Usually we get a lovely crop of fresh ginger in the stores in the spring, but I noticed this year’s batch was really sad looking - very dried out. Maybe the logistics and transport issues hit hard.
I heard on the local news today that army worms are on the march within 50 miles of us. We had our first invasion in almost 40 years two years ago. Once you notice them it’s too late. They don’t call them army worms for nothing. We’re ready for them this time around though.
OK, this is blurring the line between food and flowers, but the tall plants in the background are Amorphophallus konjac, the source for glucomannan, an extract of that aroid, often called “konjac”.
Shiratake/shirataki noodles, “rice” and many zero calorie foods are are made from the bulblike corm of this plant. While I’ve not extracted the glucomannan from the corms, I have made shiratake noodles from purchased glucomannan powder. Like many foods that are primarily fiber and low/no calorie, shiratake noodles have a laxative effect if one is not acclimated to consuming it.
Shrinkrap, I’m very fond of Aroids, which began with childhood admiration of wild stands of Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) flowers. Many of these are food plants, like Taro. Others need special treatment to be eaten because they contain microscopic crystals of Calcium Oxalate. Those crystals create a sensation of having a hornet’s nest in your mouth; stings! Jack-in-the-Pulpit was my first, and hopefully last, experience with this effect. The Native Americans ate Jack-in-the-Pulpit after slicing the corms thin, sun drying, and additional drying in breathable baskets for many months. Air and changes in humidity eventually break down the crystals, providing a winter food with long storage life. Hence Jack-in-the-Pulpit’s other common name “Indian Turnip”.
I’m seeking out another Aroid, the Elephant Yam, Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, which is a food plant of tropical Asia. I hear it has some stinging crystals which can be removed by certain cooking methods, some of which use Tamarind in the cook water. There’s a grower in Florida who has them.
The plant world is like the insect world; each goes on, seemingly forever, down fascinating pathways which keep branching.
If you get overrun, there’s always a tomato mill, like a squeezo, to make puree or juice. Last year, I got an Italian made, very large, hand-crank tomato mill, about twice the size of the Squeezo. Core and chop the tomatoes into big chunks, toss them in a pot to cook a little (destroys an enzyme which causes pulp separation). Then, when it’s cool, pour the tomatoes into the mill and crank the handle. Seeds and skins come out one side and juice/pulp go down a sluice to a bowl. You don’t have to precook the tomatoes if the end product will be a reduction sauce.
As is, the juice is great for gazpacho, drinking. You can cook it down further for a reduction sauce.
Thank you! You have reminded me that I have a tomato mill. I will put it to work.
I’ve got gazpacho and roasted tomatoes on rotation.
Working on this week’s batch today. With some frozen ripe poblanos from last year, and my first ripe peppers from @bogman’s “I think two year old Aji Amarillo plants” ! Zesty!
That looks great already! Bet it’s all gone by now!
The first Sugar Rush Peach peppers are starting to color-up. I’m curious if it’d be an easier to grow stand-in for Aji Amarillo. It’s related, C. baccatum, and has a lot of great reviews. I’ll be saving seeds if anyone is interested. Aji Charapita, C. chinense, is also on the seed saving to-do list. Those are the only peppers I’m growing this year to quell the diseases that were hammering them a couple years back.
While stumbling around for some real scientific papers on Bitter Melon, Momordica charantia, I came across this NIH.Gov paper. The reason is the Bitter Melon crop here is coming in and… well…they are bitter! I’ve got one recipe down which is good (parboiled rings, stuffed with ground, lean pork, cooked with fermented black beans and chilies), and am trying to locate some other healthy recipes that are not deep fried chips. Two white-fruited types are growing here; one is Japanese and one Chinese. I’ll get some images of the former, Jyunpaku, which I grew last year just for seeds.
Here are some nice recipe for butter melon. It is good esp if ou like fermented shrimp called bagoong which is salty . If so, go easy with the salted black beans.
If you do not like the bitterness that much, here is how the filipino do it.
There are many recipes for bitter melon I is a favorite also among the filipino community. . Look up Ampalaya recipe. I like it also with tomatoes onions, ground meat and eggs
On a bizarre side note none of our tomato plants are developing any fruit. Obviously hard to tell from the pics but I can’t spot one tomato coming in on any of the 6-8 plants and varieties we planted. Odd to say the least.
