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okras
We are going to have lots of okras this year which is exciting and slimy. I hope there enough people willing to buy and eat them. We don’t eat gumbo ourselves, but I like fried okra a lot and we’ll have to find some other relavent recipes. Here is a picture of the some of the okras we have that are thriving.
As you may have saw in an ealier post we had more okras prout that we knew what to do with. We ended up planting extra and giving some to Morning Sky Greenery.
Sadly, with my finishing up college, (sadly, I have to finish up college) I haven’t had time to devote to our seedlings. I haven’t planted any lettuces or herbs either and I know we are WAY behind. I have to keep telling myself this is a trial run and we didn’t even know we were getting into until a month and a half ago.
We have lots of tomatos that need to be replanted and have resorted to the quick and dirty solution of plastic cups from the grocery store. We also have some sad okra that won’t make it due to neglect:
Good news is we may have finally found someone to plow our garden for us. More as that develops…
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Listening in at a local hardware store
(picture of dandelions here)
So I had to pick up some fuses at one of the hardware stores in town because we blew through all ours again and I picked up a little earthway grass/fertilizer/etc spreader while I was at it which I plan to use for cover crops. I thought folks might want to read the conversation I overheard:
Customer to employee, “Whats the best thing to kill dandelions?”
Employee, “Well…”
Other employee nearer to me, “POISON!”, then after some manaical laughter, “they are about the most annoying things ever.”
I think I will just file this under ‘we will have to agree to disagree’ and leave it at that because I can’t let the destructive culture that this language springs from make me upset. The reason I can’t is because I can’t do a whole lot about it AND it is everywhere I look. It is the dominant culture and it is why I ought to be a farmer.
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Super Marmande Tomato
Seed Source: Ace Hardware (American Seed Company)
Date Planted: April 7, 2007
Marmande is a commune in southwestern France, a known producer of tomatoes. They hold a festival every July to celebrate their tomatoes.
One week into April, we realized that we had not bought and red tomato seeds! We were too busy focusing on fancy colored heirlooms, and completely forgot to plant one or two “standards.” I picked up some packets of Marmande and Delicious tomato seeds at a local hardware store and quickly planted them. It was very much an impulse buy, but I discovered later that the Marmande tomato is indeed an heirloom. Plus, Marmande is supposed to make an excellent market variety.
We were a bit late on transplanting these, but we have about 36 plants. I am not expecting them all to survive – a couple are starting to wilt pretty badly.
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Sabre Ukrainian Tomatoes
Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds
Date Planted: March 23, 2007
Amish Land Seeds claims to be the only US Source for this paste tomato! The Sabre Ukrainian tomatoes are very large paste tomatoes with few seeds. They get their name from the shape (think, sword). They are very similar to the World’s Miracle Tomatoes we have this year, but are said to ripen late in the season.
We have 27 Sabre Ukrainian seedlings.
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Tomesol White Tomato
Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds
Date Planted: March 23, 2007
Yes, another white tomato variety… three white tomato varieties, about 58 plants. But we are planting nearly 300 tomatoes, and these are bound to be a hit at Farmers Markets!
The White Tomesol tomato is relatively new German heirloom that was recently introduced to the United States. According to seed sellers, the Tomesol tomato is just about the truest “white” variety of tomato there is. Many white tomatoes are more of a pale yellow, and often have pink spots on the blossom end. We’ll see how these ones grow up!
We currently have 20 Tomesol seedlings.
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World’s Miracle Tomato
Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds
Date Planted: March 23, 2007
We chose two paste tomatoes from Amish Land Seeds this year: Sabre Ukrainian and World’s Miracle. Both are from the Ukraine, and the grower says they look almost alike but that the World’s Miracle tomatoes are about half the size of the Sabre Ukrainian tomatoes. They are suppoed to be quite a bit earlier though.
We ended up planting a standard roma variety just to boost our paste tomato yield a bit. We have 26 of these plants.
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