Pakalolo Did you ever surf Trestle's at/near the Camp Pendleton border with San Clemente? Talk about a long friggin' walk from where you park to the water especially with the old-style boards of yesteryear - what a trek! I lived in HB for several years which was nice. I lived about 200' from PCH at the pier - Main & PCH. What a scene - LOL! CC
Yah, it was the Trestle's we would try to sneak into. If you got to the water you were okay. At least they didn't shot us for being there. Back in those days I had a 10' board made by the Greek there in Huntington Beach. It wasn't as heavy as the homemade board I made when I started surfing up here in Washington at places like LaPush and Point Grenville. I got drafted in '67 and my brothers stole and sold my surfboard. So I didn't get back into surfing until I was in my late 30's. But then I was hitting the waves of Hawaii. I wasn't much good at surfing those tiny boards so I switched over to boogie boards. I got good on them. Lots of fun but the last time I went out in 15' waves and ended up hitting a reef or lava rocks. Got scraped up and bloodied but not too bad. That was it. I was in my 50's and just decided I shouldn't be out there in the big waves.
My first taste of the SoCal beach scene was Newport. I was a fresh fish from Ohio finally getting to see a coast with actual salt water.....before I ever saw the water, I ran smack dab into a girl changing into her bikini right next our parked car...I've never been the same...I think I may have matured a little. I'm still finding all the spots that folks talk about. I was stationed out here for 11 yrs from El Toro down to Miramar (rarely ever home long enough to do anything) and I'm still finding new spots.
My veggies are doing pretty well! Spinach and lettuce are growing like gangbusters in this cool, wet weather we've had here on the front range.. I've already cut them back 4 or 5 times now! wish I could say the same about my pepper plants lol. My zucchini squash is fruiting! The toms look great, but very few tomatoes on them. Thinking I may try an SST and see if that helps I know AW and Posuum have had some issues with their tom plants too... I don't see many bees around.... The mint is kicking ass in a 5 gal nursery pot. Rosemary looks ok.. growing kinda slow. The brocolli plant is doing great! I'm guessing it digs the cold too
I like it Thomas!! As much lettuce as we eat around here, it'll be cool to get some going later in the fall. More than a few folks have mentioned the lack of bee activity this year. I hope that's not an indication of some type of impending shift...you know how nature tends to start some things off small.
I haven't seen bees much on my other veggies, but they're absolutely all over my corn tassels and lemonbalm.
The kids and I finally got to munch on some "Sweet 100" cherry tomatoes last night - what an unbelievable flavor. These are the cherries that I put at each end of the porch in the big (10 gallon?) clay pots of homegrown dirt. I haven't done too much to them besides keeping them moist. I did mulch the heck out of them with a few inches of fresh chopped comfrey and then top dressed with another few inches of compost but haven't used any kind of teas etc - just the hose. They're covered in green tomato bunches - soon we'll be eating lots and lots of them. What a flavor! J
yeah i'm diggin these sweet 100's.. almost at the point where they're ripening faster than i can eat them. I'm sure i'll get some help this weekend how are they doing in the 10 gals? did the plants get pretty big? @[member="thomasmfjefferson2"] nice work holmes!! i'm getting a ton of bees all over everything now.. getting more fruit on the tom's, just wondering if its too late. i'm still putting this off to that long cold winter we had. I planted the 1st week of june and the soil was still freezing cold. I have to imagine that the bees got a late start too..
I don't have the Sweet 100's but I have Sakura Reds that were developed with PNW hoop houses in mind. It looks like I got over 100 cherry tomatoes set and have been grazing on some of them. I've got lots of bees this summer all over.
how are they doing in the 10 gals? did the plants get pretty big? They seem to be doing pretty well. They get giant out in the garden to the point that its a tangled mess (but last summer in the garden there had to be thousands of cherry tomatoes) so this year I decided to just put a couple out on the porch. I've got them tied up, and am still tying them up, as they are still growing alot. They are probably 5' tall now with a half dozen long branches. Nowhere near as many tomatoes on them as last year out in the big garden but that was really to the point of ridiculous. I gave away hundreds and hundreds of them and ate hundreds of them and still lost more hundreds to rotting on the vine just cuz we couldn't eat anywhere near as many as they produced.
Ive got lots of bees too, Pak. My big Romas and San Marzanos just arent doing well this year tho. I'll get some but nothing like what I usually get. It very well might be the late winter like AW said.
yeah that's where mine are at.. a tangled mess lol. i need to tie them up to the fence before they take down the tomato cage... crazy how they yield man.. they don't stop till they get hit by frost.
"Dont stop until frost" Agreed 110%. I find that August is the real month for cherry tomatoes - once they start producing things just snowball until you dont want to see another cherry tomato. I am NOWHERE near that point yet tho! *lol* j
Like a smoke report here's my tomato report. I got my tomatoes from KIS Farms. I got Monica growing in the garden. This is a plum type tomato and it has set about 50 but none have ripened yet. It is with a Striped German but both of these plants are half the size of the ones in the hoop house. The Striped German in the garden isn't setting many tomatoes. In the hoop house I have the Sakura Red ( I'm growing these next summer too), Striped German, Solar Flare and Jolly Elf. The Striped German and Solar Flare are a red/yellow tomato but the ones I've got so far aren't that good in my opinion. So I'm not growing them next year. The Jolly Elf looks like a cross between a cherry and a plum tomato. I like this one and will grow them next year. My hoop house tomato plants got almost 7' tall and just last weekend I topped them. The hoop house is turning out to be a great place to grow my tomatoes. I have them in 7 gallon pots with my soil and they are loving it. Overall I'm disappointed with the heirloom vegetables I'm growing. The cauliflower and broccoli were a bust. The cabbage is doing great though and I'll grow it again next year. The lettuce is so-so but my asparagus is doing great. The brussel sprouts are looking good but too early to tell how well they'll produce. My squash is overrunning my cucumbers and both are producing well. The beans and peas were good producers too. So I learned a lot this first run of organic vegetable growing. One thing I will say is I haven't had much bug issues so far. Healthy plants ward off the bugs it seems. I almost forgot to mention my 5 comfrey plants are doing great too.
The cauliflower and broccoli were a bust. Ugh - Sorry Pak. I was supposed to get you the name of the broccoli that I ran this year (which did extremely well for my first time) and I will. Either way I guess you wont be doing it this summer so I'll get you the name of it soon. PW - good point on the juice. I bet it'd be great because those little tomatoes are packed with flavor. j
Jerry Same in our garden. The biomass is incredible but pretty paltry as far as the fruit set. The Italian varieties are a challenge when you live as far north as you and I do. With the cool and wet spring we weren't able to get our starts into the soil until the first of June so we were at least 6 weeks behind where we would have liked things to start. It happens......
cucumber beetles strike again down to 1 very healthy cuke plant, the other 4 were beaten down by beetles.. I'm gonna try and cut the effected area off, and hit it with more lemon balm and neem.. but i doubt it'll make it. gonna just leave it there and hope the beetles focus on that one and leave the good one alone lol.. odd thing is that i'm not even seeing more than 1 or 2 beetles at a time, if any at all. never had a bug problem in my veggie garden till i started growing cukes..
AW Cukes, most/many melons and squash in the Pacific Northwest is a PITA - all of these types of plants are pure Powdery Mildew magnets. Sometimes it looks like frost on the leaves that's how bad it gets. That's when you bring out the baking soda and hit them every 2 days until you get things under control and then start hitting them with neem every 3 or 4 days. The $50.00 cantaloupe and that whole deal - LOL!