garden

[Ann]

Thanks for telling me about spring in Yorkshire, Starstruck!

Ann

[rstevenson]

Nothing to report yet on the garden front, but the Bohemian Waxwings have dropped in for their annual feast on the left-over berries on some bush that has gone wild near the side of the house. Apparently they spend most of the winter away from the city, but in February they come by to vacuum up whatever berries they can find. Oddly for this time of year, a Robin was trying to chase them away even though it had no interest in the berries. Getting all territorial already?!

There's lots of berries left and the Waxwings usually stay until they're all gone, so I'll try to get a picture tomorrow.

Rob

[owlice]

Oh, Rob, lucky you, to have Bohemian Waxwings!! I've seen Cedar Waxwings (too few!), but never Bohemian. Such beautiful birds!

[rstevenson]

They are beautiful indeed, but they're here for only three days each year. Reliable, but brief, visitors.

I saw an even rarer bird (for me, but I'm not much of a birder) on Sunday. It was a Newfoundland Robin. I only found out its name after seeing it and checking on-line because it looked Robinish but not quite. Here's a description of it -- second-last paragraph. The one I saw definitely had the gray over the top of the head. And scroll that page (using the arrows) 13 clicks to the right to see what they say about Bohemian visitors to these parts.

(The Robin that was chasing off the Waxwings was the usual American Robin.)

Rob

[orin stepanek]

I pretty much have my garden in this spring; just hoping that the transplants take hold. After two days the cucumbers look pretty solid while the tomatoes are still green! I put melons in by seed so I will be watching for germination. I'm still debating on planting pumpkins as the grand kids seem to be outgrowing them. If I plant them it will be mostly for fun!

[orin stepanek]

I picked this season's first produce from my garden today! I love fresh cucumbers!

cucumber 001.jpg (44.35 KiB) Viewed 45376 times

[Beyond]

Awww, that's a cute cumber, orin, anyway you slice it.

[rstevenson]

"A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out." - Samuel Johnson

[orin stepanek]

"A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out." - Samuel Johnson

Oh Rob! Actually; I like them with vinegar and pepper; creamed with sour cream and salad dressing; or just plain raw with a sprinkle of salt. slices in salads are good also. Or you can can them and have oodles of dill pickles!

[bystander]

I prefer Bread and Butter pickles.

[doschnik]

I picked this season's first produce from my garden today! I love fresh cucumbers!

YEAH! thin cutted!!!

[Moonlady]

Hey Rob, beginning of July is the best time to plant your favourite Donuts!

My family had always gardens mainly for food support, I grew up gardening vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers.
We made marmelades, jams and vegetable cooked to turkish salsa and we had a big stock in the deep freezer. Some other vegetables and herbs were
dried to preserve them, some were made to vinegar pickles. As a child, I didn't like all the work to do in the garden but now I am missing having a garden on my own now.

[rstevenson]

Hmmmmm! I plant a variety that grows very big. ...

(That's my garlic to the right of the bike.)

Rob

[orin stepanek]

Hey Rob, beginning of July is the best time to plant your favourite Donuts!

My family had always gardens mainly for food support, I grew up gardening vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers.
We made marmelades, jams and vegetable cooked to turkish salsa and we had a big stock in the deep freezer. Some other vegetables and herbs were
dried to preserve them, some were made to vinegar pickles. As a child, I didn't like all the work to do in the garden but now I am missing having a garden on my own now.

Hi! I was in the middle of replying to your post when my computer locked up: I didn't want to lose what i had written; so I spent 30 minutes trying to free it up! Seems I hit the windows logo key and I couldn't get the box off. Anyway; (abbreviated recap) My Dad always had a garden that was quite large. I remember as a kid going in there and shelling pea pods right in my mouth. There was always plenty of fresh produce! Potatoes; corn; cucumbers; radishes; beans; melons; beets; etc; etc! Of course having 9 of us kids; there was very little waste. I remember Mom and Dad making sauerkraut by salting cabbage in a 10 gal crock and storing in the cellar.
Fond memories caused me to start my own garden after I retired. Lacking a very large lot, I had to confine my garden to a small area. I grow mainly tomatoes; cucumbers and bell peppers. Last years my tomatoes produced plenty tomatoes. I blanched; skinned and froze enough to last well into this spring. I let my cucumber climb my fence. That way they take less space and make for easy picking.

[Moonlady]

Rob, did you try ramsons ( allium ursinum )? Germans are fond of it and I like it too! The leaves taste like garlic but has less side-effects, your friends stay friends

Orin, wow 9 kids in one home! We were just 5! I would never liked it to be an only child, even there are quarrels!
It is great to grow up in touch with nature, you know how plants should really taste and that there is variety in nature, not all the
perfect, one sized looking vegetables, some people really think if a cucumber looks different in size and shape from another, that is bad and not edible

I also grew up as a child some years in a surburbia where farms had giant fields and there was also wild nature, and on my way from school we ate a lot
just picking up all kind of fruits from wild trees, busches and nuts, different sorts of apples, pears, plums, mirabelles, wild cherries, wild strawberries, blackberries and raspberries,
dogrose eating even when accidently touching the seeds (we annoyed some times each other by putting the fresh seeds into the back side of shirts
which made the back itchy ), common sorrel, some other fruits I don't know how to name because I never saw them sold anywhere,
some leaves of busches that are tasty but also not sold anywhere, and actually we tried anything to eat and find out if it tastes, but we were told in elementary school
witch fruits were poisonous and not try eating.
Many people don't know how many plants are edible and tasteful.
I loved to pick the little white flowers of the smaller sort of stinging nettles and lick the nectar of it! Stinging nettles are tasteful when cooked like spinach.
Luckily there were no foxes who can cause infection with tapeworms. And I never tried mushrooms in wild nature, because I still can't tell if it is not poisonous, I mean
I could tell if I survive

[neufer]

.
Scarlett: Great balls of fire. Don't bother me anymore, and don't call me sugar.

Flavor Is Price of Scarlet Hue of Tomatoes, Study Finds
A gene mutation that makes a tomato uniformly red also stifles genes that contribute to its taste, researchers say.
By GINA KOLATA: June 28, 2012

<<Plant geneticists say they have discovered an answer to a near-universal question: Why are tomatoes usually so tasteless? Yes, they are often picked green and shipped long distances. Often they are refrigerated, which destroys their flavor and texture. But now researchers have discovered a genetic reason that diminishes a tomato’s flavor even if the fruit is picked ripe and coddled. The unexpected culprit is a gene mutation that occurred by chance and that was discovered by tomato breeders. It was deliberately bred into almost all tomatoes because it conferred an advantage: It made them a uniform luscious scarlet when ripe.

Now, in a paper published in the journal Science, researchers report that the very gene that was inactivated by that mutation plays an important role in producing the sugar and aromas that are the essence of a fragrant, flavorful tomato. And these findings provide a road map for plant breeders to make better-tasting, evenly red tomatoes.

The discovery “is one piece of the puzzle about why the modern tomato stinks,” said Harry Klee, a tomato researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved in the research. “That mutation has been introduced into almost all modern tomatoes. Now we can say that in trying to make the fruit prettier, they reduced some of the important compounds that are linked to flavor.” The mutation’s effect was a real surprise, said James J. Giovannoni of the United States Department of Agriculture Research Service, an author of the paper. He called the wide adoption of tomatoes that ripen uniformly “a story of unintended consequences.”

Breeders stumbled upon the variety about 70 years ago and saw commercial potential. Consumers like tomatoes that are red all over, but ripe tomatoes normally had a ring of green, yellow or white at the stem end. Producers of tomatoes used in tomato sauce or ketchup also benefited. Growers harvest this crop all at once, Dr. Giovannoni said, and “with the uniform ripening gene, it is easier to determine when the tomatoes are ripe.” Then, about 10 years ago, Ann Powell, a plant biochemist at the University of California, Davis, happened on a puzzle that led to the new discovery.

Dr. Powell, a lead author of the Science paper, was studying weed genes. Her colleagues had put those genes into tomato plants, which are, she said, the lab rats of the plant world. To Dr. Powell’s surprise, tomatoes with the genes turned the dark green of a sweet pepper before they ripened, rather than the insipid pale green of most tomatoes today. “That got me thinking,” Dr. Powell said. “Why do fruits bother being green in the first place?” The green is from chloroplasts, self-contained energy factories in plant cells, where photosynthesis takes place. The end result is sugar, which plants use for food. And, Dr. Powell said, the prevailing wisdom said sugar travels from a plant’s leaves to its fruit. So chloroplasts in tomato fruit seemed inconsequential. Still, she said, the thought of dark green tomatoes “kind of bugged me.” Why weren’t the leaves dark green, too?

About a year ago, she and her colleagues, including Dr. Giovannoni, decided to investigate. The weed genes, they found, replaced a disabled gene in a tomato’s fruit but not in its leaves. With the weed genes, the tomatoes turned dark green. The reason the tomatoes had been light green was that they had the uniform ripening mutation, which set up a sort of chain reaction. The mutation not only made tomatoes turn uniformly green and then red, but also disabled genes involved in ripening. Among them are genes that allow the fruit to make some of its own sugar instead of getting it only from leaves. Others increase the amount of carotenoids, which give tomatoes a full red color and, it is thought, are involved in flavor.

To test their discovery, the researchers used genetic engineering to turn on the disabled genes while leaving the uniform ripening trait alone. The fruit was evenly dark green and then red and had 20 percent more sugar and 20 to 30 percent more carotenoids when ripe. But were the genetically engineered tomatoes more flavorful? Because Department of Agriculture regulations forbid the consumption of experimental produce, no one tasted them. And, Dr. Giovannoni says, do not look for those genetically engineered tomatoes at the grocery store. Producers would not dare to make such a tomato for fear that consumers would reject it. But, Dr. Powell said, there is a way around the issue. Heirloom tomatoes and many wild species do not have the uniform ripening mutation. “The idea is to get the vegetable seed industry interested,” Dr. Powell said. >>

Scarlett: I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.

[saturno2]

My garden is small, I grow
1 lemon tree
1 plant of small tomatoes
1 plant of oreganon ( use for stomach pain and a researcher in medicine
said me that gallstones dissolve them)
5 plants of different flowers
I only put water and they look very happy
When I do not put water are really very sad

[orin stepanek]

My garden is doing fine; I gave a couple of cucumbers to my daughter and son in law! I just can't eat them all! I noticed a nice sized cantaloupe the other day. My cherry tomatoes are producing overtime; but my other tomatoes have only ripened one so far. There are a lot of tomatoes on the vines though.

[Moonlady]

My garden is doing fine; I gave a couple of cucumbers to my daughter and son in law! I just can't eat them all! I noticed a nice sized cantaloupe the other day. My cherry tomatoes are producing overtime; but my other tomatoes have only ripened one so far. There are a lot of tomatoes on the vines though.

Orin, wow you got your own cantaloupe! When you have eaten it, please describe extended how it tasted, it's texture, it's arome, it's color from outside toward inside...I love cantaloupes!

Orin, may I ask, I know there are no stupid questions only stupid people. Did the guy working in the names register wrote your name wrong? Shouldn't it be ORION?

[Ann]

I, too, rather like the name Orion Stepanek (although Orin Stepanek sounds really good, too!).

Check out this picture. The caption says that Orion is eating tomatoes!

(And by the way, Orin, I'm envious of your tomatoes! I'm helping my friend growing tomatoes, but they are tiny and green...)

Ann

[Moonlady]

I, too, rather like the name Orion Stepanek (although Orin Stepanek sounds really good, too!).

Check out this picture. The caption says that Orion is eating tomatoes!

Ann

Orion, why did you hide this cute picture of yours?! He has got that green fingers in his genes! Master of Gardening

[orin stepanek]

Orin, wow you got your own cantaloupe! When you have eaten it, please describe extended how it tasted, it's texture, it's arome, it's color from outside toward inside...I love cantaloupes!

Orin, may I ask, I know there are no stupid questions only stupid people. Did the guy working in the names register wrote your name wrong? Shouldn't it be ORION?

It'll be a couple weeks before the cantaloupe is ripe as it is still growing!
My tomatoes are starting to ripen now!
I'm not a hunter; though I did go out a few times when I was younger! I'm glad Mom and Dad didn't name me Orion! I got the name Orin when Professor Orin Stepanek came to visit my parents on the farm since he had the same last name. Mom was expecting me at the time and was intrigued by the name! It's OK I guess; but a more common name would be OK too!

[orin stepanek]

Unless the weather pattern lets up; I wont get much more out of my garden! Only the tomatoes seem to tolerate the heat. My cucumbers aren't setting on anymore! I do have some bells started but it is so hot that I don't hole much hope for them. I feel for the farmers whose crops are being burnt up and the consumers who will probably face soaring prices for produce!

[orin stepanek]

I've been watering my garden every morning and looks like I may still get a few cucumbers! My cantaloupe is doing fine; and I hope it ripens soon. I wish more had set on!

[Moonlady]

Orin, your cantaloupe looks really good! Yummy

I was cycling in the city and I saw a place with wild flowers, I love wild flowers! There were many happy bees flying around.
I stopped to look at them and I found an interesting one! A pink corn poppy with a white border! I haven't seen that one ever!