Vegetable Garden - 2022

Barstards, they are off my purchasing list now and permanently black listed :+1:

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I personally know someone who did years for growing thanks to them . They would report anyone they thought was buying stuff to grow weed and originally would write peoples plates down. Then they installed cameras that weren’t noticeable and would hand footage of vehicles over to the pigs.
Steves hydro shop did the same shit years ago too.
I get all my amendments and stuff from a place in Bridgewater. PHUCK Halifax Greed.

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The previous owners, heck even the contractor that built the house did some shady things and I got stuck with it. Basically the perimeter of the house is about a foot lower than the center. I was waiting to see it it would stabilize but it does not seem to be. A really big bill for it, going to wipe out any breathing room I had and have me waiting for my pension check every month.

Oops, meant sketchy stuff, sorry about that Shadey.

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Sorry to hear that man.

Yeah we have some non code stuff in our house that I have corrected over the years. What’s the point of having building inspectors if they don’t do their job properly.

The only way the pad would level is if it cracks across the middle from all 4 sides, and then it will need replacing anyway. If the pad has cracked and the sides are dropping you probably have subsidence. My mums house in the UK had that problem, we had to move out for 6 months while they drilled 1ft diameter holes 40ft down all over the pad and filled with concrete and steel to stop it sinking further. All done on the house insurance luckily as it cost 150,000$ 32 years ago. It only worked for 11 years and then it started dropping again.

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That is my fear that it would happen again. I dug out the foundation a month after moving in to replace the weeping tiles, they were clean as a whistle as the contractor saved a few bucks and put 3/4 down limestone on it. Hard as a rock and no water seeped through it. Because of that the water in the soil froze to the foundation and a thing called frost heave split the concrete horizontally. Not really sure if they put any steel in there also, I did not see any and I was able to put my hand into the cracks in places. Found out after when I built the sun room off the back that they poured a new wall against the old one on the inside of the basement. The footing was not increased in size and the old one now has double the weight in concrete to hold up. The previous owner also leveled the floors that were sloping down by pouring more concrete over it. Did it with the interior walls in place, and that is the start of it. Looking at over $150k to do it, almost half the value of the place. Enough of hijacking the gardening thread though.

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My wife and I really liked their Brad’s atomic grape tomatoes. They were so good, they’re probably going to be the only tomatoes we plant this year. They’re larger than a normal grape tomato, and they start out pretty scraggly initially. But they pull out of it and grow the most delicious, buttery sweet fruit that seems to be much more drought hearty than other tomatoes.

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I’ll have to check those out. I saw somebody else saying real good things about em too. I always have too many different varieties😄 I was loving the Sunburst and Sundrop yellow cherry tomatoes last year and I have chocolate cherry tomatoes that just volunteer all over cause they get so huge and are crazy prolific. One last year snuck up under the herbs thru the bed around the fountain probably would have been 12’ tall if it was vertical

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Mmm I love yellow cherry tomatoes too. We get lots of sun here in Colorado, but low humidity, so it’s one benefit for tomatoes and one difficulty. I’ve read tomatoes like consistent moisture levels in fruiting, which can be tough here. But this year I’m setting up a better drip system off a sprinkler valve. I was just running some micro sprayers off of a hose last year, and sprayers lose water to the air so fast and create too much runoff.

We also grew San Marzanos, Black Vernissage and gold medals. I’d grow the gold medals again, but the other two were so far below the atomic grapes that we aren’t even considering planting them again.

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I just get mine on eBay there is a lot of good deals to be had! Just bought 16 tomato varieties for 30 bucks of…

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Got lettuces and arugala going in the cold frame.

A couple of years ago, we weren’t seeing many pollinators, so I took the Master Gardener program in our county. Doesn’t mean I’m a master, those guys know Latin, but I do get into a lot community gardens as a volunteer. I got a bunch of plants from thinning, and even more seeds from deadheading.

I’ll be starting some of the seeds next month, along with tomatoes and peppers.

This Winter Honeysuckle just started blooming, and it’s pulling in some honeybees.

Carolina Jessamine, just started blooming, too.

Had a bunch of trees taken down too, so we should get a lot more sun, and a lot more plants… I hope :slight_smile:

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I’ve definitely heard tomatoes can be an issue in CO. I’m outside Chi and it’s not generally very dry during summer. I need drippers myself once I get more water collection and storage set up and get it on the other side of the house. I’ve always got San Marzano too, they’re a staple here. Had some really good Cherokee Purple and Brandywine last year. And some Orange Pineapple something-or-others that had a velvet-y skin and were super juicy. They were interesting but not worth the garden space really

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Looks like a badass porch and sweet lot you got there man, also, love arugula!

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No problem for Joe, lol!
http://www.awbeazley.com/pdf/joematoes.pdf

And, we haven’t found a tomato we like more than the Cherokee Purples, they just taste like a tomato should :slight_smile:

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Thanks, man…it would look a lot sweeter if I wasn’t so lazy, :slight_smile: I have to cut all those trees up, and paint the porch! Too bad the arugala’s in the way!

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I did a little digging and found something that might be of interest. It turns out that black colored tomatoes might have a natural advantage due to Anthocyanins.

Anthocyanins are a type of flavonoid, a class of compounds with antioxidant effects. Found naturally in a number of foods, anthocyanins are the pigments that give red, purple, and blue plants their rich coloring.

So the Brad’s atomic grape tomatoes get their cool look from this. However the neat thing is that studies have shown that plants with high anthocyanins generally have better drought stress tolerance:

Overall, studies investigating transgenic plants support the strong association between anthocyanin accumulation and drought stress tolerance.

So I think that’s why these worked out so well for me in Colorado. I’m sure I could grow other varieties well too, but these were definitely much less finicky with the watering schedule.

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I started growing Black Krim and Cherokee Purple about 7 or 8 years ago because I thought they were beautiful. I’ve been growing them ever since because they’re delicious!

From my experience, they tend to not be as prolific as my other tomatoes, but they don’t require any special attention, and they produce later into the fall than any of the others. I only grow heirloom varieties, which are usually more finicky than the hybrids, so I’m not shooting for the largest possible crop.

I think I have pics of some of my blacks and purples, but they aren’t on the SD card in my laptop. I’ll have to dig them up and post them…

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The Cherokee Purples have had my eye. They seem to be very popular… plus the pictures are massive! I think this year we’re going to grow all heirloom varieties… my wife and I are fighting it out for the selections. :joy: She wants gold medals and I want atomic grapes. I think we’re going to try some black strawberry too.

I ordered a bunch from wild boar farms, so maybe I’ll pick one or two from those as well.

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Ours are usually over at the end of August. I’m in the SE. What part of the world do you grow in PnH?

When temps get up over 90°, ours really slow down on flowering, but from the beginning of July til the end of August we are giving them away!

Ms. H froze a few of them whole this summer, and just pulled them out last week. Made a salsa, they did not lose that flavor!

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I don’t really like to say much about my location, but I’m in the “mountains” in a northeastern state. I put mountains in quotes because I’m only 2000 feet above sea level.

I’ve never frozen a whole tomato, but I do make fresh salsa in season and freeze it. I also pick green tomatoes with perfect skins, wrap them in newspaper and tuck them away in cardboard boxes stored in my very cool basement. I can get “fresh” ripe tomatoes well into November using this method.

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Sorry if you felt like I was putting you on the spot, NE would have been close enough, :slight_smile:

Wow, do you keep Cherokee Purples that way? Ours would never last.

I worked on a tomato farm as a kid. We’d fill up a box truck with boxes of green tomatoes, drive to a guy who would pump in some gas (I’m guessing now it was ethylene), and close up the truck. About a week later, sometimes 2, when we’d go to deliver, we’d open the truck, and they’d miraculously ripen before our eyes!

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