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Gary350
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Re: Tennessee 2019 Garden

What is this 3 arm part of the tomato plant called these are where blossoms were and tomatoes once grew. 30 years ago I cut these off of 1 tomato plant it blossomed and grew more tomatoes the other plants did not. Following year I cut these off 1/2 the plants they grew blossoms the other plants did not. This year I cut these off the plants that survived blight now they are all making blossoms and growing new tomatoes.

I spray with copper sulfate to stop blight and about 1/2 my plants came back to life while the other 1/2 died, I always spray too late to save very many plant. I need to spray for blight before I see blight. Most of these tomato plants look like 10 ft long vines the only place with green leaves if the top 2 ft that is laying on the soil trying to grow straight up.

My brand new tomato plant grown from saved Big Beef seeds is growing new tomatoes. I am spraying it with copper sulfate so far blight is no problem.

I found another Maypop plant growing other side of the garden, I pulled up 2 plants before I realized they are Maypop. Maybe roots will survive and grow new tops before first frost about Nov 6. Maypops are not turning yellow yet?

Fennel plant is making seeds but seeds seem to be vanishing I wonder if birds are eating them. I have been putting sun flower seeds on all the bird feeders lots of birds are coming every morning.

It was 64 degrees Tue morning then 92 after lunch. It was 94 today dry as the desert grass crunches like potatoes chips when I walk on it. Almost no rain in 3 months, tomatoes, peppers, okra, are doing good. Potatoes I planted 2 months ago are doing nothing. A row of seeds I planted 2 months ago are doing nothing and now I don't remember what I planted. OH well I don't care.

7 pm and dark already.
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10 foot long tomato plant looks like vine with 2 ft top.
10 foot long tomato plant looks like vine with 2 ft top.
Tomato thing
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New Big Beef tomato plant grown from seeds.
New Big Beef tomato plant grown from seeds.
New Big Beef tomato plant grown from seeds.
New Big Beef tomato plant grown from seeds.
New Big Beef tomato plant grown from seeds.
New Big Beef tomato plant grown from seeds.
Maypop
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Fennel
Fennel

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TomatoNut95
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Isn't the 'tomato thing' called a truss?

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Gary350
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I have 2 large poke berry plants and some smaller plants all volunteers. I am saving all the berries to have seeds to plant next spring. I am going to plant a 40 ft row of poke berries for the birds they love the berries. I read people in England plant poke berries because they like the looks of the plants. I am going to fill a jar with berries and keep it outside all winter to keep seeds cold. Seeds need to be cold for 3 month to germinate. Poke berries look like they will make good wine but they are poison. Poke berries are used to die clothes the die is set with salt not vinegar like other plant dies. I think I see an experiment coming I have some old blue jeans that are not blue anymore they will be next week. LOL
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TomatoNut95
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Lol, let us know how that turns out! :)

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Gary350
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I found good online information how to dye with poke berries. Carol Leigh spent 18 years researching how to dye with poke berries. Most dyes fade soon but Carol found a way to make poke berry die list for many years. Bring to almost a boil then remove from heat The more berries you add the brighter the color. Dehydrated berries contain concentrated color. Use 5 lbs of berries to 1 lb of, wool, cotton, yarn, cloth, etc to get RED. Use less berries to get many shades from, purple, red, orange, pink. Use whole berries & stems too. I squeezed my berries like grapes to save the seeds it turned my hands very bright blood red. After adding water color is not bright red. Soak cloth 24 to 48 hours then dry for a week. I dyed my old blue jeans I though it would be blue but looks like they will be red over blue. Tomorrow I need to find a white cloth to dye to see how red it looks.

I have about 10 tomato plants that are looking better & better every day. Now it is hot again 94 degrees still no rain. 12 pepper plants are doing good. I pulled up the okra it was doing good to but we are finished with it.
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TomatoNut95
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That's pretty cool! I hope you managed to get that red stain off your hand! Lol, that reminds me of the I Love Lucy show where Lucy ended up stained blue from head to toe from playing around in a vat of grapes in Italy! :)

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Gary350
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Harvest for today several peppers & 4 tomatoes. Marconi peppers are not doing much 1 tiny pepper 3" long. Big Bertha peppers had a 100 blossoms 2 weeks ago when we were having cool 56 degree nights now in this 98 degree weather looks like 6 peppers. Jalapeno peppers & New Mexico pepper plants have about 20 peppers per plant. No big pepper explosion this year if we don't stop having this 98 degree weather, first frost is 1 month away.
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TomatoNut95
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I LOVE Big Bertha! What's the largest B.B. you've picked @Gary? I got one this morning that was 5 or 5 1/2 inches long.

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Gary350
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TomatoNut95 wrote:I LOVE Big Bertha! What's the largest B.B. you've picked @Gary? I got one this morning that was 5 or 5 1/2 inches long.
Before hot weather in June I had some 4"x 7" long Big Bertha. As weather got hotter peppers got smaller. It is still 98 degrees here peppers are 2"x4" now. Cool weather will make peppers get large again. Peppers were having BER problems few weeks ago I fertilized plants with wood ash no more BER. Wood ash has lots of calcium & potassium. Potassium makes more blossoms = more peppers. About 2 weeks ago we had 56 degrees at night and 75 during the day all the plants grew about 100 blossoms but hot 98 degree weather returned most blossoms are gone.

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Today I sliced up my fourth and final batch of peppers for drying. One pizza pan, and two foil pie pans. This batch is composed of 75% banana pepper. Since Bananas are thinner skinned, they'll probably dry before the bells. We are expected to get some severe storms soon, and temperatures are going to drop to highs of 80's and lows of 50-60's. Fall is here!

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More peppers and 2 more tomatoes. For now I only pick peppers that are Red. There are about 20 more peppers that should be Red in a few more days. November day before first frost there will be a 5 gallon bucket of green peppers to pick. White wash cloth is now red dyed with poke berries. I sprinkled poke berry seeds along 300 feet of fence they will come up next year, that will be better than a poke berry row in the garden.
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Keep us posted about how well that dyed color holds up. Amazing 8)
Did you say you used salt to set the color?

Btw I do the same thing with pokeberries— left to grow in rich soil, they can get as big as a small tree (10-12 feet high and 15 feet wide) with trunk diameter of 3 inches. I eradicate them where not wanted — May take several seasons since it’s a perennial — and let them grow in the peripheries.

The migrating robins completely strip the berries when they pass through.

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Gary350
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applestar wrote:Keep us posted about how well that dyed color holds up. Amazing 8)
Did you say you used salt to set the color?

Btw I do the same thing with pokeberries— left to grow in rich soil, they can get as big as a small tree (10-12 feet high and 15 feet wide) with trunk diameter of 3 inches. I eradicate them where not wanted — May take several seasons since it’s a perennial — and let them grow in the peripheries.

The migrating robins completely strip the berries when they pass through.
When we went to the Mountaineer Festival a woman there was using poke berries to dye wool she said to use salt not vinegar to set the color. I found information online about a women that spent 18 years researching poke berry dye she says to use 1 cup vinegar & 1 tsp alum to set the color and use the stems too they have color too. I crushed about 1 quart of berry including stems added 1/4 cup salt and 1/2 cup vinegar & 1 tsp alum bring to boil then lower heat. Color will become darker if you boil it longer so you get darker shades of red, add water to get lighter colors like pink. I noticed before adding salt & vinegar poke berry juice washed off easy but after adding salt, alum & vinegar it does not wash out easy. Cloth needs to be soaked in hot near boiling dye for 1 or 2 hours then allowed to dry 1 week. So far so good. Cotton & wool will soak up dye.

I found a You Tube video, a woman making poke berry jelly. She says only the seeds are poison they won't kill you they give you the worse stomach ache you ever had. Use juice only to make jelly follow instruction on the sure jell package.

I found a video of someone making poke berry wine. I don't have anymore berries to pick or I would make a bottle of wine.
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TomatoNut95
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That is really cool! Would Pokeberries grow in clay, I wonder?

@Gary, have you grown Poblano peppers? I was looking through my Baker Creek catalogue for an Anaheim, but unfortunately the mildest pepper they showed was a Poblano.

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3 ripe tomatoes on the new tomato plant that I planted from Big Beef tomato seeds. I have been putting blight spray on this plant for a month to keep it healthy.

Volunteer pepper plant has 1 cayenne pepper it is not totally red yet. Last years tag says cayenne, I have never seen 6" long cayenne until now. These are fire hot I won't be eating it.

Forecast for Sunday 2" of rain. I was enjoying Arizona style weather, I hate to see rain season come, 6 months of non stop rain is boring. Rain makes we want to be in AZ all winter.
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Everything in the garden is small from 3 months of almost no rain and 98 degree heat. Today I harvested 3 big beef tomatoes from the plants that I bought in April. I also harvested 3 big beef tomatoes from plants I grew from big beef seeds. I sliced the tomatoes to compare flavor I can not tell any difference tomatoes grown from seeds look & taste like tomatoes grown from the original plants. This is good to know next year I will grow several plants from seeds. 3 tomatoes in front row are grown from seeds. 3 tomatoes in rear are from garden store plant bought in April. Seeds I plants are saved seeds from big beef tomatoes planted in April. I was worried saved seeds would grow tomatoes that don't taste like the tomatoes from bought big beef plants.

Today I harvested all peppers that are Red color. There are still lots of peppers on the plants that are green and some stage of red/green. I have learned cooking with peppers taste different than cooking with dried peppers ground into chili powder. I am accustom to the chili power flavor that is what I have cooked with for 50 years. Nothing wrong with chili pepper flavor from whole red chilies it is just different flavor. It is like comparing sweet bell peppers to paprika flavor.

71 degrees this morning feels like 50 with this 20 mph wind. Weather forecast has changed, no rain today, rain tonight, heavy rain tomorrow, 2" to 3" of rain in the forecast. As dry as the soil is 3" of rain will no be much.
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Today I used the 2 wheel spreader to put sulfur on the garden. I don't remember if it was a 40 lb bag or 50 lb bag of sulfur. 10 tons of organic material I put on the garden in March turned soil 8 ph. I hope sulfur will lower soil to 6 ph but since organic material is still in the compose stage it might only lower soil to 7 ph. Oh well anything is better than 8ph. Have to wait 3 months to find out how it turns out it takes 3 months for this to work.

My 30 gallon trash can lid is full of water if there is any Fennel seeds in that they are probably no good now. I was surprised to see my rain gauge shows almost 4" of rain 2 nights ago.

I kept sulfur away from my new Big Beef tomato plant it has 5 green tomatoes on it. I kept sulfur away from the volunteer fire hot pepper plant too. Both plants should be good until frost kills them in Nov.

I found 3 maypops laying on the ground. I have maypop plants coming up in 9 places around the garden. When it gets colder I will transplant them to the fence. After I harvest all the maypops to make jelly I will sprinkle seeds along the fence too. Maybe there will be more maypop plants and more maypops next year.

I found another ripe Big Beef tomato hiding among the tomato plants leaves this makes 9 ripe tomatoes in the kitchen. Maybe this cool weather & rain will make larger tomatoes & peppers. We don't need anymore peppers but it will be interesting to see how many we get.
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After lunch I sliced New Mexico peppers. It is a dark over cast day we probably won't see the sun 10 times until May so I will dry peppers in kitchen oven on low 170 degrees.
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I dug up 11 Passion Fruit Maypop plants & transplanted 10 along 1 fence & 1 along another fence. No wonder these maypop plants are coming up all over the place they have Rhizome roots. Wife made a casserole dish for dinner with garden, corn, onion, potatoes, garlic, in a cheese gravy sauce. We had garden tomatoes too & Kielbasa sausage on the BBQ grill. I have learned if a tomato sets in the kitchen for 2 or 3 days it gets riper the acid goes much lower. Acid must convert to sugar I like the less acid sweeter flavor.
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Looks delicious @Gary! Say, if you like sweet tomatoes, might I suggest trying German Pink? It is a meaty, pink-skinned, sweet-tasted large tomato. Cherokee Purple is also sweet. Yellow tomatoes are also sweet, and are supposed to be lower in acid. As for me, I don't like tomatoes that are overly sweet like that White Cherry I did this year. That was just nasty.

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TomatoNut95 wrote:Looks delicious @Gary! Say, if you like sweet tomatoes, might I suggest trying German Pink? It is a meaty, pink-skinned, sweet-tasted large tomato. Cherokee Purple is also sweet. Yellow tomatoes are also sweet, and are supposed to be lower in acid. As for me, I don't like tomatoes that are overly sweet like that White Cherry I did this year. That was just nasty.
This time of the year sun is low in the sky behind trees tomato plants get no direct sun plus days are 5 hours shorter. Tomatoes that look ripe outside look green inside and are sour. After tomatoes set on kitchen counter top for a few days they turn Redder color then when I slice them they look ripe inside. The tomato I cut for dinner tonight was riper it has been in the kitchen several days. Look at the picture of this tomato I cut minutes after picking it from the garden it is green inside and very sour too much acid. Summer times tomatoes are not this sour.
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Peppers are taking up too much space in the freezer so I am making more dehydrated peppers in front seat of truck from peppers I picked in the garden yesterday and today. It was only 75 degrees outside today not 95 like before truck dehydrator still works just a little slower than before. I learned a lesson do not grind chili power very fine like flour it cakes together and will not mix into chili & other things. I have been using my spice/coffee grinder to grind dehydrated New Mexico peppers about 7 seconds then sift out the fines and regrind the left overs 5 seconds. Extremely fine ground chili powder sure does look beautiful the finer it gets the brighter the color gets. I mixed all my fine chili powder with this course grind it is about 5/8 of a quart jar. Frozen peppers are taking up too much space in our tiny freezer so tomorrow I start dehydrating all the frozen New Mexico peppers. I should have almost a full quart jar of chili powder when I finish with the frozen peppers. There are many more peppers in the garden.

This morning I tilled the garden. There are still 14 pepper plants & 15 tomato plants. Oh wait I forgot about the hot as fire volunteer pepper in the center of the garden. There is also 1 Big Beef tomato plant near center I plants from seeds.
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Yeah, my paprika is caking as well, but I ground it as good as possible.

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TomatoNut95 wrote:Yeah, my paprika is caking as well, but I ground it as good as possible.
My paprika is caking also it seems like it adsorbs moisture from the air that makes it sticky. I microwaved my paprika then roasted it in an iron skillet it was good but after leaving over night on a plate it was all stuck together again next day. Next time I put paprika in an air tight spice bottle to see if it cakes together again.

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A popular trick is to put the spice in a bottle/jar with shaker top and add dry uncooked white rice which will absorb the moisture away. (don’t use brown rice — the nutritional oils and germ can turn rancid)

The rice grains won’t fit through the shaker holes and they can help break up any slightly caked spice when shaken up as well.

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Store in the refrigerator, I do this with my habanero salt (I over pulverized it and it clumps unless in the fridge)

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I put my paprika in a baby food jar that a family member saves up for me to put seeds in. Think I should put some rice in the bottom of the jar?

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I got all the frozen New Mexico peppers out of the freezer they turned out to be a mix of New Mexico & Jalapeno peppers. I sliced the Jalapenos first and made another jar of Bread & Butter Pickled Jalapenos. Then I sliced the New Mexico peppers and put some on the pizza pan & 6 paper plates. I put all the peppers on the dash of the truck 9 am yesterday morning we had full sun until 12 moon then it was dark an over cast all day and today too. After lunch yesterday I put all the peppers in kitchen oven for 4 hours they did not dry. This morning I put peppers in kitchen oven for a few more hours they finally dried. Then I broke large pieces into smaller pieces by hand so they fit in the grinder. After grinding all the peppers it was a very large pile of chili powder. Then I mixed today's chili powder with yesterdays chili and I have a full pint jar of chili powder.
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Looks great @Gary! Wish I could've gotten more paprika from my peppers......well I would've if I hadn't burned all those sweet bananas.

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I put 7 hard neck garlic bulbs in the refrigerator first week of July to condition them to grow quick when I plant it Sept 1st. Since we have had hot dry desert conditions for 3 months I never planted the garlic and had forgotten about it until wife found them in refrigerator yesterday. Today I built a mini green house with 2 windows 26"x32" just for this garlic 7 rows with 12 garlic per row. Hard neck is quick to sprout it should be growing tops in a week. This tiny green house gets sun for about 5 hours every morning sun is already low enough to be behind trees most of the day. I have no dedicated location for anything this garlic will be in the way in April when it is time to plant potatoes & tomatoes. If I could get all day sun on the garlic it will probably be ready to harvest in March but as it is it won't be ready to harvest until about late May or early June.

I have about 35 windows I bought for a green house but only place to build a green house that gets full sun all day is the middle of the front yard.
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Today we have 3 small tomatoes from the garden so we decided to make FLAT Tacos. Did you ever see flat shells in the grocery store and wonder what those are for? Mexicans call flat tacos, Tostadas. I made refried beans and wife cooked the ground beef. We like these with a spoon of refried beans on each tostada shell, then 2 spoons of meat, top with cheese, bake in oven until cheese melts, top with, tomatoes, taco sauce, sour cream, lettuce, or anything you like. This usually makes about 15 or 16 tostadas but today we squeezed it all on 14 shells.

MEAT. Crumble ground beef into 1 pint of water add, 1/2 dices onion, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon oregano, 2 teaspoons chili powder, 1/2 tsp salt. Cook until water boils off.

REFRIED BEANS. 1 can of beans, 1/4 diced onion, 1 clove garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons butter, 3/4 cup water. Puree in kitchen blender then cook in skillet. Stir well until beans become thicker then add 2 ounces of Monterey Jack cheese. Allow to cook so beans become thicker. Recipe calls for Pinto beans but we like Dark Red Kidney beans better.

Put shells on pizza pans & cookie sheets bake about 5 minutes in oven at 400 degees F until you notice oil cooking to the surface. Remove shells from oven divide topping over all the shells. Top with more cheese, chedder or what every you like. Bake in oven until cheese melts.

Serve, top with sour cream, taco sauce, lettuce, what ever you like.
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Makes my mouth water! :D

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I checked the garden this morning before the BIG store, we have been gone camping 3 days. I can't trust the weather man not sure storm will be much but might be rain and mud so now is a good time to pick. There was 3 nice tomatoes but 2 have bird damage so I left them for the birds. Big Bertha peppers have become Little Bertha not sure why, maybe the short days, maybe the cooler weather. Marconi peppers are smaller than Big Bertha tiny little things not much larger than New Mexico peppers. The volunteer fire hot red chili looks good, it looks almost identical to New Mexico peppers. Tag that came with the fire hot red chilies called them cayenne peppers. I never saw cayenne peppers this large they are just as hot as a small cayenne. My son likes fire hot peppers this will be his. Plants are loaded with peppers I am only picking the red ones. Soon as we have first frost there will be plenty of green peppers to pick. Potatoes are starting to grow. Garlic is growing too. I need to plant carrot seeds. We have too many peppers, wife has been making good use of the peppers she puts them in everything. Joking I told her to put peppers in a chocolate cake she said, I will put them in your half. LOL
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Lol, chocolate pepper cake! :) How about pepper ice cream?
Yeah, I need to plant my Short n' Sweet carrots to, but I ran out of dirt. Gotta go buy some more.

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We opened a quart jar of Bread & Butter pickles to put on sandwiches, home made pickles turned out good. They don't taste quite as sweet as factory made pickles I wonder if the factory uses corn syrup instead of white sugar. These home made pickles suite us fine we think factory pickles are a little bit too sweet. We ground up the whole jar to make relish to eat on BBQ grilled sausages.

I sliced all the Jalapeno peppers it turned out to be the correct amount to make 1 more jar of Bread & Butter pickled Jalapenos. We have 2 other jars I made a few weeks ago. 3 more additions to the pantry.

For 50 years we ignored these sausages in the grocery store but once we tried them we were hooked. They are all good but we both like CONECUH the best. There are dozens of different sausages each store carries different ones. We like pork best an avoid all beef.
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I found the coolest thing I want for 2020! Found it in a book of building projects I bought today at a library sale. It's called a solar dryer! My picture won't upload because my cell phone booster is being naughty. But it looks like an angled table and as a glass window on the top, and window screening on the bottom on which the produce pieces are laid. I've got it on my 2020 list! Trouble I'm going to have is finding an old glass window.....

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TomatoNut95 wrote:I found the coolest thing I want for 2020! Found it in a book of building projects I bought today at a library sale. It's called a solar dryer! My picture won't upload because my cell phone booster is being naughty. But it looks like an angled table and as a glass window on the top, and window screening on the bottom on which the produce pieces are laid. I've got it on my 2020 list! Trouble I'm going to have is finding an old glass window.....



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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

SQWIB wrote:
TomatoNut95 wrote:I found the coolest thing I want for 2020! Found it in a book of building projects I bought today at a library sale. It's called a solar dryer! My picture won't upload because my cell phone booster is being naughty. But it looks like an angled table and as a glass window on the top, and window screening on the bottom on which the produce pieces are laid. I've got it on my 2020 list! Trouble I'm going to have is finding an old glass window.....
1980 I was very interested in solar. I put solar panels on the roof of my garage. They produce 429 BTUs of heat per square foot. I built 20 panels on the roof 13' x 30' = 390 sq ft = 166,000. BTUs. In summer when it was in the 90s solar panels made steam and ran a 5 hp steam engine this was an experiment just to see if it will run a steam engine. In winter 15 to 30 degrees outside solar panels got up to 100 to 140 degrees all winter. Most of our winter day time weather is 40 to 50 degrees solar panels heated to 200 to 240 degrees all day. I used these to heat our house and it worked great saved us about 98% of our heat bill. I built lots of solar projects year after year 2 were published in Mother Earth News. I built a solar cooker it got to 300 degrees in summer with the help of a mirror it got to 350 degrees hot enough to bake, cookies, cake, bread. Hot enough to cook a pie but it never get got golden brown. I put shelves in the solar cooker to make beef jerky but summer is too hot, winter works best when heat never gets above 140 degrees some days worked perfect to dehydrate. I had no heat regulation summer will work fine if you use a thermostat to turn ON a fan to reduce heat to 140 and remove humidity. Picture look weird they are color slides I had to project pictures on the wall then take pictures with my digital camera. https://mb-soft.com/public2/energyso.html

Today I doubled the size of the mini green house and planted 500 Danver half long carrots in the right 1/2. Garlic in left 1/2 is growing tops.
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Last edited by Gary350 on Wed Oct 23, 2019 9:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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TomatoNut95
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Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

That's awesome! As many power outages I've had this year, solar panels would be so handy. And such a nice cooker! Do you still have it and use it?

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Gary350
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Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

TomatoNut95 wrote:That's awesome! As many power outages I've had this year, solar panels would be so handy. And such a nice cooker! Do you still have it and use it?
Lived there June 1977 to Aug 1991 then moved away.



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