Wild As Hell

Let's get crazy, I just got my rabies shot!

Why not?

Summer.

It's all getting shaggy around here right now.  The dog days are here. A good time to work inside.

The fences can wait until fall, the weeds can have their season. No use fighting it.

It's all wild as hell around here... that's the way we like it.

Tomatoes still trying to make it to maturity. There are so many varieties I don't have a clue which one's these are.

The cherry tomatoes are nearly done. Done as in finished, no more. Damn good though.

The eggplants weren't as promising as they might have been initially but for whatever reason they've taken off and should be ready soon.

Gigantic moons and the incessant chirping of cicadas, that's probably what makes the vegetables grow...maybe.

Summer's got it's own soundtrack. It's the one I like. Feet rough as sandpaper, farmer's tan, liver hanging by a thread.

Waiting on the fall..

Tomato Factory

Here's the tomato factory that was once our deck. I haven't counted the number of pots there are but over twenty I believe.

The cherry tomatoes have been going strong for a while and they are very tasty. The others are still small so we haven't been able to sample them yet.

There are some other tomatoes in various places throughout the yard and I have found two tomato worms on those already. The container garden seems to be all but pest free. But, they need to be ridded of suckers nearly daily whereas the ones in the real earth don't seem to sucker hardly at all.

Listada di Gandia

There is some eggplant that is coming along decently as well. I am not sure which variety it is however. I believe it is an Asian variety, I will have to check the seeds and find out. It's nice and hot now (90's) and the tomatoes really do love it. Quite a bit more watering but they seem quite happy with the heat.

No it's an Italian variety.

Tomatoes!

BHN-624

Finally some tomatoes are ripe! They are small cherry tomatoes but they are very good. Some larger varieties are growing in various places around the yard but they are still very small. So it will be another few weeks until they are ready.

These are a cross between a cherry and a grape tomato.

Blackberry Tree

Earlier in the year I tied some blackberry canes up to a dogwood tree in the backyard to give them some support. Now they are beginning to ripen and it's like having a blackberry tree.

I was picking some this afternoon and it reminded me of a time that I was with my grandparents. We were out at the airport and on the way back my grandaddy saw some blackberries growing along side a barbwire fence. At the time he was a multi-millionaire and we were in an expensive Buick but he didn't hesitate to pull right off on the side of the road and all three of us hopped out and started picking blackberries right there.

When I was a kid we spent most of our time in the woods and we always found blackberries and blueberries. I would eat as many blackberries as I could pick. Sometimes I would collect enough to take home so that they could make a cobbler. It's been quite awhile since I've had any blackberry cobbler. Maybe that will change this year.

Abundance! (sort of)

Bee balm

Bee balm came back in a planter that is on the front porch. The blossoms are really cool looking. It definitely attracts bees.

As an herb it has a lot of actions like antimicrobial, and diaphoretic. It can be used as a substitute for oregano.

It's a very cool herb and we want to use it more often.

Blackberry

Raspberries are starting to produce a little bit of fruit but we've only got three plants that we just put in this season. One died all the way back to the roots, but it is showing some new growth now.

Strawberries are beginning to make a second round of berries. We harvested a good amount in the first round.

Blackberries are beginning to ripen but they are being hindered because they are in a fairly shaded area, but there are lots of them.

Apricot

The gooseberries are just about to ripen although we don't have very many of them.

Gooseberry

Oddly enough, today I discovered two apricots on the apricot tree, which we never noticed had bloomed at all. They are both nearly ripe as well.

In the backyard just this week I discovered that there is a mulberry tree producing fruit in the yard next door that hangs over our fence. So the majority of it is falling in our yard.

In the front yard, I've just discovered that we have black cherry tree. Black cherry can be used for a number of different things like jams and infusions with liquor.

I believe that it must take a minimum number of chill hours for the mulberry and cherry to set fruit because the last two years they did not bear any fruit. This past winter was very cold for a long time.

Tomato Update

Finally there are some tomatoes on the vines here. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we can begin harvesting some.

These are Roma tomatoes, I think.

These plants need to be suckered quite often. They really want to try and run away on you.

June 2nd

We started these way back in February from seeds.

The most sunny spot in the yard is where the deck is, so we've done a lot of containers.

We also dispersed some around the yard in different places where there will hopefully be enough sun, but those places are limited. I believe that we've got about a dozen different varieties. It will be interesting to see which ones do the best.

May 1st

We didn't start them all at the same time so there are some that we've just repotted into larger containers.

Skippy Filter

Bio Filter

It turns out that if you put fish into a pond it doesn't take a long time for it to become pretty funky. Our fish were sitting at the top of the pond, listless, gulping air. It was pretty much a cesspool.

I did a lot of research online and came across what's known as a "Skippy Filter". Basically you pump water from the pond into a bucket all the way to the bottom. The bucket is full of some sort of media with lots of surface area like lava rock or scouring pads. Near the top there is a hole in the bucket so that the water level stays in the same place. As the water fills the bucket from the bottom up the water is forced through the filtration media and flows out of the overflow hole near the top.

water is forced to the bottom
through the pvc

It's a simple device but very effective. Since I do not have a/c electricity down at the pond I was able to use the dc pump in this instance to good effect. I did need to run the pump at night as well and I had a car battery that I had just taken out of our car and started using that in the evening. Although it won't crank a car any more, it will run the small pump all night long.


On top of the lava rock that I used as the filter media, I put in some expanded clay grow rocks to support some plants. I've got sweet potato, pineapple basil, and a sweet potato that I started indoors now growing in the top of the skippy filter. So far so good.

It isn't pretty with a car battery and a drywall bucket sitting on top of the pond rocks with water pouring out of the side but it's a stopgap measure until I have time to get something more permanent in place. The water is totally clear now the stench is gone and the fish aren't lingering at the top sucking air because their gills are burning with ammonia. The plants in the filter seem to be thriving as well so it's a little bit of an aquaponics system I suppose.

In due course I will add a charge controller to recharge a deep cycle battery that can run the pump 24/7. The pump draw is miniscule so I might be able to run some lighting as well. We'll see.