Food Gardening 2025

Wow, so jealz!

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OOO more greenhouse photos plz!

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Just when I was starting to harvest non-split tomatoes for the first time this season, it rained all day again. Not a hard rain, but enough that I had to venture out this evening to grab anything that had broken color so that it has a chance to mature inside without exploding/deeply splitting and getting infected with things that enjoy sucking on exploded tomato flesh.

Right now I probably have 20 extremely large cherokee purples in various stages of maturity, plus another 4 or 5 of the alleged Amish Paste/Roma tomatoes that are clearly not that. So another evening of tomato canning is soon to be upon me.

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In other news, I have lately found myself unable to consume the required cucumber/day quota that I set for myself when my plant started producing. There’s quite a bit of yellowing/dried-out foliage now, and I can see a bunch of little baby cukes that aren’t going to make it, so clearly it’s about to slow down considerably.

The relief!

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A very good day today. After a 3-ish year wait: our first pick of Italian plums. I see a plum torte in my near future.

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Yum! I love making those into a cake

Me, too. I’ve had such a hard time finding them here locally, that we planted our own tree.

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Those look amazing!

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I lived next to one that provided plentifully.

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Lucky you!

Yesssssss

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A heat-wave is coming for us from southern climes. High summer is finally happening in the PNW. Here’s today’s pick. The tomatoes (Ruby Crush) are our very first tomatoes for this season.

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@shrinkrap

I’ve been thinking about your post on another thread, as I’m in the same boat:

After some anxiety of my own, I made myself a spread sheet of everything we’ve got going on in the garden, and looked up historically when they’ve been ripe (range of dates, of course). Now I have notes of which things I certainly need to harvest before we go, which things are a crap-shoot depending on where they’re at in a few weeks and how well they might survive on the vine if left unattended, and finally those things which I don’t need to worry about at all. It’s helped to narrow down the “trouble spots”, and to let go of the things which will be fine. As far as the “trouble spots” go, I might split the difference: harvest some and hope they hold up/ripen “on the counter”, leaving the rest on the vine.

FWIW: I won’t be leaving anything “on the counter” indoors, as that could result in a real mess should things over-ripen. Will make some spot in a sheltered area outdoors and see how they fare.

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I was just thinking about your electric fence as I sit here under my grape Arbor and see that the first squirrels have already started to knock down our grapes and leaves. How do you keep the squirrels from coming through the relatively large openings of your electric fence?, the squirrels are The most threatening critter to our grape crop.

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We haven’t narrowed it down to squirrels…yet. We see them very rarely in “the back 40”. We have seen (and trapped) possums, and we see (and hope we never trap) racoons. This year will be an acid test. We gave up bagging - it was pointless.

My peeps! :heartpulse:

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Bagging is pointless in my experience as well. Squirrels are our big nemesis. Very woodsy lot. I woke up this am to find 14 new apples on the ground. Not ripe yet. There’s no way I can electrify a fence as our grape vines are immediately adjacent to a maple grove and everything is touchy touchy. I’m thinking of spraying with peppermint this year to see if it is any type of deterrent. We started using it on our cars when they got under the hood and ate through all the tubing. Twice.

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Yikes!!! :chipmunk:

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Carport and no garage unfortunately.

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Those monsters will find a way to invade any space.
I have witnessed them tearing 1/2" hardware cloth mesh off of siding, robbing an outdoor a/c unit housing of the pink insulation and many more dastardly deeds.

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