What did you do in the garden today?

[PopoMyers]

I know a bit about cross pollination, which is why I tied blossoms closed and pollinated them the next day to save good seeds for next year. Also purposely cross pollinated a couple just to see what happens. Just need to make sure I keep the strings on the handful of hand pollinated squash so o remember to save their seeds when I eat them.

Smart!

 

[PopoMyers]

@chickengr , now I'm frying some whole potatoes, all the little ones. From pea size to olive size.

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Made some of those in the instants pot and cooked a couple elephant garlic cloves with it, mashed the garlic with butter, sour cream, and seasoned salt, and mixed the potatoes in.

 

[Minanora]

@Minanora , how are your fermenting peppers coming along? The freezer bag lid on mine started ballooning up from gas pressure after a couple days in the jar. It's pushed a little bit of liquid out past the ring into the bowl, so it's venting enough to prevent the jar from exploding. I hope. LOL

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Very nice! That looks great.

Mine are coming along; they're still at it. Slowing down now though. I'm not really sure when I should consider them done. I got some weights in them yesterday. That pushed the liquid up out of the pepper mash. This is a new experiment.... I've only ever done lacto ferments without weights, and sealed in bags.... I changed out my lids for the auto venting ones. I sanitized everything with starsan when I did all this. The big jar had a culture of yeast up on the rim of the jar where a tiny area of peppers was out of the mixture. I scooped that out with a starsan coated spoon and sanitized that spot with starsan.

I tasted the mash yesterday as well. It is delicious, all-be-it, a little saltier than I expected. I think adding some vinegar to the mix when I blend it will level it out though. *Shrug*

 

[Minanora]

I fell behind. It was 109 here today. The weather station was trying to be sly and say it was only a high of 104... My sensor sources are installed correctly, and calibrated so.... yeah, no, it was 109. It was 107 at 5:30pm.

This evening I went outside in the dark; it is still very hot outside. Yuck.

I watered the garden today. That's it.

 

[Liz Birdlover]

I've never seen a groundhog out there but that doesn't mean anything... I noticed a critter turd out there yesterday about the size of a cat turd. I also saw an opossum in the driveway last weekend. Do opossum eat watermelon? I have absolutely seen rats out there so I assumed that they were the culprit. The watermelon was inside the hoop house but since the door broke off the frame any critter could walk in there.

I'm just trying to envision "What" or "Who" could eat 5 watermelons at one sitting...I mean wow, that's quite an appetite!

I did some searching for ya...I may have found your culprit!



Or...
One of these dudes is hanging around your place. Is there a circus in town?

 

[akroberts1085]

@ Minanora, I feel for you with the heat. When the heat wave came in here we were at 100 at like 10 or 11 PM. We cooled down but now we're back in the triple digits. It's supposed to cool down in September not heat up.

 

[Smokerbill]

I set up a dehydrator for drying herbs this morning. I froze herbs last year and that just didn't work out.

I read that herbs dried at low temperatures retain more of the volatile oils than herbs dried with heat so this should be a good method if it works. I'll use a pouch of silica beads in a sealed container to finish drying the herbs.

I rinsed and drained some flat leaf parsley to test it out.

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(this post was copied and pasted from the Washingtonians thread)

My attempt at dehydrating flat leaf parsley in the storage container was going too slow. The leaves are maybe half dry after three days.

Last month I found an electric dehydrator at a yard sale for $1.00. It was filthy, but none of the plastic was broken or cracked so I got it.

I washed the trays and top in the dishwasher, but the base was disgusting! I think they made jerky with it a few years age and put it away dirty. I finally cleaned the base this morning.

The heating element works, but the little metal clips that secure it to the base are partially rusted away. I was still able to get it assembled.

I transferred the parsley into the top 2 trays of the dehydrator, set it outside and plugged it in. Hopefully it works.

ETA: I think I need to spread the parsley out into 4 trays instead of 2 so it's not piled so thickly.

 

[cj2024]

I had to baby sit my nephew's 4-year-old son last month and I made him read the English subtitles off an anime series. I was amazed at how intelligent he was, he could actually read.

However, he pronounces the word, "The" like thee and I pronounce it like, "Tha." I found out that the sound thee should be used for words that start with a vowel and the sound tha should be used with words that start with a consonant. That kid is a genius........

Copilot
Usingthe web

Sent by Copilot:​

Great question! The pronunciation of “the” can vary depending on the context:

• “Thee” is used before a word that starts with a vowel sound. For example, “thee apple” or “thee elephant.”
• “Tha” is used before a word that starts with a consonant sound. For example, “tha dog” or “tha car.”

This subtle difference helps with the flow and clarity of speech. Do you have any other language-related questions?

 

[Nomadicus]

I checked on the purple hull peas this morning and found aphids again. It's raining today and tomorrow but Sunday I can eliminate the aphids and ants that farm them. And aphid is to an ant like a dairy cow or goat is to us.

 

[pennyJo1960]

I had some bug eat my tomato just a few of them.
Gave those to chickens. So tomato are starting to turn.
one tomato seems to be a sweet 100 thought it was roma.
bugs are not bothering them?