Another gigantic tomato sauce manufacturing operation going on today. This is 3 giant pots and moves us past the half way point on tomato production. What’s most interesting is that the only tomatoes I grew this season were cherry’s and plum varieties so you can imagine just how many tomatoes it takes to make a gallon of sauce. We’re having a mother’s day gathering at the house so you can guess what’s on the menu. To calibrate you, after the 6 of us ate all the pasta we could handle, there were 20 pints of sauce for the freezer. More calibration – we use 3 pints of sauce with a pound of pasta and a pint of sauce for 2 pizza’s.
Getting ever so slightly concerned about the lake level heading into May. Although we supposedly got much less rain than average this past winter, the lake remains fairly high. Seems like it never really dropped down to a typical winter level. My concern is that we’re starting the wet season without enough space to handle a much higher lake level. Wonder if I should be thinking about converting the garden to a rice paddy?
A crop I used to grow with great success in Utah was winter squash – acorn and butternut – have failed on a regular basis in Florida. Over the past 10 or so years I’ve tried several different varieties of each with zero success. I get good foliage and plenty of blossoms but shortly after the fruit starts to form, they die. I’ve tried so many times and so many different ways that I gave up. We get the squash at Publix and that’s that. But something interesting happened this year. When I clean the squash(from Publix), I toss the seeds along with the shells in the compost pile. For some reason, this year those seeds actually sprouted in the pile and as a joke project, I transplanted several to the main garden. As in the past, great foliage and plenty of blossoms but, for whatever reason, the squash seems to be growing nicely and I’m about ready to pick a couple of Acorns. I have no idea what variety I’m growing and the produce guy at Publix is no source of info on varieties.
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