Sriracha ketchup

[eat me]

Aldis has it in their test product aisle.
It's good on hot dogs with onions but can't
beat mustard on hot dogs with tomatoes. I have
a big tomato harvest this year. I let morning
glories grow as a companion plant and I suspect
the shade they provided helped the tomatoes grow.
No BER this season which is remarkable for
container growing.

[Cydrome Leader]

What foods did you give to the homeless under the bridge on your last trip
to aldi's?

[eat me]

I wasn't in the mood and there wasn't anyone there on my
way to Aldis. Bought a 12 pack box of trail mix and threw
it on a mattress where someone might be sleeping. Next
time I'm also going to do soup since you don't need a can
opener and you can eat soup cold.

Maybe there will be more as fall approaches.

[Bruce Esquibel]

You just have a lot of tomatoes coming out, or they are ripe already?

I put in 5 or 6 plants and they have alot coming out too but nothing even
close to ripe. The sweet peppers might have one or two ready later this
week.

The cucumbers which were a total fail last year is like the amazon jungle
this year. Been using them for a couple weeks now and I hope some of the
neighbors want some because I can't use what is coming out.

Big disappoint this year was the sweet peas. Normally we get a couple good
loads of tasty, good snap, good flavored ones, but it seemed like this year
they grew too fast or something. The pods that came out that seemed ready to
eat were too hard and stringy. Some of the plants were starting to turn
brown which is when I usually clean them out but those were worse than the
early batch.

I don't have any problems with BER either this year but I started everything
late. After reading 101 things that can cause it, some old coot was
insistant that it had more to do with starting/forcing the plants too early
in the season.

So instead of getting the tomato, peppers and cucumbers going around mid
march, usually around st. pats day, (i start everything from seed), I
waiting till tax day, a month later this year.

Only other thing I bothered with was some onion greens which I haven't even
checked on lately but seemed to be doing ok last time I looked. That chinese
garlic or whatever they were called finally gave up the ghost after
reproducing themselves for years.

Those pigeon berry plants that .max thinks is the end of mankind if you keep
them around also self-reproduced, there is 8 or 9 of them now. The birds
around here go nuts for those berries. Almost all day they attack and dive
bomb those to get the berries to drop. Sparrows mostly, robins, some
cardinals and at least one I think is a finch. Bright yellow, really bright.

Seems like those berries are to birds what Godiva chocolates are to women
folk.

-bruce
b...@ripco.com

[eat me]

On Tuesday, August 9, 2016 at 7:09:48 AM UTC-5, Bruce Esquibel wrote:

> You just have a lot of tomatoes coming out, or they are ripe already?
>
> I put in 5 or 6 plants and they have alot coming out too but nothing even
> close to ripe. The sweet peppers might have one or two ready later this
> week.

This is quite unusual for me. I was eating Early Girl tomatoes two weeks
ago but it was just one plant and they came out slowly (1/day). Now
every plant has produced earlier than I can recall.

> I don't have any problems with BER either this year but I started everything
> late. After reading 101 things that can cause it, some old coot was
> insistant that it had more to do with starting/forcing the plants too early
> in the season.

In ground tomatoes are far more forgiving than containers. I never had
a first wave not have BER until the plant got its circulation going.
BER is caused by lack of calcium and in container environment that
can easily be lacking. You need to add Garden Lime to bring up the
calcium. In the past I put the lime in when making the mix. This
year I was too lazy to completely remix the containers and did a
surface application using 1/4 bag per 9 cu. ft. container which
can hold two tomatoes. I also have morning glories growing over
the plants and heard that tomatoes like a little shade so perhaps
this has helped.

Old coots usually know a thing or two. My dad always planted in
ground tomatoes around first week in May which is very very early
and never had BER but that's anecdotal. He used to lose entire
crops to severe blight. It's strange how some years no plants
produce and other years you have so many you can't give them away.

> So instead of getting the tomato, peppers and cucumbers going around mid
> march, usually around st. pats day, (i start everything from seed), I
> waiting till tax day, a month later this year.

I'm too lazy to do seed but seedling prices have shot through the
roof around here. Bonnie brand at Home Depot was selling for $3.69
per seedling. I got my 4 tomatoes for half that or around $8.
Menards on Elston had 4 packs of habeneros but those are having a
bad year which is unusual since they mostly grow like a weed.

> Those pigeon berry plants that .max thinks is the end of mankind if you keep
> them around also self-reproduced, there is 8 or 9 of them now. The birds
> around here go nuts for those berries. Almost all day they attack and dive
> bomb those to get the berries to drop. Sparrows mostly, robins, some
> cardinals and at least one I think is a finch. Bright yellow, really bright.
>
> Seems like those berries are to birds what Godiva chocolates are to women
> folk.

I want this plant. Where do you get a pigeon berry plant?

[Michele]

Goldfinch. They're fun to watch because they fly like drunks and tweet
when flapping their wings. Plus the males are always a bunch of assholes
to one another.

Can pick up a sock feeder full of niger thistle seed for about $6 from
Walmart if you want to feed them and watch their clowny asses. In the
event you have a good time watching them, and it's hard not to, go for a
regular finch feeder and buy thistle seed by the large bag.