Creation is a messy process

It's just too much fun to approach re-potting in the sloppiest way possible!

I had to harvest bunches of aloe. Now I've got to figure out what to do with it and how to get the juice out of the leaves. I've always just kept it for burns and that never happens!

This week, I've purchased peppermint, parsley, patchouli, and rosemary in 4" pots. I'll wait to re-pot them for two weeks just in case they were recently re-potted.

Bell Pepper Harvest

This is the extent of my crop from the bell pepper plant. They only grew to about one eighth the size of the seed mother. They are quite usable in stir fry. I prepared a tofu stir fry and added thin slices of one of the peppers. It added texture and crunch to the dish.

baby bell pepper

Look what we have here! Isn't she just adorable?

This is a red bell pepper plant that I grew from seed that I dried after eating the fruit. I am making sure to set it on the front porch on the weekends so it will get lucky, or, get pollinated at any rate. I figure the tomato's were cursed from the beginning since the balcony is screened.

I'm almost completely vegetarian now, though I will have a week here and there where I'm craving chicken or hot dogs.

I make it a weekly practice to soak dry beans; lentil, black, etc., for use as side dishes and in recipes. It's such a simple thing to do, I wonder why we ever got used to buying them in cans. I have learned to boil them on a lower heat than high so that the beans don't break up and shed their skin. I would like to find a place to buy the beans in bulk and learn about the shelf life. I've made bean sprouts from the lentils, but would prefer soybean and alfalfa sprouts.

My Publix has changed the vendor for their organic produce from Noah's Farm in Sarasota to a vendor from South America. The flavor is just not "there". On the other hand, they are stocking an organic orange juice from Clermont and it's very good.

Summertime re-engagement

The tomato plants led an unfruitful existence. Only one plant of the sixteen produced one tomato. That was from Audrey II. I blame the seeds. All that remains of the tomato plants is in the compost bin at this time. When I try tomatoes again, I will choose a smaller variety. The green onions proved to be a useful planting. When I cut them, more grows back. They are nice in recipes, soups and salads. My parsley plant was generous for more than a year, providing an ample supply to my table, but now the parent stem is aged and is producing very stout leaves. I have cut it back and am hoping for a re-generation from it. My Queen Basil is hearty in it's third generation, but I must confess I use store bought basil still and mostly enjoy it as an ornamental. I have red and yellow bell pepper plants growing from seeds I dried from market peppers (three to a pot) but forgot to label for color. One is doing better than the other and has small pepper-buds on it.

Isadora's Latest Avocado

Back in the '70s, a massive add campaign from the California Avocado Growers Association created a serial cartoon that appeared in most major women's magazines promoting the in home propagation of California avocados. The main character was Isadora, the quintessential "single girl on her own". Isadora showed us, step by step, how to stick the tooth picks in, which was top from bottom, and the level of water to maintain. She talked openly to her plants and her avocado grew happily on the window sill of her modest, single girl apartment.
I followed her instructions and thirty five years later, my mother has a twenty foot high tree that produces generous amounts of huge, tasty, Florida avocados.
Without Isadora's help, I have failed many times in getting my avocado pits to sprout roots. I thought I was missing a step and would give up after two weeks. That was my problem, it took a month of patience to see the roots.

Tomato Sex

Today I concerned myself with the fact that I have had several tomato blossoms, yet no little green balls are beginning to form anywhere. I had the idea, that in order to attract an admiring bee, I might need to roll the coat rack with the plant hanging on it out my front door for a few hours a day. I was relieved to find out that effort would not be necessary. Tomatoes are quite capable of pollinating themselves. Check out the web page I learned this from:
http://gardening.wsu.edu/library/vege016/vege016.htm