Tomato Pinworm

Cindy was inspecting the ripening tomatoes the other day when she noticed a small hole in one of the green tomatoes.

That led her to suspect that there might be a problem with that tomato, so she picked it and sliced it open, to find that her suspicions were confirmed: a Tomato Pinworm, Keiferia lycopersicella. 

The larva of the  bug usually enters the tomato through the calyx, which can make it difficult to detect unless you see the frass (aka bug poop), but this one had entered on the skin of the fruit which made its entry point much more obvious.

In fact, in the picture below you can still see the entry hole above the sliced out portion of the tomato.

Tomato Pinworm

One problem with growing food that we like is that other creatures like it, too.

Zucchini Soup

Zucchini

The Clarimore and Raven Zucchini have now started their relentless march across the culinary landscape.  Cindy's artificial pollination efforts are now bearing fruit--lots of fruit.

Something she made recently was a cold Herbed Zucchini Soup from an Eating Well Magazine recipe that was really delicious.  In addition to 1 and 1/2 pounds of zucchini, the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese, and that ingredient was what made the soup so delicious.

For the recipe, go to Eating Well Magazine at: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/herbed_zucchini_soup.html_0 .

Garden Gate

Calling Engineer Lou---we repaired the broken fence board on our garden gate yesterday, but the problem that caused it to crack in the first place is still there.

Yard Side of the Gate

That is, when the bolt is in place to secure that side of the gate, that board becomes rigid and pressure on the gate makes that board try to flex too much and it eventually cracks.  

We're trying to think of ways to spread out the pressure and keep the new board from cracking, too.

Driveway Side of the Gate

We both had the idea of putting a horizontal board along those boards at the bottom of the gate, hoping that would make the whole thing more rigid.  Cindy's solution would be to put the horizontal board along the very bottom of the boards, running from the catch to the end of the gate.  My idea was to put it up higher, just under the horizontal cross beam and run it across all the boards.

Any ideas?  

Tomatogeddon

Tomatoes & Tomatillos

As predicted, we are now up to our kneecaps in ripe tomatoes.  Cindy harvested 16 pounds of tomatoes the other day and another 15 pounds yesterday.  She's already had to start pureeing some of them and creating tomato sauce to freeze.

Soon she'll haul out the canner and start putting up lemon tomatoes.

Tomatillos?  Yes, we've got those, too.  Lots of those, most of which went into a tomatillo salsa yesterday.  The kitchen smells like tomatoes almost all the time now.

Tomatillos

We're eating tomatoes at just about every meal, in almost every dish imaginable, and then we'll have the sauces and canned tomatoes all winter, too.

Tomatoes and Geraniums

Accidental Landscape

With Bird Netting

I was looking at our Blueberry grow bags the other day and noticed that the sides of the blue cloth bags had begun to resemble a landscape picture.

The moisture draining through the bag from the drip irrigation system has resulted in some staining from dampness and from minerals or nutrients leeching through the cloth of the bag.  The staining a week or so ago gave the illusion of white clouds; mold at the bottom of the bag creates the illusion of trees and vegetation that completes the picture.

A Week Later, No Netting

By the time I got around to shooting a picture, the staining had changed, and so had the landscape.

It makes an interesting, changeable, accidental landscape.

Joanne's Jade Plant

Joanne's Jade Plant

Our friend Joanne was visiting us here in San Diego last week and showed us the picture of her Jade plant.

It's a descendant of the enormous Jade plant we used to have in our back yard; Cindy gave Joanne a cutting from ours the last time she came to visit, and she has carefully nurtured it ever since then.

Since she lives in Minnesota, succulents like Jade take some care to keep them alive.

In our San Diego climate,  Jade (Crassula ovata) needs very little encouragement to grow.  In fact, the back 40 was pretty much covered with Jade and other plants gone wild before we cleared it out to increase the defensible space around our house and garage and cut down the danger of wildfire.

Since these plants are also called dollar plants or money plants, it might be a good thing to have a few of them around.

They're Baaaack.

Four Young Squirrels

The California Ground Squirrels have reappeared in force lately; we thought the Gopher Snake had wiped them out completely,  but we began seeing them again a couple of weeks ago under our bird feeder.

We found Big Mama Squirrel inside the enclosure for the avocado tree and then we discovered that they had also found a way to get under the anti-varmint panels around the raised beds and chewed their way through the bird netting around the blueberry plants and absconded with most of the remaining blueberries.

They're cute, but they're also voracious.

Tomato Season Begins

Tomatoes

Our tomatoes are beginning to ripen; we had the first BLT for lunch the other day, and it looks like it will be the first of many of them this season.

In fact, there seem to be so many of them that we'll probably be up to our kneecaps in tomatoes before too long.

So far we've had some of the Siletz and the Sweet Seedless tomatoes, and even three of the mystery tomatoes from the surprise plant that popped up among the roses in the front yard.  We still don't know what variety of tomato it was, or how it got there, but they were very sweet with good tomato flavor.  It's looking like those three were the only ones we'll get from that plant, but we saved some of the seeds for next year.

Good thing we love tomaotes.