Mudspike gardening thread

What variety are the yellow tomatoes @anon51893362?

Wheels

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Dang, I don’t know why but that thread completely slipped under my radar. I actually bought a house last spring and I spent my first summer doing… err… gardening. I didn’t think I’d like it at first, but strangely enough I do!

The previous owner had raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, wild strawberries, chives… and I started growing lettuce, cucumbers, green beans, different kinds of tomatoes, scallions and carrots.

The scallions, cucumbers and green beans were a resounding success… the lettuce and carrots were a big deception (I think I may have sowed the seeds too close together).

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Some of our toms

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Did you use oil to store your tomatoes

I believe wife used boiled water with salt and some seasoning. I can ask her for more details if desired.

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Please I used to dry mine in the aga and have bottles of sun dried toms in oil. I would like to try alternative methods :blush:

She says;
For 1 litter bottle

  • Fill with tomatoes, peppers and other greenery
  • 1 ea. Bay-leaf
  • 5 ea seeds black pepper.
  • 1 ts - seeds of mustard
  • 1 ts - seeds coriander

Hot boiled water poured inside the bottle.
Wait for 15 minutes and drain the water.

  • Add 1 Tsp of salt.
  • 1/2 Tsp sugar
  • 1 Tsp 9% vinegar
    Again pour boiled-hot water into the bottle. Tighten the lid. Flip the bottle upside down and cover with few towels to keep it warm.

That’s it!

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I think this year there is going to be lots of green tomato chutney made

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Thanks @anon51893362. :sunglasses:

Wheels

Pepper relish canned by my wife…Reaper Relish coming in a few weeks…

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Big one for sure! Fish in the pond enjoyed it.

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Freaking monstrosity! Stop eating tomato plants!

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if you need somewhere to offload that, I have a bit of my serrano salsa left I could trade…

These are supposed to be trinidad moruga scorpion chilli plants. They are growing really well and have a decent haul of peppers for such small plants (I wasn’t expecting much as the climate is too cold here) but they just don’t look like scorpions.

They aren’t ripe yet but I ate one and thought I was going to die. So they are definitely hot enough to be scorpions but I’d like to identify them properly. I’ve had to move them inside as the chill has started to fall in the air but next year I’ll keep the 2 best plants and pot them up in a much larger container and go for a bigger haul. I fricking love chilli.

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Finished making a planter box by the driveway under the deck.

Bit of a hard spot - there’s old concrete rubble and previous deck foundations just underneath so couldn’t just drive stakes down but had to lay the support posts in concrete. Oh well - it is pretty overbuilt now but at least it won’t go anywhere!

Went to buy some grasses and star jasmin to plant along the side but ran out of day - planting tomorrow.

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Nice…! Just be careful you don’t get termites working their way through the soil and beams of the planter box into your main structure there. Definitely spot check it every year (dig it out a bit and examine the boards)… You putting ornamental flowers and shrubs there or garden stuff?

Our garden is still doing great for peppers…tomatoes are about done with the much cooler temps.

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Why make it out of wood? Wouldn’t it have been easier and less prone to rot to stack a row of broken tiles?

We make them like this a lot, it’s both easy to do, looks nice and re-uses stuff that would otherwise be rubble. The bonus is that they provide many nooks and crannies for little insects and plants to live in. After a year or two they look really alive. (or messy, if that’s how you’d interpret that :stuck_out_tongue: )

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Thats a really neat idea! I want to make something similar round the flower bed in my garden to raise it up. I really like the rough look of it

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No termites in NZ, which helps! We do have ā€œborerā€, i.e. common furniture beetle, anobium punctatum, which is a threat to untreated timber and has been known to compromise structures in old houses.

The radiata pine used for the boxing has been treated with a bactericide/ fungicide (alkaline copper quaternary), which makes it last but if you wanted to plant edibles, you’d need to line it with something to prevent leeching.

My garden beds are made of untreated macrocarpa sleepers, which will eventually rot but the wood has a natural resistance to borer. No nasty treatment residue in my veggies! :grin:

We used to have edibles on this spot - rosemary, mint, oregano, lemongrass and Vietnamese mint…it was nice from a produce perspective but looked a bit scraggly.

The house is sadly getting a bit small for us so I’m transforming some of the gardens to ornamental planting, easy care and a bit more formal, to make the section as pretty as it can be before putting it in the market. Going to be emotional to sell it as it’s our first house and we’ve done a lot of work to it over the last decade.

@schurem I like that broken tile solution, that’s cool! Need to find out where to source that stuff here, add it to the repertoire :slightly_smiling_face:

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