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Gary350
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Re: Tennessee 2021 Garden

This is todays harvest 13 tomatoes for a total of 9 lbs 2.8 ounces. We canned 4 quart jars of tomatoes today, they are still in boiling water no picture until tomorrow.
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Gary350
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Days length is 30 minutes shorter already, I was in the garden at 6 pm digging up potatoes while it is still over cast & cool. I learn new things every day, I have already noticed potatoes do not like to be planted near any other plants and today confirms that. If a potato plant is 6" from a tomato plant or bell pepper plant there will be no new potatoes. If 2 potato plants are 8" apart new potatoes will grow offset to one side away from the neighbor plant. A row of potato plants 8" apart often will only have new potatoes on every other plant. I was not able to plant potatoes early this year the garden was under water for 6 weeks. My garden is low it holds water like a pond my potatoes need to be planted March 1st not April 25th. I planted some potatoes April 1st they rotted in the cold wet mud.

I dug up all the Russet new potatoes even though plants were not ready to be dug up yet, there is 2 lbs 5 ounces of new potatoes. Russets were all planted from grocery store russet potato peals.

I dug up the volunteer Red Pontic potato plant that was not ready to be dug up yet, the largest new potato is 7.7 ounces & 12 ounces total potatoes. Red Pontiac potatoes out produce Russet 4 to 1 in TN. If you live far north in cooler weather you will probably have better luck with Russet potatoes they do not like hot 95° dry weather. I wish we liked Red potatoes I would grow more of these.

I dug up 3 Kennebec potato plants that died the largest new potatoes is 9.1 ounces and a total is 3 lbs 4.3 ounces of new potatoes. Kennebec was planted from seed potatoes. White color potatoes in picture are Kennebec.

I picked another 3 pints of Raspberries.
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Gary350
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Todays harvest 3 tomatoes 1 lb 5 oz
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My computer is screwed up. I got the 3 year old lap top working, but camera will not up load pictures.

I picked more berries today no picture. It rained no picture. I slept about 2 hours on patio no picture.

I hate this laptop keyboard is tiny I have to type 1 letter at a time.
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That must be so frustrating!! Hope you get the situation resolved quickly.

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We have 3 more ripe tomatoes 1.5 lbs & another 2 quarts of raspberries. I have a total of 8 gallons of raspberries. It is interesting 99% of the corn silks are yellow color, the other 1% are red/purple color. Some ears are big 2" diameter & other ears with dry silks are small diameter of my finger.
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I picked about 3 quarts of Raspberries this morning. Berry plants have suddenly grown new leaves & new canes that hide berries so they are harder to find. There is a sticker vine growing in with the berries something native to TN. This sticker fine will turn out to be like having 5 miles of bard wire fence wadded up in with the berry plants. I need to see if I can crawl up into the center of the berry patch like a snake to find that sticker vine and cut it off. I know the sticker vine will grow back but maybe I can make it stay small.

Wife filled 2 more quart jars with ripe tomatoes this morning. This makes a total of 12 quarts of tomatoes to be canned today.

Online says, corn silks last 10 to 14 days then it takes 2 more weeks for kernels to grow. If that is correct it will be 3 more weeks before we can harvest corn, about Aug 10.
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I dug up 35 lbs of Kennebec potatoes today. Potatoes are tricky things new potatoes do not always grow in a circle directly under the plant, often new potatoes are off set 8" to one side from the plant, be careful where you dig. Sometimes most of the new potatoes are centered under the plant with 1 new potato 10" to one side. If soil is cracked open that is a good indication where the new potatoes are. Some plants are very large & other plants are small. Plant size does not indicate the quantity or size of new potatoes. I planted mostly cuttings with only 1 eye because we want large potatoes & I got several large new potatoes near 1 lb each but most new potatoes are smaller. 1/2 lb potatoes are probably the best size for the 2 of us. If potatoes are not covered with 1" of soil sun radiation is not blocked and the top side will be green color. Green potatoes & golf ball size potatoes will be November seed potatoes for a winter crop.
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Wife canned 12 quarts of tomatoes. Canning is finished for the year unless I decide to make Raspberry Jam. I picked a few more ripe tomatoes.
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I picked another 1/2 basket of berries this morning, another 2 quarts of berries. I have lost count not sure if this makes 8½ gallons or yesterday was 8½ gallons. Sometimes I like to talk like a foreigner, Red berries no ripe. If I leave out all the helping words it is so easy to type, much easier than typing abbreviations. LOL. I wonder what people that type abbreviations do with all their free time. LMFAO
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Raspberries & tomatoes are the only thing happening in the garden. I picked 3 quarts of berries this morning, the strange sky & strange sun made it easier to pick. Sun is usually blinding & hot but today sky is over cast and sun is blood red color. I only pick berries I see on the surface, easy picking.

I picked 6 more ripe tomatoes. Pantry is full, all the tomatoes we have now are for the table & my 2 sons. Neighbor lady wanted some tomatoes 2 days ago. Each of the 12 plant appears to have 40 to 50 green tomatoes. Another green tomato fell off 1 of the plants it will get ripe in the kitchen.

Sweet bell peppers are doing great growing in afternoon full shade there are several small peppers on each plant.

Tabasco pepper plants are small with no peppers.

Tomatillos are 6 & 7 feet tall, no fruit yet.

Cherry tomatoes have several green tomatoes, nothing ripe yet.

3 Rutgers tomato plants died. There are 6 more Rutgers plants 1 is starting to grow green tomatoes.

Corn silks are getting dry on several ears, I pulled back the husks small kernels are green. It will be another week maybe longer before we have ripe corn, silks need to be crispy dry brown & kernel milk needs to be white color & sweet flavor.
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The garden is full of Red Velvet ant killer wasps, there seems to be about 25 of them buzzing around all the time. I keep hearing 17 year cicadas I thought it was cicadas flying around until I got a look at 1 now I see they are all red velvet ant killers. I see no red velvet ants yet, they are never out until early morning and late evening when temperature is cooler. No more laying on the ground looking up for tomatoes & berries for the next 4 weeks I don't want to get stung by a red velvet ant.
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Berry picking was amazing today I picked a gallon. I might have enough berries today to start my next 6 gallons of Raspberry wine. We went to the wine club meeting last night, I opened a bottle of my last year 2020 Raspberry wine, everyone said, wow your Raspberry wine is loaded with flavor it is very good. Everyone brings several bottles of homemade wine & store bought wine everyone gets to taste them all. I try not to drink more than 2 tables spoons of wine from each bottle then later I can drink more wine from the very best wines. It is good to taste all those different wines when I fine a wine I like I go to the wine store an by a bottle. Last nights best wine was, LIBERTY cabernet sauvignon Reserve. Next time I am near the wine store I will stop and get a bottle of Liberty.
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This morning I was picking berries 15 minutes after the the sun started coming up. It is weird to pick berries in twilight. I am trying to beat the heat, 2 days in a row I was so exhausted by 9 am from this heat I stayed exhausted all day. I have things to do, I can't lay around like I am almost dead all day. After picking only 2 quarts of berries I trimmed off all the dying yellow & brown leaves from all the tomato plants. 2 weeks of every day rain has kept blight spray washed away on tomato plants. Maybe later I might pick more berries sunlight is better now.

Has anyone done research on the used tomato stem, what is the correct name for those old stems? It seems to me my tomato plants produce more tomatoes when I cut off used stems.

I picked 8 more ripe tomatoes. I guess I will make Peak O D guy O later. WHY can't I remember how to spell that. I need a stick up note on the monitor with correct spelling, spell check is no help
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I believe I call what you are holding a “fruit truss”, but individual stem to a tomato fruit is called “pedicel”.

I know what you mean about it being too dark to pick black colored berries — too often, I’ve ended up with fruits that I wouldn’t have considered ripe enough.

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applestar wrote:
Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:35 am
I believe I call what you are holding a “fruit truss”, but individual stem to a tomato fruit is called “pedicel”.

I know what you mean about it being too dark to pick black colored berries — too often, I’ve ended up with fruits that I wouldn’t have considered ripe enough.
Fruit truss sounds like a good name, now if I can only remember that.

10:30 am I returned to the berry patch to see if I missed any, I missed a whole quart of berries, some right in my face I can touch them with my nose. I picked 1 quart fast as I could it is 85° soon as I felt too hot I went in the house. Today is a good day to put on my swim suit and spray my self with the water hose.

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I picked 6 ripe tomatoes today, 8 yesterday, 4 day before that. Its about time to make garden chili. We were going to make garden pizza but got lazy & ordered pizza delivery.

Corn looks good rain made kernels get larger. Milk is not sweet yet, maybe tomorrow or next day. We had 5 minutes of rain yesterday evening that helped kernels get larger. It has rained all around us today it never got hot as yesterday.

I crawled through garden on my hands & knees 80% of the tillers died & fell off on their own. Tiller is weird, sucker makes better sense.

I have not picked Raspberries in 2 days. I am tried of picking berries, lots of berries going to waste, there will probably be another 10 gallons. Pantry has 14 jars of Jams from years past we need no more. I never got excited for a cobbler this year maybe I should make 1 anyway or I might wish I had.
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Yes! Finally getting a few tomatoes from the garden; Smallish Latah (always our earliest, with Sungold & Sweetie right behind.) Now we can rediscover what tomatoes really taste like .... "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer ..." etc.

But I wish it weren't so darn hot. Low 30s Centrigrade every day, and next week forecast is up to 35C which means our own place will be knocking on 40 again. At my age & these conditions I stay indoors after 10am F. (That's 10 hundred hours C. - or is it the other way about?) :)

No perceptible rain for the last 2 months and none in sight. It's getting scary.

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Corn harvest starts tomorrow morning at 8 am after I go buy 2 bags of ice, 1 bag for each ice chest. Pick, shuck, trimmed, ears go in ice chest to stop them from loosing flavor. Soon as kernels are cold wife cuts kernels off & fills each zip lock bag with 20 ounces of corn. She wants 30 bags in the freezer. We will probably be harvesting corn every day for several days. This years ears are about 2X larger than last years ears it won't takes as many ears to fill a 20 oz bag. We might get 30 bags of corn tomorrow, wait and see.

Wife made garden chili for dinner, everything came from the garden expect meat & 1 can of dark red kidney beans. I have saved seeds from, Blue Lake Bush beans & Roma beans that I did not plant so we are eating them in chili. Garden, Big Beef tomatoes, Yellow onions, Hard Neck garlic, makes it very good. I still have chili powder & oregano from last years garden. We made sure tomatoes aged 3 days in the kitchen before using them flavor change most of the acid flavor is gone & tomato flavor gets stronger & sweeter.
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More tomatoes. I don't pick tomatoes until they are 100% ripe. A 10 oz tomato that is almost ripe will be a 12 oz ripe tomato tomorrow.

I have not been watching tomatillos, I never grew these before, I was expecting a noticeable change but the air bags filled up with almost no change in their appearance. Today ripe tomatillos on the ground got my attention. I checked the plants and there are many ripe tomatillos. I love salsa verde I made it all the time in AZ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OhD3zggAf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccF5KWp6hwQ

Salsa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzpN92yNkAI
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This morning I found 74 ears of corn that were ready to pick. I shucked them & trimmed them, wife did the 4 minute boiling water method, cut kernels off cobs, then filled 16 bags with corn for the freezer. About 2 hours work. We put about 1/4 cup of corn in our bowl of chili we ate for lunch. We saved 6 ears for evening dinner.
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I have not picked berries in 4 days berry patch is so full berry picking has never been this easy. I picked this gallon basket full in 30 minutes. I pick with both hands pulling off clusters of 3 & 4 berries each time. I stopped when basket was too full to hold anymore & there are more to pick. This makes a total of about 11¼ gallons of berries picked this summer.
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I made a bowl of salsa, it is not as beautiful as store bought salsa or restaurant salsa but this is much better than any salsa I ever tasted. Maybe it is our ripe garden tomatoes & garden onions that makes it so good. Recipe says, 5 Roma tomatoes but I uses 2 good size 3" diameter ripe garden tomatoes. Recipe says 1 medium onion, I used 3 of our ping pong ball size garden onions. I used 1 whole garden garlic with the skin, juice from 1/2 Lime, 1/3 of a Jalapeno pepper, 10 cilantro stems with leaves. Salt to taste. I know this will taste better to marinade until tomorrow but it will probably be gone before dark today.
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Every day for about 2 weeks I have been thinking, there must be something to do in the garden but I don't know what it could be. Yesterday evening I see tomato plant limbs in all directions and several limbs hanging upside down. OH I forget to tie up the tomatoes. 6:45 am this morning I tied up the tomato plants. Most of the plants have cement rebar tomato stakes to tie plants to. Plants with no stakes I pull 10 limbs into a bundle they hold them self up.

Does everyone know about Hay Bale Twine $12 for a mile of twine, great for the garden. Farm supply stores sell it. I had to buy a new row of twine this year the last roll lasted 5 years and cost $8. I'm not sure if TSC sells hay bale twine it will probably cost $20 there they are expensive.

I can't even remember to water plants in pots they all died.
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It is so hot & dry birds are pecking holes in tomatoes to get a drink. Birds are too lazy to fly 50 ft to 3 bird baths to get a drink so I put several containers of water in the tomato rows to stop birds from pecking tomatoes. Tomatoes with holes need to be eaten right away or they go bad. It is 75° at 7 am it feels like 95° each TV station claims 99° to 102° today & feels like 120.
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6 am before it gets hot I picked a basket of corn. We now have 31 bags of corn in the freezer. I messaged friends & relatives they were here in 15 minutes the other 350 ears of corn are gone. Every time a row was picked the whole row was cut down to make it easy to pick the next row. I might check into renting a chopper machine to cut stalks into 1" pieces so they can be tilled into the soil. I usually burn corn stalks after they dry in the sun. When we start having lots of rain wet corn stalks are hard to get rid of.

Stalks with 2 ears only have 1 good ear, the other ear was soft sponge with no kernels. A few tillers tried to make ears that were soft sponge also. Next year I know to cut off tillers and cut off the smallest of 2 ears.

Just like it says online it takes 3 days for kernels to for from, clear water, to sweet milk, to very sweet milk, sweet milk, then dry kernels with no liquid. There are 3 days of sweet milk in the kernels and day 2 is maximum corn flavor & sweetness.

There is NO difference in ear size or kernel size in any of the rows with seed spacings of, 5", 6", 7", 8", apart. Next years corn crop will be 5" seed spacing, 50 seeds per row, 3 rows, 150 ears total. I will plant G90 corn again.
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That's some gook lookin corn! I hope you're composting all those husks? Looks like the stalks are going to get ground in too?

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We are swamped with tomatoes I picked 11½ lbs today. We gave away a lot of tomatoes today with corn. We gave several neighbors & relatives tomatoes. I try not to pick tomatoes any sooner than I need to, tomorrow they will be larger & riper. Sweet bell peppers are always slow they often grow much faster when we start having cooler weather.
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More tomatoes. Everyone I gave tomatoes to says, we still have tomatoes, we don't need more yet. What can I do with 22 lbs of tomatoes. I could sell them cheap on market place but we don't want people coming to our house. Tomatoes picked 4 days ago won't last much longer. We have been eating tomatoes every day & we are tired of them too.

I made red salsa it turned out good.

I made green salsa verde it is terrible. I hate it I wasted a good, onion, garlic, pepper, cilantro, just to pour it down the drain. Maybe restaurant salsa verde is different than online recipes?
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I cut the ropes that hold tomatillo limbs in a bundle to see if anything is hiding inside. Then I cut off all the tomatillos & put them in a 5 gallon bucket. Hey these are more tomatillos than I want. I think I will keep 6 of these then tomorrow morning I take these to farmers market and give them all to the oriental lady I know she has a sellers table every week. My hands both smell like perfume, LOL it must have come from tomatillos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OvwLPdRN80
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Gary350 wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:04 pm
More tomatoes. Everyone I gave tomatoes to says, we still have tomatoes, we don't need more yet. What can I do with 22 lbs of tomatoes. I could sell them cheap on market place but we don't want people coming to our house. Tomatoes picked 4 days ago won't last much longer. We have been eating tomatoes every day & we are tired of them too.
Great production from your garden, especially corn and tomatoes. What variety of each do you plant?

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lakngulf wrote:
Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:12 am
Gary350 wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:04 pm
More tomatoes. Everyone I gave tomatoes to says, we still have tomatoes, we don't need more yet. What can I do with 22 lbs of tomatoes. I could sell them cheap on market place but we don't want people coming to our house. Tomatoes picked 4 days ago won't last much longer. We have been eating tomatoes every day & we are tired of them too.
Great production from your garden, especially corn and tomatoes. What variety of each do you plant?
I planted Big Beef tomatoes first they are ripe now they are always, big tomatoes, big produces, good flavor. I also planted Rutgers & cherry tomatoes the cherry tomatoes are just now getting ripe. I think all the Rutgers died there might still be 1 Rutgers plant somewhere in the bunch.

I planted G-90 bicolor sweet corn for the first time this year. 98% germinates this year compared to 60% germination from other sweet corn years past. Ears are 35% BIG than other corn I have grown.

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You did a great job. I have heard of Big Beef and they look good. I planted Cherokee Purple, Liz Birt, and Better Boy. Was not my best year for tomatoes but we made a ton. Ours play out in the heat during July. I have a couple dozen late Cherokee Purple that are just now blooming, so I am hoping for a good second crop.

BTW: was my first try with Liz Birt. It is a cross between Brandywine and Cherokee Purple. They did ok but the fruit has hollowness to it, not full blown juicy like the straight CP. I will not try it again. Also, my Better Boys put on too much fruit and did not get very large. I grow in large pots and need to replenish the soil in each.

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Corn stalks that I cut down have been laying in the HOT sun for several days they are very light weight now it is easy to pick up a bundle of 50 stalks and move them to the grass south of the garden. I used riding lawn mower to cut corn stalk stumps shorter then I tilled the garden soil. Tiller found 2 more new potatoes, 1 golf ball size potato & a 1 lb potato slightly damaged by the tiller. Tomato plants are not slowing down we have been getting an average of 10 lbs of Big Beef every day. I was trying to keep track of total lbs of tomatoes but lost count. I assume the past 2 weeks I have picked 140 lbs of tomatoes. We have been giving, friends, neighbors, relatives, tomatoes & now no one will take anymore. Wife said, I hate to see so many good tomatoes go bad I will can 10 quarts today. Weather has suddenly changed 2 weeks early heavy dew every morning looks like it rained every night. Some Mexican people took all the tomatillos.
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I am so tired of picking berries I put an AD online, FREE berries pick your own. First thing people ask, do plants have thorns? Most people don't come. A few people came but after a few minutes they quit. People barely get poked by 1 thorn they run away screaming all the way to the hospital emergency room. I don't understand this generation of spoiled whinny babies. How can I let all these berries go to waste. I picked more berries again this morning there are so many right up front in my face I can sometimes pull off 4 or 5 at a time. I can pick 1 by 1 until each hand has a dozen berries before putting each hand full into the basket. Here is another basket of berries I only picked 2/3 the way around the berry patch & I only picked what is very easy to pick. I can still see 100s of berries that need to be picked. I keep saying, that is my last basket I'm not picking anymore. This makes 14½ gallons of berries total.
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Wife Canned 4 more quarts of tomatoes just to keep them from going bad. We sold 12 lbs of tomatoes yesterday. I learned you can't give anything away free or too cheap people won't come they think something must be wrong with it or it won't be free. I picked more tomatoes before dark yesterday, this morning there appears to be 7 lbs of ripe tomatoes to pick. I think longer tomatoes stay attached to the plant the longer they stay good. Lady that got tomatoes yesterday said she will come today and pick free berries. Good I don't want to pick anymore berries.
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TomatoNut95
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Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

I know what you mean. If people were smart enough they'd wear gloves. Main thing I worry about when picking berries is snakes. I've met a snake before while berry picking and it an experience I shall not forget.

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

I was about to relist my tomato AD on market place when a man came to the house to get 25 lbs of tomatoes. He makes 250 pints of salsa every week with a variety of different types of chili peppers. He wants another 25 lbs of tomatoes next time I have them. He lost his job to covid. His wife is a nurse at the hospital.

Rain washed away levees around my plants I had to rebuild them, I like to give each plant 1/2 gallon of water every evening in this drought. We had a very good rain 1 week ago, now soil is dry as dust.
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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:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:07 pm
I know what you mean. If people were smart enough they'd wear gloves. Main thing I worry about when picking berries is snakes. I've met a snake before while berry picking and it an experience I shall not forget.
I worry about rattle snakes & copper head snakes, so far so good. I don't wear gloves to pick berries I don't thing can pick with gloves on. I wear short sleeve shirt & short pants. Thorns get snagged on my clothes so bad sometimes I get trapped and can't get away. Thorns don't stick to skin they just scrap a little bit as long as I move slow. I pick with a 1 gallon bucket & a 6 ft long pole to push limbs to one side and the pole also allows me to lean way over into the bushes and not fall in. While the rest of the country was having cicadas we had none but now we have them. For the past 3 days cicadas have been very loud. I have only seen 1 live cicada on the patio & the empty shells stuck on trees. The lady that claimed she will come pick berries yesterday never showed up. There are several cooking shows on TV every Thursday night, last night I see a new way to make low sugar, blackberry & blueberry cobbler, blackberry & blueberry muffins, blueberry & blackberry cake, it has inspired me to make a cobbler today. It will only take 10 minutes to pick 1 quart of berries. I already know too much sugar hides the berry flavor so you mix the batter with the amount of sugar you like, taste batter to get sugar flavor you want, fill pan or cast iron skillet with berries then pour thin batter over berries, thin batter runs down into the berries. After cooking there is a very good berry flavor not hidden by too much sugar flavor. Cobbler recipe I have used for 40 years is, 1 C flour, 3/4 C sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 C milk, 1/2 C butter, 4 C berries. I will mix this with no sugar then add sugar to taste. Berries are sweet, I hope I can make better that tastes good with 70% less sugar. Recipe says, pour melted butter over the top.
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Last edited by Gary350 on Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:39 am, edited 3 times in total.



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