One Man's Battle to Ease the Food Crisis

[neonlyte]

I've eighteen tomato plants growing in troughs on balconies, all automatically watered, fed with HugeTomatoTM plant food - not one tomato in sight... not one tomato flower in sight. They are 75cm high and three months old

My plum tree has nine... yes nine... plums

My apple tree had close to 400 apples... before the storms last month. It now has 31.

We... or rather the starlings... had a bumper crop of cherries. We went away for a week and they'd gone when we returned the cherries and the starlings.

My Sweet Williams never showed, but the basil, rosemary and mint are doing fine... and we did have an excellent lettuce crop.

Up on the in-laws old farm, we have quince hedges. No one looks after them, no one cares for them yet every year we have superb quince crops.

Baked quince with rosemary and a basil and lettuce salad... might survive. Green fingered I'm not.

 

[Liar]

I just enjoyed a nice dinner of mint and basil baked fish, baby taters and an red beet, tomato and peach relish.

The only thing not from the garden was the olive oil, the black pepper and the mackerel.

The mackerel I pulled up from the ocean by myself.

Heh, I could get used to this country life.

 

[glynndah]

The bush cherries yielded enough fruit for a batch of jam and some cherry sodas. The sand plums aren't quite ready and I suspect the mockingbirds will get the best of those. The apple trees are loaded this year. They'll be turned into apple sauce and apple butter. The pear tree finally bore fruit this year. Dozens of the cutest little pears. Let's hope they ripen. The eggplants should be ready by my son's next visit home. They're his favorite vegetable. Oh, and we've already had two tomatoes, but those were the teeny little ones that were on the plant when we bought them so they hardly count.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Some of my petunias fed some rabbits for a couple days before I got some pukey-smelling spray.

A colleague has chickens and estimates his cost for a dozen eggs is down to $10 or so. It's purely an edu-thing for his kids.

 

[English Lady]

I have two tomato plants and they both have several flowers on them.

I have thyme and oregano plants that i've managed not to kill yet. *L*

 

[oggbashan]

I'm missing the walnut tree at my old house.

The new buyers employed an expensive tree surgeon to trim it. It has no walnuts this year.

Some years it cropped up to 100 lbs of walnuts. The squirrels loved the nuts I couldn't get to before they did.

Now I have ten tomato plants all showing flowers and I MUST harvest my potatoes IF it stops raining.

Og

 

[Stella_Omega]

My daughter came wandering out of a remote corner of this wasteland we call a yard, and shoved the sweetest tartest, cherry tomato into my mouth. Then she showed me the enormous, sprawling vine it came from-- how it got there I don't know. We picked about a quarter bushel.

The walnut tree (which I pruned) has a lot of big, healthy looking walnuts, but we also have big healthy-looking squirrels, so I'm not counting on them.

The ancient fig tree, that is gnarled and twisted so that it looks like some kind of primal spirit, seems to be dying this year. Healthy new saplings are coming up from the base, though. I don't want to chop the old one down-- it's Art, Baby.

Up the hill stands a great Avocado tree, and they are showing nicely, and the pomegranates are orange-red against the yellow-green leaves, and we've been harvesting Prickly Pear paddles, and trying out different recipes with them.

 

[only_more_so]

I've eighteen tomato plants growing in troughs on balconies, all automatically watered, fed with HugeTomatoTM plant food - not one tomato in sight... not one tomato flower in sight. They are 75cm high and three months old

Tomatos aren't food. They're evil! They are the devil's fruit.

They can only be stopped with Opera Music.

 

[Varian P]

I'm impressed with the lot of you. The only thing I managed to grow when I had a yard were plenty of horsetails, bindweed, and, in the edible but unstoppable category, blackberries.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Actually, I have an apple tree and sometimes make apple crisp from the produce. About a half-acre's worth of sugar goes into the recipe.

 

[rgraham666]

I do not grow things. I have a grey thumb.

 

[SeaCat]

I don't have much of an area to grow things but,,,,

That being said I do have several plants in cultivation that may one day produce usefull things for me.

One Tangelo Tree
One Grapefruit Tree
One Starfruit Tree
Two Little Bird Pepper Bushes
One Scotch Bonnet Bush
Four Cherry Tomatoe Plants
Six Pineapple Plants.

We shall see what produces and what doesn't.

Cat

 

[amicus]

An old jazz song, "Spring Will be a Little Late This Year", well, it didn't show up at all when summer suddenly appeared out here in Oregon.

But, 60 plus tomato plants survived and are blooming, self starting potato's from last years went to a little Spanish tyke, along with a fistful of sweet garden peas. All the vine plants, squash, cukes, pumpkins are doing fine, the melons are still pouting.

Corn, lots of it, is only knee high, should be much higher, walla walla sweets are growing cherry tomato's are in a snit this year, dunno why, but flowers, ivy, hens & chicks are doing fine.

And ya know what, I can yell and cuss at the garden and it never talks back, except the damned birds have consumed 25 pounds of wild bird seed in just over a month, I think I feed them too much, eh?

ami...

 

[neonlyte]

I'm missing the walnut tree at my old house.

The new buyers employed an expensive tree surgeon to trim it. It has no walnuts this year.

Some years it cropped up to 100 lbs of walnuts. The squirrels loved the nuts I couldn't get to before they did.

Now I have ten tomato plants all showing flowers and I MUST harvest my potatoes IF it stops raining.

Og

Oh... I forgot about the Walnut... some of you may remember my 'weird plant' from a couple of months back... it is now a thriving 1 foot high walnut tree. Here's how stupid I am , I was looking for something to block the holes in the bottom of a plant pot and used half a dozen old walnuts Of course they sprouted, and I kept the best one So I'll have walnuts with the sald in about 10 years.

 

[Trinique_Fire]

On the property (and there's a lot of it), there are grape vines, a cherry tree, and two hens that lay eggs. There's rhubarb out front, mint, and probably some other herbs floating around. Wander down the road and there are wild raspberries growing...probably blackberries too.

 

[DeeZire]

How-to horticulture? At Lit? Wouldn't you just pay her upfront and then take her to the opera?

 

[MagicaPractica]

I didn't get much into the garden this year. Tomatoes, yellow and green squash, and cucumbers. Only a couple cucumber plants came up. The tomatoes have lots of flowers. I did plant garlic and dill in planter boxes. I figured I'd try for a late season crop of the smaller stuff, like radishes, maybe lettuce.

The apple trees are loaded at this point. I really must cut the water spouts. They are very tart Northern Spy apples but make the sweetest applesauce using just a little vanilla and cinnamon, without any sugar needed.

The mulberry tree is loaded, but is also extrememly tall. I'm trying to keep the birds and the raccoon from eating them all with tin pie pans on strings. Hopefully I'll shake down enough for a batch of jelly. Would love to try jam out of them but would have to freeze them first to disintegrate the stems and not sure how that would work. If I get enough, I'll give it a try.

Had a good rhubarb crop but didn't keep any for myself. Co-workers were desperate for it. Not a great many grapes on the Concord vines.

 

[impressive]

I don't play in the dirt much (if at all), but there are wild raspberries (two varieties) on the edge of the woods that are just about ripe. We usually get about 10 quarts of them each summer. And, about 5 years ago, we planted bush cherries on the side of the garage. Most years, frost gets the blossoms. This is the first year we've gotten a crop -- about a gallon Ziploc baggie full of little, tart cherries.

I don't like to grow tomatoes ('cause I think the plants are stinky), but I'd like to grow zucchini & squash.

Of course, it's legal to eat road kill here -- so I can have 'possum and 'coon whenever I want.

 

[neonlyte]

I didn't get much into the garden this year. Tomatoes, yellow and green squash, and cucumbers. Only a couple cucumber plants came up. The tomatoes have lots of flowers. I did plant garlic and dill in planter boxes. I figured I'd try for a late season crop of the smaller stuff, like radishes, maybe lettuce.

The apple trees are loaded at this point. I really must cut the water spouts. They are very tart Northern Spy apples but make the sweetest applesauce using just a little vanilla and cinnamon, without any sugar needed.

The mulberry tree is loaded, but is also extrememly tall. I'm trying to keep the birds and the raccoon from eating them all with tin pie pans on strings. Hopefully I'll shake down enough for a batch of jelly. Would love to try jam out of them but would have to freeze them first to disintegrate the stems and not sure how that would work. If I get enough, I'll give it a try.

Had a good rhubarb crop but didn't keep any for myself. Co-workers were desperate for it. Not a great many grapes on the Concord vines.

Rhubarb and Grapefruit Marmalade - easiest jam/jelly in the world to make