Wednesday, June 16, 2010

So long without an update! How could I be this negligent? First my wife was on vacation visiting family (she took the camera), and then I got lazy, and THEN I stayed lazy. But the real story is that I've been unwilling to deal with uploading all this scheisse on the internet, which is essentially a series of tubes.



Anyway, before I show the progress of the plants, I wanted to put the spotlight on my latest nemesis, the green hornworm.



They were on every plant, at least a few per plant, eating tiny little fruit off the stems, and devouring leaves. Needless to say, seeing this made me a very sad panda.



You can see how they started with the smallest most tender buds and worked their way down, devouring the little infant tomatoes. As I picked each of them off, I started to feel a primal enmity between me and the worms rising up in my blood. In other words, I was losing patience with their unwillingness to come easy. Some of them would hold on for dear life and I would almost squeeze their guts out by the time I got them off and into the box which I used for collection.



By the time I had gotten all these worms (I found three more today) I realized that I couldn't just let these trespassers go. Not only could I not be assured that they wouldn't return, I couldn't bear the thought of letting them breed any further. My entschlossenheit to kill the worms was further bolstered by the fact that, before their capture, the worms had eaten enough leaves and tomatoes to have shit all over the plants themselves (though it could've been much worse I suppose). So I dumped them out on the concrete surface of our cistern and let them run for the hills for half a minute.



Then I gathered them up with a rock and smashed them.



Now before everyone starts hating on me for killing these hornworms, let me just say I don't care about the haters. You know why? B/c



There's nothing you can do about it. Of course I didn't enjoy it. When I smashed them their green blood/shit got on my leg and they popped like little grapes with juice going all over my hands. I was like LOL WUT. And of course it smelled horrible. In toto, it was actually pretty revolting.

On the growing end, much has happened since I last posted. The first to get harvested were cucumbers, which is funny since the cucumbers were the last to be planted. I think it took a mere 5 weeks for the cucumbers to go from seed to harvest. After that, I started getting grape tomatoes and jalopeno peppers. Now I've started getting regular size tomatoes. They are generally really good (especially the grape tomatoes), but some of the bigger tomatoes can be kind of mushy on the inside. I really don't know how to account for this. But it doesn't matter much because they are still good on the whole and it's nice to have tomatoes early in June.

This is the whole view when you walk in. Everything seems to be crawling along the ceiling.

This is an older pic of my better boy plant. I've started harvesting on this sucker.



These grape tomatoes have proven very tasty!



These are the blockbuster bell peppers. They are still green, and I'm going to wait for one of them to go red before I do anything, though I could eat them now.



Brandywine tomatoes. These haven't been very efficient as far as use of space goes. The early girl and better boy are far superior in this respect.


Here is my cucumber plant complete with cucumber. English cucumbers, though not quite as tasty as some varieties, are tasty even with the skin on, which I like.



Here is my favorite project. These are the melon plants (honey dew and cantaloupe). Can you spot the melons hanging in burlap sacks? There are four honey dews and four cantaloupe. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but a bad result won't be for lack of trying; rather it'll be for lack of funding, since I can't justify spending another $150 on an EC/TDS meter. I need this meter to get specific information about the nutrient concentration in my reservoirs and the PH, etc. BUT, that will have to wait until next season. Irgendwann wird es viel zu teuer! NEVERMIND, back to the pics.



I'm extremely excited about these melons and I hope they won't disappoint me. I also like my strawberries.