garden – Page 2 – Twisted and Delusional

Keeping Busy…

Posts have been few and far between since I have a few irons in the fire. I’m working on some emblems for a Datsun, the garden, finding rural property, a 3d printer build, and the usual clock and watch stuff. Yet, I still hear the question asked, “but you couldn’t find just a few moments to post…..?”

Lol.

The garden is growing well. I’ll post about that some other time. This year it’s garlic, tomatoes, corn, pole beans, squash, watermelon, and the usual herbs. The coffee is doing good, saw flowers for the first time this year but I’m not holding any hope for fruit.

I’m going to make this a quick post, so here’s a bunch of pics of the Datsun emblem progress. I’ve made a mold of the original and cast the first ‘waste’ piece from the mold. Now I need to cast a good piece to modify it the way the owner wants it.

On an interesting side note, I made some replica ‘Barracuda’ emblems for a friends car he was restoring. He only had a single good emblem and needed at least a pair for his car. The car has gone on to take many awards and is now in a recent Mopar magazine. The emblems are still on it, lol. Some pics of the reproduction emblems.

Complete, right down to the production numbers on the back and the company logo.

I also decided to challenge myself with an odd project. I purchased a large box of clockworks from ebay to have damaged clock parts to practice repairs on. 5 lbs of clock parts…… lol.

Also in that box was a severely unloved little clock movement that was almost complete, so I dug around and found a couple pieces that could make it complete with some ‘re-purposing’.

Someone has tried to ‘repair’ this movement previously. Here is a pic of one such ‘repair’.

Yup, a watch gear messily soldered to the back of the plate and drilled to make a pivot hole. didn’t even bother to file down the mess, unbelievable. Man is this thing full of gunk and dirt. I think they dipped it in clock oil and then left it in a dust-bunny colony.

A run through the parts baths make a big difference, check out the clean gears in the back compared to the still dirty gear in the front. Soon I’ll have the whole thing cleaned and ready to unsolder that hack job and do a real repair to the plate.

Ok, enough for now. I’ll post again when I can find the time.

Collecting seeds for next year

Even though its still in the upper 90 degree range here in the valley, it’s still Fall and things have run their course. All the water and sunlight won’t make some things live any longer than they were meant, and the time to collect seed has begun. I had already started drying the last seed heads for the carrots about a month ago and have been waiting to collect them until I have other seeds to pull and the sunflowers are ready. I only grew 4 sunflowers this year since I wanted to give more space to the other things in my planting boxes. One of the sunflowers was planted in square container pot and actually did the best, growing to about twice the size of the ones in the planting bed. I think next year all the sunflowers will be in containers. The largest one was actually good sized for a ‘dwarf’ Sunny variety.

Once I cleaned the dried flower parts off of the seeds I could see that there was a fair amount of good sized hulls, this year might be a good harvest!

It takes a few minutes to get all of the seeds out of the flower, but it was a Saturday afternoon and I didn’t have anything else too pressing to do. I got this one cleaned out, and the other three smaller ones which were this size…

And I ended up with a enough to fill the bottom of one of my water buckets like this….

Not a bad haul for 4 little flowers. I went and got my paper envelopes to put the seed in and decided to do the carrot seed also. I had a bit of a time with the carrot seed since it grows in bunches and isn’t nearly as easy to strip from the plant as sunflowers. Thats not even mentioning that the seeds are a bit prickly and cling to everything like small burrs. Who knew carrots were such a pain. I ended up with this much seed before I gave up on just put it in envelopes.

If you enlarge the pic by clicking on it you can see the prickly parts on the seeds. I also took the time to harvest the ‘ugly’ peppers from my pepper plants (bell pepper and hot peppers) and set them out to dry. I will usually leave the sun blemished peppers on the plant to make seed and give the ‘pretty’ peppers to friends and family. They look nice laying out in the sun, can’t wait to get the seed from these.

Some people’s pets….. :(

We had a huge (for the central valley) thunderstorm last night. I was happy because my plants got LOTS of rain and every little extra bit helps. So the next morning I got up and the first thing I want to do is see how my plants are doing, expecting them to be all perky and happy. Instead I find this…..

All my lovely zucchini plants flattened and ‘nests’ made in my vegetable bed. The destruction was all through the bed, not a single plant left unsquashed.

I try to be a nice neighbor, and those who know me know my version of ‘nice’ is open for discussion. But this is beyond what I am willing to put up with. I went to the neighbor whos dogs are always in my backyard and let him know that his pets will no longer be safe in my backyard. I have a gopher problem now and will be putting out many gopher traps of the vicious two pronged flesh piercing variety. I would hate to see anything bad happen to them…….

Bottom line, DON’T F*CK with my garden.

And More Garden

I mentioned the tomato plant has followed the usual course of tomato plants in my back yard by taking over all the available space it can. So, while I was out watering this morning I thought I would share a few more pics of just what they like to do. First a general pic of the plant as it now grows.

Yup, that sprawling mess is a tomato plant. It has overgrown its bed out onto the ‘lawn’, over the side of the box to the greenhouse, and deeper into the bed climbing the helpless carrots. If you click on the picture you get a larger pic so you can see just how bad it is. In previous years the tomatoes overgrow the whole 3′ by 8′ bed and still get into the lawn and neighbors yard, killing off everything they overgrow EXCEPT the carrots.

That doesnt mean that they leave the carrots in peace. Oh no, that wouldn’t do. Instead you take over their space and use them to your own purposes. I swear tomatoes are the original evil supervillain. Lol. Squeaking an existence out between the carrot/tomato and the fence are a few of my dwarf sunflowers. They just started to bloom yesterday and are opening up nicely this morning. I can’t wait till they start to turn up to the sun and really get going.

I have another dwarf sunflower from that sprouting that I put in a pot to see if it would grow as well as the ones in the ground. It has gotten more light since it isn’t hidden under the shadows of the other plants and has done surprisingly well. It’s almost double the size of the sunflowers in the beds and has really healthy fat leaves.

That flower is in a 14″x14″ pot, I think I will grow all my sunflowers like this next year.

Garden Update

Its been a little bit since I posted. Im doing the Couch to 5K (c25k) program to get my butt back in shape. I’m starting week 5 today and if I survive then I’ll keep posting. Also, I’m getting things cleaned up and organized out in the shop (garage, whatever) and plan on getting elbows deep in some restoration projects that I can post also.

The garden is coming along. I pulled some goodies off the vines to take over to my parents this weekend and took a pic to show what I can pull after a week of watering and tending. It looks like this.

Overall I’m pretty happy with it. I don’t pull ‘orange’ or even ‘orangish-red’ tomatoes, only the really ripe ‘red-red’ tomatoes. Everyone I have given some to comment on how sweet the tomatoes are. If anyone is interested the type is S100 Super-Sweet. I have to admit, I’m not much of a tomato eater, but these are damn good.

The bell peppers have been coming alive and producing like crazy over the recent hot weather we had. I’m curious to see if they will taper off on production since this last week the temps dropped back 10-20 degrees. Yes, it really dropped that much, from 105 highs to 85 or so. On the bright side, the lower temps have allowed some of my other plants like the mints some needed relief . I have noticed that one bell pepper plant doesnt yeild the usual bell pepper shape. Instead this one grows what looks like a overly large jalepeno, but it still smells and tastes like a bell pepper.

About now you are probably wondering about those giant carrot plants from previous posts. The flowers are starting to go to seed and I have put plastic bags over the flowers to capture any seed that falls from them. Even the seed on these things are huge compared to ‘normal’ carrots. I don’t know what I did, or how they got this big, but it’s going to be fun seeing what grows from these seeds if they sprout. Till then my plants look goofy with all the plastic on them.

Did you notice in the lower left corner you can see the tomato trying to take over the carrot plants? It has started using the carrots as a sort of trellis to climb for more sun. Crazy plants. Speaking of sun worshiping, I didnt have much hope since I have never successfully raised a watermelon plant, but my sugar baby is giving it a heck of a try.

So far it looks healthy and happy with plenty of flowers and little watermelon buds. My real concern now is the damn ‘possums that my neighbor INSISTS on feeding cat food and treating like they are something special. Did you know in Cali it’s illegal to kill a ‘possum? Frickin’ ridiculous. And now that I finally have one of these to look after….

So, if I see so much as a ‘possum track in my backyard the gloves are coming off. My great grandad had a way of dealing with cats on the farm, seems like it would work well for ‘possums too.

Yum!!

This is what happens if I don’t pick tomatoes for a day or two. Gotta love summertime.

Gravel in the Greenhouse

It’s been as few days since I posted anything. It’s been hectic at work and the evenings are the only time it’s cool enough to work or exercise, so the blog suffers. Lol.

A few days ago I finally took the shell off the back of the pickup and went for a load of rock. I ended up with just a smidge over a ton of gravel to bring home according to the loading scale. The poor old truck was barely riding above the axle bumpers and I took it slow driving home. It took most of the drive for me to realize I now had just over a ton of rock to unload… by hand… in the heat. *Sigh*

Upon getting home I made a path from the truck to the greenhouse, aired up the wheelbarrow tire, grabbed a shovel and got to work. I loaded up the first load in the ‘barrow and it was then I realized there would be no easy way to dump the contents since the door was too small. Ok, so I pulled a side panel off thinking I’d dump it through the side. Nope! The panel is about 2″ too narrow to get through.

Crud.

So an elegant, if not irrational, thought occurred to me. And the result was this….

Yup, tip the whole damn thing up and prop it on a broom handle. As you can see, it made it a snap to dump the contents of the wheelbarrow into. Time to get that shovel working. About an hour into it, I had gotten this far….

I was starting to curse myself for ever taking on this project. It was still in the upper 90 degree weather range, the sweat was combining with the rock dust to make an uncomfortable covering on my arms, and I had only accomplished THAT MUCH?

Double Crud.

Enough whining, time to get back to shoveling, this needs to get done. Another hour later and things were looking better, at lest there was enough rock to cover the weed barrier. A half hour past that and I had the base pretty much full. Yay!

But….. I still have a bunch of rock in the back of the truck. Do I leave it there? Pile it somewhere else? I figure if I’m going to move it, then I dont want to move it again. And its NOT staying in the back of the truck. Ok, might as well start on the next phase since the rock is here and I’m already hot and sore from shoveling. So, out comes the weed barrier and a couple barrier staples to hold the cloth down.

Time to see just how much rock was left over from filling the greenhouse base. Turns out there was a bit more than I thought would be left over.

A quick post

Just a quick note since things have been hectic at work. First off are those crazy carrot plants. These things are stupid huge and the flowers are big enough to bend the stalks over. Take a look.

Next on the agenda is a pic of the greenhouse with the panels installed. I left the protective film coating on the clear panels for two reasons. The first reason is that I want filtered light and will be putting some solar screen inside the greenhouse, so the frosted plastic helps my overall plan. The second reason is that it protects the clear panels from the hard sprinkler water, so if I ever do want to go with clear panels they wont be covered in hard water spots.

I plan on putting the gravel in the base of the greenhouse and maybe starting the landscaping around it this weekend. If I do, look for follow up posts.