Oregon Tree Hugger

That is how cold it suddenly got last night. What is left of the warm-weather crop was not very happy about it. The end is coming very soon. Click on the image for a larger view.

Click on any image for a larger view and a slideshow of all images. This year was so bad for tomatoes that I got ONE chocolate cherry tomato. This is the same variety I ate barrels of last year, and this year I ended up with one. The original bush was snapped off about a [...]

9′ 8″ … this is how tall my daughter’s sunflower now is. It was about 2 inches tall when we bought it at the Lane County Extension plant sale in the spring for a quarter, and now it towers over my fence at over 10 feet off the ground. (The top of the garden bed [...]

While trying to stake up my fallen Lemon Boy tomato plant, I dropped one of the wood sticks and broke the stem on a very large, nearly ripe tomato. (As you can imagine, I was pretty mad because I have been waiting a LONG TIME to get anything ripe out there.) I cursed at myself [...]

I have never grown these before, but they sounded fun. Ground cherries are a type of tomatillo that is more sweet than tart. I’m having a lot of fun with the tomatillos because they have an automatic shutoff on the ripening process, thereby taking out the guesswork. Essentially, when the husk becomes brown and the [...]

I’m now hitting the end of all the cooler-weather produce, and warmer weather is (supposedly) here for good now. I’m taking the last of my spring produce and freezing it before it bolts in the warmer weather. The technique is simple — boil some water with a bit of salt in it, toss your cleaned [...]

This is the first year I have grown cauliflower, but I love eating it (especially with onion dip HA). I had no idea what to get but this was called Amazing Cauliflower so I couldn’t go wrong … right? The first head matured and was cut today, and it really is quite amazing. The taste [...]

So I have two "members" in my little CSA now who pick up weekly boxes. It’s helping to fund the garden for us to eat, which sort of helps me to mentally justify the expense of it all. (If you think about it, a small addition to the garden is allowing me to have enough [...]

The sun finally peeked through for a few hours on Friday evening, and I swear the plants took it as an opportunity to double in size. Those vile mosquitoes also took it as a reason to break out of hibernation — after only an hour of sun, one landed on my arm (and was immediately [...]

Another week, more cold weather. I think the purple leaves in the tomatillos are a symptom of the cold, as I had the same problem with my tomato seedlings earlier in the season. (Colder temperatures prevent tomatoes from taking up phosphorus from the soil, so if you see the leaves or stems start to turn [...]