Bye, bye to tomato row

 Blossom end rot: a disorder caused by a lack of calcium in the soil or by the plant's inability to absorb enough calcium through watering in which the bottom of the fruit breaks down and rots. 

Earlier today I made the decision to pull the plug on the 2024 tomatoes. Due to a number of factors including the June heat wave, the plants simply weren't producing usable/eatable fruit. 

The first thing that happened was that the tomatoes reached the size of golf balls and just fell off the vines while green. Then the fruits, still the size of golf balls, developed blossom end rot. Each and every fruit has fallen victim to the malady. There's no use to continue to water the plants. It's time for them to go. 

Every gardener faces the possibility of crop failure, but it's certainly annoying when it happens to you. I understand why it happened this year. Following my husband's death, I had to replant seeds too late in the year, and then the heat wave hit. I forged ahead hoping for only enough fruit to enjoy on the table, not to home can. Nope.

Moving on, it's time to pull the plants and tidy the garden. Next year, and the gardener always looks forward to next year, I'm planting only determinate varieties of tomatoes, and if the variety name has the word "bush" in it, all the better. Perhaps that will help since the plants themselves don't keep growing and growing. We'll see. I'm not giving up.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, blossom end rot, gardening, garden failure, country lifestyle, rural living, a writer's life, determinate varieties, tomatoes

Garden failure 2024

Live and learn.

That's an old saying, but a true one. The 2024 gardening year is mostly a bust. I shot a little video this past weekend to talk about it. 

The link, if you want to see it, is at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFmKP4zaIes

I began the year with high hopes. Little did I know what a turn of events would transpire. The Lord of the Manor and I had a simple plan for some veggies for our table, and then it all went off the rails. 

He passed at the end of March. The garden didn't get planted at the appropriate time. A heat wave hit at the end of June. It's not been fun. Never before have I seen tomatoes get to the size of a golf ball and just fall off the vines. 

The spaghetti squash looks good, and I'll have enough jalapeno peppers for a batch of cowboy candy. There are two cabbage to harvest, too. Beyond that, I don't have much hope. 

It's amazing how quickly we'll get to the planning stage for 2025. It's time to adjust my thinking and act accordingly.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, rural living, country lifestyle, a writer's life, garden planning, tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, spaghetti squash, failure

It's going to be disappointing

Spaghetti squash blooms

January and February of this year seem such a long time ago. Ron was ill, but we still talked about the garden we hoped to have. He listened as I rambled on about seeds and soil, offering a few suggestions of what he'd like to see planted. We had no idea just how sick he truly was. 

All the garden planning wasn't wasted. I did manage to start JetStar tomatoes, cabbage, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, spaghetti squash, basil, dill, cucumbers, gourds, and some annual flowers. I wish he'd have lived long enough to sit in the garden and enjoy being among the growing things.

The brutal heat wave we experienced mid-June wreaked havoc on my garden. I've been told tomatoes won't flower if the temps get above 90F, and it looks like that may be somewhat true. The plants should have a lot more flowers than they do, and some of what was blooming have dried up.

The dill is over. It bolted in the heat so I pulled all of it and dried what I could for the spice rack. The cabbage is doing wonderful, tucked safely beneath a mesh cover to keep the moths away. Yes, I know the cabbage are planted very close together. They are annual plants, good for one year only. This works just fine. Next year I'm putting the cabbage in buckets so I can plant something new in the raised bed. The jalapeno peppers are finally flowering, but not profusely. I hope I get enough of a harvest to make a batch of cowboy candy. If not, I'll have to purchase enough to round out the recipe. 

Every year is really a different growing season. One year the peppers may be too plentiful and the tomatoes crap out. The next year, just the opposite can happen. We plant and we hope, and we accept what we're given. 

My garden will look very different next year as I'm learning to do everything - cook, do laundry, shop, and garden, for one person. Except for the begonias in the planters, that is. I've mentioned several times that my grandmother loved red wax plants and I grow them every year in her honor. 

It's never too early to plan, and I'm making notes of what I think will work next year. The damn squirrels got to the lettuce and spinach, so I think I'm going to invest in a raised planter with a cover. There are a variety of them available. I need to invest in some better tomato cages, too. 

My life is like the garden, always growing and always changing in unexpected ways. This year, 2024, has brought many disappointments, with probably more to come. But like the garden, I'm resilient. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, rural living, country lifestyle, life changes, disappointments, heat wave, planning ahead, 

Finally! Blueberries

This morning I picked a handful of blueberries off my little bush. It may not be much, but it's exactly what I wanted. I'll be able to pick another handful on Tuesday. It's just enough for breakfast whether I have cereal, yogurt, or cottage cheese. 

Sweet, juicy, and worth the wait! 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

A day of rest?

Several years ago, when I retired, the Lord of the Manor and I decided we'd try to practice a true day of rest. Now that I'm here alone, I'm finding it difficult to achieve. Deuce is great company but he's not a conversationalist. Lounging on the patio is much easier with someone to talk with. 

In theory, our day of rest included only the most necessary of "work." Someone had to prepare meals and feed the dog. I watered the garden and gathered anything that needed to be harvested, but I didn't pull weeds or apply fertilizers. We tried to make Sunday our day to take a drive, watch a movie, or just hang out together. 

I'm still adjusting to being without Ron's physical presence. My day of rest is plagued by boredom. That's BOREDOM in capital letters. I've watched some television (not my fave thing to do), did some reading out in the garden, played Frisbee with Deuce, and now I'm blogging. I wanted to take Deuce for a long walk but I did not like the looks of the radar map and sure enough, we've had a couple of rain showers. 

This is something I need to work out for myself. Boredom at this level is not very restful. It's restlessness in an extreme. I should try to write. I've been doing better with that this week, but writing is a type of work. I do get paid for the completed book. Do I want to be that strict with myself? Probably not. 

I think my day of rest, and now solitude, needs to be reimagined. What is restful to me? Walking the dog - most certainly. Playing in my garden - very much so. What about visiting one of the cousins each week? That's a possibility as long as I don't intrude on their time with grandkids. 

Hopefully, I'll come up with a few good options before next Sunday and my next "day of rest" makes me feel a touch crazy.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, day of rest, country lifestyle, rural living, black Labrador Retriever, fighting boredom, a writer's life, gardening, reading, loss of spouse, restlessness

That was close!

A line of severe thunderstorms barreled through our area last night. I'd seen the radar and knew it was coming sometime after 10 PM. About eleven-thirty, Deuce jumped to his paws and barked like someone was coming up the lane. I have a sensor that dings if that happens, and it was silent, but I knew he heard something. This morning I discovered what.

I always take Deuce out between six and seven every morning. What greeted us was a large tree limb in the middle of the parking area. No wonder the dog raised hell about it! I'll need to put the Brush Crusher 4200 on the tractor to move that to the brush pile. 

I can do that. I'm just grateful it missed hitting my Colorado. That would have made me very unhappy! 

When you live in the woods you expect these things to happen, but it seems the wind is getting worse. I suppose it's a direct result of the solar maximum and the solar flares. There's nothing much we can do except trim the trees closest to the house. Like I need more firewood at this point. (I don't.)

The branch will lie there until tomorrow. Another line of storms and rain is bearing down on us, and I'm not going to be sitting outside on a big chunk of metal when it gets here.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, storm damage, John Deere 1023, Brush Crusher 4200, country lifestyle, rural living, solar maximum, guard dogs, a writer's life

Check out the new video!

NEWSFLASH!!

I made a video yesterday! What so special about that? It was a chat from the garden and I showed my face. 

If you'd like to see it, hop over to Between the Keys. Here's the link. https://kckendricks.blogspot.com/2024/05/working-my-way-tosomewhere.html

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Will this be a Herculean task?

Our shed was the domain of the Lord of the Manor. I stored gardening "stuff" in the space he allotted me, but the shed was his Man Cave. I paid just enough attention to be able to find any items I needed and I kept my mouth shut. Now it's my shed alone and I say it needs to be organized. 

So many things are clustered down low so he could reach them. I understand that. He did rather well in finding work-arounds to his mobility issues. Now it's up to me to sort through and organize it all. 

This will be a Herculean task. There are over thirty years of accumulation of tools, implements, and equipment in the shed. He kept a lot of things because he knew how to repair them - but he never did. I need to test everything to make sure it works. New shelving is needed, and it seems I need to obtain a good assortment of pegboard hooks. The space between the studs can be better utilized, too, as shelves for smaller items I may want to keep handy. Heck, I may even scrounge up some white paint for a few areas. 

It's going to be a big job, but in the end, I'll have a space I can work in. I may even be able to store the X370 inside year-round instead of under the carport in the summer. We'll have to see if that works. 

I'd like to say I can complete this job in an organized manner, but I know better. It will be accomplished quite haphazardly, a little here, a little there, and back again. In the end, it'll get done and I hope he would approve. Actually, I know he would. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, organization, garden sheds, life after loss, rural living, country lifestyle. a writer's life, women alone, shelving, tools, equipment, John Deere x370

It turned out better than expected

My little garden patch has a corner for me to sit and read, call a friend, or just enjoy being in the garden.  After spending some time out there enjoying a cup of coffee, I felt the space lacked something. I wasn't sure what, exactly, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. 

The biggest issue was the deer netting. I didn't like the way it sagged. It was obvious the stakes weren't going to stay in place, courtesy of the rocky ground. It's difficult to drive the stakes deeply. They leaned this way and that, and I didn't like the look. The solution came to me last week - I needed two short racks for the corner. 

Several years ago, the Lord of the Manor made four racks for me. I'm still using them to trellis growing plants. But instead of two more eight-foot sections, I went with four-foot sections since I was more interested in supporting the netting in the corner than having more trellis. Knowing myself, I knew they had to match what was already there. That's a shady corner and not too good for veggies, which is why my sitting area is there. The grow bags will contain blooming flowers, not tomatoes or peppers. 

I confess to being proud of myself for constructing the two new racks all on my own. They added just the right amount of support for the netting and they give my corner an air of privacy. 

After the job was completed, I sat in the chair and cried a bit. Ron taught me so many things, but this project would have been better if he'd been here to give me an 'atta-girl'. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, deer netting, country lifestyle, rural living, privacy, life after loss, trellis, grow bags, 

A lot of prickly work

I've begun what is a massive undertaking. For years and years, I've wanted to clean out along the north stone fence row and stack the stones into a semi-proper wall. I say "semi" because I know it's impossible to get all the stones stacked. The fence row is, if I may use the word again, massive. It's at least ten feet tall and twenty feet across at the base. That's a lot of stones. If I can get a wall stacked to about four feet high in the front just for appearances, I'll call it a good job. 

This picture is of the northeast corner of my property. It's also the highest spot. This is where Ron said to scatter his ashes. This is where Jett is buried, and Jett was the dog that he held dear, much as I hold Deuce. He loved Deuce, but Jett was that one special dog for him, the dog that loved him above all else. They had a bond. 

 I don't know how far I'll get with this project. It may be that I'll do this section and stop. It'll be okay if I do. I also have a large bag of wildflower seeds to sow. And I'll probably place a lawn chair up there so I can sit and remember my times with Ron. 

Getting to this stage was a lot of work. The area was overrun with honeysuckle vines and a fair amount of greenbriers. My arms are scratched and scraped, and my back muscles are protesting. But it feels good to be able to do a job and have the immediate gratification of seeing results. 

I hope that carries through to dry stacking a stone wall.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, dry stack stone wall, country lifestyle, rural living, honeysuckle, greenbriers, love of a dog, hard work, wildflowers