Mystery Seedlings

[surviort_wwdnet]

I got most of the bell peppers picked, sliced, and flash freezing (2-1/2 large baking sheets). I picked a bag of jalapenos, made a bunch of jalapeno poppers, and flash froze the rest of the jalapenos, about a dozen, whole. Tomorrow I'll get them all vacuum packed and into the freezer. The next batch of bell peppers I pick will get diced and dehydrated. I checked the potato plants but they're not ready to dig up, so I'll just leave them alone. I didn't get the grow bag dirt dumped due to work being done by the contractors on our irrigation system and a sizable grocery delivery. Now that one can of yard waste got emptied today, there's lots of room for this spent dirt. I got the garden watered and good thing, because the irrigation zone for the garden has now gone dead since the contractor replaced a valve on another zone.

[surviort_wwdnet]

The irrigation zone for the garden is now operable, and I used it! There's nothing more to harvest at the moment, so I'm just cleaning up out there. Most of the old soil is being dumped, except for the raised bed soil, which will be sprayed with week killer, then refertilized.

[surviort_wwdnet]

I trash can full of old soil dumped, and then it was on to other yard and pool chores before it hit 100^o. The heat is killer but it's cooler under the sun shade and the plants all look healthier and aren't wilted from the heat. I'm going to pick more jalapenos and make some more poppers - my new favorite snack!

[surviort_wwdnet]

I got up with good intentions to finish dumping the old dirt from the garden, but my husband had other plans. We FINALLY got the chain on his bike, but after an hour in the heat and humidity, working in the garden didn't seem so attractive. I worked on the sprinklers, checked the old weed whacker to make sure it didn't have a battery in it, then went grocery shopping with a stop at Lowes to pick up some sprinkler head guards so I won't have to walk around poking a stick in the ground to find the few that are in too deep😂 The garden can wait until after dinner or tomorrow morning - I have until Wednesday morning to get the old dirt bagged and out to the curb.

[surviort_wwdnet]

Yikes! I'm running out of time to get the old soil dumped. Thunder, lightning, and pouring rain = get the rest of the laundry done and watch TV with my husband, fix gnocchi for dinner, and putz around on the computer. All is not lost - tomorrow should be a dry day so I can empty more grow bags into the yard waste. As I looked out the window at the drenched garden, I can picture adding two more aboveground containers in place of the grow bags (all three rows of them), which would be a much more efficent use of my limited space. That would give me a total of six containers. Grow bags can go anywhere along the edges of the yard. Still lots of peppers to pick and herbs to cut and dehydrate!

[surviort_wwdnet]

Finally made it out pepper pickin' (and I got the old dirt dumped).

[surviort_wwdnet]

I made 14 jalapeno poppers and froze the rest. The bell peppers are in the freezer (some) or in the dehydrator (the rest). Rainy day so I won't be working in the garden anymore this afternoon!

[surviort_wwdnet]

I'm so ready for 110^o+ heat advisories to be over - 110^o today and 117^o tomorrow!!!. I have garden work to do but I can only stay out there for so long. I am determined to finish dumping the old potting soil so I can get the grow bags ready for replanting at the end of August. Today (yes, on a Sunday) we have contractors here top-coating the concrete walkway and slab, so I won't be going out there stirring up dust for them, and I hope the cat doesn't jump through the screen on the porch to leave her signature😂

[surviort_wwdnet]

I dug up a bunch of potatoes and need to go dig up the rest of them, but the outdoor thermometer says it's 104^o and based on the oven-like air outside, I don't doubt it. There are still peppers growing (some just new flowers) and jalapenos are going strong. The black soybeans are almost ready for harvest, so they can be dried and put away for next spring's planting. I may go out after dinner to finish up the potato bed.

[surviort_wwdnet]

All of the old potting soil made it to the curb (it was on year Forum of use), and the rest of the potatoes made it into the house. I used a few potatoes last night to make seasoned oven-fried potatoes, and the rest will get dry canned. The garden got watered via the irrigation system. Bell peppers are starting to pop out again, and more jalapenos are starting to appear. I need to get out there and pull some weeds; however, not when it's 100^o+ outside.

[surviort_wwdnet]

This morning I took the smallest of the potatoes and dry pack canned them. This will not let us survive for more than a day or two, but it was a fun experiment with dry pack canning. I only used the baby potatoes, but this can be done with larger potatoes as well.



https://www.canningdiva.com/recipes/dry-packed-potatoes-canning-recipe/?fbclid=IwAR0SWf6HA_RWvtzSBldvm3krntitw0cW6EPXv1kE p9nM5rvzmQ_AC3ZoSZg

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

wow, hat off to you...you are a go getter....

Sorry been absent/MIA...lots of stuff came up. Caught some bug when I covered for a provider who's mom committed suicide, and she had to return to Czech Republic for a week. We went camping and bam it hit us both and we never left the camper despite being in Savannah. Bad thing is I had gone and seen my 93 yoa dad and he came down with it. GI/Flu kinda thing...all are better after about 2 weeks and camping was tiring as we both were fighting the bug.

Also, we have opened up Shopify and Etsy stores and are doing those in addition to eBay and Amazon...so like any new venture it takes quite a while to get things running. I have been playing an IT department setting up these stores, and getting all the intergrations set up, and still setting up with API keys and such. Plus designing products and listing. eBay is the money maker now, not killing it but positive cash flow daily and waiting for Q4. Amazon is a PITA to work with, but they are HUGE, so we are staying with them for a bit longer. Sold my first product on Etsy yesterday after the store being open for 3 weeks. I also am learning "marketing" with SM...which I hate having SM but it is business only and in todays world you need them. Lucky I have my daughter in charge of posting and stuff but I do the marketing.

Garden was meh this year. Only had 3 of 12 pepper plants come up and they are not over achievers. Had lots of small sunflowers but had essentially no pollinators as NONE of my flowers even sprouted. We did have one big watermelon this year out of 3 plants and of course the beans and a few tomatoes. I decided, as of now, not to do a fall garden as I don't know when fall will come this year...I am thinking fall may show up in January...

Hope all is as good as it can be with your husband....

[surviort_wwdnet]

wow, hat off to you...you are a go getter....

Sorry been absent/MIA...lots of stuff came up. Caught some bug when I covered for a provider who's mom committed suicide, and she had to return to Czech Republic for a week. We went camping and bam it hit us both and we never left the camper despite being in Savannah. Bad thing is I had gone and seen my 93 yoa dad and he came down with it. GI/Flu kinda thing...all are better after about 2 weeks and camping was tiring as we both were fighting the bug.

Also, we have opened up Shopify and Etsy stores and are doing those in addition to eBay and Amazon...so like any new venture it takes quite a while to get things running. I have been playing an IT department setting up these stores, and getting all the intergrations set up, and still setting up with API keys and such. Plus designing products and listing. eBay is the money maker now, not killing it but positive cash flow daily and waiting for Q4. Amazon is a PITA to work with, but they are HUGE, so we are staying with them for a bit longer. Sold my first product on Etsy yesterday after the store being open for 3 weeks. I also am learning "marketing" with SM...which I hate having SM but it is business only and in todays world you need them. Lucky I have my daughter in charge of posting and stuff but I do the marketing.

Garden was meh this year. Only had 3 of 12 pepper plants come up and they are not over achievers. Had lots of small sunflowers but had essentially no pollinators as NONE of my flowers even sprouted. We did have one big watermelon this year out of 3 plants and of course the beans and a few tomatoes. I decided, as of now, not to do a fall garden as I don't know when fall will come this year...I am thinking fall may show up in January...

Hope all is as good as it can be with your husband....

I wondered where you disappeared to! I'm sorry you and your wife got sick. Is your dad ok?

Where are your stores (URLs)???

Picked a few jalapenos (there are a ton of small ones still growing out there!) and pulled 2 of my 3 black soybean plants. The plants and the pods had turned brown, so it was time to harvest. I need to take the beans out of the pods and get them dried and put up for next spring. My bell pepper plants are flowering again😁, and there are two new peppers growing. They're not quite big enough to harvest but they look beautiful. Plant once, harvest forever???😂 The rest of my beans aren't doing well - I should have put up the shade cloth a long time ago😂 Fortunately, I have a LOT of beans in storage and I'm going to pull some of them and "dry" pressure can them. Then they'll be ready to eat in case the SHTF. The rest of the garden didn't do horribly, but certainly not as productive as it was last year. I'll have room for 2 more containers now that I dumped the grow bags (except for the herbs), and I'll just put the grow bags "around" wherever there's a sprinkler head. I keep cutting the herbs back to dry them, and then they all grow some more.

In other news, we finally got the pool lift pad ready after much hell-raising and stomping feet on my part. I told the general contractor we have 2 bathrooms my husband can use, but no pool. My husband really wanted the lift as he is no longer able to navigate the steps to the pool deck to use the bosun's chair. On Wednesday it was installed; we had spent the day at the Gainesville VA and, by the time we got home, it was raining. He's able to operate the waterproof remote control to get in and out of the pool, and has been in the pool every day since! The smile on his face makes the struggle to get ready for the lift worthwhile❤️ Tomorrow our neighbor will take down the bosun's chair assembly. I filled up 4 two-gallon cans and have 2 more to go, but I'm going to fill the five-gallon cans from the small cans, then refill all the small ones. The transfer pump I bought a while back works great for getting gas from a can I can't pick up to cans I can manage.



The new ADA-compliant bathroom is about half-done (ton of grouting to do) and the subcontractors have all come down with some bug. I hope they get well soon, because the VA is arranging for a Permobil rep to come to the house to get my husband measured for his power wheelchair. After the struggles at our last VA visit, he finally agreed with me that it's time. I had gotten a VA transfer chair and pushed him everywhere we had to go, while he carried his rollator on his lap. He wanted to go out to the picnic area to eat lunch, and it was all uphill - I almost didn't get him there! Going back I almost lost him on the downhill 😂, and it was after that we discussed the need for a PWC. The next day my back and legs were feeling it. Next will come a wheelchair van, which will be mostly paid for by the VA. I'm debating side or rear entry, but I think rear entry will give us a lot more options when we park because the really wide handicap spots are few and far between. With a rear entry van, we can park anywhere.

[prc-104]

So cool for both of you and I'm glad stuff is finally working out. Always seems to take forever.

On the gas cans I have the same problem .
I have a bunch of european mil gas cans. most 5gal and the rest are the 2 1/2 gallon ones.

What I found was the 17 gallon drums.
they have the same bung holes as the 55 gallon drums so all the 55 gallon attachments work with the 17 gallon. (They might be 18 gallon, but on't remember since it's been 15 years or more since I bought them new).

They hold a lot of gas and when full, if i need to move them I tip them over and roll them which is really pretty easy.
You can use a 55 gallon drum pump but what I did on top of that was to buy a car gas pump (12vdc) a filter and a length of gas line.
Use my jumper battery to run the pump and it fills up a 5 gallon can in a couple of minutes.

Good thing is they're well built and when the bungs are tight, they are really safe to keep around.

Tip is leave 4 inches at the top empty. If totally full, in the heat of the day, they will spray gas when you losen the bung.

Don't use STABLE even tho it's good. Use PRI-G or PRI-D to keep the gas stable for up to 10 years. At least that's the longest I ever stored gas and it was perfect when I used it. Imagine that.....10 year old gas. luv it.

TIP.... Pri-G is for gas BUT PRI-D works on both gas and diesel.

[surviort_wwdnet]

Our gas doesn't last long enough to worry about it going stale; we cycle through the supply on a regular basis.

I decided to dig through the potato container one last time and, lo and behold - 6 more potatoes were hiding in there! On a roll, I started weeding the rest of the containers and had it done in short order! Then I watered the garden and walked away, pleased with myself for finally getting all the weeds out. It's been a banner year for weeds and a struggle to keep up with them. I'm considering using the potato-less potato container for the next batch of tomatoes and something else. I'm only going to put in a couple of beefsteak plants, just so we can have some for eating. The peppers will stay in their container for as long as they keep producing. Lima and pinto beans are struggling, but I'll use that container for winter squash as soon as the beans run their course. I have one black soybean plant that's still green and growing; it's in a container with my eggplant, which I believe is due to be cut down and removed. It's about 5 feet tall! I may let it simmer a while longer to see if I can get a second harvest.